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DIVISIONS OVER EVANGELICAL OBEDIENCE in the 1560S The CHAPTER FIVE ‘IF THE PRINCE SHALL FORBID’: DIVISIONS OVER EVANGELICAL OBEDIENCE IN THE 1560S The religion of Elizabethan England was something of an enigma, with an evangelical queen1 blowing hot and cold on religious reform, a mostly Catholic populace, and a growing troupe of evangelical preachers and bishops not always in step with Elizabeth.2 Elizabeth’s reign saw the rise of moderate and radical Puritanism as well as the counter-balancing force of English conformity. Running throughout these discussions is the ongo- ing debate over the limits of obedience and the right to resistance. By the mid-1560s, the challenge faced by non-conformists was how to justify their disobedience to Elizabeth without exposing themselves to the charge of sedition and treason, a tension that runs back to Henry VIII. Non- conformists argued that the use of vestments was impious, leading honest men and women into sin. They therefore claimed that their consciences would be wounded should they obey the queen. The language of non- conformity, then, was the classic defence of passive disobedience— Elizabethan ‘hot’ Protestants denied that they were resisting the higher power and described their non-conformity as an expression of their obedience. The focus of this chapter will be on Elizabethan evangelicals who either came out of conformity or returned from exile and their relationship to the Elizabethan church. We will also explore evangelical connections with the continent. During the 1560s, evangelicals regularly appealed to the Swiss confederations for counsel and support in times of crisis and, in particular, when questions were raised about conscience and Christian 1 Elizabeth’s evangelical orientation has recently been studied in detail in S. Doran, ‘Elizabeth I’s Religion: Clues from her Letters’, JEH 52 (2001): 1–22; T. Freeman, ‘“As True a Subject being Prysoner”: John Foxe’s Notes on the Imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1554–1555’ EHR, vol. 117, 470 (February 2002): 104–116. 2 One Elizabeth’s liturgical conservatism, see R. Bowers, ‘The Chapel Royal, the First Edwardian Prayer Book, and Elizabeth’s Settlement of Religion, 1559’ HJ 43/2 (June 2000): 317–344. Contrast W. Hudson, The Cambridge connection and the Elizabethan settlement of 1559 (Durham, NC: Duke, 1980); N. Jones, Faith by Statute (London: London : Swift Printers for the Royal Historical Society, 1982). Both see Elizabeth as essentially in step with the 1552 version of the Prayer Book. <UN> <UN> 166 chapter five liberty. This chapter, therefore, examines only part of a very complex Elizabethan picture, and is not an exhaustive study of Elizabethan Protestantism, which included Lutheran, non-Calvinist and politique alike.3 The goal of this chapter is to study debates over conformity to royal authority and the alleged influence of Calvinism on English evangelical thought. The reason for restricting our focus in this way is that Swiss theol- ogy played an undeniably important role in later Elizabethan and Jacobean England. As Peter Lake has argued, though not every English elite was influenced by the Swiss, Reformed thinking nevertheless dominated the English intellectual world.4 For this reason, the connections between Reformed and English evangelical political thought are a perennial topic of research. For a number of years, there have been claims of a ‘Zurich Connection’ with England, in which Bullinger and others heavily influenced the Eliza- bethan formulation of the Supremacy and helped add a Swiss accent to ‘Anglicanism’.5 The argument of this chapter is somewhat different: while evangelicals identified with Swiss ideas, a number of non-conformists ultimately ignored the advice of Bullinger and Gualter and challenged Zurich’s teaching on obedience. In addition, the Swiss reformers themselves were at odds over English conformity and, at times, offered contradictory advice—Bullinger himself gave two different answers on the subject. There was therefore confusion under Elizabeth over who offered the authentic Reformed voice on the issue of obedience. Thus, evangelicals on both sides of the vestiarian controversy (1565–1569) 3 Cf. H Horie, ‘The Lutheran Influence on the Elizabethan Settlement, 1558–1563’, HJ 34/3 (September 1991): 519–37. A more thorough account of English religion can be found at Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement; idem, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon, 1983); Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Religion, 1558–1603 (New York: Routledge, 1994); C. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983). 4 P. Lake, ‘Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635’, Past & Present, 114/1 (February 1987): 34. 5 Older literature includes, T. Vetter, Relations between England and Zurich during the Reformation (London, 1904); In terms of recent arguments, M.E. Pratt, Jr, ‘Zwinglianism in England during the Reign of Elizabeth’ PhD dissertation (Stanford, 1953), maintained that the Elizabethan Settlement was a full adoption of Zwinglianism; D.J. Keep, ‘Bullinger’s Intervention in the Vestiarian Controversy of 1566’, The Evangelical Quarterly 47 (1975): 223–230 describes Bullinger as the originator of English Erastianism, though not necessar- ily the Settlement. See also J.W. Baker ‘Erastianism in England: the Zurich Connection’ in A. Schilder and H. Stickelberger (eds), Die Züricher und Rückwirkungen (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 327–349. On the historiography of this and a useful critique, cf. Walter Phillips, ‘Henry Bullinger and the Elizabethan Vestiarian Controversy: An Analysis of Influence’, Journal of Religious History 11 (1981): 363–84. A more careful and textual study of the Zurich Connection can be found in T. Kirby, The Zurich Connection. <UN> <UN>.
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