The 1559 religious settlement and the Church of England
A Religious Compromise
Within six months of her accession, Elizabeth steered through Parliament the laws known as the religious settlement. The aim was a single national Church that most English people could live with: clearly Protestant in doctrine but recognisably traditional in appearance. William Cecil drove the legislation, Elizabeth oversaw the wording, and Matthew Parker was selected as Archbishop of Canterbury to lead it. The result was a careful compromise — sometimes called the ‘via media’ or middle way.
The 1559 settlement consisted of two Acts: the Act of Supremacy made Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church, and the Act of Uniformity imposed a single Book of Common Prayer and standard form of worship across England.
The Act of Supremacy (1559)
The Act of Supremacy reversed Mary I’s reunion with Rome and made Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Henry VIII had used the title ‘Supreme Head’ in 1534, but ‘Governor’ was deliberately softer. It avoided suggesting that a woman was directly head of the Church (which Catholics and conservatives believed only a man could be) and it allowed moderate Catholics to accept the queen’s authority over Church administration without conceding that she was a substitute for the Pope. All clergy, judges and royal officials had to swear an oath of loyalty; refusal meant losing their position.
The Act of Uniformity (1559)
The Act of Uniformity prescribed how everyone in England would worship. It restored a revised version of the 1552 Protestant Book of Common Prayer, with two important changes designed to keep Catholics inside the Church: the wording at communion combined the 1549 (more Catholic) and 1552 (more Protestant) phrasings, so the priest’s words could be read either as Christ being truly present in the bread or as a memorial. Vestments — ornate clerical robes — were retained, in line with what the church had used in 1548. Attendance at the Sunday service was compulsory; failing to attend without good reason meant a fine of 12 pence per week, given to the poor.
When the priest gave bread at communion, he said: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ… preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” The first half (from 1549) suggested the bread really was Christ’s body — a Catholic reading. The second half (from 1552) said remember and do this in your heart by faith — a Protestant reading. A worshipper could choose which half to focus on. This was deliberate: it kept moderate Catholics in church.
The Royal Injunctions
In summer 1559, the Royal Injunctions added 57 detailed rules for clergy and parishes. Bibles in English had to be available in every church; clergy could marry but only with their bishop’s permission; pilgrimages and the use of relics were to stop. Each parish was to keep a register of births, marriages and deaths. Visitations were sent across the country to enforce the new rules and root out Catholic objects: an estimated 400 clergy refused to comply and lost their livings. The visitations also confirmed that Elizabeth’s government would not push compromise so far as to accept obvious Catholic ritual.
The settlement looked Catholic in appearance — vestments, traditional church furnishings, ambiguous communion wording — but Protestant in doctrine: an English Bible, the queen as Supreme Governor, no Pope, and no Mass in Latin.
The Church of England in Society
For most ordinary people, the Church was the most important institution in their daily life. The local parish church baptised children, married couples, buried the dead and ran weekly services that people were legally required to attend. Sunday sermons taught religious doctrine and obedience to the queen — a useful political tool. Bishops sat in the House of Lords. Tithes — a tenth of a person’s annual income or produce — supported clergy, while parish records meant the Church was also the main administrative system for tracking the population.
The settlement also gave the Church a hierarchy: archbishops of Canterbury and York at the top, then 27 bishops, then archdeacons, parish priests and curates. Matthew Parker, a moderate Protestant scholar, was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1559 to lead the Church without alarming conservatives.
Initial Impact
Most English people accepted the settlement with little open resistance. About 8,000 parish clergy stayed in post, accepted the new prayer book and adapted. Only around 250 to 400 of these clergy refused, alongside almost every surviving Marian bishop — only Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff took the oath of supremacy and kept his see. The Pope at first did not encourage open rebellion. Elizabeth herself made it a working principle — in a phrase later attributed to her — not to make windows into men’s souls. Outward conformity was enough; what people privately believed was their own affair, at least for now.
The 1559 settlement is often described as a triumph that ended religious dispute. It was not. Puritans inside the new Church wanted further reform of vestments and prayer book. Catholic recusants wanted the Mass back. The settlement bought peace by being deliberately vague, but every later challenge of the reign — the Northern Rebellion, the papal bull of 1570, the plots around Mary — comes from people who could not accept it. Calling it a ‘solution’ misses thirty years of pressure on a deliberate compromise.
An Uneven Settlement
By the end of 1559, England had a Protestant Church with Catholic dressing, run by a queen who refused to interrogate her subjects’ private beliefs and policed by parish-level fines for missing church. The pragmatic genius of the settlement was that it asked very little of most people in the short term. The cost would come later: the same vagueness that calmed 1559 left the door open for Puritan and Catholic challenges that would shape the rest of the reign.