This caused many arguments between the Catholics and Protestants. Therefore, there was a compromise that was made by Elizabeth to settle the argument, which was caused by the two different religions in England.
Most people in England were reasonable about the protestant religion, but there were still some people who believed in the Old Catholic ways. Not many people wanted to fight about it, because for many years, they had to worship in one way and then that way was changed to another.
Elizabeth did not have very strong views about this, so she tried to find a Middle Way, which would have pleased most people. She had taken people form the catholic religion and people from the protestant religion. Most people apart from those who were either extreme protestant or extreme Catholics were ready to agree for the sake of peace and harmony. Even if it was not exactly the religion, they believed in.
The settlement that Elizabeth came up with consisted of many rules; she the queen would rule as supreme governor supported buy her bishops, there should be limits on what the priests could say, there would be no mass, services and the prayer book should be written in English, churches should be decorated and most ceremonies should be colourful and finally the priests should not be allowed to wear brightly coloured robes.
We then move on to the refusal of some Catholics to conform and the punishment faced by their actions.
Papists were not very happy with this settlement; they refused to go to church. They were called recusants. The Tichborne family were people who refused to accept Elizabeth’s church settlement. Some of the Tichborne were even killed this showed what could happen to the Catholics if they did not go to the church. Some of the people from the Tichborne family like Nicholas Tichborne was loyal to his queen, but refused to worship anything but the catholic way. Due to this belief, Nicholas Tichborne was fined.
Life became hard for most recusants. As well as them being fined $20 each moth, some recusants, like Nicholas Tichborne, lost their land. From that point onwards, recusants were not allowed to do many things like; hold government posts and they were treated with deep suspicion by all of their old friends and neighbours. Recusants continued to defy Elizabeth; we know this because fines paid to the government each year totalled to £6000.
Moving on we the have the missionary priests. Missionary priest were priests who were sent on a mission to overthrow the queen Elizabeth and make England into a Roman Catholic country again.
The recusants continued their faithfulness to their catholic faith, despite all the punishments. This was blamed on the influence of the missionary priests.
Missionary priests came to England secretly in 1580, their mission was to overthrow the queen Elizabeth and bring the Roman Catholic faith back into England. These priests were willing to die for their faith, they were known as martyrs.
Because they had come into England secretly, they had to have a secret place to hide.
This place would usually be in a catholic person’s house, they hid in what are called priest holes, and these were secret rooms, which were in the houses of most catholic people. They were not very big or spacious, but this was good enough for the priests avoid capture. The Catholics viewpoint was that the missionary priests were martyrs, but the government viewpoint was a lot different they believed that the missionary priests were traitors and were a threat to the queen of England and a threat to England.
Father Gerrard was a missionary priest who was accused and tortured for the alleged crime trying to carry out the papal bull of 1570. He done this to get rid off Elizabeth and make England catholic again.
Finally, we have Sir Francis Walsingham. He was the inventor of the MI6. Francis Walsingham was the personal spymaster for the queen. His task was to protect the queen of any rebellions and to defend her from the missionary priests.
Francis Walsingham had searchers stationed at all the places where priests want to land; Walsingham also received information from local people about the missionary priests. Due to Francis Willingham’s fine protection for the queen, no missionary priests got close enough to overthrow or kill the queen.
In conclusion, I have found out that there were many difficulties faced by the Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth the 1st, which were very harsh and cruel punishments.