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| Elizabeth I in her coronation robes. |
The reign of Elizabeth I began with a sense of uncertainty and danger which would rarely leave it. (Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds. The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603)
The first moves
Elizabeth planned her first moves carefully. She remained for a while at Hatfield, and assembled her Privy Council in the Great Hall. The key appointment - the most important of her reign - was her Principal Secretary, William Cecil. She said to him,
This judgement I have of you: that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gift, and that you will be faithful to the state, and that without respect of my private will, you will give me that council that you think best, and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy you shall show it to myself only, and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein.
Listen here for Melvyn Bragg's discussion of Cecil in 'In Our Time'.
Her childhood friend, Robert Dudley, son of the executed Duke of Northumberland, was made Master of the Horse, a trusted position that gave its holder close access to the monarch.
On 28 November Elizabeth, adorned in purple velvet, made her formal entry into the City of London, to the cheers of the crowd.
When she entered the Tower, she said,
I am raised from being a prisoner in this place to be a prince of this land. That dejection was a work of God’s justice; this advancement is a work of his mercy.
She was crowned on Sunday 15 January 1559. Of Mary’s bishops, only the insignificant Bishop of Carlisle was prepared to crown her. This was a sign of future religious problems - England was still officially a Catholic country. She was crowned in Latin, but parts of the service that followed were read twice – in Latin and English. These changes were a portent of the religious settlement to come.
Elizabeth had no doubt that she was divinely appointed to rule. She noted in a prayer published in 1563: God had
chosen me thy handmaid to be over thy people that I may preserve them in peace.… Under thy sovereignty, princes reign and all the people obey.
She believed, as did most people at the time, that her anointing at her coronation gave her a sacred status.
'Monstrous regiment'
But could a woman ever be worthy of the sacred trust of anointed kingship? Many at the time believed that this was not possible. Her position was challenged by those with a fundamental objection to the rule of a woman, most notoriously by the Scottish Protestant reformer, John Knox. His First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment [Rule] of Women was published at the start of her reign, and though it had been aimed at Mary Tudor rather than her, she was greatly offended by it and would not allow Knox to enter the country.
A reply was published by the Protestant scholar, John Aylmer, in his An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjectes (1559), but he was unable to make the resounding defence that Elizabeth wanted.
He conceded that women were ‘weak in nature, feeble in body, soft in courage, unskilful in practice’. But he argued that there were exceptional women like the prophetess, Deborah, who had been a judge in Israel. Besides, a queen never ruled on her own.
It is not she that ruleth but the laws, the executors whereof be her judges, appointed by her, her justices of the peace and such other officers.
Parliament and the religious settlement
Elizabeth’s first parliament opened ten days after her coronation. Historians know more about the Elizabethan parliament than its predecessors, largely because of the Journals of the two Houses.
From 1510 the House of Lords kept a record of its proceedings and from 1547 the Commons kept its own Journal.
From the start, two things were clear.
- As the child of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth would reverse her sister’s religious policy and return to at least some of the reforming measures of her brother’s reign.
- This would have to be brought about by acts of Parliament. (The irreversible precedent had been created by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell when the break with Rome was brought about by Parliamentary statute.)
However, she faced two problems.
- Her religious sympathies were much more conservative than those of many of her advisors and many members of Parliament. Some of them had fled abroad during Mary's reign and returned with radical Protestant views.
- The House of Lords, including the bishops (all of them appointed by her sister), was staunchly Catholic.
When Parliament assembled in January 1559, William Cecil quickly introduced bills to re-establish Protestant worship. On 29 April both were finally passed, after bruising battles in the Lords.
The Act of Supremacy declared Elizabeth to be the Supreme Governor (not Head) of the Church. The Act of Uniformity reinstated the English Prayer Book of 1552 with minor revisions. Once again, the Mass was replaced by an English-language service. As a result, Mary’s bishops resigned en masse, and a new bench of bishops had to be created. The Act decreed that those who failed to attend their parish church on Sunday had to pay a fine of twelve pence for each missed attendance.
Together, the two Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity created the Church of England. Its origins and nature reflected a compromise between the Queen and her Parliament. It was a Protestant church, but, thanks to the Queen, it retained some aspects of Catholicism, most notably clerical dress, bishops, cathedrals and choral music.
In 1563 there were two additions:
- John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe's Martyrs) was fiercely anti-Catholic. It re-iterated the view that true religion had reached England through Joseph of Arimathea. Elizabeth was the new Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and England was an ‘elect’ nation. After 1571 the Actes were set up in every cathedral and collegiate church in England.
- The Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrinal statement of the Church of England. All clergy were required to subscribe after 1571.
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Elizabeth as the Emperor Constantine
from Foxe's Actes and Monuments.
She is the divinely appointed ruler
who brings in true and crushes
false religion.
Public domain. |
Elizabeth wished to create a church that could accommodate a wide range of opinion. As Francis Bacon later said, she did not wish ‘to make windows into men’s souls’, but she did require compulsory church attendance.
Two groups of people were not satisfied: radical Protestants and Catholics.
The Puritan movement
Within the Elizabethan church there was a ‘godly’ minority who did not seek to subvert the church but to transform it in a more Protestant direction, more like the Reformed churches on the Continent.‘Godly ministers’ rejected the white linen surplice and such ceremonies as the sign of the cross in baptism or the giving of the ring in marriage. They abbreviated the service to allow time for an ample sermon.
On the other hand, Elizabeth’s religious views were conservative, as is shown by her dislike of clerical marriage and the crucifix in the Chapel Royal. She tried to stamp out all unauthorised religious activity, such as sermons delivered on market days.
Two views emerged among those clergy and lay people who thought the Elizabethan settlement insufficiently Protestant. Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, wrote to the Zurich-based reformer, Heinrich Bullinger:
We resolved not to desert our church for the sake of a few ceremonies, and those not unlawful in themselves, especially since the pure doctrine of the gospel remained in all its integrity and freedom. ... these unseasonable contentions about things which ... are matters of indifference are so far from edifying that they disunite the churches, and sow discord among the brethren.
He was arguing that for the sake of the greater truth, people should not split the Church over comparatively minor matters ('things indifferent') such as accept rituals and clerical dress. However, he was later suspended by Elizabeth for refusing to suppress preachers she believed to be subversive. There were limits to what he would accept.)
A more radical view was put forward by two clergymen, John Field and Thomas Wilcox, in their Admonition to Parliament (1572):
We in England are so far off from having a Church rightly reformed according to the prescript of God’s word that we are not come to the outward face of the same.
These built-in tensions were not going to go away. A battle was underway for the soul of the Church of England.
Conclusion
- There was therefore a built-in tension within the Church of England. Was it a sensible via media or ‘a church but half reformed’, as its critics declared?
- By the end of the 1570s, England had become a firmly Protestant nation, though with a substantial Catholic minority. The religious changes had been brought about as a result of negotiations between the Queen and Parliament.
- Though Elizabeth aimed to create an inclusive Church, Catholics remained outside it and radical Protestants were dissatisfied with her via media.
