ABSTRACT
Elizabethan prosecutions offer insight into Catholic resistance to the new Anglican faith. Puritans were from the middling ranks of society but no sociological studies have succeeded in distinguishing the social characteristics which divided Puritans and Anglicans. The liturgical responses in which the congregation participated were greater in the Anglican church than in the Catholic. Personal faith informed lifestyles, and the good Puritan, like the good Anglican woman, tried to live a pious, godly life. Many wealthier Catholic women ensured that their households instructed in the faith. Being responsible for the education of young children, women had the opportunity to influence them. The Protestant and Catholic churches had contradictory views of women. Both churches believed that women should be subject to male authority, yet both believed that she was an individual responsible for her own religious behaviour. Although hostile Protestant propaganda negated the value of monastic spirituality, from 1598 onwards English Catholic women established some forty convents abroad.
