Elizabeth I

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(Ruled 1558–1603)

Queen Elizabeth swiftly restored the Protestant faith in England after she succeeded her sister, Queen Mary. New laws established her role as supreme governor of the Church of England and required regular church attendance. Still, in the early part of her reign, Catholics could continue privately in their faith.

During England’s return to Roman Catholicism under Mary, exiled English Protestants had begun the Geneva Bible. In the same way, the English-language Rheims New Testament was produced overseas during Elizabeth’s reign by the English Catholic college then located in Rheims, France. (The Rheims New Testament was not so much a response to Elizabeth’s rule, however, as to the growing number of Protestant English Bibles now in print.)

In England, meanwhile, Elizabeth’s bishops realized that the relatively new, accessibly designed Geneva Bible posed an unwelcome contrast to the old, 1539 Great Bible of Henry VIII. The Geneva Bible was too hotly Protestant for the comfort of the English establishment. Instead, the Church of England produced the Bishops’ Bible, a largely unsuccessful competitor to the Geneva Bible. It shared a key element with the Great Bible: a prominent picture of the ruler of England—in this case, the young Elizabeth—on its title page.