Puritans, Catholics, and Dynastic Crises, 1571–1582

Abstract

This chapter deals with the period after the dynastic ‘turning point that did not turn’ at the end of the 1560s, that is, when Mary Stuart failed to recover the ground that she had lost after being deposed in Scotland. It covers the relative peace in Church and State in England up to the mid-1570s, a peace which was destabilized inter alia by Elizabeth’s unwillingness to subscribe to the agenda of some of her councillors who wished her to agree to a more actively Protestant raft of policies than she would concede. A more aggressive form of popular politics, both puritan and Catholic, was the result by the end of the 1570s when Elizabeth temporarily opted for an Anglo-French dynastic union as a way of dealing on her own terms with the difficulties that now confronted her.