The National Church: a Servant of Imperial Policy, 1584–1660

Abstract

From the era of Elizabeth I to the age of Thomas Paine the extension and expansion of the English church to the American colonies was integral to English imperial policy, a plan that was embedded in the evolving rhetoric of Elizabethan advocates for empire, in the words of visionary and experienced explorers and a politically astute geographer. The proposed national policy was vigorously endorsed by Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Hariot, and Richard Hakluyt, Jr., to counter the imperial advances of England’s continental foe, Spain. Raleigh and Hariot were seasoned explorers whose knowledge and opinions had been shaped by voyages to distant islands in the Caribbean Sea and the ill-fated venture at Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast.¹ Raleigh’s circle of visionaries advocated an overseas policy that was nationalistic and imperialistic. Their ideas were framed by the opinions of John Foxe in his publication Acts and Monuments, a book that helped to shape the mythology that saw Englishmen as God’s chosen people courageously defending His truth through the sixteenth century. Popular and influential, it passed through four editions between 1563 and 1583.² Foxe personified Spain as the Antichrist, and it was the anti-Spanish aspect of his nationalism that was most useful to the officially encouraged legend. For Raleigh, Hakluyt and their associates the message was simply and bluntly that England had been left behind by Spain and Portugal in claiming New World territory; moreover, on the stage of European politics these Iberian empires were threateningly united in 1580.