It has been estimated that in Queen Mary's reign 2/3 of the English
people were Catholic, but it didn't matter because the leadership
and the middle classes were not.
At the beginning of the 16th century most priests were illiterate,
knew little Latin and not much scripture. Under Elizabeth standards
improved and the clergy had to pass examinations. The church began
to actively recruit educated men in the universities.
A Tudor family at prayer
Church vandalism... Elizabeth's reign also saw quite a bit of
image vandalism in churches, which steadily increased as the more radical
Puritan sects grew in influence. Paintings were whitewashed, chalices,
roods, and stone altars were removed. However, screens without roods
stayed, as did painted glass, tombs, fonts, and lecterns. Durham
Cathedral in particular suffered from the defacement and removal
of treasures.
... and greed. Sometimes there was more at work than religious
zeal. In Chester the canons removed glass from the cathedral to install
in their own churches. The vicar of Islington melted down funerary brasses
from the church and made coins from them.
Pride goeth before...the sermon. Males and females were separated
in the church, and seating was by social rank. This occasionally led
to brawls in the church over who outranked who. Churches became the
stage for family pride; often altars were pulled down and replaced by
elaborate family tombs. This was part of the great surge in social mobility,
and hand in hand with it, a great class consciousness. Pretensions to
nobility were insisted upon fanatically. Phillip Stubbs called it, "Every
man crying with open mouth 'I am gentleman'". These class concerns
extended far beyond church; they found an outlet, for example, in heraldry
which bedecked the new tombs. Before Tudor times coats of arms were
generally simple affairs. Now they became crowded, full of reference
to real or imagined family backgrounds.
Monastic buildings were adapted to become houses, hospitals, government
stores, factories, tenements, and guild halls. After the Dissolution
of the Monasteries there were far fewer people in religious orders
and the influence of the church declined drastically. It was said that,
"The church no longer ran the country, the country ran the church.
