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John Foxe, the martyrologist, and John Day, the Elizabethan master printer, played central roles in the emergence of literate print culture following the death of William Tyndale, translator of the New Testament and parts of the Bible into English. In so doing, Foxe and his publisher contributed to the accepted modern belief that Protestantism and early printing reinforced each other. Foxe's revision of his biography of Tyndale in the second edition of Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days (1570) and his collaboration on Day's 1573 publication of Tyndale's collected non-translation prose place intense stress upon the trio's active involvement in the English book trade. The engagement of Foxe and Day with Tyndale's publishing career exemplifies ways in which these bookmen exploited the power of the printing press to effect religious and cultural

It is commonly acknowledged that although Elizabeth I vowed herself to a life of perpetual virginity, she entered into a symbolic marriage with England as her husband. In this way she could receive the" adulation of her subjects as the universal object of a Petrarchan religion of love, one that pervaded ballads, pageants, and dramatic entertainments. Scholars claim that she was able to convert her unprecedented weakness as a celibate queen into a powerful propagandistic claim that she sacrificed personal interests in the name of public service.

Emblematic figures of godly and faithful women proliferate throughout the literature of the English Renaissance and Reformation. Characteristically they hold books in their hands symbolic of divine revelation, or they appear in books as representations of divine inspiration. While such representation of a pious feminine ideal was traditional in Christian art, Tudor reformers attempted to appropriate the devout emotionality linked to many female saints and to the Virgin Mary, both as the mother of Christ and as an allegorical figure for Holy Church, providing instead images of Protestant women as embodiments of pious intellectuality and divine wisdom. Long before the cult of the wise royal virgin grew up in celebration of Elizabeth I, Tudor Protestants began to praise learned women for applying knowledge of the scriptures to the cause of church reform.