ABSTRACT
There its strength lay in the laity, especially the gentry and the city of London. Outmanreuvred and defeated in the Church, it found a refuge in parliament. Even in these middle years of the reign, when the commons were on the whole amenable, a minority of puritan members continued the struggle by bills for Church reform and pleas for a purer clergy. The growing Spanish menace assisted them: they represented the genuine fears of Spanish and popish influence at court which found nourishment in the queen's enigmatic policy. The opposition which had grown up round constitutional issues in the 1560s continued into the 1570S and after. The spark was fanned into flame by the arrival of the greatest of the Elizabethan 'parliament-men', Peter Wentworth.
