Religion4

Thompson Long English 8-4 4/5/10 Religious Troubles Brewing

Religion played a central and extremely influential part in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Every time a new rule came so did a new religion. In England the church held a majority of the political power. This created rampant controversy and competition between churches. It drove countries to the brink of war on numerous occasions. As you can see religion played a large role in the world. During Elizabeth’s reign, the power rested in the hands of the Protestant church. There had been a new movement of anti-Catholicism which often created high tensions between Spain with a large catholic population and England with a protestant culture. In fact, it became so heated that the Roman Catholic Church plotted three different assassinations attempts on Queen Elisabeth. During Queen Elizabeth's reign, her group created high prejudice against Jews in England. They were often forced to leave the country. If not, they were restrained to small areas of land within their neighborhoods, and only had two job options, a peddler and a moneylender, because these jobs were frowned upon by the Protestant church. It is obvious that there was little religious appreciation for tolerance and diversity during this age. This information was provided by __ www.elizabeth-era.org.uk/queen-elizebeth- : jews-catholics:htm__

The King James Bible begins with a man named William Tyndale who was born in Gloucestershire in the late 15th century. He was educated at Oxford then Cambridge. He  was ordained as a Christian priest in around 1521. As a chaplain back in Gloucestershire, he was influenced by the writings of Dutchman Desiderius Erasmus, who argued for a personal relationship with God and personal interpretations of the Bible. He had plans to translate the New Testament to English but his ideas were unpopular to the church so he fled to London in 1523 and tried unsuccessfully to find support from the Bishop of London. He could not complete his goal until he came to King James who allowed it and put it into print. This was the biggest piece of King James’s saga. He will forever go down in history as the King who changed faith as we know it today. By making it accessible to millions of English, who were unable to read it previously.  This paper would not be complete without a section on one of the most influential characters in religious history, Oliver Cromwell. He was born in Huntington England and was educated at Sidney Sussex College and Cambridge University. He joined the House of Commons in 1628 and in 1629 the House of Commons was dissolved by Charles I. It was around this time that Oliver became a Puritan which was not an uncommon stance on religion during this time. It was an intolerant and very strict form if Protestantism. In 1640 he joined Edward Montagu, Duke of Manchester, and began a civil war against Charles II. He amassed a large force of soldiers and trained them to become an elite force. He engaged Prince Rupert in battle, and won the war proving him a skilled military leader. In 1648 parliament controlled England. However, Cromwell was still its most powerful leader. While on military campaign in Ireland in 1649 Cromwell savagely killed one third of the Catholic population and sold millions of Catholic boys and girls into slavery in Barbados. Cromwell reduced the Catholic land ownership of Ireland from 56% to 22%. At the end of his campaign Cromwell returned to England and imposed military rule. He divided England into 11 sections governed by military general's Cromwell and PostScript Puritan ideals and rules on the population often banning alcohol, gambling, wrestling and swearing, these were all publishable by jail. He also required all citizens to observe a religious activity on Sundays. When Cromwell was dying in 1658, he gave his power to his son Richard who proved to be a poor leader. After Cromwell died, there was a revolution and Richard was forced to flee the country. A new regime took over, and Cromwell's body was promptly dug up and hung from the gallows. The monarchy was restored under Charles the II.

