Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses the attitudes and policies of Queen Elizabeth I in regard to religion.

King Henry VIII inadvertently brought the Protestant Reformation to England in 1533, when Anne Boleyn was still pregnant with the future Queen Elizabeth I. For personal reasons, Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and named himself head of the Church of England. Elizabeth was thus raised Protestant and reigned as a Protestant queen during a period of great conflict in England between Catholics and Protestants, each of whom represented approximately half of the four million citizens of England at the time. In Elizabeth the Great, Jenkins pays special attention to the attitudes and policies of Elizabeth with regard...