It has been argued thus far that the theological polarity of the late-Elizabethan period represented a departure from a central tradition which kept the debate on predestination out of the limelight, steered a middle course between extremes, and avoided too precise a definition of controverted questions. The challenge to that tradition came first from those who pressed for Bezan orthodoxy, and then from Harsnett and the outspoken anti-Calvinist followers of Baro: but even in the 1590s, it has been suggested, characteristically mediating and moderating influences were represented by the two archbishops and their advisers.

The same spectrum was reflected in the early Jacobean church. ‘Calvinists’ and ‘anti-Calvinists’ (often called Arminians avant la lettre or even simply Arminians) represented extremes into which the majority of churchmen cannot without distortion be made to fit. Theologically most of them belonged in the centre, like Bancroft: and their standpoint was supported decisively by James I, who in the debates at Hampton Court rejected the attempt to modify the official formularies in a Calvinist direction.

The Hampton Court Conference

The fulcrum of all recent discussion of the Hampton Court Conference is an article by Professor Mark Curtis which argued that William Barlow's contemporary record has seriously misled historians in portraying it as a failure for the Puritan cause. He drew attention to the importance of an alternative, anonymous, account in which the king is represented as having acted independently of his bishops, and to have been more sympathetic to Puritan aspirations than Barlow's account would lead us to suppose. The king's independence bore fruit in the decisions made at the conference, which represented real concessions to the Puritans.