Elizabeth was a fairly relaxed Protestant. She favored many
customary Catholic rites (there would be no evensong in English
churches now without her) and demanded little more than
a token attachment to Anglicanism throughout much of her
reign. The interest of the Crown was not so much to direct
people’s religious beliefs as simply to be assured of their fealty.
It is telling that Catholic priests when caught illegally preaching
were normally charged not with heresy but with treason.
Elizabeth was happy enough to stay with Catholic families on
her progresses around the country so long as their devotion to
her as monarch was not in doubt. So being Catholic was not
particularly an act of daring in Elizabethan England. Being
publicly Catholic, propagandizing for Catholicism, was another
matter, as we shall see
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