union of France, Scotland and England in one hand thoroughly frightened King Philip of Spain, and made him for many years more friend than foe to Elizabeth.
The religious settlement of England.He therefore in 1558 implored Elizabeth to keep England Catholic and to marry some decent Catholic Prince. But her sister's reign had killed Catholicism in the hearts of all the best and most vigorous of the younger men in England; she knew this, and so, though she dreaded the extreme Protestants and loved the gorgeous services of the old Church, she rightly decided that she must reign as a Protestant Queen. A Protestant Queen.Yet the difficulties of settling the new Church were enormous; she had to make bishops of men who had fled abroad to escape death; and many of the most eager Protestants now objected to bishops altogether, while many more disliked even the very moderate services of the Prayer Book of 1552. Such men were the germ of the party
soon to be called ‘Puritans’, and, in later days, ‘Dissenters’ or ‘Nonconformists’. Moderation, then, was the Queen's watchword; to build up a Church which should offend as few, and please as many as possible. William Cecil, Lord Burghley.Her great adviser for forty years was the wise William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, the most far-seeing and moderate of men. And the Queen and Cecil and their Parliament had, in five years—say by 1563—built the Church upon such broad foundations that it has remained, with few changes, our own ‘Church of England’ until this day. The Prayer Book.Laws were passed in Parliament making Elizabeth ‘Supreme Governor’ of this Church, making the Prayer Book (very slightly altered from the edition of 1552) the only lawful service book, and publishing the present ‘Thirty-nine Articles’ as the Confession of Faith. The Thirty-nine Articles.Year by year more and more