ALISON WEIR ON ELIZABETH I

Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth (New York: Ballantine Books; 2008; p. 54).

‘[She] had from adolescence been imbued with the beliefs and teachings of the Cambridge reformers who tutored her, yet although she grew up in and professed the Protestant faith, she was no reformer herself; it was the traditional ritual and ceremony of religion, the glorious anthems and motets sung by her choristers, and the intellectual satisfaction of theological literature that appealed to her.

She knew that literature well, informing Parliament in 1566 that “I studied nothing but divinity till I came to the Crown.”

Furthermore, in an age in which people were burned for their beliefs, she held surprisingly enlightened views.

“There is only one Jesus Christ,” she declared. . . . “The rest is a dispute over trifles.”’

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