Challenges to the settlement: Puritans and Catholics

Challenges from Both Sides

Elizabeth’s 1559 settlement was designed as a middle way, but it left both wings of English Christianity unhappy. Hardline Protestants — the Puritans — thought the Church of England was still too Catholic. Catholics, both quiet recusants in England and powerful enemies abroad, thought it was an unlawful Protestant Church and Elizabeth a queen the Pope did not recognise. The challenges from each side were different in nature and seriousness, and Elizabeth’s response set the pattern for the next thirty years.

The Puritan Challenge: Origins

The Puritans were not a single organised party. They were Protestants who, often after returning from exile in Geneva or Frankfurt during Mary I’s reign, believed the Church of England had not gone far enough. They wanted to ‘purify’ it of practices they associated with Roman Catholicism. The most influential figures were John Field and Thomas Cartwright, a Cambridge professor who openly argued that the English Church should be reorganised on the lines of Calvin’s Geneva — with elders rather than bishops and a simpler form of service.

The Vestments Controversy, 1566

The first big Puritan flashpoint came over vestments. Puritan clergy refused to wear the ornate surplices and copes the 1559 settlement required, claiming they were ‘rags of popery’ with no scriptural basis. In 1566, Archbishop Matthew Parker issued the ‘Book of Advertisements’ setting out exactly what clergy must wear. Around 37 London ministers were suspended for refusing. Most eventually conformed, but the dispute revealed how strongly some clergy felt — and warned Elizabeth that internal Protestant pressure would continue.

The Extent of the Puritan Threat

Although noisy, the Puritan challenge in 1559–88 was relatively limited. Most Puritans accepted the settlement reluctantly and worked within it; they were Protestants like the queen, loyal to the Crown and part of the same opposition to Spain and the Pope. Their disputes were over forms of worship and Church government, not over Elizabeth’s right to rule. Even when Cartwright argued in 1570 for replacing bishops with a Presbyterian system, this was a fringe demand. Until 1583, Elizabeth could afford to manage Puritans through suspensions, fines and quiet pressure rather than executions.

The Catholic Challenge at Home

English Catholics in 1559 were a substantial but quiet minority. Many had simply gone along with each religious change since the 1530s. After 1559 they had a choice: attend the new Anglican services and be fined for absence (12 pence per week), or refuse and become recusants. Most simply attended, said little, and kept their faith private. The major exception was the Catholic nobility of the north of England, where great families like the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland still ran their estates with old religion intact and rarely visited the Protestant south.

The Pope and the Council of Trent

The Catholic Church was reorganising itself during exactly the years Elizabeth was settling her own. The Council of Trent (1545–63) ended with a tougher Catholic Church determined to win back lost ground in Europe through the Counter-Reformation. New religious orders such as the Jesuits, founded in 1540, prepared missionaries to enter Protestant countries secretly. Until 1570, the Pope cautiously avoided open conflict with Elizabeth, hoping she might still be won over. After 1570, when Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicating Elizabeth and absolving her Catholic subjects of their loyalty to her, English Catholics faced a stark new choice: loyalty to the queen or loyalty to the Pope.

The Foreign Powers

The most serious part of the Catholic challenge was external. King Philip II of Spain ruled the most powerful Catholic state in Europe, including a vast empire and the Spanish Netherlands across the Channel. France was Catholic too, although weakened by its own Wars of Religion from 1562. The Pope’s 1570 bull effectively invited any Catholic power to invade England as a holy mission. Mary, Queen of Scots, in England from 1568, became the rallying point: a Catholic claimant the foreign powers could legally support against an ‘excommunicated heretic’.

Government Response

Elizabeth’s government changed tone after 1570. The 1571 Treasons Act made it treason to call her a heretic, deny her title, or bring papal bulls into England. Recusancy fines stayed at 12 pence per week until 1581, when a new Act raised them to a crippling £20 per month and made converting an English subject to Catholicism treason. From 1577, Catholic priests trained at the English seminary at Douai who were caught entering England were executed. The shift from quiet pressure to harsh penalty followed the Pope’s 1570 escalation, the 1571 Ridolfi plot, and the rising fear that Catholic loyalty meant disloyalty to England.

A Settlement Under Pressure

By the late 1570s, the Elizabethan Church was being squeezed from two sides. Puritans inside it pushed for further reform; Catholics outside it — or quietly inside — faced rising legal pressure. The 1559 compromise had survived its first decade, but it was no longer a quiet truce. The Catholic challenge, in particular, was sharpening into something Elizabeth’s spymasters would have to take very seriously indeed.