ABSTRACT
England underwent tumultuous changes in politics and religion in the seventeenth century that had a profound impact on music in both the secular and sacred realms. During the first half of the century, religious tension grew between supporters of the Church of England, who favored traditional Anglican ritual and ceremony, and Puritans, a conservative religious group within the Church of England, who fought to align the church with Calvinist Europe. Puritans openly criticized King James’s efforts to find a Spanish Habsburg wife for Prince Charles, a union that would surely have increased Catholic influence in England. Charles’s eventual marriage to French princess, Henrietta Maria, also a Roman Catholic, affirmed Puritan concern. A more pressing threat was the growing influence of anti-Calvinists and so-called ceremonialists, who argued that the ritual of the sacraments played a more crucial role in worship than the rhetoric of the sermon. Unrest culminated in all-out Civil War in 1642. Charles was tried for treason and executed on January 30, 1649, and the monarchy was replaced with the Commonwealth under military commander Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) as Lord Protector.
