ABSTRACT
In the historiography of religious toleration in Europe, the sixteenth century is considered to have been a dark period. With the splintering of the “universal church”, prejudice and persecution marked much of the era’s religious history. In England there was no shortage of expressions of religious bigotry: Henry VIII’s execution of the Carthusian monks who refused the Oath of Supremacy, the burning of approximately three hundred Protestant heretics under Mary Tudor and Queen Elizabeth’s execution of Catholic priests on charges of treason. Although toleration of dissenting religious groups was favoured by a few intellectuals in Europe such as Sebastian Castellio, the professor of Greek at Basel, and actually extended in France, albeit temporarily, there was little similar support for it in England.1
