You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
When Elizabeth I acceded on 17 November 1558, England's religious identity was dangerously unsettled. In a single decade the country had been wrenched from the conservative Catholicism-without-the-Pope of Henry VIII's final years (Lesson 1), to the assertive Reformed Protestantism of Edward VI, to the restored Roman Catholicism of Mary I (Lesson 2) — each transition enforced by statute and, under Mary, by fire. Religion in the sixteenth century was not a private matter of conscience but the foundation of public order, national loyalty, and international alignment in an age of confessional war. Elizabeth's task was to construct a settlement that could command outward obedience from a divided realm, secure her own supremacy over the Church, and avoid provoking both Catholic resistance at home and a Catholic crusade from abroad. This lesson examines how she did it — the parliamentary struggle of 1559, the two great Acts and the Royal Injunctions that made the Settlement, the doctrinal definition supplied by the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the deliberately gradual way the Settlement was bedded into the parishes.
Her answer — the Religious Settlement of 1559 — was among the most consequential and durable achievements of the Tudor century. It created a Church of England that was broadly Protestant in doctrine yet retained much that looked Catholic in structure and ceremony (bishops, vestments, the liturgical calendar) — the celebrated via media or "middle way." Its genius, and its fragility, lay in studied ambiguity: by leaving key points, above all the nature of the Eucharist, deliberately open, it could accommodate a wide spectrum of belief and so buy outward conformity. But that same ambiguity guaranteed that the Settlement would be pressed from both flanks throughout the reign — by Catholics who could not accept it and by Puritans who found it insufficiently reformed (the subject of Lesson 5). The central debate is whether the Settlement was a coherent, principled via media designed by Elizabeth herself, or a more thoroughly Protestant settlement diluted by political necessity — and whether its survival owed more to royal statecraft or to the self-restraint of those it failed to satisfy.
The organising question is this: was the Elizabethan Settlement a deliberately moderate via media crafted by a cautious queen, or a more thoroughly Protestant settlement made and then diluted by political circumstance — and did it endure because of Elizabeth's statecraft, or because most of her subjects, for their own reasons, chose to conform?
By the end of this lesson you will be able to:
This lesson belongs to OCR H505 Unit Y107 (British period study & enquiry): England 1547–1603 — The Later Tudors, opening the Elizabethan half of the unit. It is examined in two ways:
Because Y107 is a period study, examiners reward command of how the religious question developed across the reign; keep asking how each element of the Settlement shaped the confessional balance and the reach of royal authority. Our sequence separates the making of the Settlement (this lesson) from the challenges to it (Lesson 5) — a pedagogical arrangement of our own, not a transcription of the specification's ordering (refer to the official OCR specification for exact wording). This lesson resolves the religious turmoil of Lessons 1 and 2 and lays the ground for both the challenges of Lesson 5 and the governmental themes of Lesson 4.
Elizabeth inherited a genuinely difficult position, and understanding her constraints is essential to explaining why the Settlement took the shape it did. She could not simply impose whatever she wished; she had to steer between powerful and conflicting pressures.
| Constraint | Detail |
|---|---|
| A divided realm | A decade of reversals had left committed Catholics, committed Protestants, and a large body of the confused and conformable; any settlement had to command outward obedience across this spectrum |
| Her own legitimacy | As the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was, in Catholic eyes, illegitimate; a return to Rome would have implied her own bastardy, giving her a personal stake in a Protestant supremacy |
| The returning exiles | Protestants who had fled Mary's persecution returned from Geneva and the Rhineland fired with reforming zeal, pressing for a thorough Reformation |
| The Catholic bishops | The Marian episcopate, appointed to restore Rome, would resist any Protestant settlement in the House of Lords |
| The international dimension | France and Spain were the great Catholic powers; a provocatively Protestant settlement risked a Catholic crusade, while Spain, still hostile to France, had reasons not to push England too far |
These pressures explain the Settlement's characteristic caution. Elizabeth needed a Church that was Protestant enough to satisfy her own position and the returning exiles, but not so aggressively Reformed as to provoke rebellion at home or invasion from abroad. The result was a settlement that was Protestant in substance but studiously moderate in tone and conservative in outward form — a calculated response to a genuinely constrained situation, not simply a matter of the queen's personal taste.
The international dimension deserves particular weight, because it shaped the timing and tone of the Settlement as much as any domestic pressure. In 1558–59 England was still formally at war with France as Mary's ally, and the great fear was of a Catholic combination against a newly Protestant queen — sharpened by the fact that Mary Queen of Scots, married to the French Dauphin, had a plausible Catholic claim to the English throne and was already quartering the English arms. Yet the rivalry between the two Catholic powers worked in Elizabeth's favour: Philip II of Spain, unwilling to see England fall to a French-backed Mary Stuart, had a strong interest in Elizabeth's survival and initially restrained his hostility. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) ended the Franco-Spanish war and gave Elizabeth breathing space to legislate her Settlement before the confessional lines of Europe hardened against her. The moderation of the Settlement, then, was partly a matter of foreign prudence — a Church Protestant enough to secure the regime but not so provocative as to unite Catholic Europe against a vulnerable new queen while her position was still fragile.
The core of the Settlement consisted of two Acts of Parliament — the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity — together with a body of Royal Injunctions. The legislation passed only after a parliamentary struggle in the spring of 1559, and the interpretation of that struggle is itself a major debate (see Historians and Interpretations below).
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Royal title | Elizabeth was styled Supreme Governor of the Church of England — not "Supreme Head," as Henry and Edward had been. The change conciliated both those who held that no woman could be "head" of the Church and Protestants uneasy at so spiritual a title for a layperson |
| Oath of Supremacy | Clergy, judges, and officials had to swear acceptance of the queen's supremacy; refusal meant loss of office |
| Graduated penalties | First refusal: loss of office; second: praemunire (forfeiture of goods); third: treason — though enforcement was, at first, deliberately mild |
| Repeal of the heresy laws | Mary's heresy statutes were repealed and papal authority abolished, ending the burnings |
The shift from "Supreme Head" to "Supreme Governor" is more than a semantic nicety and is a favourite discriminator in examination. It reflected both a genuine theological scruple — that Christ alone is head of the Church — and a shrewd political calculation, softening the supremacy for consciences that balked at a woman, or any layperson, claiming headship over Christ's Church. It is the first of many instances of the Settlement's characteristic method: securing the substance of royal control while adjusting the form to disarm opposition.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Book of Common Prayer | Imposed a revised Prayer Book, based on the more Protestant 1552 book but softened at the edges — the Black Rubric of 1552, which had denied the real presence, was dropped |
| The communion words | Crucially, the words of administration fused the 1549 and 1552 formulae, so that a communicant could understand the rite as conveying the body of Christ (a Catholic or Lutheran reading) or as a memorial (a Reformed reading) — the central act of constructive ambiguity |
| Compulsory attendance | All were required to attend their parish church on Sundays and holy days; absence incurred a fine of twelve pence per Sunday — the origin of recusancy fines |
| The "Ornaments Rubric" | Required clergy to wear the traditional vestments in use in 1549 — a conservative provision that would ignite the Vestments Controversy (Lesson 5) |
The fused communion words are the single most important feature of the Settlement and the clearest illustration of its method. In 1549 the Prayer Book had the minister say, at the giving of the bread, words affirming the body of Christ; in 1552 it had said words framing the act as a memorial. The 1559 book joined the two, so that the same rite could be heard by a conservative as conveying Christ's body and by a Protestant as a commemoration. This deliberate vagueness bought outward conformity at the price of doctrinal precision — and, as with the Henrician compromises, it deferred rather than resolved conflict, leaving the Settlement permanently exposed to demands for clarification from both flanks.
| Injunction | Detail |
|---|---|
| English Bible | Every parish church to hold an English Bible (and Erasmus's Paraphrases) |
| Licensed preaching | Only licensed preachers might preach; the rest were to read the official Book of Homilies, controlling the pulpit against dissent |
| Images and the royal chapel | "Feigned" images were to be removed — yet Elizabeth retained a crucifix and candles in her own Chapel Royal, a personal conservatism that scandalised committed Protestants |
| Resident clergy | The clergy were to reside in their parishes and to be of good life |
| Music | English congregational singing was encouraged, but Elizabeth permitted the survival of elaborate choral music in cathedrals and the Chapel Royal |
The Royal Injunctions reveal Elizabeth's personal hand and her limits. That she required the removal of "superstitious" images from parish churches while keeping a crucifix and candles in her own chapel dramatises the tension at the heart of the Settlement between Protestant substance and conservative sensibility — and it infuriated the returning exiles, for whom the queen's chapel looked like a relic of popery in the very heart of the reformed Church.
Via media ("middle way") denotes the Settlement's positioning between Rome and Geneva — Protestant in theology (rejecting the Pope, transubstantiation, and five of the seven sacraments) but Catholic in much of its external form (episcopacy, vestments, set liturgy, the church year). Whether this "middle way" was a coherent theological vision or a pragmatic political compromise is precisely the historiographical question this lesson trains you to weigh.
The doctrinal substance of the Church was defined in the Thirty-Nine Articles, agreed by Convocation in 1563 and given statutory force in 1571. They are markedly Protestant in content — which is itself powerful evidence against any reading of the Settlement as crypto-Catholic. The Articles matter because they fix the theology of the Church, and their unmistakably Reformed character shows that, whatever the conservatism of the Settlement's outward form, its doctrinal core was firmly Protestant.
| Key doctrine | Position |
|---|---|
| Scripture | Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation — the Protestant principle of biblical authority |
| Justification | Salvation by faith alone (Article 11) — the cornerstone Reformation doctrine |
| Sacraments | Only two sacraments of the Gospel — baptism and the Lord's Supper (Article 25) — against the Catholic seven |
| The Eucharist | Transubstantiation is rejected as repugnant to Scripture (Article 28), yet a spiritual presence to the faithful is affirmed — Reformed, but worded to avoid needless provocation |
| Predestination | Article 17 sets out predestination in carefully Reformed (broadly Calvinist) terms, without forcing the harshest conclusions |
| Church authority | The Church may decree rites and ceremonies but may not require as necessary to salvation anything not read in Scripture (Article 20) — the basis of Elizabeth's claim that ceremonies were adiaphora, things indifferent, within her authority to command |
The doctrine of adiaphora — "things indifferent," matters neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture, which the supreme governor might therefore regulate as she saw fit — is the theological hinge of the whole Elizabethan religious policy. It allowed Elizabeth to insist that vestments, ceremonies, and church government were not matters of salvation but of order, and hence within her prerogative to command. This reclassification of contested practices as indifferent is what let her frame Puritan resistance (Lesson 5) as disobedience rather than conscience — one of the most important and durable moves of her reign.
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.