ABSTRACT
In the second half of the sixteenth century an Anglo-Scottish protestant culture developed within the island of Britain. The Anglo-Scottish culture which developed in the sixteenth century was the first to turn the vital connection between the English language and protestantism into a vehicle for integration. By 1603 the two peoples of England and Scotland shared a set of key concepts and this had achieved a measure of cultural integration. The quintessentially British nature of the idea of the protestant bastion was always apparent in the basic assumption of Britain's geographical and political security. Internal safety was impossible without the peace which had been established between England and Scotland in 1560, two years after the loss of Calais to the French finally removed the toehold which the English crown had held on the continent of Europe. The broad and flexible protestant tradition which emerged from the Marian exile subsequently shaped both English and Scottish apocalyptic thought.
