shakespeare and his immediate family were conforming members of the established church of england. when shakespeare was young, his father, john shakespeare, was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, all of which required being a church member in good standing, and he participated in whitewashing over the catholic images in the chapel of the guild of the holy cross and taking down the rood screen some time in the 1560s or 1570s.