In 1559/60 the parliaments of England, Ireland and Scotland proscribed the practice of Catholicism in their respective kingdoms and prescribed Reformed religious settlements in its place. By the end of the sixteenth century the English and the Scots had become nations of Protestants, but contemporary estimates of the number of Irish Protestants ranged between 40 and 120 individuals. Protestantism in Ireland was born of conquest and colonisation in the seventeenth century. Yet the remarkable contrast in the outcomes of the Reformation across the Atlantic archipelago was not predestined. England and Ireland shared the same Tudor monarchs and the Pale around Dublin was, in effect, an appendage of England. Nonetheless, while Elizabeth I’s religious settlement was a ‘runaway success’ in England it failed to win any significant support in Ireland. Indeed, because Irish women were particularly loath to embrace the new religion no self-sustaining community of Irish Protestants was spawned in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the Scots created a Reformed Church establishment despite the wishes of their monarch, Mary Stuart, queen of Scots. This chapter adopts a comparative approach to help explain the experiences of Reformation in England, Ireland and Scotland before 1603.

This chapter offers a survey of religious dissimulation in early modern England, where questions concerning its legitimacy were, owing to the unpredictable course of the English Reformation(s), arguably more pressing than anywhere else in Europe. While most Catholic and Protestant theological authorities condemned dissimulation in principle, the practice must have been widespread and was perceived, at least by those in power, as a political reality that could not simply be ignored. This chapter outlines both ecclesiological and political justifications for tolerating those who dissembled their faith and argues that their ambivalent status and the often unstable practices of policing such religious dissimulation should be considered a central aspect of early modern approaches to the problem of religious toleration. Religious dissimulation was a highly controversial practice, and toleration for inward dissent was never a given. Especially in times of political crisis, church and state authorities frequently resorted to aggressive measures to access the secret beliefs of religious dissenters, which belied the Queen’s alleged refusal to make windows into men’s hearts.

Cambridge was at the very heart of national events and the great political and religious changes of the Tudor period. By Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, the University was closer to royal power than it had ever been. The author explains how and why the Tudor monarchs became so involved in Cambridge and examines the crisis of Henry VIII’s Break from Rome, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and Protestant Reformation. The author includes key figures in Cambridge such as Lady Margaret Beaufort, John Fisher, Erasmus and Thomas Cranmer. She also looks at the early Cambridge Protestant reformers such as Latimer, Ridley and Matthew Parker, who secretly discussed Luther’s ideas at the White Horse Tavern near King’s Parade.

The book’s conclusion briefly examines the Northern Rebellion  of 1569, a revolt centered again on the entanglement of centralization and religious reform with the South set against the North. This northern Catholic revolt proves a fitting culmination to the book because, here, we find the same convoluted dynamic of intimacy and revulsion, of derision and desire of the North of England evident in each chapter. The putting down of the revolt, the bloody and destructive retribution that followed by Elizabeth I’s government, recalls the “Harrying of the North” by William I exactly 500 years prior. But the aftermath of 1569 witnesses an emergent British identity form between England and Scotland, an identity afforded by the Northern Rebellion, that would drive England into the age of imperialism and, eventually, toward the Industrial Revolution from which so many critics claim the North–South divide originates. The chapter concludes by briefly pondering modern readings of a still-extant North–South divide in poetry, fiction, and film in order to illustrate just how essential North–South discourse, forged in the Middle Ages, continues to inform the modern rift.

The chapter concentrates upon the wealth of early modern responses to the demise of Elizabeth I in 1603. Particular attention is played to the Petrarchan discourse of eternizing, the memorialization of the last Tudor monarch in her own lifetime, and the scriptural and mythological associations which shaped the early modern reception of Elizabeth. The continuities between textual and artistic productions during the period are explored with reference to Elizabethan iconography and there is sustained analysis in this context of published miscellanies mourning the queen shortly after her death. The discussion concludes with a consideration of how dynastic change and the strategic deployment of cultural amnesia also influenced the age’s evocation of Elizabeth in the decades after her passing.

The Tudors’ Welsh ancestry and doubtful claim to the English throne rendered them conscious successors of King Arthur, and the mythology surrounding Arthur and Merlin became central to the construction of Tudor power from 1485 onwards. Accusations and rumours of magic were rife at the court of Henry VIII and played a key role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn as queen, but allegations of magic also swirled around Cardinal Wolsey in Henry’s early reign. However, it was not until the reign of Elizabeth that a Tudor monarch embraced her ‘Arthurian’ identity to the extent of seeking the advice of a latter-day Merlin, a role eagerly fulfilled by John Dee. At the high point of Dee’s influence a magically inspired idea of a British empire briefly influenced official policy under a queen so fascinated by the occult arts that she personally practised alchemy. At the same time, the Italian religious exile (and possible spy) Giordano Bruno saw himself as an ‘occult missionary’, bringing his particular brand of Hermetic magic to England.

The story I have tried to tell in this book is complex in many ways: in the politics of the authorizing Acts of Parliament, in the evolution of the text itself, and in the rivalries and collaborations between the printers of the successive versions of the prayer book. It has therefore often been been necessary to depart from a strict chronological order. In this final chapter I have therefore tried to recapitulate the overall story, and the numerous separate conclusions, as a more continuous narrative.

The Edwardian Reformation was quickly overturned when Mary Tudor succeeded her half-brother and began returning the English Church to Rome. The printers of the Edwardian prayer books had their businesses placed under Catholic managers, and all Edwardian prayer books were called in to be burnt. When Mary died and was succeeded by Elizabeth, the influence of Catholic bishops and abbots in the House of Lords was a major obstacle to any revival of the Reformation. Eventually, however, the passage of an Act of Supremacy made Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and a new Act of Uniformity prescribed a Book of Common Prayer that largely revived the 1552 book but with a few significant revisions. Two editions were put in hand, one supervised by the two new Queen’s Printers (Richard Jugge and John Cawood) and the other by Richard Grafton (who had taken back control of his printing house).

In 1561 Elizabeth commanded that the liturgical calendar should be revised, because the Old Testament chapters assigned to each day included many that could profitably be replaced by more edifying ones. Because thousands of 1559 folio editions were already in use, Richard Jugge was commissioned to print cancel calendars that could be inserted to replace the obsolete ones. The revisions did not, however, really implement the queen’s wishes, because although thirty-five chapters were removed from the sequence, the only new insertion was Leviticus 26. More immediately noticeable, however, was a considerable increase in the number of saints’ days and fasts listed in the ‘miscellaneous’ column. Those additions have sometimes been interpreted as a resurgence of Catholic traditions, but it has seldom been noticed that most of them had already been added in the small-format ‘popular’ editions of 1552–53 by those unimpeachable Protestants, Grafton and Whitchurch.

This chapter surveys the substantive common law in the later sixteenth century. The rise of habeas corpus enabled the judicial review of prerogative jurisdictions and powers, so that the rule of law was now firmly rooted. The new atmosphere of rights was linked to Magna Carta, now rescued from oblivion. Private law was still dominated by the land law. Remedies for the protection of real property were simplified, but much confusion had been introduced by the Statutes of Uses and Wills, and a major new concern was the use of perpetuity clauses in family settlements to prevent the barring of entails. The law of contract is largely timeless, but the doctrine of consideration belongs to this period, and a decision of 1602 finally sanctioned an action for recovering debts without the archaic obstacle called wager of law. The law of tort was dominated by defamation rather than negligence. Criminal law was not the concern of practising lawyers and was relatively undeveloped, especially at the level of misdemeanours. The role of the Star Chamber is considered. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of Elizabeth I’s attitudes to law and justice.

This chapter considers how the English Reformation was, or, mostly, was not recalled in official liturgical documents. The first section surveys the evolution of calendars of saints from the 1530s to the version that became fixed in the Book of Common Prayer from 1562 onwards, which included a great many ancient and medieval commemorations but none from later than the thirteenth century, and cites alternative commemorative models which Tudor regimes could have embraced but chose not to. It then discusses why the Book of Common Prayer so pointedly ignored the upheavals of the Reformation, unlike the Scottish Book of Common Order, arguing that this reflects the need to unite a bitterly divided nation through ‘common prayer’ which was also an act of oblivion. The final section traces how a new myth of the English Reformation was created by occasional services of national prayer during Elizabeth I’s reign, a myth in which the Reformation’s central event was Elizabeth’s own accession, providentially delivering her people from Mary Tudor’s tyranny. This myth faded from the liturgy with the queen’s death, to be replaced by a new liturgical emphasis on popish cruelty based around a new commemoration.

By abandoning the focus on virtue and replacing it with a focus on preservation by means of occasional deception, the Machiavellian discourse throws suspicion on the role of the counsellor, and especially problematises his powerful role in relation to the monarch. This is especially the case in late Tudor England, ruled by monarchs perceived to be ‘weakened’ by their age or gender. Whereas the Henrician humanists had advocated counsellors who ruled their princes, the threat of Machiavellianism and weak monarchs renders such arguments threatening, and the counsellor falls under greater suspicion for his perceived usurpation of power. At the same time – and by contrast – there is a view that such weak monarchs require strong counsel to guide them. If this cannot come from individuals, as they are likely to be self-interested, then it must come different, ‘dis-interested’, sources. Whereas single private counsellors will be self-interested and thus ought not to rule a monarch, especially a female one, assemblies such as parliament will guide the prince according to the good of the commonwealth. For this reason, they need to have a share in the government. Command becomes ‘bridled’ by this source of counsel.

Chapter 15 considers the reception and development of continental theologies of justification in England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Early English reforming theologies of justification tended to be Augustinian, interpreting justification as a process of making people righteous by grace. An increasing familiarity with the works of Luther does not appear to have led to a widespread adoption of Lutheran ideas on the forensic character of justification. Many of the Church of England’s formularies of faith speak of justification as consisting of the ‘remission of our sins’ and our ‘perfect renovation in Christ’. The essential feature of Luther’s doctrine of justification appears to have been understood to be its emphasis on faith alone. Luther’s influence over the English Reformation declined after the death of Henry VIII, and was replaced by various forms of Reformed theology, particularly that of Bucer. By the middle of the reign of Elizabeth I, the English Reformation appears to have developed its own approach to understanding the nature of justification, while affirming the basic Protestant notion of justification ‘by faith alone’.

Marlowe’s play survives in the so-called A-Text of 1,517 lines, first printed in 1604, and in the B-Text of 2,121 lines, printed in 1616. The B-Text is not only the longer, but also the more overtly political play, providing more in-set spectacle that is reminiscent of court performance. The difference in length has often been explained with reference to cuts made to allow provincial acting during the plague of 1592–4 or to additions made to the play in 1602 (Greg 1950). However, Eriksen offers another solution, positing that, in fact, the longer and more politically informed B-text is the earlier and was intended for court performance by a dramatist who had already tried his hand at court drama in Dido. Doctor Faustus, Eriksen argues, would be his second attempt, written in support of the self-sovereignty of Elizabeth I before the attack of the Spanish Armada in August 1588. Its consistent staging of imperial iconography in the papal and imperial scenes, especially the use of the 'pillars' and Alexander the Great, portrays Charles V as a wise ruler in contrast to his aggressive son and the Pope as a usurper of imperial power, both posing threats to the queen.

As Richard Dutton shows in the volume’s opening chapter, Richard Edwards’s Palamon and Arcite (1566) is not extant, but we know more about its performance than we do about virtually any other play in the early modern period. These accounts tell us at least three important things about early Elizabethan court theatre, Dutton explains. First, they spell out in particular detail a fact that we in a sense know but need constantly to bear in mind about court performance: that the Queen shared the stage with the performers and was as much on display as they were. Second, that despite the strict attention to formal hierarchy in the placement of the audience, the atmosphere was far from stuffy or hidebound; the Queen and her guests treated the performers with an informality that reminds us of the courtly shows in Love’s Labours Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And third, that early Elizabethan court theatre could be remarkably realistic in style, unlike much of the staging in the commercial theatres later in the reign.