ABSTRACT
The accession of Elizabeth, however, did bring a temporary halt to large-scale persecution. In Elizabeth's reign, 700 people were sentenced to death for participating in the Northern Rebellion, though many had their sentences commuted. Persecution declined sharply under Edward, but it did not cease. The new regime was no friend of religious pluralism. The four years of Mary's persecution rank alongside the terrible first decade of the Spanish Inquisition when hundreds of converses were burned for heresy, and the period during the late 1520's and 1530's when hundreds of Anabaptists were put to death in Austria and the Low Countries. In 1576, the Puritan movement experienced another crisis. Archbishop Grindal, who had been highly sympathetic towards the godly, was suspended from his office because he refused to suppress the 'prophesying', preaching conferences held in various parts of the country by the Puritan clergy.
