ABSTRACT
Francis Bacon's own writings from this time tell much of the rest of the tale. There is a recognizable trajectory in Bacon's adult life away from his Puritan upbringing, and ultimately away from the dominant Calvinism of his society as well. The Reformation was an era of intellectual turmoil and a remarkable diversity of thought which too often has been told as a tale of Protestants and Catholics. 'Protestantism' never existed as a unified set of beliefs in the sixteenth century. The Lutherans, the Reformed, and the Anabaptists were all technically 'Protestant', yet their differences with each other were as great as the differences of each with the Church of Rome. It is important to note that what set the English Reformation apart was not that it was an act of state rather than Church. The actual diversity of religious thought in Tudor and Stuart England is poorly represented by the traditional continuum which places Catholics at one end.
