Overview

The long reign of Queen Elizabeth I was the time when the Church of England acquired its classical post-reformation shape. The queen has often been criticized for her cautious approach to church affairs, for her apparently rigid conservatism and for her habit of keeping sees vacant for as long as possible so as to be able to pocket their revenues. From hindsight it is even possible to blame her for sowing the seeds of revolution, which erupted a generation after her death, but this longterm perspective should not be allowed to obscure her very real achievement. Her 'settlement’ of the church in 1559-63, whatever its faults may have been, stood the test of time and in some fundamental ways, it shaped the church for the next four centuries.

The convocations played an important and generally underestimated role in this. They met in tandem with parliament throughout the reign, and continued to grant subsidies to the crown in the usual way, but they also hammered out the doctrine and discipline of the reformed church. The thirty-nine articles were approved in 1563, and subsequent convocations issued canons, most of which were eventually incorporated in the classical collection put together in 1604. The fact that the queen refused to ratify them (except in 1598) does not mean that they had no force. On the contrary, they were allowed to take effect within the church itself, and it was only much later that their validity was called into question.

For the 1563 convocation, Archbishop Matthew Parker searched the records to discover what the proper forms should be, and then adapted them to postreformation circumstances. These forms, apart from being translated into English in 1733, remained the standards in use until the convocations surrendered their legislative powers to the newly-created general synod in 1970. Also at this time, English became without question the language of discussion and debate, with Latin retreating into increasingly formalized contexts.

The queen played a delicate balancing act between parliament (with its radical tendencies in the house of commons) on the one hand, and the convocations on the other. She refused to let the former be the arbiter of church affairs, which to her mind were beyond its remit, yet at the same time she did nothing to suggest that the convocations might be considered an independent source of legal authority.