User:Mathglot/sandbox/Elizabethan Religious Settlement comparison/revision 870547421

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which was made during the reign of Elizabeth I, was a response to the religious divisions in England during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England's independence from Rome, with Parliament conferring on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity of 1559 outlined what form worship in English Church should take by restoring the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, although modified a little in a more Catholic direction to get it passed by the Lords 21 to 18, and to mollify the conservative majority, Christopher Haigh, English Reformations, Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, 1993, pp. 235, 240-242 ISBN 978-0-19-822162-3; Diarmid MacCullough, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, 1990, p. 24, 26 ISBN 0-333-69331-0.

It's a matter of debate what the Queen's personal beliefs were. For a long time it was thought she favored the moderate Protestantism in a heavily disguised Catholic 1549 Prayer Book, MacCullough, p. 241 (quoting J.E. Neale). It has been argued "Elizabeth and her Protestant advisers had wanted a thoroughgoing Reformation; they had to accept a half-hearted Reformation," MacCullough, ibid. Or that here beliefs were a "discreet evangelicalism" as displayed by her step-mother Catherine Paar amid the splendours and continuing ceremonial worship of Henry VIII's Court in its last years: Protestantism, indeed, but not in the uncompromising form prevailing in the Church of Edward VI," pp. 26-26. Although she "had, with some difficulty, achieved an instant Reformation in law,"..."it was very different in the churches"..."series of minor adjustments, as parish clergy conformed little by little to the pressures of authority," Haigh. p. 242. At the center power Reformation was decisive: at the parish level it was fudged and fumbled as before, Haigh, p. 242. A number of other measures taken after 1559 to 1571 confirmed the moderate stance and halted any further moves to radicalism: the publication of the moderate Protestant Thirty-Nine Articles, the retention of Church music, medieval canon law and the affirmation that nought would be taught that contradicted the Church Fathers and Catholic Bishops. By the end of her reign "the political Reformations" had "made parish Anglicans," the majority of the nation, "were de-catholicized but un-protestantized," Haigh, pp. 242 and 241. The flexibility of the Settlement, "rather against the will of many of its leaders," permitted a wide variety of opinions that make it difficult to draw ecact confessional boundaries," MacCullough, p. 27, except for determined minorities.     The Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, issued on 25 February 1570 by Pope Pius V, declared "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic, released all of her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders. The bull, written in Latin, is named from its incipit, the first three words of its text, which mean "ruling from on high" (a reference to God). Among the queen's alleged offences, it lists that "she has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics."

From 1571 there were no further changes for the rest of the reign. In the succeeding decades the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, more confident, enforced the Settlement against Catholic recusants and Protestant Dissidents who were perhaps 20% and 10% of the population by the end of the reign in 1603. In the opinion MacCullough, p. 141, "The whole story of the later English Reformations which produced the Church of England is a tale of retreat from the Protestant advance of 1550, when in the struggle between Hooper and his more cautious episcopal colleagues, it seemed for a moment as if the work of Reformation would progress towards the standard set by the best reformed Churches of the continent. Hooper's defeat meant that the 1552 Prayer Book represented the most radical stage which the official English Reformation ever reached: whatever plans Cranmer had to on with further reform"..."ended with Edward VI's death in 1553. From then on the Protestantism of the English Church was in a state of arrested development: although continental advances could sway the minds and hearts of the majority of activist clergy and laity"..."they could not"..."move the structure any further forward from its idiosyncratic anchorage in the medieval past"..."...from the 1590s a group of churchmen began boldly to enunciate views which took the English Church in a very different direction, and which for a brief period in the 1620s and 1630s, succeeded in capturing its leadership," ibid. pp. 141-142. The result is a Church that refuses to state decisively whether it is Protestant or Catholic, indeed, prefers to say it is both.

Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity
When Mary I died in 1558, Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne. One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth's early reign was the question of which form the state religion would take. Communion with the Roman Catholic Church had been reinstated under Mary using the instrument of Royal Supremacy. These two Acts indicate what the Settlement was mostly about: liturgy and Church governance. The Church had to be brought into line with desires and brought under the control of the monarch (it wasn't going to be the Pope - although the accession of Mary and the restoration of the Mass was greeted with joy by majority of the nation, her wish for reunion with Rome was at first greetd greeted by many with surprise, and it took 15 months). Elizabeth wanted to please as many of her subjects as possible, as it turned out with fair success, but it took 40 years and the passing of the older generations to achieve it.

Elizabeth relied primarily on her chief advisors, Sir William Cecil, as her Secretary of State, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, for direction on the matter. Many historians believe that William Cecil himself wrote the Church Settlement because it was simply the 1551–1552 version watered down. The queen also appointed a new Privy Council, removing many Roman Catholic counsellors by doing so. Amidst all the politics and personal danger to herself (her accession was not greeted with wide acclaim) it is not so easy to parse out what she wanted initially but seems to have been: an unmarried clergy; the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist without a theory of definition; Mass vestments; a holy table covered by a fair linen or throw against the wall with candlesticks theron - "The Prayer Book communion would not be a mass, but at least it would look like a mass". With the exception of the Real Presence, she did not succeed in these matters, but in others she did.

Doctrinally she was a moderate and non-ideological Protestant. The Settlement she succeeded in imposing on the Church (whose clergy were almost with exception in Catholic Holy Orders when her reign began) was a mix of traditional Catholic teachings with the milder elements of Calvinism. Lutheran influence was little. The reformed Church of England accepted the Protestant interpretation of Justification by Faith (which rejected Good Works as part of justification, but this was also the prevailing view of the Church Fathers) and Predestination but not Calvinist Double Predestination.

J. E. Neale's "Puritan Choir" thesis claimed that a small bloc of radical Protestant representatives struggled for a more aggressive reform, and had a major influence on Elizabethan politics. The perceived alternative was having Puritan reforms forced on her by Marian exiles. They did make have some success in introducing Calvinist ideas in the catechisms where none had existed before 1559, MacCulloch, op. cit. p. 64. The theory of weighty influence has been challenged, however, by Christopher Haigh and others who state that the Puritans were basically defeated and thrust aside in he last 15 years of the reign. The prevailing view amongst historians today is that Elizabeth accepted from the Lords a more Catholic settlement than she desired as the Lords only passed the changes by a vote of 21 to 18 after threats and bribes. Afterwards he Queen could be pushed, but only so far, MacCulloch, op. cit. pp. 24-28. The Catholics were subdued, the Radical Protestants thrust aside and frustrated in their attempts "to move the structure any further from its idiosyncratic anchorage in the medieval past," p. 142.

Parliament was summoned in 1559 to consider to recreate an independent Church of England. The legislation defined Holy Communion in terms of Reformed Protestant theology with the emphasis on the reception of communion, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Mass which had stressed the sacrifice. The abuse of the Pope in the litany was in place, and ordered that ministers should wear the surplice only and not other Roman Catholic vestments. It allowed priests to marry, banned images from churches, and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

The bill met heavy resistance in the House of Lords, as Roman Catholic bishops and lay peers opposed and voted against it. They reworked much of the bill, changed the proposed liturgy to allow for belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion, made allowance for the wearing of liturgical vestments, the celebration of the Communion in the customary place (altar or table against the east wall), and refused to grant Elizabeth the title of Supreme Head of the Church. Parliament was prorogued over Easter, and when it resumed, the government entered two new bills into the Houses; the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity.

The Act of Supremacy 1558 revived ten acts of Henry VIII that Mary had repealed and confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and passed without difficulty. Use of the term "Supreme Governor" instead of "Supreme Head" pacified many who were concerned about a female leader of the church. All but one of the bishops (the octogenarian Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff) lost their posts, and a hundred fellows of Oxford colleges were deprived. Many dignitaries resigned rather than take the oath, and the bishops who were removed from the ecclesiastical bench were replaced by appointees who agreed to the reforms.

Elizabeth wanted to secure the continuation of the Apostolic Succession. Church theology and liturgy might be changed but not the Institution. All but one of the 17 Marian bishops refused to consecrate a new Archbishop of Canterbury (canon law from the 4th century required a minimum of three for consecration). She appointed Matthew Parker, a Cambridge University don (lecturer), priest and former vice-chancellor of the university. He was consecrated in December 1559 by four bishops. Two had been ordained using the 1551 English Ordinal and two in the mid-1530s using the Roman Pontifical when the Church was in schism with Rome but in all other aspects Roman Catholic. All four had been consecrated by men in Roman Catholic Orders. More bishops were consecrated to fill the Bench of Bishops. There would be no break with the ancient institutional life of the church. Continuity was the order of the day. The result in the eyes of many was a 'half-baked' reform opposed by Roman Catholics and the radical Protestants, and no end of attempts to modify or change the outcome. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the question was settled at the Savoy Conference of 1662 once for all in favor of the Settlement of 1559.

On the question of images, Elizabeth's initial reaction was to allow crucifixes and candlesticks and the restoration of roods, but some of the new bishops whom she had elevated protested. In 1560 Edmund Grindal, one of the Marian exiles now made Bishop of London, was allowed to enforce the demolition of rood lofts in London, and in 1561 the Queen herself ordered the demolition of all lofts, although she sometimes displayed a cross and candlesticks in her own chapel. Thereafter, the determination to prevent any further restoration of "popery" was evidenced by the more thoroughgoing destruction of roods, vestments, stone altars, dooms, statues and other ornaments. The roods, statutes and other liturgical furniture were for the most part removed, Diarmid, MacCullough, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, pp. 24-30, ISBN 0-333-92139-9. Mass vestments were removed, and other such items as grails and portals. The government ordered inventories of all such items and books in the possession of parishes. In not a few places the commissioners appointed to oversee the composition of the reports were met with resistance. Murals whitewashed.

Other measures 1559 to 1571 indicate a backpedaling and resistance to further reform by the monarch, the Religious Establishment and ministers of State, which over the succeeding decades of her reign became more assertive and assure of itself. Except for the Injunctions of 1571 all pre-date her excommunication by the Pope in 1570 when open preference for Catholicism was still allowed. These measures are discussed chronologically.

The Black Rubric of 1552 was removed from the Forty-Two Articles of Faith at the express order of the Queen. Henceforth kneeling was customary. In 1662 the Rubric was restored but the words were changed to "corporeal" to exclude the meaning that Christ was present physically in his natural flesh and blood. In it allowance was made for kneeling when making one's communion. The rubric state that doing was done out of reverence and did not imply any "real and essential presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood" in the sacrament - the effect was to affirm what the Black Rubric had intended to forbid - reverence to the Real Presence in the Consecrated Elements of Bread and Wine, Haigh op.cit. p 242.

The Ornaments Rubric of 1549 was approved. It set forth that the services of the Church be conducted by clergy clothed in the traditional vestments - chasuble, cope, tunicle, alb or surplice and stole - in use during the first year of the reign Edward VI, January 1547-January 1548 (the Sarum Rite), Diarmid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, 1990, p. 26. This provision remained a dead letter except in cathedrals, college chapels (and the Queen's private chapel) until the Ritualists from the 1840s applied it as part of a campaign to change the Protestant Church of England into the national, independent Catholic Church in England.

Parishes were instructed that the Holy Communion was to be celebrated "in the accustomed place," Christopher Haigh, English Reformations, Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, 1993, p. 240, ISBN 978-0-19-822162-3 (meaning the Holy Table against the wall in the sanctuary and celebrant back to the people) rather than the Table being brought into the nave: this did not prevail. The denunciation of the Pope was removed.

The Articles of Religion approved in 1563 were reduced to 39, one of which was the Black Rubric. The Articles were theologically moderately Calvinist while affirming the catholic faith as received in the canons of the First Four Ecumenical Councils. The intention of the Articles framers was to steer a course between perceived Roman Catholic and radical Protestant errors.

The Prayer Book in Latin was authorized for use in university college chapels and Convocation.

The Queen wanted a celibate clergy, but had could not get her way (she detested married clergy), MacCullough, op. cit. p. 25. Had she got her way the Protestant Holy Communion would "at least look like a Mass," celebrated by unmarried bishops and priests, Haigh, p. 241. It didn't happen, although many of the clergy she inherited from Queen Mary (and Elizabeth's private chapel clergy) carried on with the older ceremonial style and gestures.

In 1571 after her excommunication by the Pope in 1570 and as a response to accusations of heresy, Elizabeth issued Injunctions which forbade the teaching of anything "contrary to the teachings of the Church Fathers and Catholic Bishops."

Attempts to change from episcopal to presbyterial governance were quashed as were more rigorous Calvinist doctrines. Legislation to the change the Medieval canons of the Church which regulated governance was narrowly defeated -"The system of ecclesiastical law was used to harass Puritan clergy and laity who expressed their displeasure with popish survival in the Church," and "The lawyers and officials who operated the courts who were servants of the existing ecclesiastical machine were rarely sympathetic to Puritanism; and many traditional ecclesiastical lawyers could barely conceal their hostility to Protestantism, their employer, let alone Puritanism," ibid.

The Queen loved music and well-done liturgy. An attempt to abolish church music was also turned back, narrowly. The pace of reform was slow and "perceptible in the majority of cathedrals: most retained a substantial body of conservative clergy into the 1570s often in the case of cathedrals of Henry VIII's New Foundation. former monks of the monastic establishments which had gone before," MacCullough, p. 80.

The Queen allowed no change from the course set in the first 12 years of her reign, "...not even Cecil and Bacon who had so carefully overseen the fashioning of the Settlement, was that the Queen was determined not to move with the continental times. Her Church was not destined to move further in its official formularies beyond what had been prepared by 1552"..."This then was the bishops' dilemma- and the unique ambiguity of Elizabeth's Church. Her father had knocked down one of the twin pillars of the Catholic system, papal authority, while leaving the other pillar, the traditional devotional system, largely intact"..."Moreover, the structures of the Church remained virtually unaltered from Catholic times".."...the clergy perpetuated the Catholic threefold order of bishop, priest and deacon, with a fair claim, for the few who cared about such things in Elizabeth's Church, to spiritual as well as institutional and personal continuity with the pre-Reformation body of clergy," p. 29. Her resoluteness set the tone for what appeared during the early Stuart monarchs, a distinct Christianity called Anglicanism, the Via Media, Catholic and Protestant at the same time. However, it would be for the most part three centuries and more before the inward appearance of most churches and the ceremonial style of celebration approached her intentions. This was accomplished by the Tractarians, Ritualists and neo-Gothic architecture (1928 marked the first year a C of E Bishop wore a miter, although it had always appeared on the Coat of Arms and Stationary).

Her main opponents were Roman Catholics and Protestant Calvinist Radicals. She was opposed to Catholicism but not to Catholics as long as they kept quiet, Diarmid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, 1990, pp. 120-126. They could be savagely suppressed if they caused trouble. The one rebellion in the North in 1571 was vigorously suppressed. They had after this n representation at Court.

She vigorously opposed a stricter Calvinism as proposed by such men as William Strickland in 1571, MacCulloch, p. 34. He proposed in Parliament that confirmation, priestly vestments and kneeling to receive communion be abolished. She blocked him. This resulted in a flurry of activity to discipline Puritan ministers without much effect. A concerted and much more successful campaign was undertaken in the 1580s that resulted in the political impotence of the Puritans, ibid, p. 35, 41-51. However, the Queen was furious when Archbishop Whitgift, her architect of Puritan suppression. in 1595 tried to introduce in Parliament the strict Calvinist Lambeth Articles on Predestination and Salvation. She demanded they be withdrawn, ibid 65-66. They were. However, it would be wrong to identify her position as the Via Media formally as this notion shows up very early in the reign of Charles I 1625-1649: it would be better to see her reign as a period without a "brand name" but with all the basic elements that made for the Via Media in place.

All the Rites of the Church were made available in English and published in the Book of Common Prayer which anyone could purchase. The Book contained a much truncated Calendar of Saints and Major Feast Days, the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, the burial office, exhortations, rites marriage, baptism and the holy communion, ordination, the Psalter, Collects and Lectionaries. Cranmer's intent in keeping monastic Offices (reduced from 7 to 2), was to place the Church of England, which had had a strong Benedictine tradition, in a round of daily biblical readings and prayers for the entire population. One of the results eventually was wide use of the Prayer Book Daily Offices by private persons, a striking development, and the prominence of these monastic devotions which had to be recited daily in all churches. Because communion was normally celebrated only once a month or less, the Offices, rather than the Eucharist, came to be referred to as the 'Divine Service' (Divine Liturgy in Orthodoxy).

The 'hot botton' issues sacramentally were the Presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and the sacrifice of the Mass. Archbishop Cranmer adopted the Calvinist doctrine that Christ was truly and essentially present in the eucharist but in a spiritual, non-corporeal manner. Cranmer himself had spoken "of a sacrmanental coversion of bread and wine and of a spiritual eating and drinking of the body and blood"...and insisted that "Christ's flesh and blood be in the Sacrament truly present, but spiritually and sacramentally," (as did likewise subsequent Anglican Divines, viz. the substance remains as before but the nature is changed to become a Divine Sacrament), H. R. McAdoo and Kenneth Stevenson, The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Anglican Tradition, 1995, p. 18 ISBN 1-85311-113-9; The Identity of Anglican Worship, Ed. Kenneth Stevenson and Byran Spinks, ISBN 0-8192-1578-3.

However, when it came to the Sacrifice of the Mass the Church of England in the Settlement rejected (or was forced to reject) it whereby the celebrant and congregation offered the sacrifice of Christ to God. Instead of the eucharistic sacrifice as understood for centuries as stated in the Prayer of Consecration, the oblation was transferred to an optional Prayer of Oblation said by the congregation after communion. Cranmer rejected the doctrine of the eucharist as the Church's sacrifice. He was well aware that th was the universal doctrine in all liturgies East and West since the mid-second century, The Study of Liturgy, 1992, pp. 103-105, 210-25. He did not reject the Holy Communion as the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving - "but merely to rid it of its sacrificial doctrine," Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church, 1962, 234-235 ISBN 0-529-02077-7. It was not the Church's material offering to God (memorial as sacrifice), but a thanksgiving as sacrifice for the gift of communion without the need to offer it back to God before.

The Settlement as devised in 1559 in regards to the content of the Prayer Book on the two matters of Presence and Sacrifice appeared to be a compromise in wording and practice between the first Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI (1549) and the Second Prayer Book (1552). The Settlement of 1559 was based on the 1552 Book of Common Prayer but with several notable and important changes that backtracked Cranmer's intentions in the direction of 1549. First, when Thomas Cranmer wrote the 1549 Prayer Book the Words of Administration of Communion read, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life" which suggests the Real Presence. The 1552 edition of the Book, which was never implemented, replaces these words with "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving." The 1559 Prayer Book combines the two to shape a doctrine of Real Receptionism - Real Presence or Virtual Presence (take your pick) and Subjective Faith. However, some liturgical scholars such as Gregory Dix, Ratcliff, and Couratin would say that both prayer books taught the same eucharistic doctrine, virtualism, the Reformed doctrine that although Christ is really present He is by the power of the Holy Spirit and partaking of Him is as spiritual food eschewing notions of a corporal presence, albeit more cautiously in the first book. The Act which authorised the second book spoke of it as explaining and making "fully perfect" the first book. Finally, the 1559 book, published under Matthew Parker during the reign of Elizabeth, includes both phrases. .

Whereas Real Receptionism remained the favored doctrine for more than 350 years, the eucharist as sacrifice remained unresolved: it was there in the optional Prayer of Oblation after communion as a petition by the congregation to "accept this our sacrifice of prayse and thanskes geving," but decoupled from the Consecration. The addition of words such as, "of the holy gifts which we have presented to thee," would have restored oblation in the ancient sense even placed at this point in the Rite. At times sacrifice became the occasion for polemics, "...the theme of offering has an extraordinary persistence. It does not conveniently go away even when an ax is laid to its root," Kenneth Stevenson and Bryan Spinks, op. cit. pp. 58. The absence of this doctrine that had existed for 1400 years in the eucharistic prayer East and West universally was something that would haunt some Anglicans for three centuries. Theologians wrestled with this fact from time to time but were always constrained by a government and Religious Establishment that would allow no changes. This resulted at times in doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice, as discussed by 17th and 18th century Anglican Divines, and as taught in some quarters, that were at odds with the words of the Rite, H. R. McAdoo and Kenneth Stevenson, pp. 126-138, 151-166; Kenneth Stevenson and Bryan Spinks, op. cit. pp. 56-65. Eventually most Anglicans would reject his version of the traditional teaching.

The Church itself continued without break but it was not the Catholic religion she had known for most of her 26 years of her life before her accession. For the whole of her reign she prevented any further movement in a radical direction dead in its tracks such as the abolition of episcopacy and the importance of set liturgies. The medieval canons which governed the Church were kept intact. Liturgical music was encouraged. Attempts to brush these aside were rejected narrowly in the late 1560s. Indeed attempts to change the Settlement from the 1570s were met with stout resistance from the monarch and the Religious Establisment. The government more sure of itself, using the Church Commissioners and courts, from the 1570s went after Recusants (Roman Catholics) first and then in the 1570s Radicals (Dissenters), MacCiulloch, pp. 93-95 ("...from the 1570s, the courts' efficiency improved once more in step with the general recovery of nerve within the established Church').

As for the clergy almost all had been ordained in Roman Catholic Orders when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1559. Only small percentage refused to conform. As they died off priests trained at the two universities in the doctrines of the settlement took their place - not a few of them were sympathetic to the Catholic doctrinal heritage and devotional traditions in the Prayer Book if not for the Mass itself. They were instrumental in resisting further changes in a more radical Protestant direction - "despite all the assumptions of the Reformation Founders"..."the Settlement had created a cuckoo in a nest...a Protestant theological system and...programme within a largely pre-Reformation Catholic church structure"..."began to reassert its fascination, and aroused theological interest in the Catholicism which had created it"..."the Book of Common Prayer also pulled in the same direction. As a result, a number of churchmen began rejecting the assumptions of the predestinarian theology and emphasizing the role of the sacraments of the Church's life, in particular the importance of the eucharist within the Church, especially stressing the role which reason, and tradition played alongside scripture, pp. 78-79. This resulted in the complete rout of establishment Calvinism by Laud under Charles I, p. 82. The survival of the 'cuckoo' had a lasting legacy in the development of Anglicanism. The result was 'a Church which has never subsequently dared define its identity decisively as Protestant or Catholic, and which has decided in the end that this is a virtue rather than a handicap. Perhaps the Anglican gift to the Christian story is the ability to make a virtue out of necessity," p. 142.

This fact, her long reign and her stubborn defense of the Settlement more than anything else set the Church of England on the path it would eventually take as the Via Media brand of Christianity of the great majority of the English people, Diarmid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, 1990, ISBN 0-333-69331-0.



Legacy
Although Elizabeth "cannot be credited with a prophetic latitudinarian policy which foresaw the rich diversity of Anglicanism", her preferences made it possible. . As a moderate Protestant she wanted her version of the Catholic Faith to be the one for the entire Kingdom. In this she was not successful as about one-third of the nation opposed the Settlement. It lies in the fact that a moderate break with the Old Faith was not accompanied by a change in the institutional life of the Church.

The Settlement is often seen as a terminal point of the English Reformation and the Victorian Tractarians introduced the idea that it provided what came to be called a "via media", a concept central to Anglicanism. This is incorrect. It was a prologue to the Via Media attributed incorrectly to Richard Hooker who died in 1601 appears in the third decade of the 17th century, but the genesis of it is earlier within the Settlement she insisted on and refused to allow changes to. In his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity defended the Settlement. No matter how much some would-be reformers, Puritans and active laity pushed for a more radical nature and strict Calvinist doctrine, "they could not proceed to move the structure any further from its idiosyncratic anchorage in the medieval past,". The result called the Via Media which emerged in the early decades of the 17th century would be characterized by a belief in reason, an "esteem for continuity over the Reformation divide, and a hospitality towards sacramental modes of thought." It was not so much a statement of what it was rather than what it was not. It was characterized by a stout refusal to speculate or even define itself as Protestant or Catholic, ibid. It was anti-Confessional. The only documents approximating a 'Confession' were the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were not used in Liturgy.

The presence of a Catholic clergy, when not hostile to the Settlement, provided continuity (all the clergy at Elizabeth's accession were Catholic, and with the exception of the small percentage of the total who had been ordained with the English Rite from 1550 to 1553 (and regularized by Mary) all were in Roman Rite Holy Orders). Due to low ordination rates in the 1540s and 50s due to the political situations and changes of religious policy, the Queen had to bring 2,000 retired monks and brothers in priestly orders to fill up vacancies in the parishes. The last of these clergy not die out until the early years of the 17th century: they were the clergy who were in the majority until the university-trained priests in the new Rite outnumbered them after a couple of decades thereby providing a sense of institutional continuity which the Radicals could not break. Instead of celebrating a Reformation emphasis was on continuity with the Pre-Reformation Church. The Settlement as it matured produced several important attitudes and stances on doctrinal matters: a refusal to adopt any doctrine to which could be attached as too Reformed or Lutheran or Roman Catholic; an avoidance of doctrinal details as found in the systematic doctrinal systems characteristic of Continental Protestantism and Catholicism; and the establishment of a base line and litmus test of Catholicity in conformity to the teachings of the Church Fathers and Catholic bishops as stated in the Injunctions of 1571, i.e. as seen in the Four Ecumenical Councils through 451; the variety of acceptable interpretations of the Real Presence as long as not Transubstantiation, the rejection of later doctrinal developments such as Purgatory, and statues.

Another legacy, unique among reformed churches was the prominence of the monastic daily office which began the chief religious expression of the English people in corporate worship, somewhat by accident in practice since the Holy Communion in most parishes was a monthly or quarterly celebration. Cramner adopted the monastic tradition of the Daily Offices, reduced from seven to two by combing some of them into two Morning and Evening Prayer. The effect was to establish a regular cycle of structured prayer and Bible readings. The fact that so many English people had attended monastic services before the Dissolution made the practice that much easier.

Most peculiarly of all the Churches that came out of the Reformations came no major theological thought - "Amid these divisions, there were distinctive English theological priorities, but the English added little that was original: indeed, the English lack of capacity for abstract theological invention is so marked through national history as to constitute a dangerously plausible argument for persistent national characteristics," ref>MacCulloch, Diarmid, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603 p. 55. The reforms were about liturgy as seen in the issue over Rites and the nature of the Church as an Institution. At the time the melange was believed to have established a Protestant church.

By the time of Elizabeth's death, there had emerged a new party, "perfectly hostile" to Puritans, but who were not adherents to Rome. The Anglicans, as they came to be called later in the century, preferred the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1559, from which had been removed some of the matters offensive to Catholics. A new dispute was between the Puritans, who wished to see an end of the Prayer Book and Episcopacy and the Anglicans, the considerable body of people who looked kindly on the Elizabethan Settlement, who rejected "prophesyings", whose spirituality had been nourished by the Prayer Book and who preferred the governance of bishops. It was between these two groups that, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, a new, more savage episode of the English Reformation was in the process of gestation, "The events of the English Reformation show that the established Protestantism could not agree on what it was supposed to be," The Restoration of 1660 would determine it and it would be essentially Elizabethan with the pillar of episcopacy and the Prayer Book as the sine qua non.

The first canonically legal rejection of Cranmer was taken by the small Scottish Episcopal Church which was not constrained by government refusals to change the Prayer Book (an attempt in 1662 to do so in a decidedly more Catholic direction by adopting the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, never enacted because of riots against it). The Scots in 1718 and 1764 produced a Eucharistic canon based on Cranmer's First Book with an important addition of six words that undid Cranmer's doctrine. He had written after the Words of the Institution, "... we do make and celebrate with these thy Holy Gifts"..."the memorial that Son has wylleth to make." The Scots inserted the words, "which we now offer unto thee" after "gifts." In Orthodox liturgy, "Thine of Thine Own do we offer Thee." The addition restored the idea that the Eucharist was a material offering (Sacrifice of the Mass) made by the pries and congregation. However the Virtualist Doctrine of the Real Presence (derived from Saint Augustine; cf. St. John of Damascus's "the bread and wine are symbols of a spiritual reality") was kept although the straight forward and sometimes vivid language in reference to the Body and Blood of Christ suggested Real Presence (as in the Prayer of Humble Access). Also kept was Cranmer's self-oblation of the congregation in a Thanksgiving Prayer at the end of the Service. The result was to move the Church of Scotland and the Protestant Episcopal Church of America more closely to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox positions of the sacrifice of the Mass while keeping elements of the Reformed theology in reference to mode of the Presence, the emphasis on the congregants' personal faith and the Calvinist notion of consecration that the bread and wine 'may be' for us the Body and Blood of Christ rather than 'become' thus eschewing any doctrine of change in the Elements while avowing the Real Presence. Indeed the Eucharistic Prayer of the Scottish Book reflects a mix of Catholic, Orthodox and Calvinist theology so characteristic of Anglicanism to this day. Newer eucharistic prayers however, are often modeled on 3rd and 4th century eucharistic prayers (anaphoras) which avoid the doctrinal contentions of the 16th century and after, which oddly brings Anglican eucharistic doctrine into conformity with it preference for the teaching of the Church Fathers and Catholic Bishops as declared in the Injunctions of 1571.

The Road to the Civil War
During the reigns of the first two Stuart kings of England, James I and Charles I, the battle lines were to become more defined, leading ultimately to the English Civil War, the first on English soil to engulf parts of the civilian population. The war was only partly about religion, but the abolition of prayer book and episcopacy by a Puritan Parliament was an element in the causes of the conflict. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted, the legacy of these tumultuous events can be recognised, throughout the Commonwealth (1649–1660) and the Restoration which followed it and beyond. Anglicans were to become the core of the restored Church of England, but at the price of further division. In one of the last attempts by Presbyterians and other Non-Conformists to alter the contents of the Prayer Book at the Savoy Conference in 1662 two years after the restoration of the monarch and the re-establishment of Anglicans, a measure was introduced to allow ex tempore prayer and more liturgical flexibility to which the bishops replied that Free prayer was "sufferance" that ought to be used with "the greatest inoffensiveness and moderation." The bishops posed the value of tradition and uniformity against the whims of "private persons;" and that " ex tempore prayers were apt to be filled with "idle, impertinent, ridiculous, sometimes seditious, impious and blasphemous expressions," and in response to the accusation that the PB was defective on account of generalizations the bishops' crisp response was that these "were the perfection of the liturgy," Thompson, op. cit. p. 378.

At the Restoration in 1660, the congregations of the Church of England were no longer to be the only Protestant congregations in England but they far outnumbered the others in membership. The Restoration restored the Elizabethan Settlement and the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (1662) which remains in force although seldom used due to liturgical reforms introduced in 1929. Among the changes these introduced a Eucharistic Prayer close to the Scottish Canon. Subsequent Prayer Books from the 1960s moved away from Cranmer in favor of a general Catholic style. In the intervening years the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church introduced many Roman Catholic liturgical elements into the Prayer Book called the Anglican Missal and at the same time the Church of England slowly adopted the Pre-Reformation vestments that the Queen had valued as the norm and vested choirs in what has been described as a much belated Counter-Reformation.

A lasting legacy of the 16th century 'reformations' was an abiding English distaste for statues in churches, Sabbatarianism (the transference of Saturday sabbath, the day of rest, to Sunday, the first day of the week and 8th Day of Creation because of the Resurrection), and doubts about the corporeal presence of in the Eucharist.