leadership had the same idea, but because of their deplorable association with John Knox, the Scottish reformer, and his sexism toward female leaders, Elizabeth rejected their attempts to influence her reforms.
Puritans, after reviewing Elizabethan reforms, were dissatisfied and wanted to take the reformation a step further to purge the Anglican Church of all traces of Roman Catholicism. Specifically, they took issue with those allowances made to clergy to wear vestments and ornaments evocative of Catholicism. But, as with her other religious challenges, Elizabeth saw the Puritans as a threat to her political power, albeit a minor one; they would not accept the acts which she and her counselors established to secure her throne. In 1574 through 1576, she prevented the Puritans from gathering and prophesying, again utilizing her monarchy to control England’s religion and strengthen her throne.
Although the tactics mentioned above gave Elizabeth some advantage over her enemies, it was the 1959 religious settlement that was the most effective in solidifying her reign. As mentioned before, Elizabeth was not concerned with transforming England into an idealized, uniform Protestant society like Geneva or Zurich; rather, she and her council were more interested in “ensuring the conformity of ‘all manner of canons, constitutions, and ordinances… with the Royal Supremacy.” In fact, requiring an oath of loyalty to the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and standardizing church practices (not making spiritual demands like Edward IV and Mary I) were key steps Elizabeth took to securing loyalty to her monarchy. Catholics and Anglican bishops alike opposed the proposal that the Queen, being a woman, should take the place of Biblical Peter and succeeding popes to become “Supreme Head on earth of the Church of Christ in England”. To avert this possibility of “domestic trouble” as well as to appease the bishops, who had all voted against every reform since Elizabeth’s coronation, the title was changed to “Supreme Governor”, emphasizing her political authority to, “exercise any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdictions” that belonged to her. The oath of loyalty also required all clergymen and statesmen to swear fealty to the Supreme Governor. This act, along with the reinstated Act of Uniformity, ensured that the Queen was protected from religious threats of Rome, Catholic nations, and dissenters within the Anglican Church.
Modelled after Edward VI’s original law, the Act of Uniformity standardized the Anglican Church’s liturgies, prayer book, and communion in order to allow the most people salvation and to achieve common ground between the supreme state and subordinate clergy. It also, paradoxically, reduced ambiguity in church practices by dictating exactly what every congregation should say during church, while allowing for relatively broad interpretations within those wordings to reduce conflicts of the spiritual nature between clergy and the state. In the essential, Elizabeth’s government demanded uniformity, but in the nonessential minute details of the faith, they allowed flexibility to preserve some religious peace.
In creating the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth’s council eliminated many previous church practices as being “too burdensome” and “abused”; but to maintain peace, leeway was given to more traditional clergy, who used some Romanesque vestments and ceremonies to “[retain] discipline and order”. Overall, the prayer book passed in parliament easily, as it was simply a more conservative form of Thomas Cranmer’s 1552 version used during Edward VI’s short reign. In an effort to compromise, though, saints’ days were included, anti-papal prayers discontinued, and allowance of more ornate vestments were made to partially appease English Catholics. Elizabeth’s political power came from her relatively ambiguous wording that allowed flexibility for interpretation within a very uniform set of prayers, baptism, marriage, and funeral liturgies. For example, the wording of the Communion confirmed the “real presence” of Christ, allo