Advertisements of Elizabeth

ADVERTISEMENTS OF ELIZABETH: Name commonly applied to the regulations promulgated in 1566 by Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose, as alleged, of securing uniformity and decency in public worship, against the tendencies of the extreme Protestant party (see Puritans, Puritanism, § 6). It is now generally admitted that, though they represented Elizabeth’s policy in ritual matters, they never received her formal sanction. They assumed some importance in the ritual controversies of the nineteenth century, the High-church party contending that they were merely an archiepiscopal injunction enforcing an irreducible minimum of ritual, while their opponents attempted to show that they were a legal prescription of a positive kind, which made the surplice the only lawful vestment of the clergy in parish churches.

Bibliography: The text of the Advertisements is given in Gee and Hardy, Documents, pp. 467-475. Consult: J. Strype, Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, London, 1821; Church Quarterly Review, xvii. (1881) 54-60.