The Elizabethan Religious Settlement

How many of these orders were immediately obeyed is questionable. There had been so much change in the previous 12 years that the average Kentish parish may well have waited to see how things were going before involving itself in more expense. Hawkhurst sold its altar stones in 1560 and other Church accounts show money spent on dismantling Catholic furniture. At Smarden the parish received from Thomas Norton, for part of the rood loft, 20s.; Mr. Cotterill pulled their rood down completely; they only took remaining valuable scenes in the country as were at Shoreham and Lullingstone. These are few entries for the purchase of a new communion table but in Bethersden the accounts for 1560/1 show, to Richard Watts for the new communion table 3/4d. Changes must, however, have gone ahead for William Harrison in his Description of England in 1577 says, all in ages, shrines and monuments of idolatry are taken down and defaced, only the stories in glass windows excepted.

In 1563 Convocation published 38 Articles reaffirming the Settlement though there was no mention of the eucharist. However, when parliament confirmed these in 1571 this was reexamined and the 39 Articles became the basis of the Anglican Church. Much of the credit for these widespread acceptance of such doctrines must go to Elizabeth herself and her episcopate. There was never any doubt that the Settlement was one approved by the Queen alone. In most other protestant countries decisions were taken by a synod; in England the episcopacy was part of a chain of royal command. Elizabeth's ability to select the right episcopate was clearly vital: the problem of war never far away. It was her luck that she imposed via media had its critics. The main thrust came from the puritans with their conviction that the central hallmark of faith to Christ was the way to salvation. At first many of them were returned Marian exiles, full of European ideas and burning with zeal to implement them. Their very enthusiasm was the key to their lack of real success, in that they were never a united, organised entity with common aims. Some coming home from Geneva, Frankfurt and Strasbourg their doctrines and priorities varied. Half a century has shown us their particular challenge as radical and threatening alternative to the Elizabethan settlement but the troublemaker in several areas has shown a widely disparate group of opinions. Miss Marian exiles return to Kent between 1558 and 1559 all with very different backgrounds and agendas. Some like Elder and Boys were county magistrates, some lesser country gentry, while others radical Edwardian clergy, including John Bale, were restored to their livings in the Canterbury diocese.

Even later there was an uniformity often holding views in Parker's 1569 visitation 21 had conformed by 1573. Even most of the nonconformists had little of the firebrand mentality. Master Richard Fletcher of Cranbrook was reported for not wearing a surplice and from disrupting communion wafers! It seems that most anti-puritanism in the country was moderate and could, with some common sense, be absorbed into the Settlement. However, during the early 1570s Archbishop Parker was convinced there was a threat and Bowar and Dering, Rector of Pluckley, lost their licence to preach having let the Queen know his views on the existing clergy. The present communion items are often ruffians, hawkers, and carders. They are blind guides! Five years later John Stow got into trouble for his preaching at Cranbrook. Local support petitioned Archbishop Grindal to allow Stow to resume preaching. This at least proves the existence of educated puritan laity since eight of the supporters were county magistrates. There is, though, little evidence in Kent of widespread godly protestantism. Nationally after 1580 divisions among the sects increased and some separatists unable to face a church with an episcopate fled abroad.

The other opposition wing, of Roman Catholics, grew gradually. After Elizabeth's excommunication in 1570 Catholics were seen as traitors and subversives. This increased quantity stated in 1568 when Mary, Queen of Scots, fled to England and became a figurehead for Catholic plots. By 1574 the first catholic missionary priests from Douai began arriving in England. The most famous was Edmund Campion who so impressed Elizabeth that she offered him a senior post in the Church of England if he would return to it. His refusal sealed him the death penalty and in 1581 fines for recusancy were raised to £20 per month. In Kent most anti-catholic opinion involved accusations of witchcraft: one educated support was limited to a few minor gentry.

Throughout the argument and dissension Elizabeth's supremacy was exercised through her chosen Archbishops of Canterbury, who did not always receive the backing that they felt was their due. The Queen always played events in her interests. When Matthew Parker (an Elizabethan statesman) tried to solve the vexatious controversy by issuing his Advertisements in 1566, the Queen refused to endorse his actions. When Grindal, a known reformer, appointed in 1575, refused to clamp down on puritan preaching and was suspended until his death in 1583 when John Whitgift, determined to resist puritan advance, was consecrated.

Behind Whitgift's organised church lay the intellectual rigour of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker, incumbent of Bishopspbourne near Canterbury, produced his first volumes in 1593. Once seen by historians as a purely anti-puritan text it is now viewed as the seminal statement of Anglicanism. Hooker stressed that historically the church of England was a body whose origins could be traced back to the early church of the New Testament. He gave the church position, tradition and authority. The "judicious Hooker" described an Anglicanism which could be supported and by most of its critics without qualms. Unfortunately religious zeal often ran counter to common sense.

The Royal Supremacy, the Prayer Book and the 39 Articles together became the foundation of the Anglican church and, backed by Hooker's tolerance, offered a settled Elizabethan church. Much of what had been achieved had been piecemeal and the queen herself, shortly before her death there was a recognisable Church of England. The compromise, achieved with much difficulty in the sixteenth century, is coming under fresh tension in the twenty first. Does post-Christian opinion make a royal supremacy interpreted on Parliament terms an anachronism?

Books you may wish to consult:

• Elizabeth I: Religion and Foreign Affairs, John Neale
• The Sixteenth Century Reformation, Geoffrey R. Elton 2001
• Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas 1971
• Early Modern Kent, Michael Zell 2000
• A Chronicle of Kent 1250-1760, R.M. Philpin 1971
• Some valuable books e.g. England under the Tudors, G.R. Elton 1955, show dramatic changes in the historiography of this period.