Corpus Christi, Catholics, and the Elizabethan Reformation

This chapter looks at the impact of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement upon institutions and the individuals who peopled them. Beginning with the protestant ‘conversion‘ of Corpus Christi College and the university in the 1560s, it shows that the micro-history of the college’s experience of reformation speaks revealingly to a broader historiography about the implementation of the Settlement in the tense first decade of the Queen’s reign. The imposition of protestant religion within the university and its colleges and halls can be seen as a test case of the state’s ability to compel obedience to the parliamentary statutes that established the new church. This process was rendered exceptionally difficult both by the strength of adherence to Catholicism in ‘conservative‘ Oxford, but also by the complexity of the university’s structure: the overlapping jurisdictions between the university and its colleges and halls and the traditions of autonomy and self-government within each.