By Will Durant
Queen Elizabeth I faced a foe she couldn’t crush: a stubborn band of Puritans, steeped in Calvin’s fire. Some had fled to Geneva during Mary Tudor’s reign, others pored over the Geneva Bible’s notes, and a few caught echoes of John Knox’s thunder or Wyclif’s Lollard whispers. With the Bible as their unerring compass, they saw no trace of bishops or priestly robes—trappings Elizabeth had lifted from Rome for her Anglican Church. Instead, they found presbyters bowing only to Christ.
They grudgingly named her head of England’s Church to keep the Pope at bay, but in their souls, they spurned state meddling in faith, dreaming instead of a religion that ruled the state. By 1564, foes dubbed them “Puritans”—a sneer at their call to strip Protestantism of anything not scripted in the New Testament.
Predestination, election, and damnation gripped them. Hell loomed large, escapable only by bending all life to piety and morals. On grim Sundays, poring over Scripture, Christ faded before the Old Testament’s stern Jehovah. Their fight flared in 1569 when Thomas Cartwright, a Cambridge theology professor, preached the early Church’s presbyterian simplicity against Anglican pomp. Faculty rallied to him, but John Whitgift, Trinity’s headmaster, ratted him out to Elizabeth. She sacked Cartwright in 1570, and he bolted to Geneva, soaking up Calvinist zeal under Theodore de Beza.
Back in England, Cartwright, Walter Travers, and others forged a Puritan blueprint: Christ vested power in elected ministers and lay elders—parish by parish, province by province. These consistories would dictate creed, rites, and morals straight from the Bible, policing homes, enforcing “godly living,” excommunicating rebels, even condemning heretics to death. Civil rulers would enforce, but wield no spiritual sway.
In 1572, Wandsworth birthed England’s first presbytery; others sprouted across eastern and middle counties. London’s Protestants—artisans swayed by French and Dutch Calvinist refugees—and much of the Commons tilted Puritan, cheering the assault on bishops and rituals. Businessmen saw it as a shield against Catholicism’s disdain for “usury.” Calvin’s nod to interest, thrift, and toil won them over, despite his rigor. Even Elizabeth’s inner circle—Cecil, Leicester, Walsingham, Knollys—saw Puritanism as a handy cudgel if Mary Stuart grabbed the throne.
Elizabeth, though, saw a dagger in the Puritan surge, threatening her fragile religious truce. To her, Calvinism was Knox’s venom—she’d never forgiven his jabs at women rulers—and Puritan dogma outranked Catholic rigidity in her scorn. She cherished crucifixes and icons; when Puritan vandals smashed art early in her reign, she paid damages and banned repeats. Their talk of elected ministers and state-free synods smelled republican, a menace to her crown. She banked on monarchy to keep England Protestant, fearing a vote would resurrect Rome.
She unleashed her bishops. Archbishop Parker gagged Puritan presses, muzzled their pulpits, and broke up their meetings. When they held public Bible debates—“prophesyings”—she ordered them stopped; Parker obeyed. His successor, Edmund Grindal, shielded them; she suspended him in 1577. After his death (1583), she tapped her chaplain, John Whitgift, who vowed to crush the movement.
Whitgift demanded clergy swear to the Thirty-nine Articles, Prayer Book, and Elizabeth’s supremacy. Refusers faced the High Commission Court, grilled so relentlessly that Cecil likened it to Spain’s Inquisition. Puritans dug in. Some split off as “Independents” or “Separatists,” forming free congregations. Robert Browne, Cartwright’s disciple turned rival, fled to Holland, publishing tracts (1582) for a democratic Church—self-organized, Bible-ruled, Christ-led. Two followers hanged in 1583 for defying the Queen.
In the 1586 Parliament race, Puritans savaged foes with gusto: one a “gamester and drunk,” another a “seldom-churchgoing whoremaster.” John Penry petitioned for reform, blasting bishops; Antony Cope pitched a Presbyterian overhaul. Elizabeth quashed both, jailing Cope and four allies, including Peter Wentworth, in the Tower.
Thwarted, Puritans hit the presses. From 1588-89, “Martin Marprelate” pamphlets—snarky, underground jabs at bishops—flooded England. Whitgift’s spies hunted them; printers dodged capture until April 1589. Elizabeth let him loose: arrests spiked, executions followed. Cartwright faced death but was pardoned; Separatists John Greenwood, Henry Barrow, and Penry hanged in 1593. Parliament’s 1593 decree exiled nonconformists or threatened death—Puritan defiance met royal steel.
Amid the storm, Richard Hooker, a mild Temple parson, faced off with Puritan Walter Travers in sermons—Hooker for Elizabeth’s order, Travers against. Transferred to rural Boscombe, Hooker penned *Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity* (Books I-IV, 1594; V, 1597). Dying at 47 in 1600 at Bishopsbourne, he left a masterpiece. Its calm logic and stately prose won praise: Queen Elizabeth cherished it, Popes Allen and Clement VIII admired it, Puritans softened. Hooker blended Aquinas’ law with a proto-social contract: laws stem from community consent, not kings alone. Parliament, he wrote, was England’s soul—foreshadowing trouble for Charles I.
He saw religion as order’s bedrock, flaws and all. “Men love to hear of better governance,” he mused, “but miss the hidden snags.” Too scholastic for his age, too tame for liberty’s fire, he didn’t sway Puritans—they sailed for Holland, seeding congregations in Middelburg, Leiden, and Amsterdam, preludes to triumphs in England and America.
From The Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant, pp. 24-28
