England and religion in the 17th century

Throughout the 17th century, England experiences the somewhat conflicting consequences of all the religious upheavals that she endured during the previous century.
Indeed, until the 16th century, the country belonged fully to the Catholic Church.
It is King Henry VIII who suddenly breaks the ties with Rome in 1534, without however adopting a radically contrary religious stance.
Protestant ideas find a favourable terrain which they infiltrate progressively.
They are encouraged under the reign of his son Edward VI, and then distinctly reinforced under Mary Tudor when she tries too violently to impose the return of Catholicism. It is only the wisdom of Elizabeth I that restrains passions by creating an Anglican Church, an astute compromise between these rival religious ideologies.

Procession of Queen Elizabeth
 
   
What seems to pass for the ideal solution under the reign of as strong and brilliant a personality as Elizabeth only disguises the problem, because the compromise is not to the taste of one and all. On one hand, the Catholics feel despoiled, and on the other, the more militant Protestants don't recognise the Anglican Church and want to “purify it” of its conciliatory tendencies.
These Puritans become more and more numerous. Some of them emigrate to America at the beginning of the 17th century, while those that remain in England consistently feed the religious conflicts that shake the country.
   
The Stuart monarchs, who reign throughout the 17th century, follow laborious and clumsy religious policies, rendered more difficult by the heavy inheritance of the 16th century. Violently opposed to the Puritans at the beginning of the century, James I , followed by Charles I finally indirectly encourage the religion that imposes itself in England after the Civil War of 1642 during Cromwell's republic. The strictness of this religious experience is so great that for the English people it is associated with a life of austerity and sadness. Now mainly Anglican, England longs for a less coercive religion.
   
If the Restoration of 1660, with the return of Charles II to the throne, answers in this sense the wishes of the country, it also re-launches the religious debate, by trying to exclude all dissidents and to “standardise” the religion. Tensions increase again when Charles II opts for a very personal policy by forming an alliance with France during the war against Holland and by showing a worrying tolerance towards the Catholics.
The debate reaches its crucial point when James II, his brother of Catholic faith, succeeds him. The majority of the English are not ready to return to the past by re-instating a Catholic line on the throne of their country.
The Revolution of 1688 thus occurs as much for religious as political reasons.
   
At the end the 17th century, the Anglican religion imposes itself officially, while also tolerating all its nonconformist tendencies, and definitely distancing all Catholic pretenders from the throne of England.
Bible in the time of James I