Elizabethan Religious Settlement

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which was made during the reign of Elizabeth I, was a response to the religious divisions in England during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England's independence from Rome, with Parliament conferring on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity of 1559 outlined what form the English Church should take, including the re-establishment of the Book of Common Prayer.

As for the governance of the Church, all but one of the Marian bishops refused to consecrate a new Archbishop of Canterbury (Canon Law from the 4th century required a minimum of three for consecration). Intent upon maintaining the three-fold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop in the Apostolic Succession, Matthew Parker, a Cambridge University don (lecturer), priest and former vice-Chancellor of the University, was consecrated in December 1559 by four bishops. Two had been ordained using the 1550 Ordinal and two in the mid-1530s using the Roman Pontifical. All four had been consecrated by men in Roman Catholic Orders. The Church might be 'reformed' in theology but there would be no break with the ancient institutional Church in governance.

When Mary I died in 1558, Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne. One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth's early reign was the question of which form the state religion would take. Communion with the Roman Catholic Church had been reinstated under Mary using the instrument of Royal Supremacy. Elizabeth relied primarily on her chief advisors, Sir William Cecil, as her Secretary of State, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, for direction on the matter. Many historians believe that William Cecil himself wrote the Church Settlement because it was simply the 1551–1552 version watered down.

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