During the century following the English Reformation, English church officials, government officers, and laity negotiated new forms of English society and culture that reflected new forms of English identity. Five decades after Pope Leo X granted Henry VIII the title Fidei defensor, ‘Defender of the Faith,’ Pope Pius V excommunicated Henry's youngest daughter, Elizabeth I, for her adherence to and support of Protestant religion. Officially, after 1559, to be English was to be Protestant. In theory, conformity to the English Church signaled an individual's or family's loyalty to the state. In practice, however, conformity and loyalty were complex, and most of the people who continued to practice Catholicism demonstrated loyalty to the monarch and government. Gentry and noble families relied on the crown for patronage that brought employment, favors, prestige, and socio-economic advancement. Many of the late sixteenth century's powerful families had been in service to the monarch and state since the fifteenth century. Their wealth, power, and prestige grew as successive generations enjoyed the benefits of royal patronage and high state offices. These families knew how destabilizing war, demographic shifts, and religious change could be for their own economic well-being and the state’s, and for general social order. They were intent to maintain their own authority and prestige and claim their right to religious practice in accordance with their conscience, not the monarch’s. To do so, individuals and the families to which they belonged had to display their honor, loyalty to the state, and their legitimacy as members of the gentry and nobility.

The European Reformations ushered in a century of religious and social changes that drove conflict within and between communities, regions, and states. In England, religious tumult was not as severe as in many regions of the European continent; indeed, when England erupted into Civil War in 1642, it was not a religious war. This book explains how central families were to encouraging social harmony and to valuing coexistence over persecution. Post-Reformation English Catholics relied on their social worlds to mitigate tensions with Protestant neighbors and the Protestant state.