English Reformation - Legacy

Legacy

By the time of Elizabeth's death a third party had emerged, "perfectly hostile" to Puritans, but not adherent to Rome. It preferred the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1559, from which had been removed some of the matters offensive to Catholics. The recusants had been removed from the centre of the stage. The new dispute was now between the Puritans (who wished to see an end of the prayer book and episcopacy), and this third party (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 Reformation was in the process of gestation. During the reigns of the Stuart kings, 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 historian MacCulloch has noted, the legacy of these tumultuous events can be recognised, throughout the Commonwealth (1649–60) and the Restoration which followed it and beyond. This third party was to become the core of the restored Church of England, but at the price for further division.