10 - The Elizabethan Confessional State: Conformity, Papists and Puritans Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts - Audio

Professor Wrightson discusses the Elizabethan settlement of religion and the manner in which it was defended from both 'Papist' and 'Puritan' opponents. The settlement of religion achieved in 1559 (and enforced through the Act of Uniformity) restored the royal supremacy, but was in some respects deliberately ambiguous, combining moderately Protestant doctrine with traditional forms of worship and church government. It was designed to minimize the danger of religious conflict by appealing to traditionalists as well as convinced Protestants. From the 1570s, however, the settlement came under attack from both Catholics and Puritans (the "hotter sort of Protestants" dissatisfied with the limits of the Elizabethan reformation). Wrightson describes how both threats were countered and defeated, while the Church of England gradually became normalized and accepted by the population as a whole.