Quite aside from her own convictions, she had compelling reasons, from the day of Mary’s death, to undertake the fourth religious revolution (or counterrevolution) to be visited upon England in the space of three decades. Practically all of her active political support lay on the Protestant side, and she had been careful to maintain contact with the evangelical community all through the years when many of its members were pretending, for the sake of their positions and possibly their lives, to be orthodox Catholics.
