Yet ironically Mary and her cohorts had already largely opened the door,
if not to the triumph of Protestantism, at least to a mollification of
resistance to it. Though the ruthless and at times cruel suppression of
heretics had bolstered sympathy for evangelicals in England, and had
engendered animus for Mary’s and Philip’s regime abroad, it was more
their inability to read the mood of England that aided in yet another
change of religion. Stephen Gardiner had wanted Mary to be able by an
Act of Parliament to disinherit Elizabeth and bequeath the crown by will.
But the whole idea was doomed, as no one in the lower house could
abide the thought of Philip of Spain as the English monarch. Mary had
paid a dear price by her marriage to Philip II, and with the loss of Calais,
many in England believed it an unreasonable fee. To Dickens, it was the
Spanish match that made the succession of a Protestant Elizabeth
inevitable.^11 David Loades echoes the cool antipathy of the political
nation to Mary’s Spanish attachments, which as well made the change of
religion more easily effected; yet this does not entail on Loades’ part an
acceptance of the idea that Mary’s reconciliation of England with Rome
was a fool’s gambit, or that given more time the English would not have
reverted back to the old religion.^12 Elton also noted that political
entanglements with the Spanish had cost Mary the support of her
subjects, especially after the loss of Calais to the duke de Guise in 1558.^13
Indeed, aside from awaiting the finalization of peace with France, few
things in either the international or the domestic realm inhibited
Elizabeth in effecting a religious change.^14
That is not to say that it was forgone that England would become
Protestant on Elizabeth’s accession. England was still by law a Catholic
country, with close ties to Spain, the strongest Catholic power in Europe;
and with Spain, its Habsburg cousins in the Empire. If Elizabeth hoped
to effect a change of religion it would come in the teeth of opposition
from both the upper house of Parliament and from convocation. Philip
II certainly held out hope otherwise, even though among the English
traditionalists and Catholics the fear was pervasive that change was
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ELIZABETHAN CHURCH 53
velimus, tamen et prudenter et foriter et pie persequitur insitutum. Et quam vis hactenus
principia paulo visa sunt duriora, tamen spes est aliquando recte fore.’ Jewel, letter to Peter
Martyr, 20 March 1559, in Works, p. 1199.
(^11) Dickens,English Reformation, pp. 212–13.
(^12) Loades,Mary Tudor, pp. 338–42.
(^13) Elton,Reform and Reformation, pp. 394–95.
(^14) Although to the Catholic powers Elizabeth was a bastard, her relationship with Philip
II kept Paul IV, had he been inclined, from acting on the implications of this fact. David
Loades points out that Rome was poorly informed about the state of English religious
affairs, though the excommunication did finally come in 1570. Loades, Politics and the
Nation, pp. 274–75.