Hello, and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

In today's lesson, we're gonna be looking at the ability to describe Elizabeth's religious settlement and the threats that it's faced.

So let's get started.

We're gonna be using quite a few key words in today's lesson, and we'll go through these right now.

Our first one is excommunicates, and to excommunicate somebody means to ban them from a church service and the community.

Jesuit is our next one.

And the Jesuits were a Catholic group who worked in secret in England to convert people to Catholicism.

Our next one is Nicodemite.

And a Nicodemite is a person who pretends to follow one religion, but they secretly believe a different one.

Our fourth key word is Puritan.

And the Puritans were members of the English Protestant movements.

They were Protestants, but they were classed as extreme Protestants.

They were around in the 16th and 17th century, so during the Elizabethan period, and they wanted to simplify and purify worship.

Our final key term is recusant.

And a recusant is a person who refuses to attend the Church of England Services.

Let's get started on some of the key content.

So today's lesson will be split into three separate sections and our first section, our very first learning cycle for today is problems with religion.

So let's think about what issues Elizabeth faced when she first came to the throne of England.

So religion in Tudor England was far from a straightforward matter.

Disagreements over religion led to riots, led to rebellions, and in turn, they were answered with torture and executions.

So it was an incredibly violent time.

People believe if you chose the correct religion, then none of this really matters, because once you died, you get to spend eternity in heaven.

What does it matter if you suffer for the last three days of your life? You get to spend the rest of eternity in heaven.

However, if you got it wrong, then you would spend eternity in the fiery pits of hell, which obviously is not something that anybody's looking for.

The reason that this becomes so important then is that religion is no longer simply a matter of choice.

It is quite simply a matter of life and death.

It's life and death for eternity as well.

There's no point in following a religion just 'cause everybody else is if you think it's wrong, because you'll be going to hell for eternity.

That's what the case is.

Okay, let's look at our very first Tudor monarch then.

And the first Tudor monarch that we are gonna be looking at is Henry VIII, and Henry VII, as you can see on the slide, is very firmly on the Catholic side.

When he became king in 1509, Henry VIII was a very much an affirmed Catholic.

He was such a good Catholic, in fact, the Pope at the time gave him a special title, which was Defender of the Faith.

Now, Henry VIII remained a Catholic up until 1534, when he broke away from the Catholic church and set up his own religion with himself as the head of it.

And in order to do that, he had to stop being a Catholic and he became a Protestant instead.

Now, although he was a Protestant, the reality is a lot of the church under Henry VIII looked and felt quite a lot like a Catholic church.

So he was Protestant, but a very, very moderate Protestant.

There was a lot within his church that Catholics could understand, could get behind, and could support.

When he died in 1547, his son, Edward VI took over, and Edward VI had been born and raised a Protestant, so he was very much a strict, firm Protestant.

So he moved England in a far more Protestant direction.

As you can see there, he's much further along the Protestant side than Henry was.

Edward wasn't king for very long though, and when he died, his older sister, Mary I, took over, and Mary had been born and raised and remains a very strict Catholic, as you can see there.

She's very firmly on the Catholic sides.

And when she became Queen, she made England a Catholic country again, and she was very happy to do that using force if necessary.

So Mary became notorious for the the manner in which she tried to convince people to convert back to Catholicism.

If you didn't become a Catholic, generally speaking, you were executed, and the manner of execution was particularly brutal.

Mary burnt people alive, which many people at the time found very, very shocking.

This is a time period, as well, where executions were entirely normal, but the manner in which Mary executed people, it really did stand out from the crowd.

Mary once again, though, didn't reign for very long.

She's only queen for five years before she died, and so that then leaves us with Elizabeth I, who became queen in 1558.

And when she became queen at this point in time, the country is incredibly confused.

They don't know what you should be following.

Should you be Protestant? Should you be Catholic? Will I be tortured if I change my religion? Will I face eternity in hell if I don't? So Elizabeth takes over a very, very difficult time period for the English people in regards to their religion.

The other thing to take into account as well is that these issues that are taking place in England, it's not just in England, that they're happening all over Europe.

Other countries are facing the same religious upheaval, and the map on the screen here shows you that.

So in blue, we can see that areas that have remained Roman Catholic.

In yellow, we can see areas that are far more Protestant, and England, as we can see in 1560, so two years into Elizabeth being queen, is, generally speaking, pretty much an entirely Protestant country.

Other areas of Europe, including England as well though, have smatterings of Catholicism, or in Catholic areas, smatterings of Protestantism, and what this actually led to in Europe was a whole series of incredibly brutal and bloody wars.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed over the question of what is the correct form of Christianity that we should be following at this point in time.

So when Elizabeth became queen, not only was she dealing with the problem of the people in her own country feeling confused about what religion they should be following, what religion Elizabeth would make them follow, would she make them do it in a particularly violent way? She's also concerned about what if I change my religion and one of these countries in Europe takes exception to that and decides to invade and prosecute a holy war against the English people.

So Elizabeth has got an incredibly difficult job of trying to keep the Catholics and Protestants in her own country happy, and also not upsetting Catholic or Protestant nations in Europe so that they might become so angry that they could invade.

Obviously, this is all very much easier said than done.

So let's think about our check for understanding.

So a true or false question here, England didn't experience any religious violence during the Tudor period.

Is that true or false? All right, if you answered false, then you are correct, but let's justify the answer now, make sure we fully understand why it's false.

So is it false because there were riots, rebellions, tortures, and thousands of executions during the Tudor period? Or was it false because a few people were publicly executed as an examples of others, but that's it? So justify your answer now, choose A or B.

Okay, if you chose A, then you are correct.

There were indeed riots, rebellions, tortures, and executions, all because of religion during the Tudor period.

Right, let's think about our first big task for today then.

So I'd like you to complete the passage by adding in the missing words.

So here is the paragraph here, you can see some gaps there, and the words to fill in are just below.

So what I would like you to do now is to pause the video, have a go at doing this, and then we'll check your answers in just a moment.

Good luck.

Okay, let's go through some answers now then.

Hopefully you got on fine with that task, but let's check to make sure we've got them all correct.

So during the Tudor period, the permitted religion swung between Catholic and Protestant, depending on which of the Tudor monarchs was ruling.

In 1534, Henry VIII changed the religion of England from Catholic to Protestant.

The Protestant religion was then strengthened by his son, Edward VI, when he became king in 1547.

When he died in 1553, his sister, Mary I, became queen and made England a Catholic country again.

The changes in religion brought about a great deal of unrest and were the cause of several rebellions and thousands of executions.

Hopefully got all of those correct.

Just make sure you have and let's move on to our next task.

So our next cycle in this lesson is Elizabeth's solution.

How did she solve those problems that we've just been discussing? So before Elizabeth became queen, it was difficult to say for certain exactly what her religious beliefs were.

She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who we have on the screen in front of us, and in case you weren't aware, Anne Boleyn is the woman that Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church for and set up his own church so that he could marry her.

So she was the Protestant in England prior to Elizabeth's birth.

Now, she never really knew her mother.

Her mother was executed when Elizabeth was only two and a half years old.

So no real memory of Anne Boleyn, but Elizabeth was raised by a series of Protestant Tudors and they taught her to follow Protestant beliefs.

So in her early years, we can safely say that Elizabeth was Protestant.

England was Protestant at that time, so it completely makes sense that that was the case.

When Edward was queen, Elizabeth again would've remained Protestant.

We know that Elizabeth and Edward got along very well, and partly that'd be because they shared the same religious beliefs.

However, when Elizabeth's sister, Mary I, became queen, we know that Elizabeth actually presented herself as a very devout, a very strong believing Catholic.

Now, the reason for this was almost certainly self-preservation.

We know that Mary I was quite happy to execute very high ranking members of society if they didn't follow Catholic beliefs.

We know that a very, very senior bishop, or several very senior bishops were executed because they refused to convert to Catholicism.

So from Elizabeth's perspective, she probably thought that if I don't at least pretend to be Catholic in a really convincing way, my sister may well have me executed.

And there's certainly a great deal of evidence to suggest that may well have been the case.

So whilst Mary I was queen, Elizabeth was Catholic, that's certainly the image that she's presenting at that point in time.

Whether she was Catholic or not in reality is beside the point for what we are doing.

The real point of what we wanna focus on here is that Elizabeth was, when she became queen, was uniquely positioned to understand Protestant belief and Catholic belief as well.

So she had a really, really good understanding about what these two fairly diverse groups in English society genuinely believed, because she herself had lived through it.

Now, let's think about our check for understanding, first of all.

So why did Elizabeth pretend to be Catholic? And introducing our key term here, why was Elizabeth a Nicodemite during Mary I's reign? Was it because, A, her sister and other important people were Catholic so she wanted to try it out and see what it was like? Was it, B, the nearest Protestant church was too far away and the journey there was dangerous? Or was it C Mary executed high-ranking Protestants, so Elizabeth needed to pretend in order to save her own life? So choose A, B, or C now.

Okay, so if you chose C, then you are correct.

Elizabeth had to pretend to be Catholic because Mary was very happy, very content to execute high-ranking members of society if they didn't convert to Catholicism.

So when Elizabeth became queen, she very quickly worked to clear up any concerns that our subjects had regarding what direction the official religion of England would take.

So Elizabeth became queen in 1558, and by 1559, just the next year, she passed an act, a law knows the Act of Uniformity.

Now, this Act of Uniformity made it very clear to people that England was a Protestant country.

The official religion of England is Protestantism.

So it's really, really clear.

However, Elizabeth, as you can see from the quote on the screen there, "I will not make windows into men's souls." Elizabeth wasn't genuinely concerned about what people believed, what she was genuinely concerned about was trying to keep the peace in her own country.

So from Elizabeth's perspective, she didn't mind if Catholics continued to believe Catholicism, as long as they did so privately, as long as it didn't cause any trouble.

So being Nicodemite is absolutely fine with Elizabeth, just don't cause trouble.

That's the key concern for her.

Now, this religious sentiment that Elizabeth brought into play was known as the Middle Way, and the whole idea behind that is that it's a kind of a middle ground between strict Catholic beliefs and strict Protestant beliefs.

It's very much a moderate course of action.

The whole idea behind it was that it could calm the tensions that are bubbling up between Catholics and Protestants at this point in time, Elizabeth desperately wanted to avoid the bloodshed that swept over Europe.

As I said, there were brutal wars sweeping through Europe, which had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and Elizabeth just wasn't in a strong enough position to fight a foreign power.

She also wasn't in a strong enough position to fight any large scale rebellions, which might have come up because of religious arguments in her own country.

So Elizabeth's Middle Way just calmed those tensions down.

Now, it was a really, really clever balancing act because it did exactly that, it calmed tensions.

it didn't make anybody particularly happy.

There weren't Protestants out there who were jumping for joy because of these new laws.

There wasn't Catholics who were over the moon about what Elizabeth had done either, but it didn't make anybody unhappy enough that they might resort to armed rebellion.

And that really was the key thing with Elizabeth's religious settlement, her Middle Way.

So let's think about our check for understanding here as well.

So true or false, the Act of Uniformity in 1559 threatened to burn Catholics alive if they refused to convert to Protestantism.

Is that true or false? Choose now.

Okay, if you chose false, then you are correct, but let's justify that answer.

So is it false because, A, the act threatened Protestants who refuse to convert? Or is it false because of, B, the Act tried to please both Catholics and Protestants? So choose A or B now.

Okay, if you chose B, then you are correct.

The Act of Uniformity was designed to try and make both Catholics and Protestants happy enough that they didn't want to rebel against her.

Let's think about our second task for today then.

So what do you think Catholics and Protestants would've thought about Elizabeth Middle Way? I've got some sentence starters, which we're gonna put up onto the screen here now, which I'd like you to copy out and then finish off those sentences.

So first of all, Protestants would've liked Elizabeth's Middle Way because, so what is there within the Act of Uniformity that Protestants would like? But likewise, some Protestants might not have liked it because, why might some Protestants have thought that this is not good enough? The other side of the coin, the Catholics, they also might have liked Elizabeth's religious changes because, what's in the Act of Uniformity that Catholics would like, but likewise, what's in there that they wouldn't like? So some Catholics would've been unhappy because, you tell me.

So what I'd like to do is to pause the video, to write out the sentence starters, and complete those sentences now.

Good luck with that.

Okay, let's come back then.

So hopefully you got on well with that task, but let's just go through a few model answers, just give you an idea of what you could have written.

So the first sentence starter, Protestants would've liked Elizabeth's Middle Way because, you could have said England was a Protestant country again.

The second sentence starter.

However, some Protestants might not have liked it because, you could have said Catholics weren't being punished harshly for following the wrong religion.

And again, wrong there in inverted commas.

The third sentence starter.

Some Catholics also might have liked Elizabeth's religious changes because, you could have said they weren't at risk of being tortured or executed for following a different religion to Elizabeth.

This was a change from what Mary had done.

And finally, our final sentence starter.

However, some Catholics would've been unhappy because, and you could have said England was not a Catholic country anymore.

There are more answers than that you could have given, but if you are struggling, then there are some good model answers there for you.

Okay, our final learning cycle for today is the reaction to the Middle Way.

Okay, so up on the screen here, we've got a graph looking at different groups of people's reaction to Elizabeth's Middle Way.

So on one side, we've got different Protestants and the other side, we've got different Catholics, and that solid line running through the middle in a horizontal manner is Elizabeth's feelings towards those different groups.

So anything above that line, she likes that group.

Anything below that line, she doesn't like that group.

And depending on how high or low it is, depending on how much she likes them or dislikes them.

So there was a great deal of variety in religious belief during Elizabeth's time, which is entirely natural.

There have been a lot of upheaval in religion, so it makes sense that with the different groups of people who believe different things.

So Elizabeth's favourite group, the group that she could probably most identify with were moderate Protestants.

Now, moderate Protestants were Elizabeth's favourite group because they accepted Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity without any sort of real complaints.

They were mostly happy with what she was doing.

They could see what she was doing in terms of trying to make Protestants happy, but also trying to keep Catholics happy as well.

And they were fine with it.

They didn't cause a fuss.

And so because of that, Elizabeth was very happy with moderate Protestants.

Another group which she tolerated were Nicodemite Catholics.

You can see there, she doesn't particularly like it, but she's willing to put up with them because they're not gonna cause trouble.

And that's the key aspect there.

If Nicodemite Catholics went to Protestant churches but practised Catholicism secretly at home, that's fine, as long as they don't cause trouble, don't throw it in people's faces, don't go out trying to cause riots, and Elizabeth won't have an issue with you.

So moderate Protestants were a favourite group of religious believers.

Nicodemite Catholics were absolutely fine from Elizabeth's perspective as well.

You've also got recusants, and recusants are a bit more of an irritant for Elizabeth.

Recusants were Catholics who refused to go to Protestant churches 'cause of their strongly held religious Catholic beliefs.

Now, initially, Elizabeth fined this group a small amount of money each week.

So for every week you don't attend church, you got fined a small amount of money, which is irritating.

It's not the end of the world.

However, by the time of the end of Elizabeth's reign, this fine had grown and grown until it was just an eye-wateringly large sum of money every single week if you didn't go to a Protestant church.

So the natural outcome of this is that many of these recusants just naturally became Nicodemite Catholics because they couldn't afford to be anything else.

There were some very, very rich Catholics who continued to remain as recusants, but they were very much in the minority by the end of Elizabeth's reign.

Most people were either Protestant, or at the very least, were Nicodemite Catholics.

There was another group, though, that Elizabeth was particularly unhappy with, and those were the Jesuits.

The Jesuits, as we heard earlier, they were a group of Catholics who came to England with the aim of secretly trying to convert people to Catholicism.

Elizabeth did not tolerate these people whatsoever.

From her perspective, they were troublemakers.

So Elizabeth banned them from the country.

Jesuits were not welcome in England.

Anybody that came, sorry, any Jesuits that came over anyway and were caught were imprisons, they were tortured, and they were executed.

So that was just as a warning to other Jesuits who may wish to come over and do the same thing.

Jesuits are not welcome in England at this point in time.

There were some Protestants though, who were also not particularly welcome by Elizabeth, and this group were the Puritans.

Now, the Puritans, as we heard earlier, there were a group of extreme Protestants who really wanted to push Protestant laws in England as far as they will possibly go.

They wanted to get rid of Catholicism from England entirely.

From Elizabeth's perspective, she's in a difficult situation here because a lot of her close friends were Puritans.

She got on very, very well with many really high-ranking puritans.

However, she really did not appreciate their attempts to push back against her Act of Uniformity.

They didn't like her Middle Way because it didn't get rid of Catholicism.

Elizabeth didn't like that because they're trying to make life very difficult for her Catholic subjects, and all Elizabeth wants to do is try and keep the peace.

Puritans weren't helping with that, so as a result, although she got on very well on a personal level with many Puritans, she didn't appreciate their attempts to try and push her away from her Middle Way.

If he thinks specifically about the Protestant reaction to the Middle Way in general, Protestants were very happy with it.

And that's mainly because Elizabeth showed that she was willing to compromise.

One of the best examples, aside from her general Middle Way, was that Elizabeth took on the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Now, the title held by previous kings was the Supreme Head of the Church of England, but a lot of Protestants, and even some Catholics as well, were very uncomfortable having a woman hold that title.

Remember, this is an incredibly sexist time period.

Elizabeth, though, compromised by instead of being called Supreme Head, she was the Supreme Governor.

And this very, very small change in language, it managed to win over a lot of Protestants and make them far more comfortable with a woman being the head of their religion.

So Elizabeth demonstrated that she's able to compromise in order to keep people happy.

Okay, so let's think about our first check for understanding for this particular learning cycle then.

So true or false, Puritans were happy with Elizabeth's religious compromise.

Okay, if you chose false, then you are correct.

If you think about why that's false, is it false because Puritans wanted any traces of Catholic influence removed from England? Or is it false because Puritans wanted more of a compromise to keep Catholics from rebelling? If you chose A, then you are correct.

Puritans wanted to entirely get rid of Catholicism from England.

Let's think about the Catholic reaction then.

So although Elizabeth was very good at keeping Protestants and many Catholics happy in her own country, that wasn't the case for Catholics abroad.

In 1570, Pope Pious V, he's the guy with the hat, in the red hat and the red shawl on on the screen in front of you there, he issued a papal bull, which is a law from the Pope stating that Elizabeth was excommunicated, and therefore, Catholics in England did not have to obey Elizabeth's orders.

Now, this potentially could cause massive problems. It coincided with the arrival imprisonment of Elizabeth's cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, who was a Catholic ruler.

She fled to England in 1568.

This is all happening in the same sort of time.

And there were some minor rebellions and there were some assassination attempts on Elizabeth's life by Catholics after the papal bull was issued by the Pope.

However, for the most part, most Catholics were pretty happy with Elizabeth's Middle Way.

Just like Elizabeth, they were far more interested in just calm intentions and having a quiet, peaceful life than they were about what was officially the correct religion to follow at this point in time.

We can also see though that, as I said, the Catholic reaction, we've got the Pope on one side, but we've also got a Jesuit being tortured up on the screen in front of you here as well, so we know that there are plenty of Catholics around who weren't happy with Elizabeth's religious settlement, but the vast majority of those Catholics weren't English and they didn't come from England.

Within England itself, most Catholics were happy with Elizabeth's religious settlement, Thinking about our check for understanding then.

So let's answer this question here.

Why did Catholic persecution increase during Elizabeth reign? Was it because of A, being communicate, sorry, being excommunicated by the Pope, upset Elizabeth as she quite liked going to Catholic churches? Was it B, some Catholics were plotting against Elizabeth and Jesuits were trying to convert her subjects? Or was it C, It was an effective way for Elizabeth to raise money? So choose A, B, or C now.

Okay, if you chose B, then you are correct.

Some Catholics were plotting against Elizabeth and the Jesuits were trying to convert her subjects from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Okay, let's think about our final task for today then.

So I've got a table up on the screen here for you.

What I'd like you to do is looking at the four actions, the four religious actions that I've taken from Elizabeth's reign.

I want you to think about who is the target audience for each of those actions, and what were the consequences of those actions.

And I've done the first one for you, just in case you're a little bit confused.

So the first action we're looking at is the Act of Uniformity, and the target audience were both Catholics and Protestants.

It was everybody in England at this point in time.

And the consequence of the Act of Uniformity is that everyone is able to interpret holy books however they wish.

By that, I mean is everyone can can follow religion however they want as long as they do it without causing trouble.

So what I'd like you to do is think about the next three actions, who are the target audience for those three actions and what are the consequence of them? So pause the video now whilst you do that task.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you've got on well with that task.

Let's have a little look at what your answers could have included.

So for the action of Elizabeth was made Supreme Governor as opposed to the Supreme Head, the target audience here were mostly Protestants, but it was partly the Catholics as well she was trying to keep happy.

And the consequence of this is that everyone is mostly happy with the fact that there is now a woman leading the religious life in England.

Our next action is the papal bull of 1570, and the target of this was Elizabeth.

The consequence, though, is that, actually mostly Catholics ignored it, certainly English Catholics, most of them just ignored it entirely.

And our final action to look at are increased fines for recusant, and the target for that were Catholics and the consequences of that, that most Catholics attended Protestant churches as well.

For a quick summary, though, England, like the rest of Europe was religiously divided when Elizabeth became queen.

Her goal was to find a Middle Way to keep both Protestants and Catholics as happy as possible.

And most of the population accepted this religious settlement.

Persecution of Catholics did increase, though, as Elizabeth Reign went on due to her excommunication and Catholic plots against her life.

And by the end of her reign, most people in England were moderate Protestants, although there were some more radical Puritans who wanted greater changes made to the church.

Okay, that is the end of this lesson.

Thank you very much for joining me on this lesson.

Hopefully you've learned a lot.

I hope you enjoyed yourself as well, and I'll see you for the next one.

Bye bye.