Out of a total number of about nine thousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, and most of these were Mary's appointees.
The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of the time.

The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by the Parker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts, hymns and letters of this period.

During the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther's works, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations from Melanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin.
{327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, the English Reformation at this time resumed the national character temporarily lost during Mary's reign.

John Jewel's _Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae_ [Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the first methodical statement of the position of the church of England against the church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy." Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the rising young men, were Protestants.

The English sea-captains, wolves of the sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater.