Though the Catholics had shown themselves loyal during the crisis they were subjected, immediately thereafter, to the severest persecution they had yet felt.

This was due partly to nervous excitement of the whole population, partly to the advance towards power of the Puritans, always the war party.
[Sidenote: Puritans] Even in the first years of the great queen there had been a number of Calvinists who looked askance at the Anglican settlement as too much of a compromise with Catholicism and Lutheranism.

The Thirty-nine Articles passed Convocation by a single vote [Sidenote: 1563] as against a more Calvinistic confession.

Low-churchmen (as they would now be called) attacked the "Aaronic" {344} vestments of the Anglican priests, and prelacy was detested as but one degree removed from papacy.
The Puritans were not dissenters but were a party in the Anglican communion thoroughly believing in a national church, but wishing to make the breach with Rome as wide as possible.

They found fault with all that had been retained in the Prayer Book for which there was no direct warrant in Scripture, and many of them began to use, in secret conventicles, the Genevan instead of the English liturgy.