Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and half-sister of Mary I, Elizabeth I became the heir to the throne. She reestablished a very inclusive form of the Anglican Church, and openly welcomed those dissenters whom had fled during Mary's reign. Many of those who remained in England were still following the "old ways" of Catholicism, and Elizabeth was aware of this. Those who opposed her were comforted by the obvious insecurity that was brought with the Queen who refused to marry and whose closest heir was Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic.
A Parliament had gathered in 1559 to settle religion, and they reinstated the Protestant Prayer Book of Edward VI. Many of the reformers who had come back during her reign were pressing Calvinism upon her, but she was unwilling to comply. She began to enforce a uniformity in clerical attire, and many of those required to wear refused to submit, and in return were deprived of their position. Many more reforms were tried, but the Queen denied all of them with relatively the same ease. A large portion of evangelicals began to hide in brotherhoods and congregations that were increasingly detached from the main Church. Many of the congregations led to formal separations with the Church of England, but the overall numbers were very small. They were justified in their separations, but the majority of England remained Protestant. A very large threat came, however, to the survival of the Reformation in England. A revival of Catholicism began to spread very quickly, but England and its people remained Protestant in their beliefs. When Elizabeth died after a long reign in 1603, the people of England had very much esteemed their Church. The survival of Protestantism through the last three decades under threat of Catholicism had given the people of England a very high respect for the Church, and Protestantism became a cornerstone of who the English were.