| Abstrakt: |
The special character of discipline and diversity in the London of the 1560s has never lacked commentators. Following Elizabeth I’s settlement of religion in the parliament of 1559 the new government had many factors to consider. Although convinced Roman Catholic clergy were no longer to be tolerated Elizabeth was anxious not to alienate leading Catholic laymen. Convinced Protestant clerics or potential ordinands, many of them returning from exile or else emerging from prudent seclusion in the British Isles, would either accept her Settlement and shoulder the burden of governing her Church or else, wanting more than it had offered them, move into increasingly militant revolt. These things have been intensively studied and altogether the government’s agenda, like that of many a government swept suddenly to power, can be described as ‘the imposition of discipline and the quashing of diversity’. |
