II. Elizabethan Recusancy Commissions

Abstract

The Elizabethan religious settlement was meant to secure the unity of England by means of religious uniformity. As a political compromise it brought eighty years of relative peace and prosperity, but as a religious compromise it failed to satisfy either Catholic or Puritan. The problem of enforcing the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1559 was complicated by the lack of adequate administrative machinery. The delay in purging the commissions of the peace, the failure to promote sufficient zeal among the justices of the peace, coupled with the decline of episcopal power and disenchantment with the High Commission and the various diocesan ecclesiastical commissions, led the government in the late 1580s and early 1590s to issue special royal commissions to carefully selected magistrates for dealing with seminary priests and recusant affairs. Thus, the Elizabethan government's policy towards recusants at any given period of time was a reflection not only of the degree of tension in the international situation, but also of the need to devise effective ways of enforcing die penal laws.