Walsingham and Burghley in Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council

Read, Conyers

doi:10.1093/ehr/xxviii.cix.34

“…Conyers Read posited a factional split in the privy council between Cecil and the Walsingham-Leicester axis. 36 But we no longer believe that factional splits were a structural feature of politics before much later in the reign. 37 And now, especially in the work of Stephen Alford, a new Cecil has emerged, more complex, more interesting, but above all more Protestant.…”

Section: Religion and Politics In Elizabethan England 79mentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England

Collinson¹

2013

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Were politics and religion in Elizabethan England two distinct substances? The practice of religion, specifically of the religion defined by the Act of Uniformity and the Book of Common Prayer, was compulsory, and enforced. The structures of church and state were analogous. Yet, politics and religion were prised apart both in the justification offered for the persecution of Catholics and in the Catholic response. There were areas of religion which were private and voluntary, but they were far from apolitical. The politics of religion in Elizabethan England was heightened by the inability of the state to enforce strict religious uniformity.* This article is a revised version of a plenary lecture delivered at the 75th Religion and politics in Elizabethan England 75Elizabeth modelled herself on the biblical figure of Melchizedek, who was both priest and king. She was not an ayatollah. Yet, by her authority, and that of the parliament of which she was the principal member, every one of her subjects was legally bound to be present at the liturgical services of the church, twice on every Sunday and holy day, services which were constructed in minute detail in a Book of Common Prayer which, in the eyes of the law, was no more than an appendix to an act of parliament, the Act of Uniformity of 1559. Absence from church, and any deviation from the forms and rubrics of that book, were statutory offences and attracted the secular penalties of fine and imprisonment, penalties sharply increased by a further act of parliament in 1581. Other religious and ecclesiastical misdemeanours invited excommunication. That was a religious matter, but it had political and social implications. So far was religion from being private or voluntary that you could be put to death by incineration for the simple offence of holding beliefs which were contrary to orthodox Christianity. It did not happen very often, but it still happened, so far as we know, to eight persons between 1575 and 1612. 4 Political interest in religious belief and practice was not, of course, an Elizabethan innovation. Readers of Eamon Duffy's brilliant and hugely influential book The Stripping of the Altars might be forgiven for gathering that the politicization of religion began with Henry VIII. 5 But it was much older than that, and had been ratcheted up by the Lancastrian kings, using the threat of heresy and an act of parliament dealing with heresy to bolster their dubious entitlement to the throne. Henry VIII merely moved the goalposts and changed the rules.Since parliament had made the religious settlement, it could presumably unmake it, or change it (that had happened several times before, since the fifteen-thirties), and many sessions of successive Elizabethan parliaments were dominated by the politics of what Protestant critics of the settlement called 'further reformation'. Parliamentary campaigns to improve the state of the church, by reforming the prayer book, or even changing the very structure of the church, but above all to promote what hot Protestants cal...

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“…29 Can we distinguish between the ideologues and the politiques in the Elizabethan political class? 36 But we no longer believe that factional splits were a structural feature of politics before much later in the reign. Beyond 1571 no Catholic sat in the house of commons, or at least none who was identified as such.…”

Section: Religion and Politics In Elizabethan England 79mentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England*

Collinson

¹

2009

Historical Research

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Were politics and religion in Elizabethan England two distinct substances? The practice of religion, specifically of the religion defined by the Act of Uniformity and the Book of Common Prayer, was compulsory, and enforced. The structures of church and state were analogous. Yet, politics and religion were prised apart both in the justification offered for the persecution of Catholics and in the Catholic response. There were areas of religion which were private and voluntary, but they were far from apolitical. The politics of religion in Elizabethan England was heightened by the inability of the state to enforce strict religious uniformity.* This article is a revised version of a plenary lecture delivered at the 75th Religion and politics in Elizabethan England 75Elizabeth modelled herself on the biblical figure of Melchizedek, who was both priest and king. She was not an ayatollah. Yet, by her authority, and that of the parliament of which she was the principal member, every one of her subjects was legally bound to be present at the liturgical services of the church, twice on every Sunday and holy day, services which were constructed in minute detail in a Book of Common Prayer which, in the eyes of the law, was no more than an appendix to an act of parliament, the Act of Uniformity of 1559. Absence from church, and any deviation from the forms and rubrics of that book, were statutory offences and attracted the secular penalties of fine and imprisonment, penalties sharply increased by a further act of parliament in 1581. Other religious and ecclesiastical misdemeanours invited excommunication. That was a religious matter, but it had political and social implications. So far was religion from being private or voluntary that you could be put to death by incineration for the simple offence of holding beliefs which were contrary to orthodox Christianity. It did not happen very often, but it still happened, so far as we know, to eight persons between 1575 and 1612. 4 Political interest in religious belief and practice was not, of course, an Elizabethan innovation. Readers of Eamon Duffy's brilliant and hugely influential book The Stripping of the Altars might be forgiven for gathering that the politicization of religion began with Henry VIII. 5 But it was much older than that, and had been ratcheted up by the Lancastrian kings, using the threat of heresy and an act of parliament dealing with heresy to bolster their dubious entitlement to the throne. Henry VIII merely moved the goalposts and changed the rules.Since parliament had made the religious settlement, it could presumably unmake it, or change it (that had happened several times before, since the fifteen-thirties), and many sessions of successive Elizabethan parliaments were dominated by the politics of what Protestant critics of the settlement called 'further reformation'. Parliamentary campaigns to improve the state of the church, by reforming the prayer book, or even changing the very structure of the church, but above all to promote what hot Protestants cal...

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“…For instance, the supposed rivalry between William Cecil (1520-1598), Elizabeth I's chief minister, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-1588), the Queen's first favourite, in the 1560s and 1570s, has become part of historical tradition. 15 At first glance, this enmity would appear to be the origin of the later feud between their offspring, Robert Cecil and Robert Devereux, as outlined above. 16 However, the evidence to support this interpretation is thin, and accounts fail to consider the changed personalities of Conversely, sorting the data by university attendance reveals that the percentage of universityeducated councillors rose significantly across the period.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

A Community of Councillors: Tudor Government and Prosopography

Huddlestone¹

2021

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The Tudor privy council was the executive board of the English state and its members the leading political players of the era. Historians of Tudor politics have traditionally focused on kings and great men. When they deal with the privy council, they treat councillors in isolation, only exploring their links with others during moments of political strife. The result is a historiography dominated by faction and division. A prosopographical approach – a form of collective biography that helps identify the shared elements in a group’s experiences, and foregrounds the relations between its members - allows us to look at this group of men as a group, and in so doing to see them differently. Their many shared experiences - a childhood spent together at the same grammar school, a tour of Europe’s universities as young adults, joint military service, marriage into the same family, or time spent together hunting, hawking, and feasting - makes it much harder to divide councillors into neat opposing camps. More broadly, this paper uses the case-study of Tudor privy councillors to illustrate how tools taken from the Digital Humanities can enhance and expand the prosopographical approach: in particular modern relational database software moves us beyond simply identifying common themes in the lives of the members of this group, and allows us to explore patterns of interaction between them. Such an approach, moreover, has the potential to enhance our understanding of many other groups of the early modern period.

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Walsingham and Burghley in Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council

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The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England

The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England

The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England*

A Community of Councillors: Tudor Government and Prosopography

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