The Elizabethan religious settlement (17)

Question 1

What were the two aspects to forming a religion in the country that people will experience?

Answer 1

1) The legal status of the Church

2) The liturgical books to be used in church services

Question 2

Until the law what had the English Church remained a part of of?

Answer 2

The Catholic Church of Rome.

Question 3

What were he three possibilities of what the nature of the established Church would be?

Answer 3

1) An “Anglo-Catholic” Church. A Church whose doctrines and practices remained essential Catholic even though it had rejected papal supremacy.
2) An apparently moderate Protestant Church similar to that implied by the Act of Uniformity of 1549.
3) A more radically evangelical Church as implied by the Act of Uniformity of 1552.

Question 4

What were the two Acts of Parliament that the Elizabethan settlement essentially embraced?

Answer 4

1) The Act of Supremacy

2) The Act of Uniformity

Question 5

What did Acts therefore allow?

Answer 5

The issue of a set o royal injunctions to enforce the Acts and, to meet liturgical needs, the publication of a new Book of Common Prayer.

Question 6

What was also embraced in the Elizabethan settlement but not until 1563?

Answer 6

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

Question 7

What did the Act of Supremacy restore in law?

Answer 7

The royal supremacy in the Church, which had been established under henry VIII and then removed under Queen Mary.

Question 8

What happened to the papal supremacy, which had been restored by statute law under Queen Mary?

Answer 8

Was rejected.

Question 9

What was restored because of the Act of Supremacy?

Answer 9

The Reformation legislation.

Question 10

What was revived because of the Act of Supremacy? (2)

Answer 10

1) The heresy law under Mary was replaced.

2) The powers of royal visitation

Question 11

What did reviving the powers of the royal visitation allow?

Answer 11

The Crown to appoint commissioners to “visit”, reform, order, correct and amend all such errors, heresies, and abuses’.

Question 12

What did the Act of Supremacy describe the queen as?

Answer 12

“supreme governor” rather than “supreme head” of the Church of England as her farther had been.

Question 13

What was taken by clergymen and church officials?

Answer 13

An oath of supremacy, there were penalties for refusing to do so.

Question 14

What did the Act of Supremacy restore?

Answer 14

The legal position of the Crown in relation to the Church which had been first established in the reign of Henry VIII.

Question 15

What did the Act of Supremacy give?

Answer 15

Legislative authority for the Crown to act in matters relating to the Church.

Question 16

What did the Act of Uniformity specify the use of?

Answer 16

A single Book of Common Prayer, which was a modified version of the second and strongly Protestant book that Cranmer introduced un 1552.

Question 17

What were the two modifications in the Book of Common Prayer?

Answer 17

1) Variations in Eucharistic belief were possible in that both the 1549 wording, which even the conservative bishop Gardiner felt able to accept at the time, and the 1552 wording derived from the beliefs of the Swiss reformer Zwingli were permitted.
2) The “Black Rubric”, which had been included in the 1552 prayer book to explain away the practice of kneeling at the administration of the Eucharist was omitted.

Question 18

What were the royal injunctions of 1559?

Answer 18

These were a set of instructions about the conduct of church services and government of the Church issued in the queen’s name s supreme governor.

Question 19

What had royal injunctions been used by the Crown on 3 occasions for?

Answer 19

As a mechanism for imposing its will in relation to church practices, in 1536, 1538 & 1547.

Question 20

What did the first injunction make clear?

Answer 20

Their Protestant character, it emphasised “the suppression of superstition” (i.e. Catholic practices).

Question 21

What did these injunctions emphasis?

Answer 21

That the Eucharist be administered at a simple communion table rather than at the altar, which was a clear signal that religious practice should move in the direction of reform.

Question 22

What were parish churches required to purchase? (2)

Answer 22

1) An English Bible, reasserting the 1538 injunctions,

2) A copy of Erasmus’s paraphrases, as preciously required in 1547.

Question 23

What was her disapproval of clerical marriage signalled by?

Answer 23

The prospective wives of clergy had to produce a certificate signed by two justices of the peace signifying their fitness for such a role.

Question 24

What is not known about the settlement?

Answer 24

Whether it was intended as an end in itself or as a precursor to further reform.

Question 25

How was Elizabeth placed under two extremes?

Answer 25

1) A “Puritain choir” of radical clergymen and MPs, who may have forced her to accept a more Protestant prayer book than she had really wanted.
2) Catholic bishops and conservative peers in the House of Lords, who strongly opposed the uniformity bill, believing the settlement too Protestant.