1558–1571

The Elizabethan Settlement and the Thirty-Nine Articles

Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. For the sake of national unity she deliberately avoided doctrinal disputes. In 1559 a Protestant prayer book was restored in a moderated version combining the 1549 and 1552 communion formulas. An Act of Uniformity came with it. Mary's dissenting bishops were removed without reprisals.

The revised "Thirty-Nine Articles" grew out of Cranmer and Ridley's "Forty-Two Articles". Convocation approved them in 1563, and they were promulgated in 1571. They affirmed a moderate Calvinism – the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation and justification by faith alone. Yet they left rites and church order a "middle way" between Rome and continental Protestantism.

This via media survived the plots surrounding Mary Stuart, who was executed in 1587. It also survived the growing discontent of Puritans demanding further "purification" of the church.