So far as doctrine was concerned, Henry VIII made comparatively little change, though the denial of purgatory in 1536 cut deep at the root of the Catholic system and there were indications that the king was preparing for further changes in 1546-47. But the general impression was, as Hooper said, that the king had destroyed the Pope but not Popery; the doctrinal reformation was the work of Edward VI's ministers. Protector Somerset's changes were comparatively moderate and are repre sented by the first Act of Uniformity and the First Book of Common Prayer (1549). The latter especially was a compromise and its de sign was tp open the door for the new learning without closing it upon the old. The definite breach with Catholicism came when Somerset had fallen as the result of his sympathies with the peasants in their protest against enclosures. Northumberland, who engineered the reaction against the Protector's liberal policy, played for the support of the extreme Protestants on whom alone he could rely in an attempt to exclude the Princess Mary from the throne. In 1552 by the Second Act of Uniformity and Second Book of Common Prayer the door was definitely shut on Catholicism; but so far as inspiration was sought from the Continent and not from Wycliffe, that inspiration was Zwing lian and not Calvinistic. It was not till the Marian exiles returned from Geneva that Cal vin began to exert an appreciable influence on the Church in England.
Northumberland's championship was enough to ruin any cause; and the identification of Protestantism with his harsh and violent rule involved it in a discredit from which it was only redeemed by the blood of the Marian martyrs. Queen Mary came to the throne as a representative of the Tudor tradition against a self-seeking revolutionist; even her Spanish marriage was based on the approved policy of alliance with the House of Burgundy, and in religious matters few dreamed at first of any thing more than a return to the system of Henry VIII. Wyatt's ill-advised rebellion, the truculent spirit of Mary herself, the character and conduct of many of the Reformers were responsible for the persecution which reached its height in 1555-56. It involved a gross mis calculation. Englishmen of that day were not squeamish, but• no generation in England had witnessed anything like the buntings of Queen Mary. They rehabilitated instead of discredit ing the Reformation; and the subsequent popu larity of Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,) with all its exaggerations, is proof of the impress of the persecution on the national mind. It was deepened by the association of this violent policy at home with weakness and disaster abroad. Tudor prestige depended largely upon the figure they cut in Europe, and Mary's well authenticated remark about Calais illustrates her appreciation of the failure of her policy. Her fate was hardly less tragic, though more deserved than her mother's.
Elizabeth personified the revolt from Rome, but not a Protestant or a Catholic theology. She was purely a politique, and if she ostenta tiously kissed the Bible in the street on her way to coronation, she was careful to show the crucifix in her private chapel to her brother in-law's ambassador; and the ambiguity of the Ornaments Rubric had its value in interna tional politics. That the late persecutions would cease was certain, but all the rest was made as doubtful as might be to the prying eyes of the foreigner. It was, however, largely a diplomatic pose adopted by the queen, partly to parry a real danger and partly because at was of the essence of her nature to shirk respon sibility. The wonderful unanimity with which the bishops refused to countenance Elizabeth and her ecclesiastical settlement shows that they were under no misapprehension. That settle ment was no mere return to the Anglo Catholicism of Henry VIII; it did not go so far as the second Prayer Book of Edward. but it went a good deal farther than the first. Nor was repudiation of Catholicism so novel or so dangerous a thing as in Henry's reign. By the Peace of Augsburg (1555) the empire had re signed itself to the public licensing of heresy. Calvinism was planted in the heart of Europe; the revolt of Scotland from the Papacy with drew a thorn from England's side, and civil war in France placed another Catholic country hors de combat. Spain alone could think of a Catholic crusade, and Philip II soon had enough to do with heretics and rebels in his own dominions. Elizabeth had more to fear from plots than from invasion, and her main task was to keep her subjects in a state of tolerable suspense until the financial and mili tary weakness of the realm had been repaired. State and Church had become so closely inter woven that national unity was thought to require some sort of ecclesiastical uniformity. But it was to be one of externals principally; men must go to church on Sundays, but Elizabeth boasted that she made no windows into men's souls. It was, however, impossible to avoid religious persecution when one religion involved a royal, and another a papal supremacy over both Church and State; and religious persecution went on in England until the Church prac tically abandoned politics and the State theology.
The plots against Elizabeth were, however, almost as much political as religious. The Bull of Deposition (1570) was a convenient screen; but even Philip II did not launch his Armada until Mary Stuart had left him her claims to the English throne and Drake had goaded him into fury by attacks on Spanish trade. The northern earls who rebelled in .1569 were fight ing the fight of expiring feudalism as much as of the Counter-Reformation; nor is it easy to believe that the Catholic religion was the sole concern of the queen who married the Pro testant Bothwell according to Protestant rites.