Here, Williams explains how the toleration of different belief’s and religions across the British empire (and eventually in America) was actually moved forward by the Virgin Queen.
Years were to go by before the secular governments were compelled by their own eventual impotency to recognize that other beliefs existed and would continue to exist, that other believers existed and would continue to exist. At first, and for a hundred years or so, strong efforts were made to prevent their existence. It is arguable that the one point which decided that those efforts should fail and that a different state of things should come into being was the life – unexpectedly prolonged – and the beliefs – unexpectedly ambiguous – of Elizabeth of England.
-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p. 179
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