Booklet 1 - Religion in England

Question 1

Introduction to the religious situation

Answer 1

• England was a confessional state which meant it had a singular national church: The Church of England. The monarch was the head and it was governed by Bishops. Rules were set out by the book of common prayer and church attendance was compulsary.
• Protestants and Catholics had been fighting for many years across Europe and protestantism formed as a reformation against the errors of the Catholic Church
• The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 tried to create a national church where catholics and protestants could worship together and defuse religious tensions

Question 2

Explain the puritans

Answer 2

• Extreme protestants
• Saw Catholics as traitors and thought catholic rituals were evil and that the pope was the devil
• The crown was worried that puritansim would drive catholics to be more extreme due to them being treated with suspicion because of the gunpowder plot

Question 3

Explain the dispute between Arminians and Puritans in the 1620s

Answer 3

• Arminians and Puritans were in dispute over who represented the original intensions of the Elizabethan settlement
• Charles responded to the dispute in November 1628 with ‘The Declaration of Charles I’
• The declaration stated: Charles wants the disputes to come to an end, anyone who speaks about the dispute is going against God and will upset the Church
• Puritans saw the declaration as favouring Arminians and it was an attack on their religious practices

Question 4

How did puritans react to personal rule?

Answer 4

• Puritans disapproved Laud’s reforms
• The first organised resistance attempt to personal rule came in 1636 by puritan gentry and nobility who’d previously been active in parliament
• Leaders of the resistance were John Pym, Earl of Warrick and the Duke of Bedford as well as John Hampden who had a ship money courtcase - they were all a part of a private owned sipping company
• The puritan gentry were hostile to personal rule and would heavily oppose Charles regardless of his financial policies like ship money
• 1637 - star chamber arrested 3 puritan writers for publishing attacks on government and they were sentenced to have ears cut off and have cheeks branded before being imprisoned: Burton, Bastwick and Prynne
• 1649 - strict puritans were the core of the revolutionary forces and would execute Charles
• It’s clear laudianism was the main reason for puritan hatred for the period of personal rule and puritans saw laudianism as to strive for catholicism and absolutism within the monarchy