On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the cathedral in Wittenberg, thus setting into motion a chain of events that would forever change Christianity. The Reformation took on many forms as these new ideas spread, with the help of a new technology – the printing press – and the particular circumstances in each country affected the way Protestantism found expression. In England, events overtook the church when Henry needed a divorce, and the reformers found a way to provide it. England never saw the same amount of bloodshed as other European countries did – there was never an Inquisition, or a St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, or a 30 Years War. But there was a unique roller coaster in the mid 16th century, bookended on either side by two strong monarchs who tried to please everyone, and find compromises.
This past October the podcast looked at how the Reformation expressed itself in England with four episodes focusing on the state of the Medieval English church prior to the 1520’s, the Henrician Reformation, the previously mentioned religious roller coaster during Edward VI and Mary I’s reigns, and then the Elizabethan Settlement. Each of those episodes is below, as well as other episodes I’ve done over the years that deal with religion, which I’d recommend listening to after these four – namely, the Catholic experience in Elizabethan England, Mary Queen of Scots, and Francis Walsingham, the Protestant spymaster.
The sources I used for Reformation Month are all listed below, too…
Books:
The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy is the seminal book on the state of the Catholic church in England during this period.
In The Voices of Morebath he looks at one particular village, and how it dealt with the changing religious laws.
Also, there’s Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants, and the Conversion of England in which Duffy challenges the idea that Protestantism was on the “right” side of history.
Peter Marshall’s Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation is a sweeping survey of the Reformation in England.
I also read Diarmaid MacCulloch’s All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation collects essays from all the leading scholarship and interprets it for the wider audience.
Previous Episodes
Mary, Queen of Scots was Elizabeth’s heir, and the figurehead of Catholic rebellions.
Episode 085: Tudor Times on Mary Queen of Scots
Throwback Episode 29: Mary Queen of Scots
Catholics in Elizabethan England
Throwback Episode 26: Catholics in Elizabethan England
Francis Walsingham
Throwback Episode 027: Francis Walsingham, Spymastera
REFORMATION MONTH EPISODES
Episode 087: The English Church on the Eve of Reformation
Episode 088: The Henrician Reformation
Episode 089: Edward, Mary, and Religious Whiplash
Episode 090: The Elizabethan Settlement
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Episode 090: The Elizabethan Settlement Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I am a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 90, the final of the four-part series on the English Reformation that I’m doing this year. The 500th anniversary of the Ninety-five Theses which is coming up in just a couple of days. This final one is on Elizabeth Religious Settlement. I should add that I’ve already done episodes on the Catholic experience in Elizabethan England, on Mary Queen of Scots who plays into this a whole lot, and on Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s very Protestant spymaster. So I will add those episodes in the show notes that I’m finally compiling with all of this information and they will be at Englandcast.com.
Quick announcement on the Tudor planner. The 2018 Tudor planner which is a weekly and monthly diary filled with Tudor history, music listening suggestions with a Spotify playlist, quotes, all wrapped in a gorgeous cover inspired by an illuminated manuscript. It’s now available for preorder and it will ship on November 15. And let me tell you, these planners are so gorgeous! I made a lot of changes after the feedback from last year and it came out really well. So if you preorder by November 15 you get a discount of $5 off the regular price, and you will get them before anybody else does. So go to Tudorplanner.com to see a video of the planner pictures and all the ordering information.
Finally, I need to thank my patrons. I have amazing patrons. Thank you to Kathy, Juergen, Ashley, Kendra, Anne Boleyn also known as Jessica, Elizabeth, Cynthia, Judy, Kaylee, Ian, Laura, Barbara, Sharkiva, Amy, Alison, Joanne, Kathy, Christine, Annetta, Mary, Katherine, Candace, Rebecca from TudorsDynasty.com, Al, and Chandler. I love you guys. You’re so cool! To find out how you can join this exclusive list of super awesome people, head on over to Englandcast.com and click on the Donate and Support Button at the top menu. You can support for as little as a buck a show.
So we are now at the final episode here in reformation month. We started out by discussing the state of the medieval church on the eve of the 1520s in England. Then we looked at Henrician Reformation. And we went through 11 years of religious whiplash under Edward and Mary.
And here we are now at Elizabeth. On the 17th of November 1558, Elizabeth I was proclaimed queen. She was 25, a young woman who was well-educated and it was her conception in December of 1532 that really solidified Henry VIII finally having to leave the church and start his own Church of England. She was really conceived in this idea of reformation and the rejection of people’s authority. We are still uncertain about her personal beliefs, both in religion as well as so much else, but she did clearly identify with the Protestant cause.
In the very beginning starting in December of 1558, she walked out of a mass in the royal chapel when the host was elevated during communion. And in January 1559, she embraced an English Bible during her state entry into London prior to her coronation, so she very obviously inclined towards reform but she was not clearly Protestant, and the first priority of her reign was a religious settlement. This was for a number of reasons.
First, of course, under Mary, England became reconciled to the Pope and was officially Catholic again. So Elizabeth needed to re-establish a rule away from the Pope. Elizabeth wanted to stop the religious turmoil that had become the norm for England. This had been the case for the previous 30 years, she pushed hard for a settlement that would take everybody into account and try to make everybody happy and bring back some stability to the kingdom.
And in this Religious Settlement of 1559, we see a mixture both of her personal beliefs, as well as recognition of the need for political compromise. A lot of the activities around the religious settlement are still hazy, the documentation isn’t always the best, but historians generally agree on a narrative that is pretty similar. Initially, Elizabeth and her chief adviser William Cecil, wanted to return to the situation as it was in 1552, just before the death of Edward VI.
Remember that this period now in 1558-1559, is a time when many Protestant exiles are coming back after fleeing England during the reign of Mary I. They’re feeling liberated, let loose, and they’re excited to make changes after half a decade of being forced out of England. Many Catholics and even more traditional Protestants are actually afraid of this influx of radical Protestants from Europe. This made the need for settlement even more important. At Mary’s funeral, Bishop White said:
“The wolves be coming out of Geneva and have sent their books before, full of pestilent, doctrines.”
So Mary’s barely even being buried and you’re already starting to see radical Protestants coming back, and they expect to be able to re-establish the church that they want. But at the same time, many of the Protestants were afraid of the way Elizabeth seem to appease the Catholics. And it got them really angry. Many of these hardliners, they settled in London, and they were able to use the Catholics as a scapegoat to cause trouble within the Capitol and to create mobs. Elizabeth tried to control their behavior, but it was difficult to enforce this of course, in such a large city.
One Venetian who was living in London, he was called Il Schifanoya. He described in letters back to friends in Europe, how gangs of men were forcefully getting into churches and preaching extreme Protestant views to those members of the public who would follow them in. Elizabeth had to issue a proclamation stating that she would not accept these acts of public disorder and riots, and that any religious settlement would go through Parliament.
Elizabeth was opposed in Parliament in the House of Lords to the new initial more Protestant Prayer Book proposal both from the Catholic bishops as well as some of the laity. There were of course, still many noble families that didn’t embrace reform. As we discussed before, initially, the Protestants were actually a very small minority, so plenty of the nobility did not want these changes. The Convocation itself, the clergy in England stated at this time that they believed in Papal supremacy and the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Elizabeth had another reason for wanting to be very careful and walking this tightrope – that was foreign powers. Protestant countries like Germany wanted England to embrace the Protestant beliefs, while Spain who was still officially considered an ally since Philip II had been married to Mary, wanted England to remain Catholic. Elizabeth also didn’t want to make Catholic France angry. Catholic France had a deep relationship with Scotland since the French royal family were actually ruling Scotland while Mary Queen of Scots was in France. So angering the French could lead to a war on England’s northern border, which Elizabeth didn’t want. She had to be very careful to make sure that in any settlement, both sides felt okay.
So Elizabeth and Cecil came back to Parliament with a different prayer book, which tried to bridge both sides the same way her father had tried to walk this tightrope. So in 1559 for example, in the prayer book, the communion service was a blend of the Protestant one in 1552, in which communion was a service of remembrance and Thanksgiving. They merged that with the 1549 version that had allowed for the possibility of transubstantiation; and again, that is the idea that the miracle that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. And so in 1549, the service read:
“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.”
Then it was followed by:
“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.”
So they blended it together. It’s been described by Diarmaid MacCulloch as a “masterpiece of theological engineering.” In 1559, the bill brought before Parliament, also named Elizabeth as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the Supreme Head. Now, many people thought that this was more appropriate for a woman. But it also seemed that some people would accept this, who thought that the Supreme Head of the church was still in Rome, but it was still an act of supremacy and all Lords had to swear an oath to her.
This act of supremacy also set up an ecclesiastical high commission that ensured that all the clergy were following the new prayer book and were loyal to Elizabeth. They still only had a majority of three votes in the House of Lords. The House of Commons was much more supportive, but the House of Lords was not so much. During the Easter recess that year, Elizabeth actually imprisoned two Catholic bishops in the Tower, so that may have helped to persuade the others who may have voted against it. So just barely passed in the House of Lords. The Church of England was re-established. They passed also an Act of Uniformity -that’s the next part of the Religious Settlement that declared that new prayer book should be used throughout the kingdom. They also repealed the heresy laws passed under Mary.
There was no doubt that England had turned Protestant again. But there was a lot of ambiguity about just how Protestant England was. Elizabeth may have got less than she originally intended, but she did accept it. 30 years of all of this religious turmoil had left the nation very divided and no change had had any kind of time to really establish itself. And some historians believe that most people remained conservative and traditional in their beliefs. Others believe that people went with the changes in waves and conform to the changes, but really weren’t that enthusiastic and they hid their beliefs. Of course, a lot of this depends on where you are, like we talked about in southern England, Protestantism tends to be more popular than in the north or the West Country.
One very important thing to think about though, is that people are now aware of the possibility of alternatives in religion. So suddenly, people are aware that there are other ways to believe. In the past, nobody had even considered that there was any way to believe other than the official doctrine. So suddenly, there’s all these new ideas that you can choose from, almost like a religious smorgasbord. And that really made a difference in how people saw religion. It wasn’t so much, just the Absolute Truth, but it was something that you could almost find for yourself, choose your own truth, as it were.
So while many people embraced some of these new possibilities, they also decided that they were tired of the religious turmoil and they wanted peace. Some bishops accepted Protestants in their midst, and they tried not to be too dogmatic about it. And even Elizabeth is famous for saying that she did not want to “make windows into men’s souls.” So there’s almost the tiniest little bit of a smidgen of religious tolerance starting to come up.
But the most important thing was that Elizabeth wanted order, stability, and conformity, and in that the ambiguities of 1549 were okay for her. And I have to say, that slightest little bit of religious tolerance is not at all what we would consider religious tolerance today. You still had to conform, you still had to go to the Church of England, and we’ll talk about that in a second. But it was just the idea that people suddenly over the past 30 years, could see that there were other ways of believing, besides that, which they had always been taught. And that would be a really important thing as time went on, as the Enlightenment came about, and the idea of being able to choose your own truth, of being able to have your own personal relationship with the divine became more important for everyone.
So the next part of the Elizabethan Settlement is a set of injunctions that were issued to the clergy, stating what the Act of Uniformity said and instructing them on how to follow it. They stated that religious images that were still in existence after Edward, (remember he whitewashed so many of them) any that were still around should remain as long as they were not superstitious.
They also tried to compromise in the debate between communion tables and altars. So Catholics used altars for communion and Protestants wanted to use tables. So in these injunctions, they said that communion tables were to be used for Holy Communion, but the communion table could stand where the old altar had stood.
To appease the Catholics, they use traditional wafers rather than common bread which the Protestants had wanted. But to please the Protestants she kept the services in English and kept the English Bible.
So you see, she’s trying to please both sides. She had also wanted to keep the crucifixes and the rood screens. She personally had a crucifix in her own chapel. But the Protestant bishops disagreed and started taking many of them down in the 1560’s.
She also introduced the Book of Common Prayer, which is still used in Anglican churches today. It set out the religious services, the order, and instructed that the clergy had to follow it. She kept Protestants happy by banning pilgrimages to fake miracles. Protestants didn’t like the way many Catholics have made money out of pilgrims coming to see them and coming to see these fake relics and worship at these shrines. But by calling them fake miracles, she actually implied and left room for the fact that there might be real miracles and that kept the Catholics happy.
Elizabeth would have liked many of the clergy to stay, she didn’t try to force anybody out. But she did make them swear an oath to the Act of Supremacy and so many of them left at that point. In her new appointments, she chose people who were not religious extremists.
For example, as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, she chose Matthew Parker, he had not gone into exile under Mary. But he had conformed, though he was clearly a Protestant. There was no purge of parish clergy. Many of the clergy were allowed to keep their positions and they even got away with continuing many of the traditional practices. In fact, 80% of the clergy were really okay with these changes, and they just kept going on.
And this shows how most people really just wanted to go to church and pray and get on with things. The majority of ordinary people just went to church, though some Catholics of course, worshiped in secret. And as the decades go on, that became more and more important, as Jesuit priests and missionaries started coming in.
So in many ways, the churches were still allowed to appear traditional. They use the prayer book, but they could sort of change it as they needed to. There were fines for people who didn’t attend the Church of England services at least once a month. Those people were often reported to Elizabeth’s Privy Council. As time would go on under Francis Walsingham and suspicion of Catholics would rise that would become more important. But early on, the fines were low 12 pence a month if you didn’t attend the Church of England services. It was about the amount of a day’s wages for labor in London, so they were not that difficult.
In 1563, at a meeting of Convocation in England, meeting of the clergy, some of the more radical Protestants actually wanted to get rid of the vestments that were worn during services, calling them the “rags of Rome”. They also wanted to have permission to get married. In the 1559 prayer book, Elizabeth kept the vestments. She insisted on keeping the traditional dress, she insisted that Archbishop Parker keep them. And she also did not like married clergy.
If you were clergy and you wanted to get married, you actually had to receive special permission to do that. So she really frowned on clergy getting married. So the church in the 1560’s was ambiguous. And Elizabeth was really okay with that. It had broken away from the Pope, again, it was clearly Protestant in that way. The services were leaning Protestant, and they were in English, but it was also up to the individuals to interpret it as they wished, provided that they conformed outwardly. So that’s the really big thing here.
The Act of Uniformity demanded the people conform. But what they believed inwardly was not really something that concerned Elizabeth. Of course, this is early on in her reign before the greater threats of Mary, Queen of Scots and Spain. And, of course, the very important St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France, that would happen in the 1570’s. So those events later on would start to shape her ideas and that of her council as well, towards being more suspicious of Catholics, and in other episodes, like I said, I talked about that.
It was still very precarious, even in the 1560’s here. No one could doubt that the church was Protestant, but also no one knew that Elizabeth wasn’t going to die soon the same way her brother and sister had. Both the Catholics and the fanatical Protestants were concerned with what would happen next. And so the Elizabethan Settlement is actually part of what led to some of the problems that Elizabeth had in the future. In the 1560’s, there was a popular term for Catholics, they called them “church papists”. These are Catholics who went to church, but in their hearts, they were Catholic. Many Catholics would worry that over time, Catholicism would just die out.
And in 1562, Elizabeth got smallpox and she almost died. She recovered, but it became so clear that everything in England, the Religious Settlement, everything hung on the life of this one young woman. For Catholics, it was a reminder that things might not always be like this, after all, the Protestants went into exile and they were able to come back. There’s this knowledge that things might not always be that way, that Elizabeth might die the same way Mary and Edward did that led to many of the Catholic activities later in the 16th century, which of course brings me to the reminder that you should check out those episodes I did on Mary, Queen of Scots, the Catholic experience and Francis Walsingham.
But in 1559, it was clear that Elizabeth wanted a solution that was going to try to please everybody, bring everybody into the fold, get rid of fanaticism on both sides, and required everyone to follow it on the outside that she didn’t really care what people believed on the inside. Basically, the Religious Settlement was about stopping the religious turmoil, stopping the burnings of heretics, and stopping all of this back and forth Catholic-Protestant that had plagued England for so long, wondering what does England really believe? What are we allowed to believe? What are we supposed to believe?
The Elizabethan Settlement with the Act of Supremacy, the injunctions, these laid it all out and tried to compromise and bring everybody into the fold and it did seem like it was going to be quite successful. And in many ways, you could argue that it was quite successful because England never saw the mass slaughtering and mass warfare that the rest of Europe saw. So it’s possible that the Elizabethan Settlement, while not pleasing, everybody did manage to please enough people to keep England at peace, and keep England from devolving into general civil warfare and bloodshed.
So there we have it. Reformation month is complete. Remember on October 31 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to his church at Wittenberg. And I’ll have some special audio up coming up from my colleague who does the History of Germany Podcast Travis J. Dow who is in Wittenberg for the celebrations right now. So stay tuned for that as well.
So links for everything I’m using this month including the books and the videos are coming at Englandcast.com. Remember to check out Tudorplanner.com to see the gorgeous 2018 Tudor planner/diary and consider supporting the show on Patreon. You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 8016TEYSKO (816839756) or through Twitter @Teysko or Facebook.com/Englandcast. Thanks so much for listening and I’m gonna be back next week to actually talk about James I and witchcraft. This is a belated Halloween show and I will talk to you again very soon!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
