The Religious Settlement and the Catholic Threat

Elizabeth's religious settlement of 1559 — the via media ("middle way") — attempted to create a Church of England acceptable to both moderate Catholics and moderate Protestants. The Act of Supremacy made Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church; the Act of Uniformity imposed a single Book of Common Prayer. Church services were Protestant in structure but retained some Catholic ceremonial elements. Clergy who refused to swear the supremacy oath were removed.

For moderate Protestants, this was satisfactory. For committed Catholics, it was apostasy. Recusants — those who refused to attend Church of England services — faced fines of 12 shillings per Sunday by 1581 (raised to £20 per month for gentry). The fines were a financial weapon as much as a religious one.

The Catholic threat intensified in the 1570s and 1580s as Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis in 1570, which formally excommunicated Elizabeth and declared it no sin for any Catholic to assassinate her. This transformed English Catholics from dissenters into potential traitors. It also made life dangerous for ordinary English Catholics who had no desire to overthrow their queen.

Seminary priests trained in Catholic seminaries on the Continent — at Douai (founded 1568) and Rome — entered England secretly to celebrate Catholic mass and maintain the faith. Edmund Campion (a Jesuit priest) was captured in 1581 after over a year of hiding in priest holes in Catholic houses. He was tortured and executed at Tyburn in December 1581, becoming one of the Catholic martyrs. By 1603, over 130 Catholic priests had been executed under the recusancy laws. The government's argument was that these were traitors, not martyrs — that their religious mission was inseparable from political subversion.