Read Online Daily Life in Elizabethan England by Jeffrey L. Forgeng - Free Book Online

inclined to let English Catholics believe as they pleased, but the level of tolerance extended to Catholics diminished from the late 1560s onward, as international tensions between Protestants and Catholics increased, and English Catholics were increasingly seen as a potentially dangerous fifth column. The situation was Society 29
    aggravated with the arrival of Mary Stuart in England as a possible Catholic claimant to the throne, and by Catholic participation in the Northern Rebellion of 1569. In 1570 the pope issued a decree officially deposing Elizabeth from the crown, making it very difficult to maintain loyalty both to the Catholic Church and to the Queen, and it was in this year that the Queen first began to execute Catholics for acts in support of the pope and his policies. Tensions rose even further in the 1580s when the pope sent Jesuit missionaries into England, with the intent of ministering to English Catholics and winning converts. The Jesuits were regarded as the worst of spies, and if caught, they were subject to torture and a protracted and agonizing execution.
    Changing attitudes toward English Catholics can be traced in governmental policies: enforcement of recusancy laws began to intensify in the early 1570s; in 1581 the 12d. fine for recusancy was increased to a ruinous
    £20; in 1593 recusants were forbidden to travel more than five miles from their home without a license from the local bishop or justice of the peace.
    Yet even amidst these rising tensions a Catholic like the composer William Byrd was able to secure a place as a court musician under the patronage of the queen.
    At the other end of the religious spectrum were those who felt that the English church was not Protestant enough. Many English Protestants believed that the Church of England needed to go further along the path of reform; they objected to even the limited degree of ritual retained in the church and wanted a more fully Protestant church like those in Scotland, the Netherlands, and Geneva. Some even felt that bishops should be abolished, since their office was not based on scriptural authority. Such people favored a presbyterian church government, run by assemblies of clergy and godly laymen, an idea that Elizabeth considered a threat to her royal authority.
    Opponents of the advocates of further reform called them Precisians or Puritans. The Puritans had no label for themselves, except perhaps generally referring to the godly or reformed —indeed they were not a cohesive movement but represented a spectrum of reformist thinking within the established church.
    There were others who saw the national church as hopelessly flawed and founded clandestine religious groups of their own outside the
    church’s authority, pursuing what they felt was a purer form of Christian worship. Notable among these were the Anabaptists, who had been an underground presence since the days of Henry VIII, and the Brownists, as critics labeled the followers of Robert Browne, who founded a clandestine group in Norfolk around 1580, and eventually established a foothold in London and elsewhere in the country. Such sects formed small independent congregations for worship, but their meetings were secretive, since the government regarded separatism as treasonous. Government suppression drove some of these Separatists to the Netherlands, where they 30
    Daily Life in Elizabethan England
    would later merge with the emigrants who went on to establish the Plymouth Colony in America in 1620.
     
    A certain measure of religious liberty was allowed for foreigners.
    French and Dutch (mostly Flemish) Protestants had their own churches in London, although the English were not allowed to attend them. Even the diplomatic representatives of Catholic countries were allowed to celebrate Mass in their residences—again, strictly off-limits to subjects of the English crown. There were even communities of Jews. The Jews had officially been evicted from England in 1290, and would