Queen Elizabeth Endeavours to Spread the Reformed Doctrines
Above: Portrait of Queen Elizabeth
After the death of Queen Mary in 1558 {chap, vii.) her half-sister, Elizabeth, succeeded, as already mentioned, to the English Crown. Elizabeth was as great a champion of the Reformation as Mary had been of Catholicism. Of religious zeal she herself had little or none, but she desired ecclesiastical uniformity throughout her dominions, and the establishment of a well-ordered State Church of which she should be the head. This Church should, of course, extend its sway over Ireland also.
In 1560 she directed the Irish Parliament to assemble in Dublin, and caused it to pass two important statutes. The Act of Supremacy declared her Supreme Governor, as well in ecclesiastical and spiritual matters as in temporal, and denied the Papal jurisdiction. That of Uniformity required a certain Reformed Prayer Book to be used everywhere at public worship, and compelled the attendance of all on Sundays and holidays at this worship, under penalty of a fine. Any persons holding an office, either ecclesiastical or civil, should declare on oath that he believed the Queen entitled to the position assigned her by the former Act, and that he disbelieved in the Pope’s jurisdiction. All who spoke, either in public or in private, against the new laws would be liable to severe punishment.
This religious legislation was far, however, from being strictly enforced anywhere in Ireland. In a great part of the country it was manifestly impossible that it could be enforced at all. But, even in places where the authority of the English Government was a reality, Elizabeth was too prudent to provoke hostility and possible rebellion by premature and excessive severity. On several occasions she checked her officials, when their zeal led them to attempt an enforcement of the actual law. She was content to depend on the influence of time and of the education of the younger generation, and, for the present, to allow the practice to linger much behind the theory
Above: Queen Elizabeth and her religous policy
Quite towards the en d of the reign, we hear that one class of officials, the mayors of the various cities, had not been required to take the Supremacy Oath, and that many Justices of the Peace had not taken it either. The fine for non-attendance at the Reformed services was not strictly exacted, even in the Pale, and not exacted at all in most places outside it, except now and then in some of the southern cities.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this lenity, if such it can be called, was due to either humanity or weakness on the part of the Queen. From first to last her Irish policy had a definite aim—the political subjugation of Ireland, and its reduction to uniformity with England in religion, speech and customs. The Brehon Laws were to be cast aside as mere barbarous customs ; the English dress was to be worn ; the English language alone was to be taught in the schools.
