Seminar Overview:

The aim of this seminar is for students to acquire an understanding of the political and religious situation in England at the start of Elizabeth’s reign, and to be able to place it in the context of preceding developments in England and internationally. We will pay particular attention to the so-called Religious Settlement of 1559 – involving parliamentary Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, as well as the issuing of a set of Royal Injunctions and a new Prayer Book. We will discuss critically rival historiographical interpretations of this Settlement, as well as what it is possible to say about the motives and attitudes of the Queen herself. The seminar will provide an informed context for the discussion of primary documents in the following week.

Questions for discussion:

- Assess the religious condition of England on the accession of Elizabeth I.

- What were the principal aims of the Religious Settlement of 1559?

- Was Elizabeth I the saviour of English Protestantism?

 

Seminar Reading:

Alford, Stephen, ‘Reassessing William Cecil in the 1560s’, in John Guy, ed., The Tudor Monarchy (London, 1997)

Alford, Stephen, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven and London, 2008), chaps 7-8

Bowers, Roger, ‘The Chapel Royal, the first Edwardian Prayer Book, and Elizabeth’s Settlement of Religion, 1559’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000)

Clegg, Cyndia, ‘The 1559 Books of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Reformation’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (2016)

*Collinson, Patrick, ‘Windows into a Woman’s Soul: Questions about the Religion of Queen Elizabeth I’, in his Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994)

Collinson, Patrick, ‘Elizabeth I’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Online

Crankshaw, D. J., ‘Preparations for the Canterbury Provincial Convocation of 1562-63: A Question of Attribution’, in Wabuda, S., and Litzenberger, C., eds, Belief and Practice in Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson from his Students (Aldershot, 1998)

Cross, Claire, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (London, 1969), pp. 1-37

*Doran, Susan, ‘Elizabeth I’s Religion: Clues from her Letters’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52 (2001)

Haugaard, William P., Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), esp. chaps 3, 6

Hoak, Dale , ‘A Tudor Deborah?: The Coronation of Elizabeth I, Parliament, and the Problem of Female Rule’, in Christopher Highley and John N. King, eds, John Foxe and his World (Aldershot, 2002)

Hudson, W. S., The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (Durham, N.C., 1980)

Jenkins, Gary W. John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot, 2006), chaps 1-2

Jones, Norman, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (London, 1982)

*Jones, Norman, ‘Elizabeth’s First Year: The Conception and Birth of the Elizabethan Political World’, in Christopher Haigh, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984)

*Jones, Norman, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (Oxford, 1993), chaps 2-3

MacCaffrey, Wallace, Elizabeth I (London, 1993), chaps 4-5, 23

*MacCulloch, Diarmaid Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London, 1999), pp. 185 ff.

Neale, J. E., ‘The Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity’, English Historical Review, 65 (1950)

Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1559-1581 (London, 1953)

Pettegree, Andrew ‘The Marian Exiles and the Elizabethan Settlement’, in Pettegree, ed., Marian Protestantism: Six Studies (Aldershot, 1996)

Rex, Richard, Elizabeth I: Fortune’s Bastard (Stroud, 2003), chaps 4-5 [PM]

Starkey, David, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London, 200), chaps 38-44 [PM]

Sutherland, N. M. ‘The Marian Exiles and the Establishment of the Elizabethan Regime,’ Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 78 (1987),

*Walsham, Alexandra ‘“A Very Deborah?” The Myth of Elizabeth I as a Providential Monarch’, in Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, eds., The Myth of Elizabeth (Basingstoke, 2003)

 

Documents:

 

[There are about 30-40 pages of sources to read for each seminar. EHD = Ian W Archer and Douglas F. Price, eds, English Historical Documents 1558-1603 (London, 2011).]

‘The device for the alteration of religion’, EHD, pp. 26-9

‘Viscount Montague’s Speech in the House of Lords’, EHD, pp. 32-3

‘The Act of Supremacy’, EHD, pp. 33-8

‘The Act of Uniformity’, EHD, pp. 38-41

‘Royal Injunctions, 1559’, EHD, pp. 41-53

Extracts from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer: ‘Of Ceremonies, why some be Abolished and Some Retained’; ‘The Order of the Ministration of the Holy Communion’, John E. Booty, ed., The Book of Common Prayer 1559 (Washington, 1976), pp. 18-2, 247-9, 258-68.