key terms Flashcards
Factionalism
In this context, factionalism refers to the fragmentation of the political system into separate groups competing against each other for patronage and advancement and, in the process, reducing the effectiveness of government.
Patronage
The system by which the Crown distributed favours to those that were seen as loyal.
Sectaries
Members of Protestant sects which had rejected the Church of England and the royal supremacy.
Presence Chamber
When the reigning monarch was a queen, male courtiers could not normally enter the Privy Chamber, therefore the Presence Chamber was the place where private contact could be made between monarch and courtier.
The temporary banishment of Leicester and Pembroke from the Presence Chamber therefore seemed considerable punishment.
Impotent Poor
A subcategory of the deserving poor, which comprised those who could not look after themselves, either because of age or infirmity or because they were orphans.
Martial Law
Legal authority and political control exercised by military authority.
Joint-Stock Companies
Businesses which are owned by their shareholders, who profit in proportion to the relative size of their shareholding.
Recusant
Term used to describe those who refused to attend the services of the Church of England.
Puritanism
The belief amongst godly Protestants that the Church of England needed to be purged of any remaining ‘superstitious’ (Catholic) practices.
Synod
A Church council that in this context would exist outside the official Church hierarchy.
Marprelate Tracts
A set of scurrilous and satirical attacks written in the late 1580s about some of the bishops of the time.
Sectaries
A term used, usually with disapproval, to describe members of sects which had separated from the Church of England.
Society of Jesus
Formally recognised as a religious order in 1540, this looked actively to reconvert places which had become Protestant during the Reformation.
