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Validating the English Church

At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, leaders of the Church of England recognized the need to provide a history for the national church that would identify its origins in the early Christian era, and demonstrate its initial independence from Rome. Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury, inaugurated an intense period of research into the Anglo-Saxon Church. Parker and his circle managed to retrieve the Anglo-Saxon language from oblivion, and laid sound foundations for the study of Saxon England and its institutions. This endeavour was further developed by a succession of antiquaries inspired by William Camden’s investigations into the different pasts of Britain. Richard Verstegan, Henry Spelman, James Ussher, and William Somner all made significant contributions to this research. Church history remained a powerful force for advancing Saxon and medieval studies throughout the seventeenth century.