Introduction

This introduces the key themes of the book. The importance of the exile experience and the nature of reformed religion (in relation to the clergy and the realities of clerical leadership in Elizabethan England). The book takes three key points of examination: the contrast between religious conflict at the centre of the nation and in the peripheries; discusses if accommodation or conflict was at the centre of religious life; and examines responses to opposition to the settlement from both Catholics and Puritans.