Why Religion Was Such a Dangerous Mess in Elizabeth I’s England, and How the Fitzalan Chapel Still Shows Her Plan for Fixing It

A Hidden Chapel in Arundel Reveals How Queen Elizabeth Tried to Heal England’s Catholic-Protestant Divide

One country, two faiths = a political powder keg. This building embodies Elizabeth I’s attempt to hold Catholic and Protestant England together.

When Elizabeth I inherited the English throne in 1558, she also inherited a religious mess of historic proportions. In less than 25 years, England had swung violently from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again. Three monarchs, each insisting their version of faith was the only lawful one, had created chaos.

Elizabeth’s father had started this tumultuous journey to marry her mother. Her brother and sister only made things worse, dividing families and sending dissenters into exile or to the stake. Both faiths claimed to be the one true Church of England. Dissenting was never more unwise.

Elizabeth tried something radically practical. She sought to keep Catholic and Anglican England under one roof. She did this by law, by practice, and by deliberately squishy ambiguity. Nearly five centuries later, there is one place in England where Queen Elizabeth I’s compromise still physically survives. You can experience her religious vision in stone, wood, and glass.

🌰 The Nutshell Guide to Why Religion Became Such a Dangerous Mess in Tudor England, 1534-1558

Here’s a nutshell guide to the backstory of religion and religious conflict in England between 1534 and 1558, the first year of Elizabeth’s reign:

Prior to 1534, all English subjects and places of worship were Roman Catholic. Henry VIII’s desire for a son drove him to upend England’s religious applecart. He forced a break with Rome and made himself head of the new Church of England. Thus, the English Reformation and the English Protestant faith were unintended byproducts of the Pope’s refusal to annul Henry’s marriage to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

The divine right of kings, indeed.

Unpleasant consequences awaited those who did not comply.

After their father’s sixth marriage and his death in 1547, Elizabeth’s half-brother, Edward VI, inherited the throne. He swung the rudder of the English Church hard into Protestantism. Devout Catholic subjects scurried for safety to the continent.

Six years later, in 1553, Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I, turned the wheel back to Roman Catholicism. Mary’s reputation for toasting English Protestants at the stake sent devout Protestant subjects fleeing to the continent, while jubilant expatriated Catholics returned to England.

Five years later, Elizabeth inherited a country where how you worshipped God was a burning torch tied to a powder keg of power and politics. Her subjects had suffered religious whiplash at the whim of the monarch of the moment. The words “deeply divided” and “dangerous” do not even begin to describe the mood in the country.

👑 How Elizabeth I Changed English Religious Policy in the First Years of Her Reign (1558-1572)

In the north, priests whispered Latin masses behind bolted doors while Catholic earls rebelled. In London, fiery Protestants stripped the altars bare and threw popish tradition to the floor. Intending to unify English Catholics against her, Pope Pius V’s Regnans in Excelsis (1570) declared Elizabeth a heretic and a “pretend queen.” Pius absolved her subjects from following her orders, excommunicated those who continued to obey her, and stirred up chaos in England.

Plots to dethrone Elizabeth and attempts on her life popped up like whack-a-moles. 🔗 I explain how Elizabeth's spy master uncovered one plot to invade England and kill her here.

The Church of St Nicholas and Fitzalan Chapel in Arundel is England’s only shared Catholic–Protestant sacred space.

Catholic Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart, fled civil war in her own kingdom and sought asylum in Elizabeth’s. While Mary ended up more prisoner than houseguest, that didn’t stop the plots to place her on Elizabeth’s throne.

Meanwhile, Pope Pius and his nemesis, the Scottish Protestant preacher John Knox, made for odd bedfellows. They agreed on one thing: down with that irritating woman named Elizabeth Tudor at all costs. 🔗 I unpack John Knox's surprising role in all this here.

Ever the pragmatist, Elizabeth chose a radical path: intentional ambiguity. “Attend Anglican service on Sunday,” she decreed, “and whatever prayers you murmur in the privacy of your home are your personal Elizabethan secrets.” She would not inquire. Her compromise offered both tradition and reform, provided that she became and remained Supreme Governor of the Church of England, superior even to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Deal?

Deal.

For a time.

But when the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 drenched France in Protestant blood, England’s tolerance for its Catholics shrank overnight. 🔗 I explain why this massacre changed everything in England here. To admit to being Catholic was now a risk.

The religious divide prompted several foiled invasions of England by foreign Catholic forces. They hoped covert English Catholics would rise up against their Protestant government and queen, meeting the invading ships at the ports. The 1588 Spanish Armada and the long and bloody 80 Years War in the Netherlands exemplified how easy it looked to attack England and bring Catholicism back.

✝️ When Religion Split Families: Cousins, Claims, and Counter-Claims of Treason

Within English families, religious division produced complicated results. Faith and marriage became inseparable decisions. Whom you married could turn an entire family more Catholic, more Protestant, or perilously both. Among the nobility, intermarriage (and more than a few bastards) made most nobles “cousins” of one degree or another, to each other and to the Queen herself.

For example, one family of Elizabeth’s cousins, the de Veres, headed by John de Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, swung Protestant with Henry VIII and Edward VI. However, they prudently became Catholic under Queen Mary I, then swung back to being Protestant when Elizabeth came to the throne.

Meanwhile, the de Vere’s Arundel cousins, the Howards, led by the powerful Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, remained devoutly Catholic throughout the reigns of four Tudor monarchs. The Duke paid for it with his life, executed for treason in 1572. His son, Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel, died a prisoner in the Tower and was buried in the Fitzalan Chapel. Philip was later canonized as a Catholic saint.

John de Vere’s son, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, a Protestant, petitioned his cousin Queen Elizabeth to save their mutual Catholic Howard cousins’ lives. Meanwhile, other of Oxford’s and Elizabeth’s Catholic cousins, Henry Howard and Charles Arundel, were cooking up plots to assassinate her. They tried to smear Oxford with a counter-claim of treason and a litany of other outrageous crimes.

Notably, at the time they accused Oxford, Howard and Arundel were themselves imprisoned for treason and under the tender persuasions of William Cecil, Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham on behalf of Elizabeth’s government.

(Spoiler alert: Howard and Arundel were guilty. Oxford was innocent.)

What a mess religion could make of family get-togethers.

⛪️ An Elizabethan Secret You Can Still Visit Today

Enter here for Tudor history, religious brinkmanship, and one of England’s best-kept Elizabethan secrets.

A short walk from the mighty walls of the Dukes of Norfolk’s Arundel Castle, home to the Howards and the Fitzalans, stands the Parish Church of St. Nicholas and the Fitzalan Chapel.

Step through its pretty garden gate, and you enter the Anglican Parish Church of St Nicholas. Duck inside, and you are still standing on Protestant ground. But place just one foot beyond a screen that crosses the chapel’s nave, and you will physically straddle the Elizabethan religious political divide.

Beyond that screen, under the same roof, is the Fitzalan Chapel, where the Dukes of Norfolk and their family celebrated mass. It remains solidly Roman Catholic and is still the resting place of the Fitzalan and Howard dead.

No other church in England so cleanly preserves this physical duality, this reflection of the very fulcrum on which Elizabeth’s religious compromise balanced the powder keg of politics. The same 14th-century vaulting covers the Protestant and Catholic portions. The same daylight streams through medieval traceried windows onto Protestant pews and Catholic tombs. One side sings the Church of England liturgy. The other whispers Latin prayers for the souls of the departed.

🕊️ Inside Elizabeth’s Plan for Religious Peace

On a recent visit, my husband and I, Catholic and Protestant in an interfaith marriage, stood beneath the one roof in England where both faiths still exist side by side. The peal of bells from the tower above us poured through the arches above sturdy pillars etched with Norman carvings. Straight ahead, the screen representing the country’s 16th-century religious divide stood unlocked and wide open.

How very Elizabethan!

If this exploration sparked your curiosity, you’ll find many more hidden histories waiting on my website, dorotheadickerman.com. From real Tudor women and secret diplomacy to fresh ways of understanding Shakespeare’s plays through the Elizabethan world and historical people he actually knew.

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