ABSTRACT
In the eyes of the Pilgrims, the true faith was under threat of destruction from a government deeply infected by heresy. Generating this belief was the recent onslaught on the wealth of the church; the eviction of the papacy; the rejection of purgatory and saintly intercession; the limitations placed on the rights of the clergy and the liberties of the church; and what appeared to be a show of utter contempt for the formal distinctions previously made between soul and body, church and state, clergy and laity, and matters spiritual and temporal. This record of behaviour, the Pilgrims firmly believed, rendered nonsensical the king’s title of ‘Defensor Fidei’.
