Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие. Алексей Минченков

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      Fortunately, by the time of her accession Elizabeth was already an accomplished political leader, a great actress on the political stage who knew how to win popular support, she had keen political acumen and, most importantly, a genius for choosing the right people to work with. As a consequence, there gradually emerged a tightly-knit group of educated and highly intelligent officials who gave the kingdom a sustained stability. Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary and chief counsellor was William Cecil, who was later to become also her Lord Treasurer. It was a great partnership which lasted 40 years and whose main purpose was no longer revolution but consolidation, to bring peace to the country by building on the foundations laid by Henry VIII in the 1530s. Cecil’s brother-in-law Nicholas Bacon was Lord Chancellor and Francis Walsingham, officially a secretary of state to the queen, was in effect the head of Elizabethan intelligence service.

      What Elizabeth and her government eventually managed to achieve in matters of religion is often referred to as Elizabethan religious settlement. The queen, who was not particularly religious herself, wanted to return to how things stood shortly after Henry VIII’s death. But her first Parliament wanted a more radical form of Protestantism, so did the people she wanted to work with. At her accession England was still Catholic. What became the Anglican Church slowly emerged as the reign progressed. It was shaped by political events as a cross between Catholic and what was called Puritan. The Puritans wanted the abolition of the bishops and any trace of ritual reminiscent of Rome. The Puritan doctrine modeled on Calvinism and the Church of Geneva with its democratic republicanism didn’t appeal to the queen, who thought and acted on her successor’s principle ‘No bishop, no king’.

      In 1559 Elizabeth’s first Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which abolished papal allegiance and recognized the queen as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. She wanted to return to the moderate and largely Catholic Prayer Book of 1549, but was forced to allow the restoration of the more radical version of 1552, although some of the more extreme attitudes were eliminated. Eventually this Prayer Book proved to be a golden mean, a chameleon that meant different things to different people. Parliament also passed the Act of Uniformity and in 1562 Cranmer’s 42 Articles of Faith were modified to 39 and adopted by the clergy. In 1571 these Articles were imposed by Parliament as the doctrine of the Anglican Church. With certain revisions, they have remained the basic doctrines of faith of the Established Church of England till the present day.