At the same time as the Catholic threat intensified, a growing body of reforming Protestants voiced their dissatisfaction with the Elizabethan Church. Most of these Puritans, so called because they wished to "purify" the Church of all remaining vestiges of Catholicism, accepted the existing structure of the Church and merely demanded and improved standard of clergy and the removal of "impurities" in doctrine and ritual. Others, however, went much further, 'attacked the government of the Church by bishops, objected to the Royal Supremacy, and sought a Presbyterian (i.e., elected) style of Church order.
The Queen's distaste for the Puritan attitude of mind, whit its solemn disavowal of the ordinary pleasures of life like music and sports, added fuel to her growing aversion to the political implications of Presbyterian doctrines. In her view, Civil and Church government were two aspects of one state, and the Puritans' refusal to accept the latter implied opposition to the former. The more radical Puritans, indeed, openly voiced the claim that the final authority in all matters of government lay with the national synod or assembly of the Presbyterian church and that even monarchs were subject to its jurisdiction.
Throughout the mounting religious controversy of her reign, the Queen remained fundamentally concerned with the safety of the kingdom rather than with the theological claims of Protestants or Catholics. The political and not the spiritual import of religion was her prime interest. Since she believed that the essence of religion was deeply personal and that men might come to God from different paths, it was not her wish to pry into individual consciences but only to enforce a degree of outward religious conformity in the interests of national unity. She had an antipathy to religious dogmatists, and is said to have declared that there was "only one Christ Jesus and one faith; the rest is a dispute about trifles." When she addressed Parliament in 1585, she...