Elizibethan Religious Settlement Essay Example
Elizibethan Religious Settlement Essay Example

Elizibethan Religious Settlement Essay Example

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  • Published: May 20, 2017
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Elizabethan Religious Settlement The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559",[1] was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England. The Act of Supremacy of 1559 re-established the Church of England’s independence from Rome, with Parliament conferring on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity of 1559 set out the form the English church would now take, including the establishment of the Book of Common Prayer.

When Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth’s early reign was the question of which form the state religion would take. Communion with the Roman Catholic Church had been reinstated u

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nder Mary using the instrument of Royal Supremacy. Elizabeth relied primarily on her chief advisors, Sir William Cecil, as her Secretary of State, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, for direction on the matter.

Many historians believe that William Cecil himself wrote the Church Settlement because it was the 1551-2 version dusted down. Parliament was summoned in 1559 to consider a Reformation Bill and to recreate an independent Church of England. The drafted Reformation Bill defined the Communion in terms of Reformed Protestant theology, as opposed to the transubstantiation of the Roman Catholic mass, included abuse of the Pope in the litany,[2][3] and ordered that ministers should not wear the surplice or other Roman Catholic vestments.

It allowed priests to marry, banned images from churches, and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of th

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Church of England. The Bill met heavy resistance in the House of Lords, as Roman Catholic bishops and lay peers opposed and voted against it. They reworked much of the Bill, changed the proposed liturgy to allow for belief in transubstantiation in the Communion, and refused to grant Elizabeth the title of Supreme Head of the Church. Parliament was prorogued over Easter, and when it resumed, the government entered two new bills into the Houses—the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity.

The Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, issued on 25 February 1570 by Pope Pius V, declared "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic, released all of her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders. The bull, written in Latin, is named from its incipit, the first three words of its text, which mean "ruling from on high" (a reference to God). Among the queen's alleged offenses, "She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics. Under Elizabeth, factionalism in the Council and conflicts at court greatly diminished. The Act of Supremacy 1558 revived ten Acts of Henry VIII that Mary had repealed and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and passed without difficulty. Use of the term "Supreme Governor" instead of "Supreme Head" pacified many who were concerned about a female leader of the Church. Elizabeth's changes were more wholesale than those of her half-brother, Edward VI[citation needed]. All but one of the bishops lost their posts[citation needed], and a hundred fellows of

Oxford colleges were deprived.

Many dignitaries resigned rather than take the oath, and the bishops who were removed from the ecclesiastical bench were replaced by appointees who agreed to the reforms. On the question of images, Elizabeth's initial reaction was to allow crucifixes and candlesticks and the restoration of roods, but some of the new bishops whom she had elevated protested. In 1560 Edmund Grindal, one of the Marian exiles now made Bishop of London, was allowed to enforce the demolition of rood lofts in London, and in 1561 the Queen herself ordered the demolition of all lofts, although she retained a cross and candlesticks in her own chapel. 4] Thereafter, the determination to prevent any further restoration of "popery" was evidenced by the more thoroughgoing destruction of roods, vestments, stone altars, dooms, statues and other ornaments. The queen also appointed a new Privy Council, removing many Roman Catholic counsellors by doing so. Queen Elizabeth I of England reached a moderate religious settlement which became controversial after her death. Act of Uniformity

The Act of Uniformity 1558, which required the population to attend Sunday service in an Anglican church, at which a new version of the Book of Common Prayer was to be used, passed by only three votes. [5] The Bill of Uniformity was more cautious than the initial Reformation Bill. It revoked the harsh laws proposed against Roman Catholics, it removed the abuse of the Pope from the litany and kept the wording that allowed for both a subjective and objective belief in the Real Presence in the Communion. After Parliament was dismissed, Elizabeth, along with Cecil, drafted what are known as the Royal Injunctions,

1559.

These were additions to the settlement and largely stressed some continuity with the Catholic past: ministers were ordered to wear the surplice; wafers, as opposed to ordinary baker's bread, were to be used as the bread at Communion. There had been opposition to the settlement in the shires, which for the most part were largely Roman Catholic, so the changes are often said to have been made in order to allow for acceptance of the Settlement, although MacCulloch sees it as "absurd to see these concessions as intended to mollify Catholic-minded clergy and laity" and only of help in conciliating possible Lutherans.

Catholics had lost so much that these minor changes meant nothing to them. [6] What succeeded more than anything else was the sheer length of Elizabeth's reign; while Mary had been able to impose her programme for a mere five years, Elizabeth had more than forty. Those who delayed, "looking for a new day" when restoration would again be commanded, were defeated by the passing of years. [7] "5 Elizabeth, c. 23, provides for giving the aid of the temporal power in execution of the Church's sentence of excommunication, which involved imprisonment for not more than six months. [8] Legacy The settlement is often seen as a terminal point of the English Reformation and in the long run the foundation of a "via media" and the concept of Anglicanism. At the time it was believed to have established a Protestant church. [9] Although Elizabeth "cannot be credited with a prophetic latitudinarian policy which foresaw the rich diversity of Anglicanism", her preferences made it possible. [10] To some it can be said to represent a

compromise in wording and practice between the first Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI (1549) and the Second Prayer Book (1552).

For example, when Thomas Cranmer wrote the 1549 Prayer Book, it contained the words "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. " The 1552 edition, which was never implemented, replaces these words with "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving. " However, some liturgical scholars such as Gregory Dix, Ratcliff, and Couratin would say that both prayer books taught the same eucharistic doctrine, albeit more cautiously in the first book. nb 1] The Act which authorised the second book spoke of it as explaining and making "fully perfect" the first book. [11] Finally, the 1559 book, published under Matthew Parker during the reign of Elizabeth, includes both phrases. [12] In Sir John Neale's "Puritan Choir" thesis, it is illustrated how a small bloc of radical Protestant representatives struggled for a more aggressive reform and had a major influence on Elizabethan politics. Neale shows how a militant group of "Marian Exiles" or Protestants who had been forced abroad during Mary I's reign returned to pursue a staunchly Protestant reformation. citation needed] However, this theory has been challenged by Christopher Haigh and others, and the prevailing view amongst historians today is that Elizabeth was compelled to accept a more Catholic settlement than she wanted by the Lords, rather than having Puritan reforms forced on her by Marian exiles in the Commons. By the time of Elizabeth's death, there

had emerged a new party, "perfectly hostile" to Puritans, but not adherent to Rome. The Anglicans, as they came to be called later in the century,[13] preferred the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1559, from which had been removed some of the matters offensive to Catholics. 14] A new dispute was between the Puritans, who wished to see an end of the prayer book and episcopacy and the Anglicans, the considerable body of people who looked kindly on the Elizabethan Settlement, who rejected "prophesyings", whose spirituality had been nourished by the Prayer Book and who preferred the governance of bishops. [15] It was between these two groups that, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, a new, more savage episode of the English Reformation was in the process of gestation. Road to the Civil War

During the reigns of the Stuart kings, James I of England and Charles I, the battle lines were to become more defined, leading ultimately to the English Civil War, the first on English soil to engulf parts of the civilian population. The war was only partly about religion, but the abolition of prayer book and episcopacy by a Puritan Parliament was an element in the causes of the conflict. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted, the legacy of these tumultuous events can be recognised, throughout the Commonwealth (1649–1660) and the Restoration which followed it and beyond. Anglicans were o become the core of the restored Church of England, but at the price of further division. At the Restoration in 1660 Anglicans were to be but part of the religious scene. Notes 1. ^ For an extended treatment, see Ratcliff, E. C. (1980). Reflections

on Liturgical Revision. Grove Books. pp. 12–17 discussing The Communion Service of the Prayer Book: Its intention, Interpretation and Revision, and also Dix, Gregory (1948). Dixit Cranmer Et Non Timuit. Dacre. Footnotes 1. ^ Dickens 1967, p. 401 2. ^ Moynahan, Brian (2003-10-21). "chapter 19". The Faith. Random House of Canada. pp. 816. ISBN 0385491158, 9780385491150. 3. England, Church of; William Keeling, William Keeling (B. D. ) (1842). Liturgiae Britannicae. William Pickering. pp. 426. 4. ^ Haigh 1993, p. 244 5. ^ Christopher Haigh (ibid. ) p. 237-41. No bishops voted in favour, two were prevented from voting at all, and two other ecclesiastics were absent. The majority were all laymen: John Guy (1988) Tudor England. Oxford: Oxford University Press; p. 262 6. ^ MacCulloch, D. (2004) Reformation: Europe's house divided. Penguin; p. 289 7. ^ Haigh 1993, p. 245 8. ^ Cutts, E. L. (1895) A Dictionary of the Church of England. London: S. P. C. K. ; p. 510 9. ^ MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2005). Putting the English Reformation on the Map". Trans. RHistS (CUP) XV: 75–95. 10. ^ Dickens1967, p. 403 11. ^ Tanner, J. R. (1948). Tudor Constitutional Documents. CUP. pp. 19. 12. ^ Chadwick, Owen (1964). The Reformation. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pp. 121 13. ^ Maltby 1998, p. 235 14. ^ Proctor F. and Frere W. H. , A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (Macmillan 1965) p. 91ff. 15. ^ Maltby 1998 Bibliography Dickens, A. G. (1967). The English Reformation. Fontana Haigh, Cristopher (1993). English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors. Oxford University Press Maltby, Judith (1998).

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