Reform After the Settlement
Some historians place the end of the English Reformation in Elizabeth’s reign. Others see a “Long Reformation” continuing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Stuart period makes the longer view compelling.
Arminians Versus Puritans
Under James I, theologians associated with Bishop Lancelot Andrewes challenged parts of Calvinist teaching, especially predestination. Their belief in free will and their preference for older liturgical forms made them known as the Arminian party. They looked toward the Church Fathers and the traditional 1549 Prayer Book rather than relying only on the Reformed tradition.
Under Charles I, Arminians gained influence through William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud’s “Beauty of Holiness” sought to restore majesty to worship and dignity to the priesthood. Puritans and Prayer Book conformists alike often regarded these innovations as dangerous.
Religion Becomes Civil War
The conflict was not merely theological. It concerned who should govern the church and what national worship should look like. Resistance to Laudian reforms fed the crisis that culminated in the English Civil War. After Charles I was overthrown, a Puritan-dominated Parliament dismantled the Elizabethan Settlement.
Yet Puritans could not agree on a replacement. Quakers, Ranters, Seekers, Diggers, Muggletonians, and Fifth Monarchists emerged alongside other movements. When the monarchy returned in 1660, the settlement was restored, but the old religious consensus had been broken.
England’s Reformation therefore did not produce one Protestant church. It produced a permanent landscape of competing churches, each claiming to define the nation’s faith.