The Fault Lines: Tensions Within Late Elizabethan Protestantism
THE FAULT LINES: TENSIONS WITHIN LATE ELIZABETHAN PROTESTANTISM
Although herself wishing religious peace, Elizabeth rapidly found herself caught up in the religious controversies of the age. Many of the English Protestants who had sought exile in the cities of Europe—including Geneva—returned on learning of Mary's death, and began to press for England to become much more explicitly Protestant. Yet England's Roman Catholics had enjoyed the ascendancy during the reign of Mary Tudor, and were not inclined to give up their privileges easily. There was a serious threat of religious strife within England, which could easily lead to foreign invasion—for example, from France. Elizabeth determined to settle the religious question as quickly as possible, and managed to achieve a compromise that offered something to both her Protestant and Catholic subjects. It was, however, an uneasy situation, which could easily become destabilized.
The Elizabethan period was noted for growing religious tensions, arising directly out of the expediencies of the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion. These differences may have been suppressed; nevertheless, they existed, and grew in importance and bitterness as the reign proceeded. As we have seen, Elizabeth's concern was primarily to establish religious peace within her realm, and she was perfectly prepared to compromise over matters she regarded as being of little importance.
The difficulty was that the matters she deemed trifles were viewed as major issues by others—especially by those Protestants who were dissatisfied with her religious reforms to date. The Puritans were by then emerging as a radical Protestant protest movement, dissatisfied with the compromises which Elizabeth I had forced on her national church. Many in the growing Puritan movement saw issues such as the use of the Prayer Book and clerical dress as being controversial, and were prepared to make them into issues of contention. To illustrate this point, we may return to the group of Marian exiles in Geneva, including Thomas Sampson, who were responsible for the Geneva Bible. Sampson returned to England in 1559, and was appointed dean of Christ Church, Oxford.
Elizabeth laid down the rule that clergy should wear vestments at public church services. In effect, this meant returning to something like the form of dress worn by clergy before the Reformation. For Elizabeth, this was not an issue of great importance, yet one that she believed would help reassure Catholics within England—whose support she might need in the event of a national emergency. The returning Marian exiles saw it as a symbol of Roman Catholicism, which they regarded as totally out of place in a reformed church. Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, tried to negotiate a compromise in 1564. When this failed, he issued a series of precise instructions for clerical dress, which insisted that clergy should wear vestments, such as a surplice.
For Sampson, this was nothing less than a degeneration into superstition and idolatry. He wrote to his Protestant colleagues in Zurich, seeking guidance. Peter Martyr Vermigli—formerly Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford—had no doubts. Sampson should denounce the vestments, yet wear them if they were made a condition of office. Otherwise, those hostile to the Reformation would be promoted over him, and he would lose any chance of affecting English religious life from a position of influence.
This was but one of the many expressions of discontent over the Elizabethan Settlement. Puritans found the use of the Prayer Book objectionable. It obliged the clergy to say and do certain things that
Puritans found to be incompatible with the Bible—such as kneeling to receive the bread at communion, or making the sign of the cross at baptism. They had serious difficulties with the idea that the monarch was the supreme governor of the church. The more the Zurich Protestants learned of Elizabeth's religious measures, the less they liked them. Heinrich Bullinger wrote in anger to sympathize with his English colleagues. The demand to wear vestments and other such outrageous things were, he declared, “fabricated in the school of anti-Christ;” they were “the restored relics of a new popery.”
Tension grew. The radical Protestant party might well have been defeated politically through measures introduced in the final decade of Elizabeth's reign by Archbishop Whitgift; theologically, however, Puritanism was clearly becoming an increasingly powerful and sophisticated presence in England. By the end of Elizabeth's long reign, the most serious religious tensions within England no longer had anything to do with those between Protestants and Catholics. The new battles concerned two different styles of English Protestantism—Anglicanism and Puritanism.
Anglicanism stressed the close link between the church and the monarch, and valued the role of the queen as the “supreme governor” of the Church of England. It affirmed the importance of the Prayer Book as a means of enforcing religious uniformity throughout England, and hence ensuring national unity. This approach was strongly defended by John Whitgift, who became archbishop of Canterbury in October 1583. In one of his most important early sermons, Whitgift affirmed the principle of royal supremacy and the necessity of obedience to those in authority—including princes, bishops, and magistrates. He was perfectly prepared to enforce conformity to the teachings and practices of the state church in the courts. Anglicanism was the state religion of England. English national identity, in Whitgift's view, could be sustained and guaranteed only by the English national church.
The Puritans thought otherwise, and longed for a radical overhaul of the English church. They looked to Geneva, rather than
Canterbury, for inspiration and guidance. It must be appreciated that “Puritanism” was a diverse movement in the late Elizabethan period. Some Puritans were content to put up with clerical dress and the use of the Prayer Book, provided that they were allowed to adopt a Calvinist theology and develop a preaching ministry. Others believed that the Protestant religion, as they understood it, demanded a total reform of the church to bring it into line with Genevan practice and the abolition of the monarchy.
In the 1580s, Geneva became for Elizabethan Puritans what Moscow was to British communism during the 1930s—a symbol of their aspirations, and a source of the ideas and support that might bring them about. The Geneva Bible thus came to be a potent symbol of the reform that they believed lay ahead. If Elizabeth would not allow them their demands, what of her successor? She could not live forever. It was just a matter of time before an opportune moment for radical change would arrive.
Elizabeth might well have suppressed serious religious dissent within her realm. But what would happen after her death? Was there not a serious danger of radical religious upheaval just over the horizon? This was certainly what many members of the Anglican establishment feared; it was also, of course, precisely what many Puritans were hoping for. When it was announced that Elizabeth would be succeeded by James VI of Scotland, English Puritans believed their moment had come. To understand why, we need to consider the question of the succession in a little more detail.