but one mistress here and no master

Sharpe quotes an unjustly celebrated text purporting to be Archbishop Cranmer’s address to King Edward VI at his Coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1547, in which the young king is duly styled a second Josiah – and many historians have cited it before him, including myself. But alas, we must all subtract this supposed sermon from our databases on the Edwardian regime; it is an unscrupulous ultra-Protestant forgery from the 1670s and it has beguiled us for too long.

It was once thought that Elizabeth aimed at a moderate settlement which echoed that of her father and was curiously suggestive of a particular brand of modern Anglicanism; but this idea is highly anachronistic and ignores the tensions of the late 1550s, when it was evident that there could be no compromise between Catholic and Protestant viewpoints. It was also once thought that Elizabeth was pressured into a more openly Protestant settlement by her MPs and the views of those Protestants returning from exile who had experienced a truly reformed church order and were enthusiastic to see it duplicated in England. In reality, it seems that Elizabeth was clear-sighted in her pursuit of a Protestant settlement, albeit one with some cautious features, but that she faced considerable opposition from the Catholic episcopacy and nobility. It is also evident that once she had achieved her settlement, she authorized the systematic evaluation, and where necessary, expulsion of parish priests resistant to the changes. Whilst the Marian bishops were swiftly removed from office, however, the parish clergy were weeded out more gradually. The much-vaunted Elizabethan via media was not a theological compromise, so much as a piece of Protestant pragmatism. The settlement was quite clear in its rejection of Catholicism, but it was also empathetic in its attempts to stir up as little popular disruption and dismay as possible.