will underwritten by several “acts of uniformity” that were passed by Parliament at the monarch’s request.6 As in the German principalities, everyone in England was obliged to worship in the same way, and church attendance was made compulsory to make sure that they did. Those whose sympathies still lay with the papacy had to conceal the fact, particularly after Elizabeth was excommunicated by the pope in 1570.7 In Ireland, which was theoretically under English rule, the change of religion was never