The Wars of Religio7t 639 Section 112. England under Queen Elizabeth The long and disastrous civil war between Catholics and England Protestants, which desolated France in the sixteenth century, beth, 1558-' had happily no counterpart in England. During her long reign ^^°^ Queen Elizabeth succeeded not only in maintaining peace at ^flafrt/^<iffi home, but in frustrating the conspiracies and attacks of Philip II, which threatened her realm from without. Moreover, by her interference in the Netherlands, she did much to secure their independence of Spain. Upon the death of Catholic Mary and the accession of her Elizabeth restores the sister Elizabeth in 1558, the English government became once protestant more Protestant. The new queen had a new revised edition gstablfshe^ issued of the Book of Common Prayer which had been pre- the Church pared in the time of her brother, Edward VI. This contained the services which the government ordered to be performed in all the churches of England. All her subjects were required to accept the queen's views and to go to church, and ministers were to use nothing but the official prayer book. Elizabeth did not adopt the Presbyterian system advocated by Calvin but retained many features of the Catholic church, including the bishops and archbishops. So the Anglican church followed a middle path halfway between Lutherans and Calvinists on the one hand and Catholics on the other. The Catholic churchmen who had held positions under Queen Mary were naturally dismissed and replaced by those who would obey Elizabeth and use her Book of Prayer. Her first Parlia- ment gave the sovereign the potvers of supreme head of the Church of England, although the title, which her father, Henry VIII, had assumed, was not revived. The Church of England still exists in much the same form in The English which it was established in the first years of Elizabeth's reign and survives in the prayer book is still used, although Englishmen are no longer Jj^m"^'"^^ required to attend church and may hold any religious views they please without being interfered with by the government.
