ABSTRACT
Over the centuries the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 has been the subject of much debate. In the past historians focused on the questions of what kind of religious settlement Elizabeth and her advisers wanted following her accession in November 1558, and how close the settlement achieved in parliament in the spring of 1559 was to the settlement they had envisaged. Were the queen and her advisers held back by Catholic opposition in the House of Lords or were they pushed too far in a Protestant direction by proto-puritans in the House of Commons? 1 Regardless of whether the regime and the queen got the settlement they wanted, historians seem unanimous in their description of the settlement; it was a via media, a moderate religious settlement implemented by the embodiment of moderation, Archbishop Matthew Parker. From the first weeks of Elizabeth's reign her chief ministers William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon were determined that Parker, their old associate, would become the new archbishop of Canterbury. The regime was fortunate that Cardinal Pole, the previous Archbishop, had died 12 hours after Mary I in the evening of 17 November 1558; for Pole, a staunch Catholic, would have presented a difficult problem for the new regime. The candidate chosen to be the new archbishop would signify to the world the nature of Elizabethan religious policy Historians, from John Strype in the eighteenth century to William Haugaard in the twentieth, seem united in believing that the key to Parker's appointment as archbishop in 1559 was his 33moderation. 2 Surprisingly, however, despite the almost universal use of the term 'moderate' there has been little discussion of what 'moderate' in this context really means. This essay will attempt to diagnose the kind of religious moderation found in Matthew Parker and the religious settlement of 1559. The treatment of 'moderation' by historians of the Elizabethan Settlement and the problems arising from the different ways in which moderation has been handled will be explored to begin with. Then three symptoms of moderation in this context will be examined, before finally turning to Matthew Parker and his appointment as archbishop of Canterbury.
