Brill Publishing Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547-1603 (2011)

Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547–1603

Studies in the History of Christian Traditions

General Editor

Robert J. BastKnoxville, Tennessee

In cooperation with

Henry Chadwick, CambridgePaul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee

Eric Saak, LiverpoolBrian Tierney, Ithaca, New York

Arjo Vanderjagt, GroningenJohn Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana

Founding Editor

Heiko A. Oberman†

VOLUME 155

Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547–1603

By

Stephen A. Chavura

LEIDEN • BOSTON2011

LEIDEN • BOSTON

Cover illustration: Hugh Latimer preaching before King Edward VI at Westminster in 1547, from John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chavura, Stephen A. Tudor Protestant political thought, 1547-1603 / by Stephen A. Chavura. p. cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; 155.) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20632-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Political science--Great Britain-- History--16th century. 2. Christianity and politics--Great Britain--History--16th century. 3. Great Britain--Politics and government--1485-1603. I. Title. II. Series. JA84.G7C43 2011 320.5’5094109031--dc22

2011008583

ISSN 1573-5664ISBN 9789004206328

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Dedicated to my fatherRev. Dr. Michael Chavura

1950–2008

“Children are often very reticent to their parents.…A strange feeling of diffidence pervades a seeking soul, and drives it from its friends.”

- C.H. Spurgeon

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................. ixPreface ....................................................................................................... xi

Introduction ............................................................................................. 1

PART ITHE REFORMATION CONTExT OF

ENGLISH THOUGHT

Chapter One. The Reformation and its Ideas ..................................... 19

PART IIGOD, MAN, AND THINGS

Chapter Two. Order and Will in Tudor Thought ............................ 39Chapter Three. Reason, Nature, and Natural Law ............................. 89

PART IIIEMERGING TRADITIONS OF

POLITICAL THOUGHT

Chapter Four. English Reformation Origins of Absolutism .............153Chapter Five. Consent from Church to State ....................................181Conclusion ...............................................................................................226

Bibliography .............................................................................................229Index .........................................................................................................245

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book began in 2001 under the supervision of Professor (now Emeritus) Graham Maddox at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales. Working with Graham was a humbling and uplifting experience. His analysis of my work, and the period of thought in general, proved to be both intellectually refining and excit-ing. He is a wonderful exemplar of what a scholar should aspire to. I was also pleased to have the opportunity to get to know his wife, Carol, as well as his remarkably gifted family (those who live in Australia, anyway).

I also thank the examiners of the original dissertation for their very able criticism and encouragement: Paul Corcoran, John Tonkin, and Glenn Burgess. Of course, they bear no responsibility for any short-comings of this study.

The best experience I had while researching this book was to spend a month as a Student Fellow at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. In hindsight there is no way I would have been able to complete my research without the materials I gathered from the Meeter Center. The assistance given to me by Dr. Karin Maag, Mr. Paul Fields, and Mr. Kalvin Budiman made my research experience most pleasant. My roommate, Dariusz Bricko (now Dr Bricko), showed me around Grand Rapids and the neighbour-ing towns, introducing me to all his friends on the way. The time I spent at Grand Rapids will always be treasured.

Over the years I have spoken and corresponded with numerous people who have offered insights. Some of them did not even know I was writing this book, so they must be distanced from any of its deficiencies. In no particular order I thank Conal Condren, Bruce Mansfield, David Rollison, Dan Eppley, Richard Muller, Wilfred Prest, Paul Corcoran, Nicholas Aroney, Andrew Sharp, Phil Lynott, Tod Moore, and Robert Linder. My colleague at Macquarie University, Ian Tregenza, kindly read the entire manuscript and his comments were insightful and constructive. I also thank those who participated in the Australasian Political Studies Association conferences of 2004 and 2005, the New Zealand Political Studies Association conference 2004, and the Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and

x acknowledgements

Early-Modern Studies conference, 2005 where I presented parts of this book. I am grateful to Cary J. Nederman for inviting me to the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. 2005 to present on his panel. I also appreciated the opportunity to present some of my research to the Evangelical History Association, Robert Menzies College, Macquarie University, 2006. I especially thank Associate Professor Stuart Piggin and Professor Robert Linder for their comments. Others who contributed to the intellectual life of this work are David and Bronwyn Gawthorne, Gino Erispe, Adam and Alphia Possamaï, Eric Jones, the Politics Department at Macquarie University, and the regular attendees of the Evangelical History Association meetings, especially Meredith Lake and Geoff Treloar.

The staff at Brill were a model of guidance and professionalism. Ivo Romein was always prompt in communication and happy to guide me through the alien world of publishing. His constant encourage-ment helped fuel my motivation. I owe a huge debt to the anonymous expert reader and to Series Editor Professor Robert J. Bast, whose comments and suggestions on the original manuscript uncovered all sorts of sins of omission and commission. Good proof-readers cover a multitude of howlers. The later stages of the publication process were aided by the wonderful work of Meredith McGroarty and Debbie de Wit. Their time, patience and effort is greatly appreciated.

If my siblings—Julianne, Kristy and, Tim—lived in early-modern England they may have complained about the household’s useless member which contributeth nothing to the body oeconomic. Nonetheless, I thank them for not cauterizing me or cutting me off. I thank my mother, Merilyn, who encouraged my research at all times.

To my wife, xanthi, I give thanks for being so patient with me as I worked on this manuscript. You joined me half-way through this journey as my best friend and finished it with me as my wife. What took us so long?

1 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab (tr.), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 36.

2 Brian Trainor, Christ, Society and the State, (Adelaide: ATF, 2010), p. 266.

PREFACE

The West is faced with political theology, from within and without. It has never left Islam—there was never a secular Enlightenment that swept through the Islamic world—and, in some ways, it has always been with the West. Take, for example, Carl Schmitt’s famous conten-tion in his Political Theology, ‘All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts….’1 This may seem a bit far fetched, but take a minute to consider Schmitt’s idea. Can we understand the origins of democratic theory apart from the development of the concept of legitimacy by consent within religious movements such as medieval Conciliarism, early-modern Puritans and Separatists, and the experience of New Englanders in congregational-operated churches? Can we appreciate, given the general acceptance of ontological naturalism or scientism, adherence to the idea of human equality and human rights without accepting the fact that it is not based on observation or science, but almost certainly derives from the Christian idea of God’s image universally distributed through-out humankind? Even Kant’s best commentators see fit to mention the Lutheran pietism that runs throughout his moral philosophy. As Brian Trainor says, the conviction shared by Kant and much liberal-ism that people should be seen as ends in themselves ‘is a presupposi-tion which is shared by the Christian-religious consciousness’.2 To what extent, for better of for worse, has this consciousness informed modern politics? More than a few commentators consider Marxism a secular Christianity. Can we understand American exceptional-ism without considering the experience of English Separatists, who wished to establish their own pure form of devotion and considered themselves God’s chosen ones, an example of true piety? When Hobbes sketched the blueprint of the modern state, a sovereign, unrivalled, and omnipotent monster, the closest analogy he could think of was in describing it as a ‘mortall God’. Indeed, when Weber defines the state

xii preface

he defines it as the only sphere where power is intrinsically legitimate. The state can coerce because it is the state. Whether we like it or not, as a matter of historical fact, our thought is to a great degree shaped by a collective theological subconscious.

In many ways the story of modern political thought is of a quest to find non-theological justifications for political and social givens, which previously had their justifications in Christian visions of God, human-kind, and the good. Whole shelves are filled with weighty tomes by the twentieth-century’s most gifted philosophers seeking to demonstrate that we should on occasion set our power to the side and accommodate the needs of the weak. This is so much liberalism, but prior to the Enlightenment most philosophers only needed to read the Sermon on the Mount to be convicted of obligations that have only tenuous rational foundation, or duties that are destroyed when based on theo-ries of enlightened self-interest. If the liberal state is like a hotel, as it has been likened to, where people live and dwell together but partici-pate in no collective goal or endevour, then it is a hotel haunted by whispers of a religious past, whispers which may be mistaken by the guests as moral intuitions.

This study offers an account of the political ideas of Tudor Protestant ecclesiastics, thus it is an account of early-modern political theology. It is the suspicion of many historians that modern politics arises out of the Reformation, for it was there that the medieval ideal of the church dominating the state was overcome, that the state found itself without any earthly rival, that the individual was roused with a duty to work out his own salvation directly before God, and that individual conscience became the centre of the moral universe for so many. The central argu-ment of this book is that the social, political, and religious upheavals of the time were having their toll on political ideas, which bore the impres-sion of an age in which traditional institutions and modes of thought were being redefined and replaced. If political ideas bear the impres-sion of the institutions and ideas of the society from which they spring, then the tumultuous nature of sixteenth-century Europe must account for the tensions, ambivalences, ambiguities, and incoherence of much Tudor Protestant political thought.

There have been many excellent studies of Tudor political thought published over the last few years and I hope I have made good use of the best of them. This is certainly not meant to be a definitive history of English Reformation thought, indeed, the thought of Protestants under Henry VIII is barely dealt with. In many ways this is not a conventional history of thought at all. It is not a seamless, chronological account of

preface xiii

3 Happily the absence of ecclesiastical political thought from much of the literature on early-modern political ideas is being addressed and corrected by scholars such as Patrick Collinson, Torrance Kirby, Peter Lake, Michael Mendle, Jonathan Scott, and Michael Winship. Glenn Burgess’ British Political Thought 1500–1660 (Palgrave Macmillan: NY, 2009) deals with ecclesiastical political thought at length.

political ideas. I am more interested in a history of concepts. This has its limitations, for a history of concepts will inevitably involve repeti-tion, as each chapter revisits familiar events and personalities to recon-sider their ideas in the light of a new concept, whether natural law or government by consent. However, a conventional history of political thought will tend to anchor ideas and texts to the relentless flow of events throughout the period, leaving little time to explore aspects of thought that are fascinating in themselves but difficult to fit into an account where social and political history take priority over the ideas of the time. I hope my readers will not begrudge me offering, in many ways, several independent though related, studies of concepts in six-teenth-century England.

I have focused on ecclesiastical thought because the most celebrated accounts of early-modern political thought tend to ignore it. Where are the debates between Knox and Aylmer, Whitgift, Browne, Cartwright, and Hooker in the most important surveys of early-modern political ideas written since the mid-1970s? They are largely ignored.3 Yet they were considered vital debates in their day and, as some historians including myself suspect, prepared the path for absolutism, consent, popular participation, and sovereignty to become political common-places. This is far from a definitive account of Tudor Protestant politi-cal thought and there is a great need for a modern chronological study of Protestant political ideas from Tyndale right up to the Glorious Revolution.

One final note must be made. Although the thought of Richard Hooker is referred to throughout this study, references to his ideas are, however, merely cursory. This has nothing to do with this writer’s opinion regarding the worth or significance of Hooker’s contribu-tion to political ideas, which stands as the culmination of theologi-cal and political thought in sixteenth-century England. It was Hooker who succeeded most in assimilating the learning of the day into a coherent defence of the Royal Supremacy. Hooker’s ideas on natural law and consent will be addressed as a way of pointing out inconsisten-cies in the ideas of the churchmen who wrote before him. Although, for Hooker, the scholastic method was his choice of approach, he was

xiv preface

always a Reformed theologian who tried to demonstrate Reformed theology and the Royal Supremacy from the most general principles of reason and scholastic method. Given the amount of attention paid to Hooker’s political thought over the decades, it is to be hoped that historians of political ideas will be prepared to accept a study that focuses more on the lesser known ecclesiastical political writings of sixteenth-century England. Indeed, in any event, it was these writings and the spirit contained in them to which Hooker was responding.

1 J.W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, (London: Methuen, 1928), p. xiv. Franklin Le Van Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966 [1940]), passim. E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, (London: Pimlico, 1998 [1943]), passim. Christopher Morris, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker, (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 5–6. Arthur P. Monahan, From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300–1600, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), p. 185. Cf.p. 293.

2 John B. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980 [1958]), p. 136.

INTROdUCTION

What was the nature of sixteenth-century political thought? For the great historian of political ideas, J.W. Allen, it was essentially medieval. Yet Franklin Le Van Baumer in his classic study stressed the innovative character of Tudor political thought. E.M.W. Tillyard declared the ‘Elizabethan world picture’ to be wholly medieval. Christopher Morris largely concurred. More recently Arthur P. Monahan has stressed the innovative character of Reformation political thought as a result of new (Protestant) theological premises.1 Could it be that the very nature of sixteenth-century thought leads to such divergent understandings of its spirit and content? John B. Morrall called the period between the fifteenth-century and the seventeenth-century the ‘age of ambiguity’.2 I think Morrall’s judgment is compelling, especially in the light of Protestant ecclesiastical political thought of Tudor England from 1547–1603. These dates are significant for it was during this period that England ceased being merely anti-Roman and affirmed and encour-aged Reformed Protestantism. Morrall’s term ‘ambiguity’ will be used in this study. Yet the terms ‘tension’ and ‘ambivalent’ are also appropri-ate, for often in English Protestant political thought there existed an uneasy marriage between numerous traditions of thought. I wish to give an account of ecclesiastical political thought in Tudor England, but I also want to show how political thought was shaped by political and intellectual revolutions that were taking place at the time. The ambiguity and ambivalence of political ideas reflected an age of mate-rial, political, and religious transition and uncertainty.

These theoretical tensions paralleled synthetic tensions within the English polity; tensions between the absolutist claims of the prince and

2 introduction

3 Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 69 (1987), p. 43.

4 Peter Lake, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited’, in John F. diarmid, The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 135. Cf.p. 256.

5 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., Olive Wyon (tr.), (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931 [1911]), vol. 1, pp. 205–206.

6 Pierre Mesnard, L’Essor de la Philosophie Politique au XVIe Siecle, (Paris: Boivin, 1936), p. 663.

the conciliar claims of parliament. In short, there were absolutist and republican traditions co-emerging in England throughout the post-Henrician period and political theology contributed to both traditions. In a now famous article Patrick Collinson claimed that ‘Elizabethan England was a republic which happened also to be a monarchy: or vice versa’.3 The cohabitation of these traditions was often stormy for there were two governments both trying to govern: queen and council. Collinson’s insight has generated an enormous literature over the last twenty years. The tensions in the Tudor polity inform much of this sur-vey of Tudor political thought and I hope to show how the Puritan and Nonconformist movements added to the republican ideals of civic par-ticipation and limited monarchy, though in their own unique way. In many ways parts of this study aim to address and correct what Peter Lake has recently identified as the ‘inherently secular’ account of the republican strand in Tudor political culture.4 Among other things I hope this study will contribute to our knowledge of the distinctively Protestant republican tradition emerging throughout Tudor England that would find its most mature and revolutionary expression the fol-lowing century.

Ernst Troeltsch, speaking of Christian social thought, described much of it as a dialogue between systematic thought and contingent historical circumstance:

…still the fundamental ideas in the great fruitful systems of life are not simple and uniform; rather, to a great extent, they themselves are already the result of a complex. On the other hand, in the unending and involved interplay of various forces…everywhere we have to take into account the element of accident and surprise, i.e. the clash of independent causal sequences, which have no inner connection with each other.5

Pierre Mesnard saw the sixteenth-century as an age ‘where Catholic and feudal forms try to embrace new national realities’.6 The same is

introduction 3

7 Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Second Edition, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1960]), p. 25.

8 Michael Oakeshott, ‘Introduction to Leviathan’, in Hobbes on Civil Association, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1975), pp. 7–8.

true for Protestantism. The ambivalence between older systems of thought and newer ones and between allegiances to the state and to the church generated ambiguities in English thought. Sheldon S. Wolin has spoken of a tendency in the history of political thought for theoretical traditions, old and new, to coexist in the same age with the old subtly affecting the new:

…the past is never wholly superseded; it is constantly being recaptured at the very moment that human thought is seemingly preoccupied with the unique problems of its own time. The result is…a ‘coexistence of diverse elements’, partly new, partly inherited, with the old being distilled into the new, and the new being influenced by the old.7

Wolin’s observation captures the Protestant tradition of political thought in Tudor England. It was a religious tradition with several tra-ditions of political speculation within it, often in conflict. This is most obvious in the discussion of the concepts of order and providence in Chapter Two of this study. Protestant political thought harboured ten-sions between cosmologies and theologies, old and new, as well as ten-sions generated by Protestantism’s new-found official status as state-religion and its perennial need—ubiquitous in the history of Christianity—to critique the state from outside the space of power pol-itics. The pull in various opposing directions, which was inevitable given the introduction of a new vision of society and the world, created an overall ambiguity in thought regarding the universe, natural law, and the higher powers.

Historians of political thought have debated exactly what constituted the transition from medieval political thought to the thought that emerged from the seventeenth-century onwards. Michael Oakeshott in his famous introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan divided the history of political thought neatly into three traditions: reason and nature (ancient and medieval), will and artifice (early-modern, especially Hobbes), and rational will (Hegel onwards).8 Norberto Bobbio says much the same, distinguishing the Aristotelian tradition from the modern (Hobbesian) tradition by Aristotle’s justification of political society from nature and

4 introduction

9 Norberto Bobbio, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition, daniela Gobetti (tr.), (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 8–9.

10 Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, p. viii.11 david Loads, Tudor Government, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. ix.12 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols, Volume

One: The Renaissance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 50. See the critique of Skinner in Ralph C. Hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 15.

13 Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood, A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509–1688, (Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 64. In this sense their study can be seen as a defence of C.B. Macpherson’s classic account, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

14 A.J. Slavin, ‘The Tudor State, Reformation and understanding change: through the looking glass’, Paul A. Fideler and T.F. Mayer (eds.), Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep structure, discourse and disguise, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 230.

Hobbes’ from will and consent.9 Franklin Le van Baumer’s definition of the medieval concept of kingship, particularly in England, is made up of four factors. First, the king is subject to laws; second, it is necessary for the king to have advisors; third, the king is responsible to God for the public good; fourth, non-resistance is not emphasised.10 Given Baumer’s definition of medieval political concepts, much Tudor eccle-siastical political thought was not medieval, as the king’s power over all things, including the church, was stressed along with obedience and absolute non-resistance. According to david Loads, medieval and early-modern political thought always started with God as the ultimate source of power.11 Quentin Skinner has defined modern political thought, the thought that arose out of the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth-centuries, as naturalistic, that is, not drawn from religious or revealed premises, nor seeking to derive its political principles from some ordo naturalis, nor concerned with eternal principles.12 Wood and Wood speak of a transition between medieval and modern by highlighting a shift in focus from corporatism to individualism, that is, from an emphasis on the common good to the profit of the individual.13 But surely this does not exhaust the differences. A.J. Slavin says that in attacking Roman Catholicism Henry VIII brought into question the link between a transcendent order, which functioned to legitimise a temporal order. Henry VIII replaced God with tradition.14 Skinner has offered a history of the concept of the state identifying the transition from a medieval to a modern state theory as a transition of the state

introduction 5

15 Quentin Skinner, ‘From the state of princes to the person of the state’, Visions of Politics, 3 vols., Volume II: Renaissance Virtues, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 368–413.

16 Jones, ‘William Cecil and the making of economic policy in the 1560s and the early 1570s’, Fideler and Mayer (eds.), Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth, p. 172.

17 Ibid., p. 178.18 Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability

in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 70, 90.19 Martin Van Gelderen makes the same complaint in connection with sixteenth-

century dutch political thought. The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 2–3. Paul A. Fideler and T.F. Mayer complained that ‘Tudor political ideas and culture have received relatively little scrutiny for almost four decades’. ‘Introduction: the study of Tudor political thought’, Fideler and Mayer (eds.), Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth, p. 1. The same observation is made by Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood, commenting that

from a personal entity to an impersonal entity.15 The theme of transi-tion from the personal to the impersonal is also explored by Norman L. Jones, who identified personal explanations for social ills as ‘pre- modern’ and institutional explanations as ‘modern’.16 Jones also opines that the divining of God’s will was a necessary concern for the pre-modern theorist.17

Though the following account of Protestant political thought identi-fies signs indicating a medieval/modern transition, I am primarily con-cerned with how the confrontation between political events and theological trends affected political thought. Of interest is the confron-tation of political ideas with political change (Henrician Reformation, Edwardian Protestantism, Marian persecution, and the Elizabethan Settlement) and theological doctrines (providence, intellectual corrup-tion, sola scriptura). Although, owing to space, the political thought of the seventeenth-century cannot be explored exhaustively in this study, the reader will notice the author’s hunch that the concepts and lan-guage of the Tudor ecclesiastical thought softened and fertilized the soil from which seventeenth-century ideas of absolutism and govern-ment by consent grew. If the seventeenth-century experienced a ‘con-fessionalisation of politics’ in which religious passions…drove political ones’ then interest in the political theology of the sixteenth-century needs no further justification.18

In the historiography of early-modern English political thought sixteenth-century ideas have received far less attention than those of the seventeenth-century. There is now a general awareness that the sixteenth-century has been under researched.19 The lack of research is

6 introduction

‘sixteenth-century English political thought has enjoyed relatively little scholarly atten-tion, certainly much less than the classics of the seventeenth-century’. Wood and Wood, Trumpet of Sedition, p. 27.

20 Take the influence of Hobbes and Locke on modern liberal political philosophy as well as other seventeenth-century theorists like Milton and Harrington on the revival of normative republican political thought over the last fifteen years.

21 Graham Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 149.

22 Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 3.

not wholly perplexing, for it was the following century that produced some of the most innovative and enduring treatises of politics in English history.20 Furthermore it was the revolutions and political movements of that century that played such an important role in creating the political ideas and institutions that remain with us today. When eight-eenth and nineteenth-century Englishmen defended freedom from tyranny or order as opposed to ‘mobocracy’ they saw themselves as defending the political settlement of the Glorious Revolution. It is as though England had been conceived in 1215 and was finally born in 1688.

More particularly the same can be said for the English ecclesiastical political thought of the sixteenth-century, despite frequent assurances of its importance. For example, Graham Maddox reminds historians of political thought that the origins of our modern political institutions are to be found, ultimately, in the religious convictions of their early-modern theorists: ‘The modern democratic mind is apt to forget how saturated in religious idiom, how driven by religious inspiration, how dependent on the favour of providence, seventeenth-century activists were’.21 Margo Todd points out that ‘We now know more than ever about what puritans did…but the theoretical underpinning for their actions has received scant attention of late. There has been virtually no systematic re-evaluation of the origins and nature of puritan social thought and its political ramifications’.22 This is true of Protestant social and political thought at large. It is true that there have been plenty of studies on Protestant resistance theory, but resistance theory was never characteristic of English Protestantism and had virtually no influence on subsequent political ideas in Tudor England. Indeed, its appeal to historians probably owes much to its exceptional nature in the first place.

introduction 7

23 On this see C. Behan McCullagh, The Truth of History, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 173–177.

24 R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956 [1946]), pp. 213–214, 216, 222, 227.

25 I take the terms ‘postitivist history’ and ‘idealist history’ from Keith Sewell’s discussion. See his Herbert Butterfield and the Interpretation of History, (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 7.

26 Quentin Skinner, ‘Analysis of political thought and action’, James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 109. For the recent debate about the efficacy of ideas in history see Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric, (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 14–16.

27 S.J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government 1485–1558, (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995), p. 6. For an excellent example of a man acting on principle see J.E. Neale’s account of Peter Wentworth’s imprisonment. Wentworth could have been released at any time upon admitting error. He refused on the grounds of obligation to God and common-wealth. Wentworth eventually died in prison. Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584–1601, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), pp. 263–264.

Could the lack of interest stem from historians’ scepticism regard-ing the possibility of a person making a decision purely on intellec-tual grounds, that is, disbelief that ideas can have causal power in history?23 R.G. Collingwood argued throughout his posthumous book, The Idea of History, that no one can understand an historical event or an artifact without coming to grips with the intentions behind it. Historiography was the exercise of uncovering the reasons for actions.24 Positivist history has always been more popular than idealist history;25 it has also tended to consider idealist history as a soft form of histori-ography in the same way that physicists may consider psychology, at best, a soft science. As Quentin Skinner has said, such anti-idealist schools of thought consider the principles ‘professed in political life [to be] the merest rationalizations of quite different motives and impulses’.26 S.J. Gunn warns the historian of the danger in assuming that ‘political life was based on calculations of more or less crude mate-rial self-interest’. Indeed, such historiography tends to neglect ‘the influence of ideas—religious, constitutional, even moral…’ . Furthermore it unnecessarily writes off ‘all initiative in policy as short-term tools in the political struggle…’ .27 Earlier in the twentieth-century the bril-liant historian of Presbyterianism, A.F. Scott Pearson, gave a similar warning:

Historians are faced with the danger of ignoring the religious roots of political thought and of failing, owing to an inadequate psychological

8 introduction

28 A.F. Scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth-Century Puritansim, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 131–132.

29 G.R. Elton himself assured his readers that ‘The stress so commonly laid in the discussions of the Reformation’s pre-history on intellectual or doctrinal disputes mis-leads entirely….[In] England, the government led the way, and it was only the political changes carried out which made possible and even necessary the subsequent religious transformation’. G.R. Elton, England under the Tudors, (London: Methuen, 1955), pp. 109–110. There have been direct responses to such epiphenomenal views of ideas in history. One classic study that shows that Protestant resistance theory was not mere-ly a response to current political vicissitudes is Robert M. Kingdon, ‘The first expres-sion of Theodore Beza’s political ideas’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 46, (1955), p. 99. More recently Norman L. Jones has shown that the link between philosophy, reli-gion, and policy is perfectly exemplified in William Cecil’s privately written notes on usury, which show Cecil’s reasoning leading him to opt for its continued illegality in England. ‘William Cecil’, pp. 169–193.

30 Steven Ozment, Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution, (New York: Image, 1991), p. 30.

31 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 213.

32 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 6.

33 Todd, Christian Humanism, p. 53.34 Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 2.

analysis, to discern that the motives which animated the Protestant reformers were primarily religious.28

The tendency to avoid taking ideas, particularly theological ideas, seri-ously has certainly resulted in Protestant ideas of the sixteenth-century being unrepresented in the literature.29 Reformation historian, Steven Ozment, criticises the tendency of much historiography to ‘isolate religion from politics and society and to treat it as secondary and epiphenomenal’.30 Fortunately the indifference and hostility to ideas as effective throughout history has receded. Charles Taylor has recently defended a ‘varied’ approach taking into account the economic, politi-cal, and ideal nature of history.31 None of this should be taken to stand at odds with Pocock’s most valuable reminder that history is little more than ‘an intelligible story of how men’s actions produce results other than they intended’.32

There is no justification for overlooking the political ideas of Tudor churchmen. Todd points out that ‘The sermon was, after all, the pri-mary vehicle by which ideas were propagated in early modern England…’ .33 Peter Lake gives evidence that many Presbyterians became Separatists by being influenced by sermons.34 Stephen Alford

introduction 9

35 Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 33.

36 Paul E. Corcoran, Political Language and Rhetoric, (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1979), p. 121.

37 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 8, 13, 16–19.

38 John Witte, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

39 See for example Quentin Skinner’s comment on the thought of John Knox: ‘There seems to be a good deal of truth in the assertion that his theory of resistance is not strictly speaking a political theory at all, since his appeal to the nobility is couched en-tirely in terms of their alleged religious obligations’. Foundations, Volume Two: The Age of Reformation, p. 211. Italics original. Yet we note that Professor Skinner has given us some of the most insightful analysis of political theology over the last three decades.

40 Janet Coleman, A History of Political Thought: From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 169.

41 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The concept of language’, Anthony Padgen (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 19.

identifies sermons as ‘some of the best sources on the Edwardian ideal of kingship…’ .35 The importance of the sermon has been pointed out by more general historians of political communication.36 Ernst Kantorowicz showed that theological speculation shaped discourse well beyond the ecclesiastical realm. Indeed, a theological vocabulary was utilised by Elizabethan lawyers to express their views.37 John Witte, in one of the best histories of early-modern political thought written over the past thirty five years, has shown how contemporary political ideals such as government by consent, equality, and human rights had their origins in early-modern Calvinist theology and political thought.38 Perhaps there have been those who have denied any political status to theological speculation, and, hence, have not considered the works of divines worthy or necessary for analysis by historians of political ideas.39 Janet Coleman’s comments regarding William of Ockham are apt: ‘But to say that his theological focus on scriptural truths makes him a non-political or anti-political writer is to adopt a twentieth-century view of secular intentions behind political expression’.40

The same lack of interest in ecclesiastical political thought is evident in contemporary scholarship on political language and vocabulary. For J.G.A. Pocock, writing the history of political thought is writing the history of political discourse.41 Pocock notes that it should be of interest to the intellectual historian how ideas, vocabulary, and argu-ments interact with the changing circumstances of the times:

10 introduction

42 Ibid., pp. 31–32.43 See my discussion of the body metaphor on pp.119–30.

When the conventions, paradigms and directives of which a political lan-guage may be thought of as composed are applied to and in political cir-cumstances other than those which it conventionally presupposes, two processes may be seen taking place. First, the new wine will be poured into the old bottles; the new circumstances, and the problems in thought and action which they generate, will be assimilated to those presupposed by the old conventions, so that the latter may continue to rule them….The historian will find this process fascinating to watch, because it high-lights the presuppositions of the old language, informs him as to what sort of universe its users were encouraged to presume they were living in, and enables him to form judgements regarding the historical situations in which it had been formed and was being used….But needless to say, there is a process in the contrary direction; the new circumstances gener-ate tensions in the old conventions, language finds itself being used in new ways, changes occur in the language being used, and it is possible to imagine this process leading to the creation and diffusion of new lan-guages—though exactly what this phrase would mean remains to be specified. Our historian will try to study the sequences in which such things may be seen happening….42

According to Pocock traditional political discourse, when confronted by a change in some social fact, can do two things. It can be assimilated with the social change, in which case the presuppositions and argu-ments traditionally employed can accommodate and defend the new social fact (i.e. the Henrician elevation of the state over the church). Alternatively, if the new social fact forces the traditional political dis-course to be contorted beyond credibility in the attempt of accommo-dation, a new political discourse with new presuppositions can emerge in response to the changing social conditions.43

What is a political language and what were the political languages in Tudor England? A political language is a set of presuppositions that are coherent, to which theorists and politicians need to submit, demon-strating how their proposals are conducive to such presuppositions. If one was only interested in knowing whether a certain political pro-posal or theory was in accord with God’s will, one could be said to use a theocentric vocabulary. Anthony Padgen has distinguished four different political languages or vocabularies used by early-modern political theorists. First, law of nature or political Aristotelianism; sec-ond, language of classical republicanism; third, political economy;

introduction 11

44 Padgen, ‘Introduction’, Padgen (ed.), Languages of Political Theory., p. 3.45 Conal Condren, ‘Political Theory and the Problem of Anachronism’ in Andrew

Vincent (ed.), Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

46 John Guy, ‘The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England’, dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 292–310.

47 A.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1588–1585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 48.

48 ‘Act of Appeals (1533)’, G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 344.

49 Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, pp. 2–3.

fourth, science of politics.44 We must be careful not to assume that these vocabularies are unrelated, for, as Conal Condren reminds us, to sepa-rate natural law (or perhaps any medieval and early-modern political vocabulary) from theology would be anachronistic.45 John Guy has argued that there were two languages of political counsel in early- modern England: ‘humanist-classical’ and ‘feudal-baronial’.46 Neither Pocock nor Guy identified any specifically religious vocabulary. This was pointed out and corrected by A.N. McLaren, who added the lan-guage of ‘godly and prophetic counsel’ to Guy’s list.47 In many ways this study is a history of what McLaren calls ‘godly and prophetic counsel’ in England from the reign of Edward VI to James I.

It is undeniable that social and political innovation often leads to theoretical change and innovation. The nature of this relationship and the terms used to express it are the more interesting question. Entailment, causality, epiphenomena, and influence are all terms that have been seized upon to describe a characteristic of human history, namely, that institutions and material events and conditions shape and inform ideas, and vice versa. In his 1940 study, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, Baumer argued that the 1533 revolution in English govern-ment occasioned a similar revolution in political thought. In 1533 Henry VIII officially declared himself ‘supreme head’ of the whole English realm.48 By abrogating papal authority in England Henry VIII afforded the English monarch practically unlimited authority; at least authority in both temporal and ecclesiastical realms. According to Baumer the English Reformation created a revolutionary theory of kingship, quite foreign to the medieval tradition.49 The revolution replaced the Hildebrandine model of church/state (auctoritas/potestas) relations—where, essentially, the church had significant authority over princes—in preference for a reverse model where the prince had the

12 introduction

50 Ibid., pp. 23–24.

greater portion of authority over the church. In stating his case Baumer articulated a grand philosophy of the relationship between political/social change and theoretical innovation:

The delimitation of papal and ecclesiastical powers in France and Spain, and their complete absorption by the secular power in England, Scandinavia, North Germany, and parts of Switzerland, naturally wrought a revolution in political theory as well as in practical politics. In every great period of transition the displacement of an old order by a new necessitates the repudiation of an antiquated philosophy and the forma-tion of a new creed calculated to justify, and to fit the facts of, political actuality….[T]he leading continental religious and political reformers lost no time in denouncing Gelasian dualism, and in demanding the con-trol of the Church everywhere by the omnipotent State.50

Baumer offers a rule: synthetic change occasions theoretical change. In the case of the Henrician Reformation the medieval auctoritas-over-potestas model was turned upside down—resulting in what has come to be called the Marsilian or Erastian model. This model tended to place the authority of the state over the church, so the church was directed by the state. This study softens Baumer’s contention that new political facts occasion new political theories by showing how new theological movements also contribute to changing political common-places, either by making them conceptually irrelevant, given the new theology (Chapter Two) or by retarding their development (Chapter Three). This is not a materialist intellectual history. Ideas respond to the material, but also to other ideas. Furthermore, material events respond to ideas. Perhaps one of the more ironic lessons from the his-tory of Marxism is the power of ideas over economic and political con-ditions. A combination of political, social, and theological upheaval contributed towards the ambiguity that marked Protestant ecclesiasti-cal political thought throughout the period.

The following chapters are thematic. Each chapter will begin with an overview of the medieval and Henrician understanding of the concept in question, thus giving the reader an understanding of the traditions that English Protestants were both drawing upon and abandoning. Although England is an island the minds within it are not. It is crucial to place the political ideas of the Tudor churchmen within the context of international reformations of church and state. The English clerics’

introduction 13

coreformers on the Continent were deeply interested in the progress of the Reformation in England. The English were frequently given to see-ing successful reformations in Switzerland as blueprints for what may happen in England, institutionally and intellectually. For the most part the Protestants covered in this study are those who held official posi-tions in the English church or whose vocation was defined by some religious office. Thus bishops, deans, divines, preachers, and translators of religious literature will be the focus of study. All these men had anti-Romanism in common, but, as will be shown, this was not sufficient to produce a completely coherent political theory. The sources used are mainly printed texts from the period. This includes sermons, liturgies, prayers, treatises, and tracts. There is also considerable use of letters and state documents.

Chapter One begins by a discussion of the importance of the European Reformation for the early-modern view of society and poli-tics. Theological upheaval led to new visions of the universe and soci-ety. The new theological ideas were imported to England and were used by Protestants to express their political ideas. The chapter provides a brief overview of the Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan periods. The main events of those periods which affected political thought are introduced, though they will be continually discussed throughout the whole body of the text. It was events such as the Henrician break with Rome (1533), the introduction of Reformed theology during the Edwardian period (1547–53), anti-Protestant rebellions, the Marian persecution of Protestants (1553–8), the Elizabethan Settlement, the perceived Catholic threat to the Elizabethan throne, and the Puritan and Separatist movements that generated most of the ecclesiastical political thought. It was the theoretical problems caused by the interac-tion and tension between old ideas with new ideas, the demands of the state and conscience, and the need to create an innovative political theory with traditional concepts which tended to characterize Tudor political thought.

Chapter Two argues that the worldview in the writings of the English churchmen was ambiguous. Traditionally historians consider the idea of fixed rank and hierarchy, as opposed to the alternative idea of God’s dynamic will immediately causing all things (providence), to have been distinctly medieval. Far from arguing that providence completely replaced the order and hierarchy in Tudor ecclesiastical thought, I argue that both traditions were kept side by side with a bias towards divine will, thus showing that the Tudor worldview was neither wholly

14 introduction

51 Scott, England’s Troubles, p. 67.

medieval nor completely un-medieval. It was a worldview pulled in either direction by two traditions. Furthermore, certain theoretical tensions arising from this ambivalence will be explored with special attention to John Knox. Ultimately Chapter Two shows how these two traditions were not suitable partners to produce coherent political the-ories. For this reason the two separated into two distinct traditions best represented by the thought of Richard Hooker and the thought of the radical seventeenth-century Puritans.

Chapter Three turns to the concept of natural law. It has been said that Tudor England witnessed a revival in natural law discourse, and also that the Protestant movement as a whole was distinctly uncom-fortable with the concept. I wish to show that the failure to produce anything substantial or innovative on the concept of natural law was owing to the confrontation between natural law as a traditional politi-cal commonplace and the new Protestant emphases on sola scriptura and on intellectual corruption of humankind through sin. English Protestants found themselves torn between two theoretical commit-ments. On the one hand, a genuine appreciation for philosophy and ancient wisdom, including the legitimacy of natural law discourse. On the other hand, a firm conviction that scripture, not philosophy, is necessary and sufficient to resolve problems. This latter belief was joined with an equally strong conviction that the human intellect has been corrupted by sin and, consequently, cannot stray too far from the guidance of biblical revelation before it becomes a factory of idols. The first commitment kept natural law discourse alive, but the second prevented it from flourishing. Also, when certain writers did make substantial use of natural law concepts, such as the body metaphor, the political and religious circumstances prompting them to take it up also led them to contort and misuse the concepts in a clumsy and ineffective way.

Chapters Four and Five consider the concept of political authority within the writings of the English Protestants, which was, for the most part, a divide between conformists and the Puritan and Separatist movements. The seventeenth-century ‘would experience both extremes of monarchical absolutism and republicanism’.51 Chapters Four and Five seek to show how the ideas and vocabularies conducive to absolutism, republicanism, and democracy were nurtured the previous

introduction 15

52 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975); Quentin Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought 1570–1640, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

century in religious controversy. The conformists, those who defended the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, argued for the dominion of the prince over all things, including the church. This led to an emphasis on obedience that made later absolutist theories quite plausible. The Puritans and Separatists, on the other hand, declared the prince’s authority to be limited by the church. Indeed, they held that the prince was even subject to church discipline. In this sense the con-flict within Protestant political speculation was between a Hildebrandine understanding of church over state and a Marsilian or Erastian model of state over church. The tension within the Protestant movement as a whole was caused by the absolutist claims of the English crown clash-ing with the religious convictions of the Puritans and Separatists. It is almost certain that had Elizabeth instituted the demands made by early Presbyterians then there would have been no problem with all Protestants admitting the Royal Supremacy over the church. Chapter Five also offers a sustained treatment of the political thought of the Separatist polemicist, Robert Browne while considering the ideas and aims of the Puritan movement in general. It is a great shortcoming of much scholarship on early-modern republicanism that the religious dimensions are barely mentioned. Indeed, republicanism was as much Protestant as it was anything else. With this in mind I show how Browne’s advocacy of government by consent was directly inspired by his congregational ecclesiology. This is important for historians of Christianity and politics, as it offers good evidence for the influence of Protestant theology on the rise of republican and democratic politics. The Puritan and Separatist movements show the distinctively Protestant contribution to notions of limited monarchy and popular consent. Their ideas were shaped and written in opposition to Catholicism and were drawn from the Bible and Continental Reformed theology, and in this they are distinguished from the classical humanist tradition which has become the main object of analysis by historians like Pocock, Skinner, Richard Tuck, and Markku Peltonen.52

16 introduction

53 Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), pp. 17–18. I thank Ian Tregenza for helpful discussions on Oakeshott’s writings on the history of political thought. See Tregenza (2003).

Oakeshott offers the following warning to historians of ideas looking for neat transitions or clear nodal points identifying paradigm shifts:

The appearance of a new intellectual character is like the appearance of a new architectural style; it emerges almost imperceptibly, under the pressure of a great variety of influences, and it is a misdirection of inquiry to seek its origins. Indeed, there are no origins; all that can be discerned are the slowly mediated changes, the shuffling and reshuffling, the flow and ebb of the tides of inspiration, which issue finally in a shape identifi-ably new.53

This study is an account of ‘a great variety of influences’, political, social, theological, that were leaving their mark on political thought in Tudor England. I do not wish to identify any single thinker or event as the single catalyst of a new age of political thought. Yet, I do believe that the Reformation period is the single most important period in terms of attempting to come to grips with the political ideas and institu-tions of the last three hundred years. This does not rule out studies on Renaissance, medieval, and even ancient thought in trying to track the history of the present. The sixteenth-century was, nonetheless, recog-nized at the time and by commentators the following century as the age of transition. The following study takes the intuition of the time seri-ously and offers a glimpse of one aspect of a restless age.

Part I

the reformatIon Context of englIsh thought

1 W.J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance 1550–1640, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 2000), p. 99.

2 W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (sussex: harvester Press, 1984), p. 23.

3 ernst troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., olive Wyon (tr.), (london: allen and unwin, 1931 [1911]), vol. 1, p. 328.

4 Ibid., p. 148.

ChaPter one

the reformatIon anD Its IDeas

The European Reformation

William J. Bouwsma in his study of early-modern europe describes a transitional period ‘from the rigidities of social organization and from arbitrary and oppressive government’.1 surely the reformations on the Continent and in england were central to that transition, yet the social and political effects of the reformation of the sixteenth-century were almost certainly unanticipated by its earliest advocates. luther’s attempts to free the laity from the authority of the priesthood (sacerdo-tium) would eventually lead to an egalitarianism extending far beyond the walls of the cathedral. By attacking the penitential cycle, the reformers raised doubts in the minds of many regarding the need for the institution of the church. If the church existed as a mechanism to dispense the infinite grace stored up in heaven by the work of Christ and the saints, and now such grace could appropriated by anyone with a simple faith and a contrite heart, then wherefore the church?2 The new theology also introduced a novel individualism into the european consciousness. ernst troeltsch pointed out early in the twentieth- century that ‘the really permanent attainment of individualism was due to a religious, and not to a secular movement, to the reformation and not to the renaissance’.3 luther’s rejection of the idea of an institutional mechanism dispensing saving grace removed the possibility of a spir-itual hierarchy on earth. no Christian was in any way dependent on another for salvation. all would now fear and tremble before god, individually and directly.4 The awe generated by the sacerdotium was under siege. Indeed, ‘The notion of society as forming a huge pyramid,

20 chapter one

5 sheldon s. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, second edition, (Princeton and oxford: Princeton university Press, 2004 [1960]), p. 138.

6 John Witte, Jr, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2007), p. 77.

7 martin luther, ‘on secular authority’ (1523), martin luther and John Calvin, On Secular Authority, harro hopfl (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1991), p. 23.

8 Ibid., p. 25. 9 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 130.10 Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 3.

wherein the power assigned each layer was an inverse proportion to the length of the layer, was cast aside for the flattened imagery of a society where, ideally, the members were equal’.5 as John Witte says, ‘The Protestant reformation was, at its core, a fight for freedom—freedom of the individual conscience from intrusive canon laws and clerical controls, freedom of political officials from ecclesiastical power and privilege, freedom of the local clergy from central papal rule and oppressive princely controls’.6

This genealogy of individualism is tempting when dealing directly with luther, who espoused as radical a gulf between the conscience and the church as Descartes was to do the following century between the soul and the body. Indeed, for the augustinian monk, ‘where the soul is concerned, god neither can nor will allow anyone but himself to rule’.7 In a mood that was to be echoed by Kant’s enlightenment chal-lenge—Sapere aude!—luther threw out a challenge to humanity: ‘…each must decide at his own peril what he is to believe, and must see to it that he believes rightly’.8 luther’s attack on the church was an attack on that institution that most epitomised organised hierarchy.9 Perhaps luther’s most subtle attack on the institution of the Catholic church was his tendency to derive all his doctrines directly from the text of the Bible or from augustine. By doing this he was ignoring the whole medieval tradition of theology and political thought. In the words of W.D.J Cargill Thompson, ‘luther was in a sense deliberately putting the clock back a thousand years’.10

But if the first generation of reformers—viz., luther, Zwingli, and Bucer—were enthusiastic to free Christians from a stifling system of works and merits to a religion of sincerity and inward devotion, they were equally naïve in their conviction that their language and ideas would be limited to the spiritual. as steven ozment has said, the spir-itual freedom spoken of by the reformers appealed equally to those

the reformation and its ideas 21

11 steven ozment, Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution, (new York: Image Books, 1991), p. 20.

12 Ibid., pp. 20–21.13 Bouwsma, Waning of the Renaissance, p. 95.14 Jonathan scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability

in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2000), p. 253.15 Cameron, European Reformation, p. 349.16 Thompson calls the reformation attitude to the state and politics ‘augustinian’.

Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 65.17 troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 282.18 Thomas aquinas, ‘De reginine Principum’ (1265–67), ch.1, St.Thomas Aquinas

on Politics and Ethics, Paul e. sigmund (ed. & tr.), (new York and london: norton, 1988), p. 14.

who wanted to escape the arbitrary authority of the state. This was most keenly seized upon by traders, who had long complained of restrictions on their mercantilism by government interference and holy days.11 towns and peasants tended to see luther more as a political than a spiritual ally. Indeed luther’s polemic against spiritual tyranny became polemic against the tyranny of an aristocratic city council or a powerful prince or lord.12 In the end, the priesthood of all believers inspired, or was manipulated to bring about, egalitarian views on social rank and vocation. such egalitarianism eventually led to a preference for republicanism when it came to political speculation.13 It was the ideas that emerged from the radical reformation that led to the political radicalism in seventeenth-century england. Indeed, as one recent his-tory of the period proclaims, ‘…the english revolution unleashed in the 1640s became the last and greatest triumph of the european radical reformation’.14

The first reformers were aware of this dangerous misunderstand-ing of their message, being ‘painfully conscientious revolutionaries, whose grasp of the principles was usually sounder than their under-standing of political realities’.15 Their vision of government was some-what less idealistic than the aristotelian vision.16 Because aristotelians placed such a heavy stress on natural law, it was taught that govern-ment would have arisen even had adam not sinned. If it arose purely out of nature it would have been directed by love, rather than wielded because of fear.17 aquinas considered government to be necessitated by human nature and the tendency to form societies.18 This naturalis-tic defense of government became fairly standard among all medie-val political theorists after Thomas. typical was the view of John of Paris, who in his De Potestate Regia et Papali (c.1302/3) wrote that

22 chapter one

19 John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power: A Translation with Introduction, of the De Potestate regia et Papali of John of Paris, ch.1, arthur P. monahan (tr.), (new York and london: Columbia university Press, 1974).

20 Dante alighieri, De Monarchia, 1.ii–iv, Carlo signorelli (ed.), (milan: Proprieta letteraria riservata, 1964).

21 Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 2.22 luther, ‘on secular authority’, p. 18.23 Ibid., p. 9. Cf. augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, 19.15, (Cambridge,

massachusetts: harvard university Press, 1969).24 huldreich Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion (1525), samuel

macauley Jackson and Clarence nevin heller (eds.), (labyrinth Press: Durham, north Carolina, 1981), p. 296.

25 Ibid., p. 301.

government was a function of the natural proclivity to form societies. furthermore, for society to flourish there must be some organising agent, namely, government.19 The same went for Dante. If the final cause of man is rational reflection then complex communities need to be formed so all the necessary conditions allowing for speculation can be met, ie. food, shelter, protection. Yet for people to live with one another productively coordination is necessary, for wills do not always coincide. Therefore a unified, directing force is a necessary condition for humans to flourish.20 Though the reformers had a dim view of kings and magistrates, they retained some of the medieval esteem for the civil regiment. even luther, with his reluctance to praise any human institution, made it clear in his 1523 tract, On Secular Authority, which he considered to be his definitive statement of political thought,21 that government was part of god’s plan, not an aberration. If government is merely subordination, protection, and punishment then it is of god, for even these proceed from him as much as food and covering.22 for luther, this sat perfectly well with his pious augustinian belief that ‘if all the world were true Christians…there would be neither need nor use for princes, kings, lords, the sword or law’.23 Zwingli echoed luther’s sentiments. Ideally, there should be no need for magistrates, for the church of Christ should be blameless. nevertheless, it is those who seek the stateless society (anabaptists) that make government necessary. This side of eternity will never witness the sinlessness that would obvi-ate the need for magisterial coercion.24 Zwingli also spoke of the civil government as equal in dignity to the church. Indeed, he took the body metaphor that the apostle Paul used to define ecclesiastical roles and applied it to civil government to prove the necessity of Christians par-ticipating in the governmental sphere.25


26 John Calvin, ‘Christianae religionis Institutio’ (1536), Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 29, William Baum, edward Cunitz, edward reuss (eds.), (Brunswig: C.a schwetschke and son, 1863), p. 228.

27 Calvin, ‘Institutio Christianae religionis’ (1559), Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta, vol. 5, Peter Barth and William niesel (eds.), munich: n.p, 1962), pp. 471–472.

28 Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 39–80.29 Ibid, pp. 4, 55.30 for example, John milton, ‘a Defence of the people of england’, Political Writings,

martin Dzelzainis (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1991), p. 106.31 ralph C. hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell

university Press, 1989), pp. 27, 32. Cf. graham maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, (london and new York: routledge, 1996), p. 121.

french theologian John Calvin was enough of a realist to note that talk of spiritual freedom would inevitably be twisted into talk of tem-poral freedom. In the 1536 edition of his Christianae Religionis Institutio Calvin declared the distinction between spiritual freedom and political freedom to be as profound as that between spirit and matter:

Indeed, there are those who hear that the gospel promotes a freedom, which knows no king and no magistrate among men, but looks to Christ alone, and think they are not able to have the fruit of their freedom as long as they see any power established over them. They therefore think that nothing will be safe unless the whole world is reformed anew, where there are neither courts, nor laws, nor magistrate, nor anything that in their opin-ion restricts their freedom. But truly, whoever knows how to discern between body and soul, this present changing life and that future eternal life will understand without difficulty Christ’s spiritual kingdom and the civil order to be things very much distinct….spiritual freedom can well exist with political bondage….26

These words were kept by Calvin in all editions of his Institutio right up to the 1559 latin edition.27 This should not lead us to conclude that Calvin was indifferent to political liberty. Throughout his career he showed uncommon appreciation for liberty, both for the individ-ual and the institutions of what we now call civil society.28 Indeed, Witte argues that Calvin’s great contribution to Western politics was three-fold: rule of law; democracy; and spiritual freedom.29 Though his profound distinction between spiritual and political freedom would be completely rejected by radical Puritan theorists the following century,30 Calvin’s words served to assure rulers and nobility that the new religion was perfectly compatible with existing social structures. ralph C. hancock holds that one of Calvin’s main aims was to generate a sort of piety towards the civil order by showing how it fitted in with god’s overall order.31 for Calvin, civil government

24 chapter one

32 Calvin, ‘Institutio Christianae religionis’ (1539–54), Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 29, p. 1102. for the Christian as pilgrim see Idem. Cf. augustine, City of God, 19.17. see Witte’s discussion, Reformation of Rights, p. 48.

33 Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 1996), pp. 22–23, 371.

was divinely approved and necessary in the same way as those elements needed to sustain organic life. Yet, in augustinian terms, Calvin described civil government as a crutch from which the Christian can benefit while peregrinating through this world:

Its function among men is not insignificant, it is as great as bread, water, sun, and air, great dignity and even superiority to be sure. Indeed it does not (as is the measure of all these) look to this end, in so far as men breath, eat, drink and are nourished (although it certainly comprehends all these things, while it provides that men live together). It does not, I say, look to this end alone: but that there should be no idolatry; no sac-rilege in the name of god; no blasphemies against his truth and other offenses of religion. It protects public peace; that each may be able to keep his possessions safe and unharmed; that men should conduct blameless business among themselves. In short, it provides that a public form of religion exists among Christians and that humanity among men persists.32

Calvin makes it clear that the civil authorities are not an end in them-selves. on the contrary, like the visible church, they are an institution to set the proper conditions that make piety possible. Calvin, unlike secular republican theorists, always stressed the merely instrumental goodness of politics. Politics was always subordinate to the infinitely higher pursuit of piety. french Calvinism both succeeded and failed. It succeeded in preventing french absolutist ideas from gaining uni-versal currency by generating distrust for political and religious insti-tutions that sought a monopoly on the soul and society. Yet, in the end, Calvinism failed to claim the french church and state. The failure of the Calvinist reformation in france left an ancient church and state domi-nating over a bourgeoisie increasingly intolerant of absolutism. here is a remote cause of the revolution of the eighteenth-century.33 Calvin upheld the dignity of politics, but on a foundation of divine will rather than natural law. The providential vision of legitimacy would come to play an important role in the political thought of english churchmen, who began to read Calvin during the edwardian reign.


34 richard hooker, ‘of the laws of ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593), I.i.i, Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 1, W. speed hill (ed.), (Cambridge, massachusetts: Belknap Press, harvard university Press, 1977).

35 andrew Pettegree, ‘The early reformation in europe’, Pettegree (ed.), The Early Reformation in Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1992), pp. 6, 16.

36 Cameron, European Reformation, p. 64.37 Ibid., pp. 1, 18.38 ozment, Protestants, p. 23.39 Ibid., pp. 24, 27–28.40 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 129.

It was difficult for the reformation not to become a popular event. If the target of the reformers were the doctrines and moral condition of the church, it would be of immediate appeal to those subject to the church, whether they were really oppressed or not. remember the real-ism of richard hooker writing at the end of the century: ‘he that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hear-ers…’ .34 The reformation generated a literature aimed specifically at the uneducated. Flugenschriften—pamphlets popularising the ecclesi-astical controversy—were printed and carried all around europe for mass readers and audiences.35 humanists were also beginning to see the salvation of the church as residing in the hands of the masses. If the people could read the Bible for themselves, then perhaps there would be a popular movement in favour of ecclesiastical moral reform.36 By 1519 the second edition of luther’s latin works was being published. six hundred copies were being distributed to booksellers all around europe.37 however, contrary to the warnings of many critics of the reformation, who correctly saw the dangers of the new doctrines if misunderstood by a restless peasantry, the reformation brought about no political revolutions. generally speaking the reformation ‘remained an age more fearful of anarchy than of tyranny and preoccupied more with problems of continuity and order than with ways to bring about change’.38 no reformer seriously suggested the possibility of social equality—an absurdity in the sixteenth-century akin to the possibility of reviving rank and station in modern liberal democracies. all that was desired was to spread Protestantism throughout europe.39 however, as sheldon Wolin has pointed out, luther’s apolitical theology would exercise significant influence over subsequent political thought.40 english separatist preachers and writers, seized by the leveling nature of reformation theology, would come to express political ideas with a similar egalitarian strand.

26 chapter one

41 Pierre mesnard, L’Essor de la Philosophie Politique au XVIe Siecle, (Paris: Boivin, 1936), p. 13.

42 Cited in Daniel eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007), p. 71.

43 a.g. Dickens, The English Reformation, (n.c: fontana, 1964).44 Diarmaid macCulloch, ‘england’, Pettegree (ed.), Early Reformation, p. 166.

The Reformation in England

It did not take long for the ideas of the Continental reformers to find fertile soil around europe. This was owing, in part, to the fact that sixteenth-century thought was very much international. as mesnard wrote, ‘one cannot understand Calvinism if one only sees it as a genevan phenomenon, nor the ideological impact of french opinion without appealing to a machiavelli or a Buchanan, nor the political shudder of althusius without Calvinist theology and Bodinian sociol-ogy’.41 soon the issue of conversion was not merely a matter for the individual conscience. It was beginning to be a matter of politics: the conversion of a commonwealth. as the english jurist and defender of henry VIII’s royal supremacy, Christopher st german, wrote in his Doctor and Student (1528/31), the king would have ‘not only charge on the bodies, but also on the souls of his subjects…’ .42 There is some debate among historians whether the reformation in england was accompanied by any genuine commitment to Protestant principles, or whether the english split from rome was pure expedience. In other words, was the reformation, in the words of Diarmaid macCulloch, more an ‘act of state’, or was it an event caused by years of dissatisfac-tion with the roman Catholic church. Prior to the groundbreaking work of a.g. Dickens, the english reformation was considered purely a matter of state, a movement executed from the top down. Dickens, by examining local records for the first time, argued that the henrician reformation was caused by popular dissatisfaction with the roman Catholic church, or anti-clericalism.43 some decades after Dickens’ work in the field there was a swing back to the traditional view of the english reformation being a matter of political expedience, rather than a religious event.

The general consensus is that the english reformation under henry VIII was primarily caused by ‘one man’s obsessive quest for a male heir, rather than a nation’s search for the way back to the Church of the apostles’.44 Yet the problem with interpreting the 1533 split with rome


45 a.g. Dickens and Whitney r.D Jones, Erasmus: The Reformer, (london: methuen, 1994), p. 216.

46 Diarmaid macCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 1998), p. 207 (yet macCulloch sees him as an evangelical in 1549, p. 411); Dickens and Jones, Erasmus, pp. 196–197, 208.

47 g.W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 2005), pp. 225, 232, 237.

48 Ibid, p. 242.

as a wholly political action is that it does not fit with all the evidence. for example, we cannot ignore the widespread influence of erasmian humanism in england, both in the universities and in the administra-tion of state. With exception to the break from rome the reformations under henry VIII, edward VI, and elizabeth I could be called erasmian in their conviction of the real need for change, moral and theological, yet also their aversion to radical and unnecessary upheaval of all things. This is particularly the case with the henrician and elizabethan refor-mations, which has led some historians to muse whether ‘it was indeed in english soil that his [erasmus] propagation of the philosophia Christi found its most fertile seed-bed and put down its deepest roots’.45 major figures in the henrician and edwardian reformations were out and out erasmians or, at least, seemed as much erasmian as they were Protestant. such figures included Thomas elyot, author of the popular princely handbook The Boke Named Gouernour, William tyndale, english lutheran, Bible translator, and first translator of erasmus into english, William marshall, force behind the Poor law reform (1536) and trans-lator of marsilius of Padua and lorenzo Valla, John à lasco, Polish pas-tor in edwardian england, martin Bucer Professor of Theology at Cambridge, and even Cranmer, who, before 1552, macCulloch describes as ‘more of an erasmian than a Protestant’.46 Thus even after the split henry continued to critique the english religion for its super-stition. furthermore, even after he received his divorce he continued his mild reformation of the church and never in his lifetime gave up his insistence on his royal supremacy over the church.47 henry was pro-foundly influenced by erasmus’ critique of the church as immoral and superstitious. Consequently he never ceased criticizing clerical immo-rality and always avoided pilgrimages and shrines if he could. Indeed, his difficulty with the papacy ‘simply intensified his erasmian and righteous conviction that the church was in need of purifying reform’.48 henry was, in his own way, a not entirely insincere reformer of the church.

28 chapter one

49 eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 6–9.50 stephen alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (Cambridge:

Cambridge university Press, 2002), p. 64.

Whatever it was that caused the english split with rome, it is certain that it resulted in the english government gathering up more dominion than it had previously enjoyed. although 1533 was the culmination of a growing trend of centralising power and jurisdiction in the king, the ability for the king to determine orthodoxy and heresy, which henry progressively acquired throughout the 1530s, was revolutionary and without medieval precedent.49 Part of henry’s success in declaring state power over the church was owing to the english Protestants’ hope in him as a potential force for true religion. The new powers taken by the crown caused a crisis in the consciences of Protestant churchmen. seeing that the king was now responsible for national reformation ecclesiastical political theorists were led to emphasis princely authority to an extent unusual for political theology. Yet, recognising the prob-lems of extolling the state to such dizzying heights, they developed a counter emphasis in their writings on the responsibilities of the prince and the subjects to god, which could clash with the princely will on occasion. henry became a new Constantine. furthermore, he enjoyed the same titles of sovereign and saviour that were lavished upon that ancient emperor. Perhaps this was inevitable given the vacuum of power left by henry’s outlawing of any roman jurisdiction in england. With the absence of papal authority the issue of who had authority over the church and its reformation were bound to arise. later such questions included to what extent subjects were bound to obey a ruler who would not venture as far down the path of reform as purists had hoped.

Edwardian England

The henrician emphasis on the king as vicarius Dei was retained throughout the reign of the tudor dynasty. When henry died he was succeeded by his sickly son edward VI, who for most of his brief reign was king in name and blood only, being a minor.50 It was during this period that the church became most distinctively Protestant, or, more accurately, reformed. It was the reformed leanings of tudor elites that tilted the church towards switzerland rather than germany. Probably if edward lived longer the church would have moved much closer to the


51 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 2002), pp. 230, 240.

52 haigh, English Reformations, p. 168.53 macCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, p. 83.54 see ethan shagan’s study for a balanced overview of the popular reactions to the

english reformation during the henrician and edwardian periods. Popular Politics and the English Reformation, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2000).

55 m.a. overell, ‘Peter martyr in england 1547–1553: an alternative View’, Sixteenth Century Journal, xV/1 (1984): pp. 87–104. for an excellent account of the circle sur-rounding martyr at oxford, see Jane e.a. Dawson, ‘The early Career of Christopher goodman and his Place in the Development of Protestant Political Thought’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, university of Durham, 1978), pp. 4–39.

56 torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, (leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). macCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, pp. 173–174.

reformed churches in switzerland.51 upon edward’s coronation there were immediate changes to visible religion. a book of evangelical hom-ilies was introduced, as well as lay participation in both the bread and wine of communion. In 1548 church images were removed and in 1549 the uniformity bill was finally passed, which meant that the latin rites were replaced by Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. In 1550 the altars were exchanged for communion tables and in 1551 a team of proselyt-ising preachers was sent to parishes. In 1553 the remaining instruments of the traditional mass were removed.52 The edwardian emphasis was continuous preaching and lecturing, though there was always an acute shortage of qualified preachers.53 The english parishioners took the new religion hard. many took to arms over edward’s Prayer Book of 1549, which was made even more explicitly Protestant in 1552.54 Protestant theologians were headhunted from the Continent. martin Bucer was made regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, while Peter martyr Vermigli received the same honour at oxford, though that lat-ter university was far less open to new theological ideas.55 During this period swiss theologian heinerich Bullinger was having a significant impact on the english church, though his influence would be rivaled during the elizabethan reign by the more systematic offerings of John Calvin. In fact, one cannot over emphasise the ‘Zurich connection’ when coming to grips with the church under edward and elizabeth. The english reformation and its political thought must be viewed in the wider context of the events and ideas in europe; Protestant wars in france, germany, and holland, as well as swiss theology. In some respects it was the ideas of men such as heinrich Bullinger, Peter martyr Vermigli, and John Calvin that animated the english church and its troubles throughout the edwardian and elizabethan periods.56

30 chapter one

57 for a contemporary account see Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England dur-ing the Reign of the Tudors, a.d. 1485–a.d. 1559, 2 vols., William Douglas hamilton (ed.), (london: Camden society, 1875 [1965]), vol. 2, p. 15. strype saw the 1549 upris-ings in economic terms. Ecclesiastical Memorials relating Chiefly to Religion and the Emergencies of the Church of England under King Henry VIII. Kind Edward VI. and Queen Mary, 3 vols., (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), vol. 2, part II, p. 132.

58 strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 2, part I, pp. 262–263. Jennifer loach consid-ers the Western rising as primarily religious and Kett’s rebellion as economic, Edward VI, (new haven and london: Yale university Press, 1999), pp. 70–88.

59 alford, Kingship and Politics, p. 206.

The reformed emphasis on sola scriptura and on the inability of the intellect to understand certain truths wholly apart from revelation was now accepted by all Protestant divines. This led to a theological method of biblicism and a hesitancy to wander off into lengthy philosophical speculation on the nature of god or his moral law.

The most significant political events during the edwardian period were the numerous rebellions in reaction to both economic and reli-gious policy. Catholic rebels and the poor, who were crippled by infla-tion from greater land taxes on their landlords, rose against the religious and economic edwardian reforms.57 In response to the uprisings numerous ad hoc preaching licenses were prepared for willing preach-ers to travel and preach the doctrine of obedience and absolute non-resistance.58 out of the Western rebellion of 1549 there arose some political literature produced by the english church, most notably by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. another crucial devel-opment was the emerging idea that the king was not of absolute neces-sity in governance. The experience of minority government taught many noblemen that a commonwealth can function quite well with power localized in a council and parliament rather than an absolute monarch. This period proved crucial in the transition from the ideal that the monarch was the state to ‘a polity conscious of existence beyond the life of the king or queen and capable of defining itself ideologically as Protestant…’ .59 edward’s reign was absolutely formative in the long transition from absolute monarchy to monarchical republic spoken of by contemporary historians. The most important figures for this study who wrote during the edwardian period are miles Coverdale, hugh latimer, John Bale, Thomas Cranmer, John hooper and John Bradford. The prayers and liturgies produced by the edwardian church are also highly significant.


60 for the brief reign of lady Jane grey see hester W. Chapman, Lady Jane Grey, (london: Jonathan Cape, 1962).

61 andrew Pettegree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies, (aldershot: scolar Press, 1996), p. vii.

62 The classic account is Christina hallowell garrett, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of English Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1938). more recent are Pettegree, Marian Protestantism; Dan g. Danner, Pilgrimage to Puritanism: History and Theology of the Marian Exiles at Geneva 1555–1560, (new York: Peter lang, 1999). for underground churches in marian england, see J.W. martin, ‘The Protestant underground Congregations of mary’s reign’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35/4 (october 1984): pp. 519–538.

63 Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, p. 242.

Marian England

edward VI’s early death in 1553 and the ascension of his sister mary to the throne ushered in a brief english counter-reformation from 1553–1558.60 During this period the roman Catholic church was fully restored in england and the dominion of the pope was again recog-nised. england, which under edward had become the ‘central stage for the continuing reformation drama’, seemed all but lost to Protestants at home and internationally.61 Zealous Protestants who refused to con-form to marian Catholicism either formed underground churches or, if they had the means, fled to the Continent to wait for england once again to embrace the reformation. some eight hundred Protestants fled to various european cities including Basle, strasbourg, and geneva.62 here they were not idle. students continued their studies and scholars wrote books that were smuggled back to england. In all, seventy-two vernacular books of devotion and polemic were produced by the exiles.63 These books at first exhorted english Protestants to pray and weep for a regime change, then encouraged them to become vessels of providence themselves and revolt against their Catholic queen. of chief interest will be the writings of John Ponet, Christopher goodman, and John Knox. other lesser figures such as the young laurence humphrey, Bartholomew traheron, and anthony gilby will be consid-ered as well.

Elizabethan England

Protestant fugitives’ prophecies of mary’s imminent judgment did not have to wait long to be fulfilled. In 1558 she died and was replaced by

32 chapter one

64 Ibid, p. 244.65 Kirby, Zurich Connection, pp. 23, 25.66 stuart Barton Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, (london: sPCK, 1962),

p. 4.

her sister elizabeth. for the first time in twenty-five years english reli-gion would settle down to a fairly steady and uniform practice. for elizabeth, the english church would be entirely reformed in its theol-ogy, yet the outward ceremonies and pomp, which to many connoted Catholicism, would still have a place. fourteen of twenty-three early bishops under elizabeth were returned marian exiles. Though they were reformed in theology, they were not all necessarily zealous to mould the english church, or the commonwealth for that matter, in the image of Calvin’s geneva.64 In fact it was more Zurich than geneva that informed the elizabethan settlement, both Bullinger and Zwingli taught that the cura religionis was part of the office of the ruler— effectively giving the state power over the church. furthermore, the Zurich theology encouraged conformity to the clerical vestments as a matter of adiaphora or spiritual indifference. If the church could not be described as entirely reformed along genevan lines, perhaps it could be so described according to Zurich’s example?65 It was elizabeth’s refusal to reform the english church strictly in line with the genevan example that created the religious schisms, which would, in turn, pro-duce two strains of political thought: the one emphasising the subjects’ obedience to the queen (established churchmen) the other the queen’s obedience to god (Puritans and separatists). The threat of Catholicism and the Jesuit movement also produced significant amounts of political speculation from Protestant divines. some of the significant established church divines whose ideas will be considered are John aylmer, the older laurence humphrey, alexander nowell, edwin sandys, and John Whitgift. These were men who completely threw in their lot with elizabeth’s religious policy.

The Puritan and nonconformist movements arose in reaction to elizabeth’s militant attempt to enforce the act of uniformity (1559) on all priests within the english church. having failed successfully to push for reform at the 1563 Convocation, critics of the english church sought to effect reform through politics.66 The Admonition to Parliament (1572) pleaded to the parliament to see that ‘nothing be done in this or any other thing, but that which you have the express warrant of


67 ‘an admonition to Parliament’ (1572), W.h. frere and C.e. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestos: A Study in the Origins of the Puritan Revolt, (london: sPCK, 1954), p. 15.

68 Janet Kemp, ‘laurence humphrey, elizabethan Puritan: his life and Political Theories’, (unpublished Ph.D thesis, West Virginia university, 1978), pp. 22, 43.

69 B. reay, ‘radicalism and religion in the english revolution: an Introduction’, J.f. mcgregor and B. reay, Radical Religion in the English Revolution, (oxford: oxford university Press, 1984), pp. 1–2.

70 ‘sandys to Burghley’ (2 July 1573), W.h. frere and C.e. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes, A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt, (london: s.P.C.K., 1954), p. 154.

god’s word for’.67 This is the essence of Puritanism and separatism. from the beginnings of the edwardian church there were certain gar-ments that were compulsory for all clerics to wear. upon returning from exile in switzerland many newly appointed clerics, accustomed to the ecclesiastical simplicity of Continental reformed churches, simply abstained from wearing them. elizabeth turned a blind eye to this until autumn 1564 when she began enforcing the act. By 25th January 1565 elizabeth had pressured matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, to get complete conformity from his priests. In march 1566 Parker published his Advertisements, which stipulated the priestly requirements, and began to enforce conformity; thirty-seven ministers were suspended for refusing to conform. In the end this Vestiarian Controversy led many zealous Puritans to turn their attention away from merely the clerical dress to more fundamental issues like the scope of government authority. eventually the Vestiarian Controversy led to a handful of Protestants demanding ecclesiastical autonomy from the state.68 The anti episcopal movement among Puritans, led by Thomas Cartwright, would eventually express itself most strongly in the english revolution and the long Parliament the following century.69

It should perhaps be of no surprise that in the controversy over the publication of the Puritan manifesto, An Admonition to Parliament, the Puritans had gained a reputation as seditious. Writing to lord Burghley in 1573, the Bishop of london, edwin sandys, noted that the word and the spirit of the Puritan movement seemed at odds. reflecting on the people of london, sandys noted the ‘boldness and disobedience these new writers have already wrought in the minds of the people and that against the Civil magistrate whom in words they seem to extol but whose authority in very deed they labor to cast down’.70 The following

34 chapter one

71 ‘sandys to Burghley’ (28 aug. 1573), ibid., p. 155.72 accounts of the scholarly controversy may be found in stephen Brachlow, The

Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology 1570–1625, (oxford: oxford university Press, 1988), p. 5; margo todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1987), pp. 1–4.

73 Patrick Collinson, ‘antipuritanism’, in John Coffey and Paul C.h. lim (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2008), p. 19.

74 even richard hooker could not resist throwing in a few ad hominems before his devastating attack on their theology. ‘of the laws of ecclesiastical Polity’, Preface 8.6, Works, vol. 1.

75 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (london: Jonathon Cape, 1967), passim; The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625, (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

76 Basil hall, ‘Puritanism: The Problem of Definition’, Studies in Church History, 2, (1965): pp. 283–296.

77 Peter lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1982), passim.

78 William hunt, The Puritan Movement, (Cambridge, massachusetts: Yale university Press, 1983), pp. xxi, 119.

month he perceived the aim of the Puritan movement to be ‘railing not only against particular men but also against the whole state’.71

exactly to whom the term ‘Puritan’ should be applied has been a subject of debate in the historiography of elizabethan england.72 Indeed, the term was coined by their enemies and, hence, must be used carefully.73 Their contemporary detractors often offer the modern his-torian with caricatures rather than clear definitions.74 Whereas previ-ously in historiography Puritans were considered to have been those separated from the english church, contemporary scholarship defines them as those who remained in the church, yet were perennial moni-tors and critics. Patrick Collinson’s magisterial The Elizabethan Puritan Movement pays close attention to ‘the hotter sorts of Protestants’ who stayed within the english church yet remained critical.75 Basil hall defines Puritans as restlessly critical, but, none the less, non-separated members of the english church.76 Peter lake identifies Puritans as those evangelicals harbouring a tension between principle and conformity. They also had a vision of a godly community built up through the preached word.77 William hunt, perhaps a bit too broadly, considers as Puritans those who saw rome as the antichrist and extolled the preach-ing and reading of the Bible in place of ceremonies. also, they encour-aged a strict moral discipline for society at large.78 hunt’s definition could be applied to separatists like robert Browne and henry Barrow,


79 todd, Christian Humanism, p. 14.80 stephen Brachlow, Communion of Saints, p. 9.81 for Cartwright’s response to his separatist critics, see a.f. scott Pearson, Thomas

Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 1535–1603, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1925), pp. 219–221. on the outcome of separatist inflexibility see edmund s. morgan, Roger Williams: Church and State, (new York: norton, 1987), p. 80. as early as 1609 people were leaving for the new World because it was thought that the english church’s incomplete reform was inviting destruction akin to that visited upon sodom and gomorrah.

82 Bullinger to horn (november 3, 1566), Zurich Letters, p. 204.83 margo todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge:

Cambridge university Press, 1987), p. 233.

who considered themselves to have little in common with Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright and Walter travers.

I will use margo todd’s definition of a Puritan as one who wanted the total purging of all things roman from the english church, while advocating a godly discipline to be adopted by society at large made possible by the preaching of the Bible in all churches. furthermore, the advocates of such ecclesiastical reforms remained within the english church, conforming for the greater good of a future complete reforma-tion through their internal efforts.79 Puritans include such men as anthony gilby, Thomas Cartwright, Walter travers, the younger laurence humphrey, edward Derring, and William fulke. separatists include robert Browne, henry Barrow, John Penry, and robert harrison. It has been said that the separatists deserve their own cate-gory because of their radical views of congregational autonomy and their repudiation of the idea of an established church.80 a further dis-tinction between the Puritans and the separatists was the view of the former that it was no sin to remain in an imperfect institution in order to change it. The latter group saw no difference in remaining in the institution to change it and perpetuating the imperfections of the institution.81

In 1566 Bullinger, sympathising with nascent Puritanism, wrote to the Puritan Bishop horne telling him that it would be prudent for him not to discuss the limits of magisterial authority, lest it should generate any disorders in the realm.82 The popular association between Puritanism and subversion lasted well into the seventeenth-century, with John Donne preaching a sermon in 1622, in which he ruefully, though quite rightly, observed that Puritans would have the king cen-sured and corrected!83 In the Puritan-compiled Fortress of Fathers (1566) there were numerous calls to obedience to god over prince.

36 chapter one

84 Fortress of Fathers (n.p. 1566), fol. B.85 Cf. Philip melanchthon, ‘Commentarii in epist. Pauli ad romanos’, Cap.xIII,

Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 15, (hall: C.a. schwetscher and son, 1848).86 Fortress, fol. D4.87 Ibid., (no fols).

When justifying the compilation of the opinions of the most learned european reformers, the title page of the Fortress defined itself against those who ‘appoint the authority of princes and prelates larger than the truth is’. Peter martyr’s authority was invoked to remind the englishman that ‘if he [prince] would go beyond those bounds [god’s laws], and command anything that is contrary to godliness or the law of god, we ought rather to obey god than men…’ .84 When quoting melanchthon’s comments on romans 13:1, the Fortress ignored the unusually lauda-tory account that melanchthon wrote of secular government and pro-vided only those sections where he stressed obedience to god over government.85 Wolfgang musculus was quoted admitting that subjects must render obedience to the magistrate, but that they should remem-ber that they belong not to the magistrate but to god.86 finally the authority of rudolph gualter was appealed to in warning readers of the dangers of being over-awed by magisterial authority.87

The political and religious vicissitudes briefly outlined in this chap-ter serve to provide some historical background to the thought that will be explored in the subsequent chapters of this study. furthermore, I wish to show how the confrontation between numerous forces such as politics with religion, the new reformed theology with lingering medieval ideas, and the reformation emphasis on the supremacy of conscience with the need of ecclesiastical uniformity contributed to the ambiguity of english political thought. If much of the political thought of the Continental reformers such as luther, Zwingli, and Calvin was an attempt to come to grips with the apparent political implications of the new Protestant theology, so the english scene from 1547–1603 generated political theories that tried to make sense of the political and intellectual changes taking place, all the while attempting to remain faithful to god over any man.

Part II

God, Man, and thInGs

1 Charles taylor, A Secular Age, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, harvard University Press, 2007), p. 446.

2 Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, (London: Weidenfeld and nicolson, 1965), p. 152. Italics added. Cf. Idem pp. 149 & 166 for Walzer’s statements concerning the seventeenth-century Puritans’ casting off the Great Chain of Being for divine will. see ralph C. hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 1–22 for a discussion of providentialism and its impact on political action. Cf taylor, Secular Age, p. 125.

ChaPter tWo

order and WILL In tUdor thoUGht

Introduction

The worldview of the tudor Protestants was, for the most part, ambig-uous. There was tension between a traditional fixed view of the cosmic order and the new emphasis on divine providence. Charles taylor speaks of the shift from a ‘hierarchical order, which had divine endorse-ment’ to an alternative model where mobilization rather than fix-ity became the core value.1 Michael Walzer pointed out that the seventeenth-century Puritan movement had completely cast off any talk of universal hierarchy that had characterized social thought only a century previously. The medieval universe was ‘pluralist’ with ‘angels and stars in the celestial spheres, popes and kings on earth’ occupying places ‘fixed in nature and linked in an harmonious fashion with the rest of the cosmic order’. Walzer identifies an epoch in intellectual his-tory when this medieval cosmology was replaced by an emphasis on dynamic, personal, and divine will. how did shift this come to pass? Walzer provides the clue speaking of ‘Calvin’s God’ who ‘reigned over a single, unified domain’ with ‘all powers held from him directly and [owing] nothing to nature’. Indeed, ‘all men were his instruments, and whether they allied themselves with his sovereignty or rebelled against it, he imparted to them all something of his own willfulness’.2 Though overstating his case, Walzer sees the theology of the reformation as pivotal in a shift in worldview from the medieval concept of imper-sonal fixed order to an emphasis on God’s dynamic will working

40 chapter two

3 see W.h. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics: Two Traditions of English Political Thought 1500–1700, (London: oxford University Press, 1964), passim; Christopher Morris, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker, (London: oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 16–26.

4 G.r. elton, England under the Tudors, (London: Methuen, 1955), p. 397; e.M.W. tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, (London: Pimlico, (1943) 1998), p. 12.

5 Jonathan scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 43.

through all things. Walzer’s generalization may apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism, but to speak of sixteenth-century english Protestants as having cast off order and hierarchy altogether would be mistaken. Indeed, speculation on order, degree, and rank was quite characteristic of political theory in tudor england.3 Both G.r. elton and e.M.W tillyard marveled at the readiness of even the tudor Puritans to retain the concept of universal order and rank.4 Yet the nature of order was changing. The sixteenth-century was a transitional period in english thought, when the idea of order still lingered, but was being invoked alongside a distinctly reformed emphasis on God’s dynamic will as an explanation for order, rank, and events. If their sev-enteenth-century disciples had let go of the medieval worldview the loosening grip is evident in the thought of their spiritual fathers of the previous century. The whole intricate edifice was eventually to be cast off in the following century by hobbes and Locke, who, like Protestants, placed the heaviest emphasis on will; not the will of God but the will of the sovereign and the people. This chapter will survey the transition from strong views on fixed cosmic and social order to an ambivalent accommodation of traditional fixity with a strong emphasis on God’s will as the determining principle behind all order. It is in the writings of the Protestant divines that we witness a shift in paradigms from cos-mic necessity to world as will.

By studying the worldview of any age or re-entering an ‘alien mental world’5 we may find it easier to understand why so many ideas not given the slightest bit of scientific or philosophic credence today, may have been considered perfectly rational and even a tenant of rationality hundreds of years ago. The second half of the sixteenth-century was a period of conceptual transition in tudor england. Political theorists were torn between a traditional conception of impersonal fixed hierar-chy and a newer emphasis—brought about by political crisis and nour-ished by Continental reformed thought—on God’s dynamic will working in nature and society. If one hopes to understand the tudor

order and will in tudor thought 41

6 antony Black, ‘The individual and society’, in J.h. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 603. Cf. ernst troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, olive Wyong (tr.), 2 vols., (London: allen and Unwin, 1931 [1911]), vol. 1, p. 278. Brian tierney argues against interpretations of ockham’s cosmology that describe an ockhamist universe as a universe ruled by God’s arbitrary will, where all norms could have easily been different. For tierney, ockham’s God was one who exercised will in accordance with reason. The Idea of Natural Rights, (Grand rapids: eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 175. W.d.J. Cargill Thompson makes the interesting comment that it was through Luther’s influence that the political ideas of ockham became mainstream in Protestantism. The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (sussex: harvester Press, 1984), p. 8.

7 Peter Martyr Vermigli, ‘of ciuill and ecclesiasticall power’ (1561), in torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), p. 80.

englishman’s views concerning the state and the citizen’s relationship to it, then an understanding of the more general views of the tudor englishman is essential because propositions concerning the state and the citizen flowed from general propositions concerning God and his creation. Unlike in modern political philosophy, where society is viewed as a confusion of competing wills, which have to be either har-monized or managed by the state, the medieval and early-modern vision of society was of a terrestrial sphere that needed to be harmo-nised with an eternal and heavenly ideal. If there was any medieval tradition to which Protestant providentialism approximated, it was the nominalist tradition. as antony Black writes, in contradistinction to the tradition of fixed and impersonal order, nominalism ‘emphasised the essential arbitrariness of God’, holding that ‘regularities of natural and human phenomena are the result of contingent circumstance rather than innate tendencies’.6 In the case of the english Protestants, what seems to have happened is that the idea of universal fixed imper-sonal order—metaphysics—became mostly subsumed under the idea of providence—theology. This was perpetuated by a reformed and, as will be shown, Calvinistic theology. order was still invoked, but it became less cosmic and impersonal and took on a more divine-fiat quality. rather than speaking of politics in fixed cosmological terms it became a divine revelation, or, in Peter Martyr Vermigli’s terms, ‘Kingdoms and Commonwealths can thus be called workshops of the divine will’.7

This is not to say that there was a unified movement among all english political thought to do away with the medieval notion of fixed impersonal hierarchy. Indeed, J.P. sommerville maintains that even in

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8 J.P. sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640, (London and new York: Longman, 1986), p. 48.

9 Margo todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 233.

10 J.G.a. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton, new Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 49.

11 For the whole classical tradition of the Great Chain of Being see arthur o. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: harvard University Press, 1964 [1936]), pp. 24–66.

early seventeenth-century thought, ‘The universe was often viewed as an orderly hierarchical structure, or Great Chain of Being, in which each part was related by correspondence or analogy to all other parts’.8 Margo todd says that during the seventeenth-century there was a reac-tion to the levelling principles of the Puritan movement; theorists swung back to universal hierarchy and fixed order.9 If the seventeenth-century theorists began to place a heavy emphasis on order and hierar-chy, without equal attention to God’s will, then this was a swing back to the medieval theory. nonetheless, despite efforts to reinvigorate the traditional worldview it was eventually replaced. The fading of the medieval worldview in theology had its impact on political thought at large.

Medieval order

The medieval concept of order and hierarchy was largely impersonal and apprehended by reason and observation. J.G.a. Pocock wonder-fully paints the medieval vision in which ‘the individual employed rea-son, which disclosed to him the eternal hierarchies of unchanging nature and enjoined him to maintain the cosmic order by maintaining his place in that social and spiritual category to which his individual nature assigned him…’ .10 It seems to have had its first expression in classical thought. Plato envisioned a world of perfect reality, of which this temporal world was a mere reflection. This led to a hierarchy within reality: the more an idea resembled the eternal forms in its immutabil-ity and clarity, the more perfect it was. Thus mathematics was a more perfect science than biology, which was the study of mere fluctuating appearances.11 nevertheless, it accommodated itself quite well to the Christian philosophy of the middle ages, being translated into that


12 Ibid., p. 67. as ernst troeltsch points out the two traditions of natural law and divine will as justifications for political authority can both be traced back to the influ-ence of augustine. troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 158.

13 augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 1.8, Corpus Christianorum, vol. 32, (turnholt: typographi Brepols editores Pontificii, 1962).

14 sheldon s. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, second edition, (Princeton and oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1960]), p. 141. It is an indication of the protean nature of augustine’s thought that another writer eight years previously could describe the divine-voluntarist view of the universe as augustinian. see Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, (London: routledge and Keegan Paul, 1952), p. 47.

15 taylor, Secular Age, pp. 164–165.16 ‘Unam sanctam’ (november 1302), Brian tierney, The Crisis of Church and State

1050–1300, (englewood Cliffs, new Jersey: Prentice-hall, 1964), p. 189.

tradition by st. augustine and Pseudo-dionysius.12 In his influential treatise, De Doctrina Christiana, augustine affirmed a natural grada-tion of permanence and impermanence; sentience and insentience; rationality and non-rationality:

Then, when they [humankind] go on to look into the nature of life itself, if they find it mere vegetative life, without sense, such as that of plants, they consider it inferior to sentient life, such as that of cattle; and above this, again, they place intelligent life, such as that of men. and, perceiving that even this is subject to change, they are compelled to place above it, again, that unchangeable life, which is not at one time foolish, at another time wise, but on the contrary is wisdom itself.13

sheldon s. Wolin describes augustine’s conception of the political order as possessing a ‘rooted stability, a sustenance drawn from the nature of creation itself ’. For augustine the political order was fixed, for ‘it participated in the perfection written into the very essence of things’.14 speaking of the medieval tradition Charles taylor says, ‘…any attempt to deviate from it turned reality against itself. society would be dena-tured in the attempt’ for the medieval order was not ‘simply contin-gent’.15 In the bull Unam Sanctam (1302), probably the most significant ecclesiastical document on medieval church/state relations, Pseudo-dionysius was used to illustrate ecclesiastical supremacy from the notion of universal hierarchy and the principle of intermediation. something whose authority is given through an intermediary is dependent on that intermediary; if one thing is dependent on another then it is inferior, for it must look to that other thing for the fulfillment of its being or authority.16 But all power on earth is possessed by the

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17 This is what Walter Ullmann called the ‘descending’ theory of power. A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages, (Middlesex: Penguin, 1965).

18 dante alighieri, De Monarchia, 1.iii, Carlo signorelli (ed.), (Milan: Proprieta Letteraria riservata, 1964).

19 John scotus erigena, ‘de divisione naturae’, Medieval Philosophy, herman shapiro (ed.), (new York: random house, 1964), pp. 84–103.

20 Louis B. Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform, (Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 17–30.

21 Thomas aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, 3.81, 5 Vols., Vernon Bourke (tr.), (Garden City, nY: Image Books, 1956).

22 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53.

pope, vicarius Dei, who distributes it to the secular powers.17 Therefore, because the secular powers depend on the spiritual powers for their authority, the former are inferior to the latter. about a decade later dante built a system of hierarchy based on the attributes of God and those things in creation that share them. humans are the highest within the hierarchy because they have reason, which is also possessed by God. The purpose of society is to develop this most high faculty.18 John scotus erigena attempted to elaborate the idea of natural hierarchy in his great work De Divisione Naturae. he pointed out that inferiority is determined by the extent to which an object is derived from something else. That which is most directly derived from God himself, like a per-son or an angel, is higher in the created hierarchy.19 Jean Gerson, draw-ing heavily on dionysius, saw all power relations—ecclesiastical or political—as a reflection of the heavenly hierarchy of trinity, angels, and virtues; practically immutable.20 The idea was resident in mature scholasticism with Thomas aquinas continuing augustine’s theory.21 This order was largely impersonal in nature, more a reflection of God’s nature than an expression of his will. Indeed, ‘its legitimation and its organizing categories were alike timeless, and change could exist in it only as degeneration or recovery’.22

With the coming of the reformation scholastic philosophy took a blow, though not by all Protestant theologians. For some, Luther and Calvin in particular, scholasticism and aristotelianism represented attempts to prove absurd doctrines or an arrogant curiosity which con-structed Babylonian towers with the intention of trying to penetrate heaven to catch a glimpse of God. not surprisingly, given Luther’s doc-trine of the priesthood of all believers, the reformer had little to say about social gradations derived from cosmic order, and his doctrine of universal priesthood could often sound like a rejection of hierarchy in toto:


23 Martin Luther, ‘on secular authority’, Martin Luther and John Calvin, On Secular Authority, harro hopfl (ed. & tr.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 33.

24 Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 49.25 on the anabaptists the standard study remains George h. Williams, The Radical

Reformation, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962); see also The Radical Reformation, George Baylor (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For the thesis that the radical reformation on the Continent was vindicated in the english revolution, see scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 253, 270.

26 Vermigli, ‘Ciuill and ecclesiasticall power’, in Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 86.

…there neither can, nor ought to be any superiors amongst Christians. rather, each is equally subject to all the rest….among Christians there is no superior except Christ alone. and how can there be superiority [or inferiority] when all are equal, and all have the same right, power, goods and honour? no one desires to be another’s superior, for everyone wants to be the inferior of the rest.23

despite the apparent wink at social equality, overall Luther was mainly concerned with ecclesiastical and spiritual equality, not equality in the kingdom. Luther could derive social rank from the notion of vocation, or the dynamic will of God as an explanation for one’s current social status. Indeed, for Luther and Calvin, any order in the universe and in society was not be deduced from first principles concerning the nature or quiddity of God, but to be explained by way of appealing to the will of God made visible in nature and society. as W.d.J. Cargill Thompson writes concerning Luther’s theology, ‘he [God] is continually active in his creation, upholding and sustaining the universe and replenishing his creations. If he did not sustain it, it would collapse’.24 The spirit of Luther’s religious parity never broke out into social parity in his own thought. This happened with the anabaptists and their cognate sects such as the Family of Love, and over the next hundred years with the separatist congregations and the Levellers.25 even the scholastic Protestant Vermigli did not seriously engage the medieval arguments for hierarchy. after reflecting on papal use of dionysian theology to justify hierarchy he merely commented, ‘has he not built his tyranny beautifully?’26

Order and Providence in Tudor England

elton considers the concept of universal hierarchy—an ‘eternally fixed scheme of things’ or ‘settled laws’—as the basic worldview of tudor

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27 G.r. elton, England under the Tudors, (London: Methuen, 1955), p. 396.28 Ibid, p. 261.29 Meyrick h. Carré, Phases of Thought in England, (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949),

p. 199.30 J.G.a. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 4.31 stephen L. Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History

of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England, (new York and oxford: oxford University Press, 1989), p. 16.

32 Ibid., p. 18.33 Ibid., p. 26.

englishmen and women.27 Indeed, far from the notion of ‘order’ reflect-ing a predictable, ‘ordered’ society, elton holds that the concept was so popular because it created some security in an age of change and unpre-dictability.28 Furthermore, it is the looming presence of the concept of universal hierarchy that leads elton to believe that tudor england was essentially medieval in its worldview. similarly, Mayrick h. Carré holds that discourse on fixed order was distinctively medieval. For Carré, the thought of richard hooker was england’s best example of pure medi-eval thought. By this he means that hooker ‘will not allow that the laws of things are the arbitrary manifestations of God’s will’.29 J.G.a. Pocock speaks of the late medieval and renaissance tendency to find the ‘par-ticular less rational than the universal…’ .30 It made more sense to see social institutions as the corollary of universal and necessary principles than of particular outcomes of particular acts of divine will. stephen L. Collins uses words like ‘fixed’, ‘static’, ‘immutable’, and ‘constancy’ to describe the tudor worldview.31 For Collins, ‘order and degree were at the heart of tudor concepts of society and the commonwealth’.32 Because ‘man’s world was an imperfect reflection of the divine order’ there was ‘no acceptance of change as natural’.33 Collins points out that the tudor preoccupation with immutability had to deal with the fact that there were obvious religious, social, economic, and political changes taking place in sixteenth-century. Theorists usually either ignored this ‘ambivalence’ between concept and fact or tried to show how the fact of social change could be understood within a framework of order.

The idea of universal order was immensely appealing to humanist scholars who sought to revive ancient wisdom. For as well as augustine, Cicero and Plutarch spoke of a natural hierarchy. one locus classicus in english humanist literature for rational order in the universe and


34 Thomas elyot, The Gouernour, (London: everyman, 1907), p. 6.35 desiderus erasmus, ‘Institution Principi Christiani’ (1516), Collected Works of

Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings, vol. 5, a.h.t. Levi (ed.), (toronto: toronto University Press, 1986), p. 274.

36 Thomas starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, t.F. Mayer (ed.), (London: royal historical society, 1989), p. 40. Italics added.

society is contained in Thomas elyot’s The Boke Named the Gouernour (1531). Within the early part of this book is a justification for social stratification on the grounds of a rational order in nature. elyot moved from cosmic order to social order; those of one rank should not med-dle with the affairs of another rank. an economic trope is used to illus-trate the point:

and that have we in daily experience; for the pans and pots garnish well the kitchen, and yet should they be to the chamber none ornament. also the beds, testars, and pillows beseemeth not the hall, no more than the carpets and cushions becometh the stable. semblably the potter and tinker, only perfect in their craft, shall little do in the ministration of justice. a ploughman or carter shall make but a feeble answer to an ambassador. also a weever or fuller should be an unmeet captain of an army, or in any other office of a governor.34

The great dutch humanist desiderius erasmus said the same thing fif-teen years earlier but used a different metaphor; namely that as a per-formance of song and dance is grotesque without proper order and harmony, so is a state where different ranks and stations do not know how to act accordingly.35

Thomas starkey’s Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (c.1529–32) places the same emphasis on order, proportion, and cooperation, using the organic metaphor to make his point. The ‘commyn wele’ consists in people ‘living together in civil life according to the excellent dignity of the nature of man every part of this body agreeing to other, doing his office and duty appointed thereto, there I say you may be sure is <set> a very and true commonwealth, there it flourisheth as much as the nature of man will suffer…’ .36 although starkey was not as cosmic in his vision as elyot, he continued the notion of an objective and universal order as being the essence of a proper society. Unlike later Protestant discourses on order, starkey had little to say about God. The order that starkey spoke of, which finds its expression in social ranks, is an order neces-sitated, not by God’s will, but by human nature. starkey’s thought is aristotelian in that he offered a naturalistic justification for the type of

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37 Ibid., p. 42.38 Ibid., p. 43. For providentialism in the thought of starkey, see starkey, An

Exhortation to the People, (London 1536), p. 9. Cited in a.n. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 75.

39 William tyndale, Obedience of a Christian Man (Marlborough, 1528), (Yorkshire: The scholar Press, 1970), fol. xviii.

40 Ibid., fols. xviii & xxv–xxxi.41 Thomas Becon, ‘The Governance of Virtue’ (c.1546), Early Works of Thomas

Becon, Parker society, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1843), p. 402.42 Ibid., p. 456.

society he was defending. starkey also soaked up the lessons of Machiavelli and was happy to state that part of a commonwealth’s flour-ishing or regression ‘hang something of fortune and chance…’ .37 ‘Fortune’ was not merely a word used to describe God’s mysterious ways. It is a force quite apart from God. Lupset is alarmed by Pole’s emphasis on such a force. nevertheless, Pole vaguely assures him that God will take the trials of fortune into account in the final judgment.38

The earliest tudor Protestant discourse on rank and order was theo-logical, not metaphysical. The idea of social order was present in William tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which was a doctrinal and pragmatic apology for Protestantism. Claiming that his intention was simply to teach ‘Gods law’ or ‘what obedience God requireth of us unto father and mother/master/lord/king and all supe-riors…’ ,39 tyndale tried to show not only that Protestant theology was true, but that Protestantism enjoined a strict observance of social rank and obedience to the prince.40 But tyndale expressed his views on hier-archy by way of appeal to God’s will, not by way of cosmic hierarchy or impersonal order. similarly, in the Governance of Virtue (c.1546), dedi-cated to henry VIII’s third wife, Jane seymour, Thomas Becon pre-scribed the way the godly must behave at every moment of the day. Under the rubric ‘What is to be done after dinner’, and sounding much like later Puritans, Becon recommended to ‘return unto thy labour, and virtuously exercise thyself, according to thy vocation and calling’.41 recognising that the devil—‘troubler of all good orders’—will place seditious thoughts into the head of a willing soul, Becon encouraged his reader to ‘content thyself with thy vocation, labour diligently and quietly for thy living, study to maintain peace, pray for the high pow-ers…and defend thyself against satan, and all his crafty suggestions…’ .42 Becon, though concerned with social rank and order, did not appeal to


43 ‘homily on obedience’ (1547), G.r. elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 15. Italics added.

some Great Chain of Being but used the plainer vocabulary of divine arrangement—vocation. although a preoccupation with divine will was evident in henrician Protestant thought its importance increased noticeably in edwardian (1547–53) political speculation. although this shift to providentialism may be attributed to the fact that the Protestants of edwardian and elizabethan england faced some of the same political tumults of the henrician period it is probably not a sufficient explanation for the permanence of the shift. The emphasis on providentialism in the very system of Protestant theology proba-bly goes some way in explaining its permanence right up until the seventeenth-century.

Order and Providence in Edwardian Thought

edwardian england retained the concept of social rank and station. Yet the concept was expressed less by way of cosmic hierarchy than by a vocabulary of divine will. one of the few examples of cosmic language in describing social rank comes from the 1547 edwardian Homily on Obedience. The Homily makes use of all words associated with immuta-ble station, and is best quoted at length:

Almighty God hath created and appointed all things in heaven, earth and waters in a most excellent and perfect order. In heaven he hath appointed distinct orders and states of archangels and angels. In the earth he has assigned kings, princes, with other governors under them, all in good and necessary order….every degree of people, in their vocation, calling and office, has appointed to them their duty and order. some are in high degree, some in low; some kings and princes, some inferiors and sub-jects, priests and laymen, masters and servants, fathers and children, hus-bands and wives, rich and poor….43

This contains the medieval concept of hierarchy. however, talk of cau-sality, rationality, or likeness to the divine substance is completely eschewed. necessity is invoked but within the midst of numerous references to God’s will as the organizing principle of heavenly and social hierarchy. owing to the illiteracy of preachers and the popular-ity of Catholicism in the rural churches of england, the minority

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44 diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, (Penguin: London, 1999), p. 194.

45 Cited in richard L. Greaves, ‘traditionalism and the seeds of revolution in the social Principles of the Geneva Bible’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, VII/1 (april 1976), p. 94. Cf. Graham arthur Cole, ‘Cranmer’s Views on the Bible and the Christian Prince: an examination of his Writings and the edwardian Formularies’, (M.Th. thesis, University of sydney, 1983), p. 85.

46 John Cheke, The Hurt of Sedition, (London, 1549), fol. a vii.47 Franlkin Le Van Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, (new York: russell

and russell, 1966 [1940]), p. 87.

government in 1547 banned free preaching and commissioned author-ised prayers and homilies. The above homily would have been heard by hundreds of captive congregations all around england.44 Writing in 1549 archbishop Thomas Cranmer saw in the Bible a complete guide to hierarchical living. discarding the vocabulary of cosmic order, he affirmed that a guide for conduct in all ranks could be found within the pages of scripture. Though Cranmer was indifferent to the Great Chain of Being, he saw society as a collection of ranks, each of which required a correct mode of conduct:

here may princes learn how to govern their subjects: subjects obedience, love and dread to their princes. husbands, how they should behave then unto their wives: how to educate their children and servants. and contrary the wives, children, and servants may know their duty to their husbands, parents and masters. here may all manner of persons…learn all things what they ought to believe, what they ought to do, & what they should not do….45

a naturalistic justification for hierarchy was offered by the humanist scholar, sir John Cheke. rank is natural because some people have been given greater gifts by nature.46 such justifications were rare amongst english Protestants. The concept of immutable rank and order passed into the worldview of the english reformers with ease. If there is one thing that is noticeable, it is simply that the english Protestants spoke of it more in theological terms than in cosmic terms. Franklin Le Van Baumer in his study of this period attributes all talk of God’s will to the anxiety that tudor theorists had about rebellion.47 no doubt this was partly true, but the reception of strong predestinarian views from the Continent during the reign of edward VI explains the permanence of this shift in thought.


48 taylor, Secular Age, p. 176.49 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, p. 107.50 troeltsch’s comments are typical. Social Teaching, vol. 2, pp. 581–587.51 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, talcott Parsons (tr.),

(London: allen and Unwin, 1976), passim.52 Bruce Gordon, ‘Introduction: architect of reformation’, Bruce Gordon and

emidio Campi, Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger 1504–1575, (Grand rapids: Baker academic, 2004), p. 25.

53 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, (new haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 245.

John Calvin’s Influence in England

If it is true that one of the great ideas that transformed the medieval into the modern world was new emphasis on providence, then the influence of reformed theology, Calvinism in particular, must be of interest to the historian of political ideas and institutions.48 Walzer points out that the seventeenth-century Puritans did not see their polit-ical campaigns in terms of rights but in terms of a divine commission.49 If, as Walzer has argued, this feeling of calling had any impact on the modern political world, its origins and expression in the previous cen-tury are worth studying. since the early twentieth-century it has become a commonplace in historiography and political thought to identify Calvin’s soteriological doctrine of predestination as the hinge on which his theology turns.50 This was popularised by Max Weber in his attempt to show that the origins of modern capitalism are to be found in the Puritan emphasis on calling, predestination, and the supposed belief of the Puritans that one’s salvation could be temporally confirmed by worldly prosperity.51 By the beginning of elizabeth’s reign, the ideas of John Calvin were exerting the most influence over english Protestantism. The massive influence of Bullinger over edwardian churchmen would have facilitated the eventual dominance of Calvinism, for Calvin was one of the few theologians ever cited by the swiss reformer.52 Philip Benedict argues that ‘not only was the dominant theology of the early elizabethan church manifestly reformed; with time it grew distinc-tively Calvinist’. no author would be as frequently printed during elizabeth’s reign, nor would any author compete with his presence in the libraries and readings of oxford and Cambridge theologians.53

no one would have denied God’s providential hand in the fortunes of a nation; yet the english Protestants were obsessed with it. Conse-quently when Catholic polemicist, John Christopherson, was writing

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54 Christopherson, Exhortation to Beware of Rebellion, (London, 1554), fol. Y v.55 see raab, English Face of Machiavelli, pp. 69–70, 73; Markku Peltonen, ‘Classical

republicanism in tudor england: The Case of richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie’, History of Political Thought, XV/4, (Winter 1994), p. 472.

56 John hooper, ‘declaration’ (1550), Early Writings of John Hooper, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), pp. 387–388.

57 John Calvin, ‘Institutio religionis Christianae’ (1539–54), Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 29, William Baum, edward Cunitz, edward reuss (eds.), (Brunswig: C.a. schwatschke and son, 1862), p. 891.

58 Charles davis Cremeans, The Reception of Calvinistic Thought in England, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949), p. 60. speaking of Cranmer, the architect of english Protestantism, diarmaid MacCulloch says ‘predestination was a basic assump-tion of the archbishop’. Thomas Cranmer, (new haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 428.

against Protestant ministers, one of their doctrines that he singled out as particularly noxious was their bias ‘against free will…’ .54 The Protestant mind did not abandon the notion of natural order and hier-archy, but these commonplaces of political rhetoric were less important than direct appeals to the Bible and interpreting God’s providence in society. some historians have identified the general rejection of fortune in tudor political thought as a possible reason for the hostility directed towards Machiavelli.55 Certainly reformed Protestantism rejected for-tune as an explanation of anything.56 Calvin allowed some talk of for-tune, but only if it was borne in mind that the word was really referring to God’s mysterious will: ‘…in whatever way things are ordained by the dispensation of God, they are to us fortuitous’.57 reformed theology espoused a radical theological determinism that was repulsive to most Catholics and humanists. With the Protestants of edwardian england there was a mindset—probably largely Calvinistic—that nature and society were simply the revelation of God’s will. Consequently, events were divined for their theological meaning. Political doctrines were not put forward simply as pragmatic advances, or as being in accord-ance with teleology and reason, but as ways of averting the wrath of a historically engaged God.

There is good evidence showing that it was Calvin’s writings on providence and predestination that had an impact on the english Protestants.58 In fact, it seems that many english Protestants under edward VI were quite determined in their Calvinism and in their opposition to the more libertarian perspectives of Melanchthon and Bullinger. When one reads the correspondence from english Protestants


59 traheron to Bullinger (sept. 10, 1552), Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols., Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), vol. 1, p. 325. traheron would have meant by ‘among us’ his associates at oxford University. see Jane e.a. dawson, ‘The early Career of Christopher Goodman and his Place in the development of english Protestant Thought’, (Unpublished Ph.d. thesis, University of durham, 1978), p. 72. Calvin’s Institutio was being read in england by 1552. dawson, ‘early Career of Christopher Goodman’, p. 16.

60 traheron to Bullinger (June 3, 1553), Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 326.61 traheron to Calvin (n.d), ibid., p. 328.62 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 428.

to Bullinger during the edwardian and Marian reign, it becomes evi-dent that Bullinger had the status as a doctor of considerable authority. actually, he was rarely taken to task for any of his views. nevertheless, in a letter written to heinrich Bullinger in 1552, Protestant stu-dent, Bartholomew traheron, told Bullinger that he had heard that he entertained the same views as Melanchthon regarding the providence and predestination of God, namely that there is a synergy between the efforts of man and God in the process of salvation. traheron said this with some caution, as though he wanted to distance himself from any such j’accuse. he then told Bullinger that John Calvin’s De Aeterna Dei Praedestinatione had been well received in england: ‘But the greater number among us, of whom I own myself to be one, embrace the opin-ion of John Calvin as being perspicuous, and most agreeable to holy scripture’.59 When traheron received Bullinger’s non-Calvinistic response, he wrote back to inform him of his displeasure and took the opportunity to summarise the english view of God’s providence:

We say that God permits many things, when he does not renew men by his spirit, but gives them up to the dominion of their own lusts. and though God does not himself create in us evil desires, which are born with us; we maintain nevertheless, that he determines the place, the time, and mode [of bringing them to action], so that nothing can happen oth-erwise than as he has before determined that it should happen. For, as augustine has it, he ordains even darkness. to be brief, we ascribe all actions to God.60

traheron then reproved Bullinger for deviating from Calvin’s formula-tion. Finally when traheron wrote to Calvin he was careful to state in his introduction, ‘whatever men have proposed or determined, never-theless every event is dependent upon the will of God…’ .61 For the most part ‘free-willers’ were outcasts in edward’s reign.62

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63 ‘Indeed we do not, with the stoics, contrive a necessity from a perpetual connec-tion and intimately involved series of causes, which is contained in nature; but we make God the ruler (arbitrium) and director (moderator) of all things, who, according to his wisdom, has decreed from the limit of eternity what he was going to do; and that which he has decreed now follows by his power’. Calvin, ‘Institutio’ (1539–54), p. 890.

64 John Bradford, ‘a treatise of election and Free Will’ (1562), Writings of John Bradford containing Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), p. 212.

65 h.C. Porter (ed.), Puritanism in Tudor England, (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 56.

66 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), p. 68. Guy notices that ‘the doctrine of predestination became a pillar of english Protestant theology at this time’. Tudor England, (oxford: oxford University Press, 1988), p. 221.

67 Collinson considers it an overstatement that english predestinarianism was com-pletely owing to Calvin. Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 36–37. see also John Patrick donnelly’s study, which argues that Calvin’s theological influence was not as profound as has been previously thought. also, he argues that Peter Martyr—so influential in edwardian england—did not get his predestinarianism from Calvin but from the

Protestant preacher, John Bradford, wrote his A Treatise of Election and Free Will, which was published posthumously in 1562. In the brief treatise there is a discussion of the stoic doctrine of necessity, lifted straight from Calvin’s Institutio.63

The stoics’ opinion is to be condemned as concerning fatal necessity….For they did imagine a perpetual connexion and knitting together of causes by a perpetual order which is contained in nature: whereas we should certainly know that it is God which is the ruler and arbiter of all things, which of his wisdom hath foreseen and determined all things, that he will do, and now of his power doth in his time put the same in execution, according as he hath decreed with himself.64

If the predestinarian theology of the english reformers went some way in shaping their political thought, then there is a good case to be made for the influence of Calvin on english Protestant political thought, as least with respect to the preoccupation with God’s will that so charac-terised it. Calvin’s Institutio was a popular divinity textbook at Cambridge during the second half of edward’s reign; as Porter describes the english situation: ‘…a group of english theologians swallowed it whole…’ .65 archbishop Parker was warned of a group of Puritan preachers who would denounce anyone failing to preach God’s predestination.66 regardless of whether it was Calvin’s writings directly that sparked the english preoccupation and development of the doctrine of predestination, its impact was lasting.67 Furthermore, the


likes of Paul, augustine, and Martin Bucer. ‘Italian Influences on the development of Calvinist scholasticism’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, VII/1, (april 1976): pp. 81–101, 97. Peter Martyr openly declared that God, not the stars, is the cause of political tumult. Marvin W. anderson, ‘royal Idolatry: Peter Martyr and the reformed tradition’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 69, (1978), p. 184. Most recently torrance Kirby has sug-gested that the texts of Bullinger (Decades) and Vermigli (Loci Communes) were at least equally important as anything produced by Calvin in shaping english Protestantism into the seventeenth-century. Indeed, in 1586 archbishop Whitgift requested all min-isters to read Bullinger’s Decades. Zurich Connection, pp. 3, 5, 9, 29.

68 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 37. similar complaints were still be-ing made in 1606. see Christopher haigh, ‘The Church of england, the Catholics and the people’, Peter Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, (London, new York: arnold, 1997), p. 245.

69 tom Webster, ‘early stuart Puritanism’, in John Coffey and Paul C.h. Lim (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 56.

preoccupation with God’s providence seems to have survived well into the elizabethan regime and beyond; Collinson records the mur-murs of an english rector, who with some bitterness spoke of the constant prating about God’s predestination by the surrounding clergy.68 In 1626 and 1628 Charles I issued proclamations to close con-troversial preaching and writing on predestination, given the heat being generated over the issue.69 Protestant providentialism would cre-ate tension in elizabethan political thought between divine will and impersonal order.

John Hooper and the Edwardian Divines

Bishop of London, John hooper’s interest in cosmic order was periph-eral in comparison to his interest in God’s politic will in history. hierarchy and order were not terms that hooper employed when making his exhortation to kings and subjects to act according to their station. hooper did not need to prove that such stations actually exist any more than he needed to prove the existence of a reality outside of the mind. The concern with order survived well into the radical and iconoclastic period of edwardian reform, and beyond into the elizabethan period. however, it was expressed not only in aristotelian terms or by way of nature, but also in terms of divine will. Unlike the aristotelian universe, the Protestant universe was intensely personal. hooper used divinely ordained social rank to admonish Catholics not to rebel against the edwardian reformation. In his Declaration of the

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70 John hooper, ‘declaration of the ten holy Commandments of almighty God’ (1550), Early Writings, p. 272.

71 Ibid., p. 367.72 Ibid., p. 363–364.73 hooper to Bullinger (aug. 1, 1551), Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 94.74 For english and european responses to plague and the sweat, see andrew

Cunningham and ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 272–294.

Ten Holy Commandments of Almighty God (1550) he affirmed early on that the Commandments were instituted to show how all are to behave in their divinely appointed stations. The stations referred to are typi-cal of such discourse: God-man; commonwealth-private; superior-inferior; husband-wife; father-son; citizen-landsman. all stations require a divinely ordained mode of conduct.70 hooper informed his readers that God ordains such ranks as a matter of social preservation. rank, if crucial to self-preservation, was, therefore, natural. here he added master-slave; disciple-teacher; and younger-elder to the list of stations.71 The reality of God’s will was crucial. In an attempt to muster up some sense of responsibility among the nobility of england to aid the progress of the reformation and to put down discontents, hooper reminded them that ‘kingdoms be altered and changed because of sin…’ . Furthermore, ‘God removed likewise princes from their digni-ties by reason of sin…’ .72 The following year hooper wrote to heinrich Bullinger informing him of the sweating sickness that had taken england and described it as a ‘remarkable token of divine vengeance’.73 two years later he wrote a whole homily on plague and punishment, specifically with reference to the sweating sickness that took england previously.74 The theme was one of divine quid pro quo; God rewards for faithful service, but also punishes for perfidy. typical of hooper, the homily is quite remarkable in its expression and all encompassing vision. he was interested in looking at two causes of plague: the natural and the supernatural. actually, he was interested in the natural only to brush it aside for a meditation on the supernatural:

and whereas reason hath many good and probable arguments in this matter touching the cause of pestilence…these causes are to be consid-ered as natural and consonant to reason; yet there be reasons and causes of pestilence of more weight, and more worthy of deep and advised con-siderations and advertisements than these be: and more, because they lie within man, and be marked but of very few, and hide themselves secretly,


75 hooper, ‘homily in time of Pestilence’ (1553), Later Writings of John Hooper, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), pp. 161–162 & 165.

76 Original Letters, vol. 1, pp. 324, 100, 273, 365, 143–144; Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 544; nicholas ridley, ‘a Piteous Lamentation’ (1556 ed.), Works of Nicholas Ridley, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), pp. 58–60.

77 John Bradford, ‘Meditation on the Commandments’ (1562), Bradford containing Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, pp. 161–162.

78 Martin Micronius to henry Bullinger (august 14, 1551), Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 574.

till they have poisoned the whole man, both body and soul. For indeed physicians that write, meddle with no causes that hurt man, but such as come unto man from without: as the humours, they say, take their infec-tion from unwholesome meat and evil diet, or else from the corruption of the air, with such like: but our saviour Christ sheweth that our corrup-tion and sickness riseth from within us….the principal and chief cause of pestilence is not the corruption of the air, nor in the superfluous humours within man; but that sin and the transgression of God’s law is the very cause and chief occasion of pestilence and of all other diseases.75

hooper, acknowledging natural causality, though rejecting its priority, showed that there is an invisible cause to visible events: heavenly will. This was the consensus of all edwardian Protestant divines.76 For exam-ple, John Bradford, later to be martyred under Mary, took the time in his posthumously published Meditations on the Commandments (1562) to explain social rank as divine will. Bradford, like all exegetes of the decalogue, understood the Fifth Commandment to teach that mother and father represent all offices of authority. Thus, when Bradford wrote that God ‘for order’s sake and the more commodity of man in this life hast set in degree and authority above me, comprehending them under the name of “father and mother” ’, he was in effect saying that all author-ity is by God’s provident will. The classic order of ‘superior degree’ was affirmed by Bradford: parents, magistrates, and masters.77 If Bradford imbibed his understanding of order from tradition, he derived his the-ological justification from his Calvinistic predestinarianism.

hooper’s providentialism was not merely academic, it led him to stress obedience: subjects to king (but never in spite of God), king to God. Certainly there was a pressing need for hooper to labour the point, for around the same time there were some sects, certainly anabaptists, denying the legitimacy of property rights and magisterial authority.78 The edwardian ecclesiastical reforms not only triggered defiance from loyal Catholics, but also raised the hopes of anti-royalists

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79 John hooper, ‘declaration’, Early Writings, p. 355.80 Ibid., p. 366.81 John hooper, ‘annotations on romans XIII’ (1551), Later Writings, p. 103.82 Ibid., p. 104.

and communitarian anarchists among the radical Protestant fringes. hooper derived all obedience from the fifth commandment to obey parents, parents understood as all those with authority: parents, teach-ers, and rulers. The latter ‘hath the defence of the country and the peo-ple of the same committed unto his charge…’ .79 hooper provided a succinct statement of what the Christian’s attitude to political govern-ment should be:

The sum and conclusion of this fifth precept, and all that I have spoken in it is: that such as the Lord hath appointed in the earth over us to rule, those we must reverence, honour, and obey with all fear and love; and that we derogate nothing of their dignity with contempt, contumacy, or unkindness. For seeing God would his ordinance that he hath instituted to be inviolated, it is our office to observe the degrees and order of pre-eminence as he hath instituted.80

Later hooper became more insistent on the divine imperative to obedi-ence. Though hooper cautioned Christians never to obey humankind over God, he made it clear that there was never any call for violent resistance to magistrates:

If they be according to the word of God, of necessity and bondage, upon pain of damnation they must be obeyed. If they be repugnant to the word of God, they should not be obeyed. Yet rather should a man suffer death than to defend himself by force and violent resisting of the superior pow-ers, as Christ, his apostles, and the prophets did.81

hooper advocated the most radical type of obedience possible for a Christian, obedience to tyrants and non-resistance even when impious and blasphemous legislation is forced upon unwilling subjects. such obedience can only be justified by reminding the subject that God has placed the prince in his station. hooper again emphasised the necessity of obedience from providential appointment: ‘But let the king and magistrate be as wicked as can be devised and thought, yet is his office and place the ordinance and appointment of God, and therefore to be obeyed’.82 he went on to give pragmatic reasons for obedience: it is bet-ter not to provoke God’s wrath upon oneself. even when giving prag-matic justifications for obedience hooper was totally theocentric in his


83 Ibid., p. 105.84 Ibid., p. 109.85 hooper, ‘homily in time of Pestilence’, pp. 167, 171.86 henry Machyn, diarist spanning the reigns of edward VI, Mary, and elizabeth,

noted numerous executions and pilloryings for seditious words. The Diary of Henry Machyn Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, (London: Camden society, 1848), pp. 34, 150, 154.

thought. The apostle Paul was interpreted as warning all, lest ‘ye should think it a light thing, and but a trifling matter to withstand and disobey the magistrates, understand ye that in your so doing ye withstand and fight against God…’ . Therefore, ‘…ye provoke judgment and vengeance against yourselves, and be culpable and guilty of God’s everlasting dis-pleasure, if ye repent not, and give over your obstinate and disobedient rebellion’. as well as rebellion never benefiting the rebel, eternally, the cost is ultimate:

absalom, with a thousand traitors against one true subject, prevailed not against his father david; but died the death of a traitor….If God’s word be true (as it cannot be false), all such as do by thought, word, or deed, intend to trouble, unquiet, change, alter, move, or resist the ordinance of God, which is the magistrates and higher powers, must needs of necessity perish, as well in this world, as in the world to come, except they repent, and cease from doing evil.83

summarising his argument hooper saw two good reasons not to rebel: divine will and the preservation of order. First, the magistrate’s very existence is ‘the ordinance of God…’ . second, disobedience breaks down God’s laws which ‘troubleth the public and common peace, and giveth other stomach and encouraging to disobey’.84 This was not hooper’s last word on the subject. In 1553, towards the end of King edward’s life, he speculated in a publicly read homily on whether the plague was God’s punishment for england’s lack of religious zeal. rebels in mind and deed were quite possibly responsible for england’s pesti-lence.85 obedience and non-resistance were considered sacrosanct, a matter pertaining to eternal destiny. Those who did not heed the admo-nitions of the clerics were publicly punished or executed. The general populace did not ignore such displays.86

order and rank in edwardian Protestant political thought was inseparable from more general speculation concerning God’s will. discourse on order and hierarchy was current during england’s most radical period of reformation, but the complex medieval metaphysical

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87 Winthrop s. hudson, John Ponet (1516?–1556): Advocate of Limited Monarchy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

88 Ponet, A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power, (strasbourg, 1556), (amsterdam: da Capo Press, 1972), p. 3.

foundation was replaced with a new emphasis on God’s direct will as a sufficient justification for social institutions.

The Great Chain of Being and Natural Portents in John Ponet’s shorte treatise

When in 1553 edward VI died and was replaced by Mary, many english Protestants, who could afford passage, fled to the Continent to practise their religion until God again made england good ground for the gos-pel. The marriage between medieval metaphysics and the new empha-sis on God’s will became most strained during this period, as seditious Protestant political theorists attempted to persuade all people by any political vocabulary that a revolutionary political agenda was neces-sary. The most ingenious of Protestant polemicists during the Marian reign was John Ponet, former Bishop of Winchester. Ponet fled Marian england, absconding in the midst of taking part in the unsuccessful Wyatt rebellion in 1554, to find refuge in strasbourg. Mid-way through his exile he published his Shorte Treatise of Politike Power, a manifesto of limited government and tyrannicide.87 Certainly this was the most sophisticated sedition published by a sixteenth-century englishman. Ponet was certainly the most refined of the notorious Marian exiles; a keen theorist, also, a gifted astronomer: he presented henry VIII with a sundial of his own novel design. It is not hard to see that a man of such erudition and conceptual finesse would choose to bring natural order into a radical manifesto on practical politics.

despite the tract’s seditious nature, Ponet began his Shorte Treatise by affirming a medieval conception of ontological rank in nature based on degrees of rationality. Ponet affirmed that ‘oxen, sheep, goats, and such other unreasonable creatures cannot for lack of reason rule them-selves, but must be ruled by a more excellent creature, that is man…’ .88 Ponet’s opening ontology was a straight advocacy of the Great Chain of Being. This is virtually all Ponet had to say about natural hierar-chy. Ponet then made the move from describing a universal ontologi-cal rank in nature to a divinely ordained social and political rank.


89 Cf niccolo Machiavelli, ‘The discourses’, I.56, in The Prince and the Discourses, Max Lerner (tr.), (new York: random house, 1950).

90 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 150.91 hudson, John Ponet, p. 91.92 Quentin skinner, ‘Interpretation, rationality and truth’, Visions of Politics, vol. 1,

pp. 27–56. Besides this, speculation of eschatological signs was common in europe.

Yet Ponet’s Great Chain of Being discourse soon gave way to a sus-tained language of divine will at work in nature and society. Ponet, like all the english Protestants, considered the universe the visible manifes-tation of divine will. In one of the most fascinating parts of Ponet’s Shorte Treatise, he divined the political significance of current english reports of birth defects and astronomical phenomena.89 discoursing on the calamities of england he asked, ‘and what wonderful monsters have there now lately been born in england? and what celestial signs most horrible?’ his detailed account included a child born in oxford with ‘two heads and two parts of two evil shaped bodies joined in one’. another child born in Coventry ‘without arms or legs’. another child born near London had ‘a great head, evil shaped, the arms with bags hanging out at the elbows and heels…’ . There was also another child born near London ‘speaking as a prophet and messenger of God’. Finally, Ponet noted a ‘horrible Comet’ and ‘diverse eclipses’. after he had listed the various anomalies, he asked, ‘But what were these? only bare signs? no certainly, they do and must signify the great wrath and indignation of God’.90 Ponet eventually spent quite a few pages inter-preting the monsters as signs of God’s anger towards england’s idola-try. Furthermore, he warned that the nation should expect some further political upheaval. he did not specify what it might be. This is quite symptomatic of the general spirit of the time. It was an age obsessed with the second Coming of Christ and it grew accustomed to looking towards the heavens to discover some secret about to be unveiled on earth. Winthrop s. hudson was astonished by Ponet’s apparent lapse in rationality on this point, incredulously remarking that, in spite of his learning, he adhered to such superstitions.91 But hudson is too hard on Ponet, and too anachronistic in his disappointment. It is best to try to understand such beliefs by studying the background beliefs of the times. Ponet’s celestial speculations may not have been true, but given the belief of the time that God reveals his dispositions through natural events, Ponet’s insistence on comets and birth deformities was surely rational.92

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It was a time when nature was a book and phenomena signified God’s mind. see Cunningham & Grell, Four Horsemen, p. 13.

93 Shorte Treatise, p. 76.94 Ibid., pp. 76, 148, 166.95 Goodman, How Superior Powers Oght to be Obeyd, (Geneva, 1558), p. 85.96 Ibid., pp. 46–47.97 Ibid., p. 96.98 Ibid., p. 135.

Ponet’s understanding of nature was essentially theological in that he rejected aristotelian deism for the dynamic will of God, who reveals himself in nature. God determines the day to day politics of england. The events of court were just as revelatory of God’s disposition as was a deformed child. Ponet saw tyrants, Mary in particular, as manifesta-tions of God’s wrath. he was confident to admit that ‘God sendeth and suffreth evil governors (and will send worse) to plague the people for their iniquity…’ .93 neither did Ponet shirk from prophesying calamities on england by comparing its behaviour to the behaviour of old testament nations that were plagued by political upheaval and oppres-sion.94 Ponet’s initial affirmation of the medieval Great Chain of Being was not merely tokenistic or merely asserted for rhetorical appeal. nevertheless, it was vestigial. It was a medieval idea that, given his emphasis on divine will, played no important role in any of his argu-ments. Its significance is that it, along with his use of the body meta-phor, shows a lingering medievalism, which was not quite at home with his providentialism. Its presence was sincere but redundant.

Genevan exile, Christopher Goodman had little to say about fixed order or natural superiority. he did, however, take care to affirm that God not only created the universe in the first place, but also that ‘by his wonderful providence are all things preserved and governed…’ .95 Goodman was more interested in appealing to God’s will. he affirmed that the history of england’s woes is due to God’s indignation towards her idolatry. as God ‘drowned all mankind for sin’ and destroyed sodom and Gomorrah with ‘fire and brimstone’, so england should repent lest she ‘fall in to the hands of this mighty revenger…’ .96 also, Goodman affirmed throughout his book that Mary’s tyranny was an ‘express sign of God’s wrath, and [a] notable plague for the sins of the people’.97 Going beyond Ponet’s prediction of political woe as signified by the comet, Goodman stated that england will experience the ‘spanish plague’—referring to a persecution to be inflicted upon the english people by spanish Catholics.98 Goodman’s thought, unlike


99 troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, p. 897, fn.349.

Ponet and Knox’s, was basically unspeculative. But like Ponet, Goodman’s background belief in an acting God who now deals with nations and rulers in the same way as he did in the narrative of the old testament shows how his method of political thought was possible. Perhaps there is little speculation in Goodman’s political thought on fixed hierarchy simply because it is not too prudent to insert such ideas into a tract written to justify regicide. order was, by and large, basically eschewed by both Ponet and Goodman for the more flexible concept of God’s will. God’s will, being free and irresistible, is able to justify innovative and, by medieval standards, almost counterintuitive political exhorta-tions. In Ponet’s treatise the vestige of the medieval teaching on rational order was harmless because it was undeveloped and played no major part in his argument. on the other hand, it became conceptually prob-lematic for John Knox, who built his seditious arguments upon twin foundations of fixed immutable order and God’s dynamic will.

Cosmic Contradictions: Fixed Order and Providence in John Knox, John Aylmer, and Laurence Humphrey

The concept of immutable order found it difficult to come to grips with the fact of social and political change. Collins called this an ‘ambiva-lence’ between concept and fact. In Knox’s thought the historian of political ideas is confronted with conceptual problems symptomatic of an age of ambiguity. But Knox’s ambiguity is between two concepts: order and divine will. If, as troeltsch argued, there was a contradiction in the thought of Calvin, who held at once to the rationalism of the lex naturae, yet extolled the ‘irrational’ divine will, a similar contradiction can be seen in the political thought of Knox.99 The scotsman tried to build his case for the overthrow of Mary of england and Mary of scots upon the medieval metaphysic of fixed order and degree. however, he emphasised God’s dynamic will just as strongly as he did the medieval concepts. The problem is that the notion of fixed order renders God’s will somewhat redundant and an emphasis on God’s free irresistible will makes discourse on fixed order meaningless. Knox was by far the most apocalyptic of the english reformers. he, more than any other Protestant, affords the historian of political thought the most sustained

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100 Calvin, The Letters of John Calvin, vols.4, Jules Bonnet (ed.) and robert Gilchrist (tr.), (new York: Burt Franklin, 1972), p. 47; Cf. Brandt B. Boeke, ‘Calvin’s doctrine of Civil Government’, Studia Biblica et Theologica, 11, (1981), p. 62.

101 andrew Pettergree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies, (aldershot: scolar Press, 1996), pp. 145–146.

102 Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, pp. 456, 479–480, 483–484, 486.103 Both Zwingli and Bucer invoked the augustinian definition of providence and

order. hulderich Zwingli, ‘sermonis de providentia dei anamnema’ (1530), Corpus Reformatorum, vol. XCIII, part. III, (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1983), pp. 126–127; Martin Bucer, Common Places of Martin Bucer, d.F. Wright (tr. & ed.), (appleford: The sutton Courtnay Press, 1972), pp. 97, 99. Cf. troeltsch’s contention that medieval organicism was capable of politics as radical as it was conservative. Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 289.

104 It is a commonplace in historiography on sixteenth-century political thought to associate the concept of universal order and hierarchy with monarchical interest. Cf. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics, pp. 8, 44–57; Morris, Political Thought in England, pp. 20–21. Cf. Cary J. nederman, ‘Body Politics: The diversification of organic Metaphors in the Later Middle ages’, Pensiero Politico Medievale, II (2004), pp. 59–87.

discourse fusing divine will with cosmic order. at the same time, there is a tension in Knox’s argument brought about by his mingling of the old order with the new. Knox wanted to affirm the voluntarist nature of the universe, natural and social. Yet he also wanted to affirm an immutable order of ranks, excluding women from powerful stations. as Calvin had pointed out to Knox, despite the fact that women are by nature inferior, God can easily bring one to power as an exception.100 Knox could not tolerate the logic of Calvin’s argument, and simply affirmed a double sovereignty of cosmic order and divine will. Calvin’s desperate attempt to distance himself from Knox’s ideas was to no avail. The book bore the insignia of Jean Crespin’s press in Geneva. Calvin’s reputation with elizabeth would never recover.101

The fixed view of the universe and the dynamic voluntarist view of the universe as are both ultimately attributable to augustine. The bishop of hippo brought about a new historiography, not attributing events to chance, fortune, or depicting them as part of an eternal cycle, as had the stoics. rather, augustine saw history as the history of indi-vidual personalities controlled, ultimately, by the divine personality.102 history became intensely personal and it was this sort of historiogra-phy that the reformers rediscovered by going directly back to the Bible and augustine. Knox, like others, actually used nature and the augustinian teaching on order to argue against the legitimacy of Mary Queen of england and Mary Queen of scots.103 Thus, some qualifica-tion must be made to the usual assumption that notions of order func-tioned as admonitions to obedience.104


105 John Knox, ‘The First Blast of the trumpet against the Monstrous regiment of Women’ (Geneva, 1558), Works of John Knox, 6 vols., david Laing (ed.), (new York: aMs Press, 1966), vol. 4, pp. 389–390. Cf. augustine, City of God against the Pagans, 19.13, William Chase Green (tr.), Loeb edition, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: harvard University Press, 1969); Cf Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 141.

106 Knox, ‘a Letter to the Commonalty of scotland’ (1558), Works, vol. 4, p. 527. Cf. augustine, City of God, 19.17.

107 Knox, ‘First Blast’, Works, vol. 4, p. 390.

In what is his most systematic political statement, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), Knox, on the authority of augustine, appealed to an immutable order in the universe. Using patristic authorities he defined order as ‘that thing by which God hath appointed and ordained all things’. he quoted The City of God in defining order as ‘a disposition, giving their own proper places to things that be unequal’.105 Knox never went on to elaborate much, but he seemed to mean that there is a gradation in creation, a hierarchy from higher to lower. not all things are equal; the inferior cannot occupy the place of the superior. God has arranged all things in their respective places, according to their excellence and nature. That same year, Knox was to affirm that God has ‘ordained distinction and difference betwixt the King and subjects, betwixt the rulers and the commune people…’ . such order was temporal and destined to with the world.106

Knox showed some embarrassment in appealing to augustine and the notion of order as a proof against gynaecocracy. he immediately assured his readers that such appeals are redundant in light of God’s revelation in scripture:

If any list to reject the definition of augustine, as either not proper to this purpose, or else as insufficient to prove mine intent, let the same man understand, that in so doing he hath infirmed mine argument nothing. For as I depend not upon the determinations of men, so think I my cause no weaker, albeit their authority be denied unto me; provided that God by his will revealed, and manifest Word, stand plain and evident on my side.107

Knox’s haste to assure his readers that he did not consider the authority of augustine as sufficient in absence of the Bible was a sign of the times. For the Protestant, metaphysics could be illuminating, but it was not sufficient to establish any truth. Indeed, it was not even necessary. It is interesting to note that even among Protestants, who were quick to point out sin’s corruption of the intellect and the sufficiency of the Bible

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108 Janet Kemp, ‘Laurence humphrey, elizabethan Puritan: his Life and Political Theory’, (Unpublished Ph.d. thesis, West Virginia University, 1978), p. 5.

109 John aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithfull and Trevve Subiectes (strasbourg, 1559), fol. B3.

110 This is not to minimise aylmer’s belief that the political realm derives its or-der from the natural realm. see Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State, pp. 16–17.

apart from philosophy, there was a vital appreciation for philosophy and the works of aristotle. It seems, though, that such an interest in the traditional medieval body of learning was having a diminished impact on their method of political thought.

There was an incoherence in Knox’s thought brought about by his dual allegiance to the medieval fixed universe and a radical emphasis on God’s will. If God is free, why can he not give a woman the gifts of a ruler? Knox’s discourse on fixed hierarchy and order was made irrele-vant by his continued stress on God’s irresistible will in society. If God can produce a deformed child to teach a nation a lesson, why not a capable female ruler? The fact that God’s will removes any notion of immutability in nature and society, and the fact that Knox emphasised both this and the notion of immutability made his political thought radically incoherent. Indeed, John aylmer, Bishop of London, pointed out this very incoherence in his brilliant response to Knox’s blast An Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes. Both aylmer and Laurence humphrey, who in 1561 would become President of Magdalen, oxford, responded to the Marian exiles. aylmer wanted to refute Knox, humphrey wanted to ‘clarify’ Goodman and Ponet, though he had read Knox.108 aylmer pointed out that no matter what order in the universe or in nature Knox declared to exist, God’s dynamic will renders every-thing contingent, anything possible:

If nature hath given them by birth: how we repine at that which is God’s will and order: are we wiser then he in bestowing it[?]…[B]y him reign they and not by us. It is his appointment and not ours…Therefore it is more agreeable to duty, and a great deal less jeopardy, to honour his choice, rather then to prefer our own.109

For aylmer, if nature and order are, as Knox admitted, simply the visible manifestation of God’s will, then any aberration from the orderly is equally by his will. Therefore, even though one may recognise regularities in both the natural and social realms, irregularities do not necessarily become harmful, for they are equally ordained by God.110


111 Laurence humphrey, ‘on the Preservation of religion and its true reformation’ (1559), Janet Kemp (tr.), in Kemp, ‘Laurence humphrey’, p. 212.

112 Ibid., p. 213.

Therefore Knox’s belief in immutable rank and order—man above woman—is immediately contradicted by his other belief in God’s full control over all things. For if it happens that in a commonwealth with hereditary succession a female is born in line to inherit the crown, this is God’s will. By nature elizabeth is Queen, she has tudor blood, no human determines nature, only God, therefore she is divinely ordained. Who can reject God’s preference? aylmer pointed out that providence looses everything and leaves nothing fixed. The medieval world picture was erased in the apology for elizabeth’s rule.

Knox’s thought exemplifies conceptual difficulties. The difficulties arise because Knox tried to mix two worldviews in a single system of thought. eventually one had to give way to the other. Knox’s contempo-rary, Laurence humphrey, simply reinterpreted the idea of fixed order as whatever God should will:

There is a fixed order, both a state of things and an ordering of kingdoms. nor are states constituted first of all without laws, without leader, rashly and by chance; neither are kings or those who are in charge for them, thus constituted. But as once the kings of Judah, so now ours, are anointed by the command and will of God, whether they are good or bad or men or women. For there is no power but of God.111

humphrey then went on to affirm the legitimacy of gynococracy in spite of the customs of the nations. Indeed, ‘the custom and example of the rule of women is not often found and rarely does a woman enter upon the service of the state. nevertheless it is not always unnatural and monstrous, if God calls and wishes a woman to hold the power’. By dismissing the legitimacy of ius gentium or the customs of nations humphrey was dismissing a concept ubiquitous throughout political thought. his reason for completely ignoring the prescriptions of the nations was simple, God can override any tradition:

since, therefore, God turns the reigns of things as it seems good to him and chooses those he wishes and since he raises up a magistrate to relieve calamities and restrain violence, whoever illegitimately overthrows that authority which he has established, seems to attack the minister of God, the anointed one and Christ.112

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113 John Knox, ‘a Godly Letter sent to the Faithful in London’ (1554), Works, vol. 3, p. 166.

114 Knox, ‘Letter to the Queen regent of scotland’ (rev. 1558), Works, vol. 4, p. 453.

By focusing on God’s will rather than immutable principles of politics, humphrey could easily answer objections against elizabeth’s legiti-macy. his thought in this respect did not suffer from the incoherence of Knox’s, simply because humphrey completely replaced arguments from cosmic order and ius gentium with the divine will, thus no matter how counter intuitive a political state of affairs seemed to be, it could not be anything other than legitimate. Perhaps it was the same incoher-ence that led richard hooker at the end of the century to place no emphasis on God’s will and to go to the other extreme of using the scholastic method and affirming the medieval metaphysic to its utmost capacity.

Knox’s exhortations and letters of consolation drew heavily on the old testament emphasis on God’s imminence in catastrophe. There were also allusions to the book of revelation in his descriptions of england’s political situation. Certainly, for Knox, there was no wheel of fortune in society. all that occurs is either a direct sign of God’s wrath for perfidy or of God’s refining of the elect. Whenever Knox made the plea for a godly england, he added that it was the only sure way to avoid God’s punishment with political tyranny. In his Godly Letter Sent to the Faithful in London (1554) he reminded his readers that ‘even as you purpose and intend to avoid God’s vengeance, both in this life and in the life to come…avoid and fly, as well in body as in spirit, all fellow-ship and society with Idolaters in their idolatry’.113 In 1558, at the height of Knox’s radicalism, he republished his Letter to the Queen Regent of Scotland with additions. he cautioned the Queen not to mistake the death of her two sons and the violent death of her husband as mere misfortune, but, instead, to acknowledge the ‘judgements of God, who hath begun already to declare himself angry with you, with your seed and posterity, yea, with the whole realm, above which it should have ruled’.114 This was quite a remarkable statement. Knox accused the Queen of causing her own sons’ death by her conduct. again, in order to understand how this was possible for Knox to assert, one must remember that his belief in his calling by a judging God made him a prophet, with the watchman’s duty to preach his message of repent-ance. It was this sense of divine commission as it survived into the


115 anonymous, ‘The epistle of a Banyshed Manne out of Leycester shire’ (1554), Knox, Works, vol. 3, p. 259.

116 Ibid., p. 261.

following century which led Walzer to speak of a revolutionary army of God-fearers, who would go on to found the modern world.

as an introduction to Knox’s Faithful Admonition (1554), the anony-mous writer of The Epistle of a Banyshed Manne out of Leycester Shire began his short work with what could be called a typical Protestant view of history:

There hath been no time, since the first fashioning of man, which hath not had her manifold miseries and great troubles, by which God chas-tened and punished all men for their evil life and unthankfullness to him, continually refusing his calling and warning; whereof the righteous and just had their parts, although it was for their commodity and profit, (but to the utter destruction of the wicked and ungodly) for judgement begin-neth at the faithful, which are called the houshold of God in the scripture; and the punishment whereby God chasteneth them cometh always to them for the best, either to the bringing of patience, or the acknowledg-ing of their sins, or for the avoiding of the eternal condemnation. and their fashion is, when they perceive the hand of the Lord to be upon them, or upon others, by any manner of trouble, as poverty, sickness, banishment, falling away of faithful friends, increasing of foes, or any other like trouble, immediately they turn to God, are heartily sorry for their sins and unthankfullness, confesseth them selves guilty, and calleth earnestly for mercy, which God for and in Jesus Christ granteth unto them, of his great goodness according to his promise.115

In other words, God sends all sorts of personal and economic woes suf-fered by the elect on earth for their ultimate benefit. Furthermore, God’s activity determines political events. In fact, the writer sees God’s control over political tumult as the same as his control over the very elements of nature. It is God who sends ‘bloody war, sudden death, great untruth, open perjury, division, strange consuming fires, change of great estates and commonwealths, overflowing of great cities and lands by water, hunger and poverty without pity…’ . in the same way that ‘God causeth the very elements to fight against the world…’ .116

outside of the Protestant political mind, whole systems of politics were built up almost a priori on the notion of order. or, at least, think-ers made it clear that what they were advocating was in some way vali-dated by the instruction of nature or the dictates of common experience. Certainly this was true of the most intellectually vigorous movement of

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117 harro hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State c.1540–1630, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 27.

118 John Milton, ‘a defence of the People of england’ (1658), Political Writings, Martin dzelzainis (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 124. see also p. 135.

119 tillyard, Elizabethan World Picture, pp. 11–16.

the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries: the society of Jesus. Jesuit political thought made heavy use of social and political order as deriv-able from nature and natural hierarchy.117 The society as a whole was in many ways the triumph of the Thomist metaphysic. Ponet and Knox did not completely abandon metaphysics in their conception of univer-sal order as God’s providence. The difference was that, whereas previ-ous and later theorists would use order to exhort obedience, Ponet and Knox used such doctrines to encourage sedition. This being said, the Great Chain of Being and order permeated the radical theories of Ponet and Knox. still, for both men, Knox in particular, order was really just a veiled way of describing God’s will and providence. It was never impersonal. hierarchy and order were only ever the visible function of an invisible, irresistible, divine will. however, as exemplified in Knox’s thought, the presence of both traditions in the one system was a house divided, which could never stand. and collapse it did. radical political thought the following century completely eschewed talk of cosmic order and appealed either to natural law, covenant or providence. as far as Milton was concerned, if a revolution succeeded it was by God’s will, and therefore the new order was perfectly legitimate. For ‘If God alone gave a kingdom to Charles, he also took it away from Charles…’ .118

Order and Providence in Elizabethan Thought

In his classic study, The Elizabethan World Picture, e.M.W. tillyard affirmed that elizabethan england was far from the modern age that historians had occasionally portrayed it as being. essentially, elizabethan england was totally steeped in religion, and to suggest it was secular or modern was inaccurate. For tillyard it was not a break from medieval-ism that characterised sixteenth-century england, but an embracing of it almost to the end.119 Yet tillyard overlooked the shift in emphasis from metaphysical order to divine will, which Carré identified but made little of. he noted the ambivalence of the Puritans toward ancient


120 Carré, Phases of Thought, p. 191.121 J.G.a. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the

Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton, new Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 28.

122 Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 181.123 nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States 1607–1876,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

and medieval cosmologies. nevertheless, he contended that the previ-ous cosmology and metaphysic of the schoolmen was generally accepted by ‘Churchmen and Puritans, scholars, poets, and dramatists’. he also pointed out that none of these sects ‘gave birth to theories relat-ing to the order of things that departed in any important point from the accepted forms of thought’.120 This last comment needs to be qualified. even if the new emphasis on God’s will by most tudor churchmen does not count as a new concept, its stress, with the Great Chain of Being’s fall into desuetude, qualifies as a turning point in the history of english thought. The separatists attempted to break down spirit-ual hierarchies between clerics and laypeople, and also the hierarchy among clerics themselves. Furthermore, although there was much talk by elizabethan churchmen about order and hierarchy, it was of a divine will-vocabulary. as J.G.a. Pocock points out, ‘The sphere in which they operated was that of the inscrutable providence of God, and success in that sphere seemed providential; it argued they were divinely commis-sioned to exercise power’.121 The metaphysics used by scholastic theolo-gians and the decorated language employed by henrician humanists was largely eschewed for divine will. It is best to speak of a period of ambiguity between medievalism and emerging modes of thinking.

With the death of Queen Mary and elizabeth’s accession in 1558, english Protestants again found themselves in a sympathetic common-wealth. Providentialism justified the regime from the very beginning. Writing to elizabeth from Zurich Vermigli identified england as an ‘elect nation’.122 This english exceptionalism would last well into the fol-lowing century and be appropriated by english settlers in the new World.123 The immediate task of political theorists was to justify elizabeth’s right to rule as a woman. The long-term task of elizabethan theorists was to justify obedience to a prince considered a heretic and, eventually, an excommunicate by thousands of english Catholics. elizabethan Protestantism lost the homogeneity of the edwardian Protestant movement. It was partly the concept of rank and order that

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124 Wilburn to Bullinger (c.1566), The Zurich Letters or the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), p. 269. Italics added.

125 Grindal and horn to Bullinger and Gualter (Feb. 6, 1567), ibid., p. 274. Italics added.

126 Cox to Gualter (June 12, 1573), ibid, p. 421.127 Thomas Bilson, The Trve Difference betvveene Christian Svbiection and Vnchristian

Rebellion, (oxford, 1585), p. 543.

set the hotter Protestants on the road to separatism. elizabeth had decreed that ministers be distinguished from laypeople by certain ecclesiastical garb a distinction that was declared by critics to connote rome and foreign to the earliest Christian tradition. stating the rea-sons why some ministers renounced their preaching posts, Percival Wilburn pointed out to Bullinger that ‘The different orders of the clergy are still retained…’ .124 Those who were happy with the garb made no attempt to deny the charge of stratification between clergy and laypeo-ple and among the clergy itself. Bishop Grindal, later archbishop of Canterbury, and robert horn wrote to Bullinger and rudolph Gualter affirming that the majority of churchmen ‘hold that the ministers of the Church of england may adopt without impiety the distinction of habits now prescribed by public authority’.125 In 1573 Bishop richard Cox accused the Presbyterians of rejecting the current order as being of little use. Indeed he saw it as their mission that such order ‘may be altogether abolished’. It was the equality of rank that most unsettled opponents of Presbyterianism and Puritanism.126 disregard for order reached a peak with Thomas Bilson’s pronouncement that ‘kings and commonwealths at the preaching of one man, have submit-ted themselves to the faith of Christ…[though] twenty thousand Bishops, should take exception to the Gospel of truth, which is nothing else but to war against God, by pretence of human reason and order’.127 order had now become a scandal to the progress of religion. With the influence of precisionist biblicism and an aversion to anything remotely connoting roman Catholicism, elizabeth’s via media proved too great a burden on many churchmen, leading them either to remain in the english church as perpetual critics—Thomas Cartwright and the Presbyterians—or leave the church and form separatist congrega-tions—Barrowists and Brownists.


128 david daniell, The Bible in English, (new haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 294–295.

129 Lloyd e. Berry, ‘Introduction’, The Geneva Bible (1560), (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 8.

130 My study of the Geneva Bible relies on the account of richard L. Greaves. see his ‘traditionalism and the seeds of revolution in the social Principles of the Genevan Bible’, Sixteenth Century Journal, VII/1, (april, 1976): pp. 94–109.

131 Geneva Bible, 2 Thes. 3: 10.132 Ibid., Prov. 11: 2.133 Greaves, ‘traditionalism and the seeds of revolution’, p. 95.

Early Tensions: The Geneva Bible and Laurence Humphrey’s The nobles

The theorising of elizabethan churchmen shows the same dualism between fixed order and divine will that was so conspicuous among the texts of the edwardian Protestants. The first great literary achievement of elizabethan Protestants was the Geneva Bible (1560). The popularity of the Geneva Bible cannot be exaggerated. Upon its first printing in 1560 it became ‘at once the Bible of the english people’. Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, attempted to rival it with his Bishops’ Bible (1568), but its reception by ministers and laypeople never matched the Genevan effort, which maintained its popularity through one hundred and forty editions before 1640.128 english Calvinist and friend of Knox, William Whittingham, spearheaded the Geneva Bible. The team of translators included Miles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman, anthony Gilby, Thomas sampson, and William Cole. numerous others, includ-ing Knox and William Kethe have been added to the list by other schol-ars.129 The notion of immutable social rank impressed itself deeply upon the Geneva Bible (1560).130 The annotators of the book frequently encouraged their readers not to ‘live idly, but ought to give himself to some vocation, to get his living by…’ .131 Whereas previous humanists had warned of cosmic disharmony with any attempt at one changing his station, the Geneva Bible simply spoke of God’s judgment. The annotators warned their readers of seeking to rise above their vocation: ‘When man forgetteth himself, and thinketh to be exalted above his vocation, then God bringeth him to confusion’.132 While the Geneva Bible had its radical and even subversive elements, its basic view of society was one of fixed vocations ‘building on the conviction that man’s status and condition are predetermined, with each estate having its own responsibilities’.133 But it was a hierarchy devoid of metaphysics and sustained by the will of God.

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134 For an examination of Optimates, see Kemp, ‘Laurence humphrey’, pp. 76–80. other biographical information may be found in Christina Garret, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 [1938]), pp. 193–194.

135 Laurence humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye, (London, 1563), fols. a ii–iii, C iii–iiii, d ii.

136 Ibid., fol. B vii.137 Ibid., fol. C vii.138 ‘auncientye’139 Ibid., fol. C vi.140 Ibid., fol. e vii.

The divine origins of rank were strongly set forth by Laurence humphrey. humphrey had stayed at Calvin’s Geneva during the Marian period, where he wrote his Optimates in 1559.134 The work was pub-lished in english in 1563 as The Nobles or of Nobilitye. It was an appel-lation to the english nobility to make itself an exemplar of godliness and right living, and to guard the realm so that it would become fully reformed in religion. The nobility could be justified if one saw society like a human body. a body is made up of numerous parts, some more excellent and important than others. to remove the greater members would destroy the whole body altogether.135 Though humphrey affirmed that rank was in accordance with the three laws: the law of God, the law of nature, and the law of nations, much of his discourse on rank was concerned with it as a fiat of God.136 There is a clear hierarchy in society—kings over nobles, wealthy over poor, males over females—which was not justified in terms of harmony but in terms of God’s will. When humphrey spoke of those who would do away with rank alto-gether, or who would try to rise above their station, he did not threaten disharmony or disorder, but gave what seems to be a threat of divine judgement.137 to kill a nobleman or even to take his property is to undo what God has done; for ‘all power, rule, dignity, paternity, nobility, novity, ancientness,138 descendeth from that author and giver of all heavenly and earthly gifts’.139 humphrey was not even prepared to speak of natural rank or natural gradation; divine will was a sufficient explanation:

For it [nobility] is not given to all men, nor bought by Princes’ favour, neither commeth by the benefit of nature, nor…happens by chance and casualty: but even given from above, by the providence, and dispensation of god. Who plungeth low the lofty from their seat: and lifteth up the lowly. Who, with his rightwise eye regardeth man’s life, and with his mighty arm and heavenly beck, guideth and governeth it.140


141 Thomas norton, To the Queenes Maiesties Poore Deceiued Subiectes (n.c. 1569), fol. a iii.

142 Ibid., fols. a iv–B ii.143 Ibid., fol. B i.144 Ibid., fol. e iiii.

While humphrey was medieval enough to draw the analogy between a commonwealth and a body, thus showing the necessity of rank, his argument really came down to brute fact. If God controls the whole of his created order, then existing social stratifications are meant to be. Though humphrey had previously said that rank was in accordance with nature, he denied the possibility of any natural explanation of why this or that person should be higher than another. The order of society, like the order of the cosmos, is simply a manifestation of God’s will. seeking to overturn or change it is not merely disorderly, it is to ask of the Creator, ‘What hast thou wrought?’

In 1569, there was an attempt by northern englishmen to depose elizabeth from the throne and install Mary Queen of scots. The scottish Queen entered england with the hope that elizabeth would aid her in regaining her lost power in scotland. her presence in england inspired northerners to try to place her on the english throne. The northern rebellion was a failure and the leaders were publicly executed, but it proved that elizabeth had strong enemies in the northern region of england—a bastion of Catholicism. english Parliamentarian and trans-lator of Calvin’s Institutio, Thomas norton, wrote tracts highlighting the danger of recusant Catholics. norton couched his justification for obedience entirely in terms of divine will. he began by pointing out to the northern rebels that their actions could occasion their ‘state of damnation’, appealing to fear of destruction of the soul over the body.141 after this, norton expounded the cause of rebellion as ambition and poverty, but a poverty caused by foolishness and mismanagement.142 norton considered rebellion an impulse ‘to resist the ordinance of almighty God, [and] to reject his most inestimable benefit…’ .143 he went on to recommend Cheke’s The Hurt of Sedition to address the con-temporary problems of state.144 In his other tract, A Warning agaynst the Dangerous Practises of Papistes, published the same year, he set out to show how Catholicism was perforce seditious, for the pope had declared elizabeth a heretic. This particular tract was far better than the latter, for it was true. norton correctly pointed out that throughout

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145 Thomas norton, A Warning agaynst the Dangerous Practises of Papistes (n.c. 1569), fols. B i, d ii, C iii, F iiii, h iv.

146 Lowers, Mirrors for Rebels, p. 29.147 For the bull in Latin and english with commentary see elton, Tudor Constitution,

pp. 410–418.148 Cf. Powel Mills dawley, John Whitgift and the Reformation, (London: adam and

Charles Black, 1955), p. 124.149 Ibid., p. 128.150 Liturgical Services of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker society, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1847), p. 515. Italics added.

european history the papacy had frequently encouraged disobedience and sedition.145 norton’s observation proved prophetic, for the follow-ing year pope Pius V declared elizabeth excommunicate and released all Catholic subjects from obedience to her.

With the 1570 papal bull, Regnans in excelsis—an ‘unmistakable dec-laration of war’—the papacy formally declared elizabeth excommuni-cate and, therefore, illegitimate; a usurped ruler. The bull was published in england in May.146 The roman see absolved all english Catholics from obedience to elizabeth. traditionally these sorts of bulls not only absolved subjects from obedience, but also placed a curse on those that obeyed or aided an excommunicated ruler.147 disobedience was a Catholic duty. This was understood by Protestants to make all consci-entious Catholics traitors.148 although the bull did not explicitly call for regicide, in 1580 the papal secretary of state, writing from spain, declared that it would be a ‘meritorious deed’ if someone should remove elizabeth from this life.149 The english Catholic was placed under immense burden of conscience.

Threats to security, internal and external, gave occasion for exhorta-tions to obedience couched in traditional and providential terms. elizabethan liturgies show the historian of ideas that the Great Chain of Being was still presupposed in much reflection of humankind’s place in the order of things:

…thou hast created and made us of nothing, not dumb beasts void of reason, not vile vermins creeping upon the earth; but the noblest and most honourable of all thy worldly creatures, little inferior to thy heav-enly angels, endued with understanding, adorned with all excellent gifts, both of body and of mind, exalted to the dominion over all other thy earthly creatures, yea, the sun and the moon with other heavenly lights appointed to our service, enriched with the possession of all things, either necessary for our use, or delectable for our comfort.150


151 elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 443–444.152 ‘homilie against disobedience and Wilfull rebellion’ (1570), Certaine Sermons

or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth I (1547–1571), (Gainesville, Florida: scholars’ Facsimiles and reprints, 1968), p. 275. Italics added.

153 Bellarmine was less concerned with divine decree than he was with ‘right order’. he appealed to the dionysian hierarchy as a model for the temporal: ‘even among the angels there is super- and subordination; why then not among human beings in the state of innocence?’ Cited by hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought, p. 209.

similar language was employed for the elizabethan Homilie against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1570). as edward VI had done, elizabeth largely banned unauthorised preaching and ‘prophesyings’ for official prayers and homilies.151 Thousands of english parishioners would have eventually heard this homily. a cosmic hierarchy is out-lined from God to angels to humans to animals: rank and obedience become the lesson of creation. But an impersonal hierarchy or meta-physical gradation is nowhere to be found. The divine will is just as strong as the concept of order. Indeed, the latter is just the former in another vocabulary:

as God the creator and Lord of all things appointed his angels and heav-enly creatures in all obedience to serve and honour his majesty: so was it his will that man, his chief creature upon the earth, should live under the obedience of his Creator and lord…and as God would have man to be his obedient subject, so did he make all earthly creatures subject unto man….152

There is no talk of rationality or relatedness to the nature of God as determining rank and order. For the Protestants, as opposed to the Jesuit literature, order was largely arbitrary.153 Furthermore, after the rebellion in eden God appointed a similar order to be maintained in society. Just as God appoints humans to reign over beasts so he appoints magistrates to reign over the rest. There is no distinction between God’s providence over nature and his providence over society:

…God forthwith by laws given unto mankind, repaired again the rule and order of obedience thus by rebellion overthrown, and besides the obedience due unto his Majesty, he not only ordained that in families and households, the wife should be obedient unto her husband, the children unto their parents, the servants unto their masters: but also, when man-kind increased, and spread itself more largely over the world, he by his holy word did constitute and ordain in Cities and countries several and

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154 ‘homilie against disobedience’, p. 276. Italics added.155 Liturgical Services, p. 686.156 Ibid., p. 278.157 Ibid., p. 294.158 Cf. richard tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 6.159 on the theoretical responses of english gynaecocracy, see a.n. McLaren, Political

Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), passim.

special governors and rulers, unto whom the residue of his people should be obedient.154

as usual, the emphasis on cosmological and heavenly rank gave way to social and political rank. Just as God ‘by thy word appoints man to rule thy other creatures’, so in his heavenly wisdom he ‘hast lifted up Kings and Princes to command and rule men in their several places…’ .155 There is no talk of gradations of being, just of divine will. This sort of talk was useful when the homily got around to justifying obedience. In a wonderfully succinct statement of the Protestant doctrine of for-tune the congregation was again reminded that government ‘commeth therefore neither of chance and fortune (as they term it) nor of the ambition of mortal men and women…but all Kings, Queens, and other governors are specially appointed by the ordinance of God’.156 nature also had a way of enforcing God’s commands. The third sermon that went to make up the Homilie was exclusively concerned with the catas-trophes that beset the rebel in his sedition. Very little is mentioned of God in this section. The lesson is that misfortune always follows rebel-lion. In a quirky turn the sermon goes into nice detail as to exactly why rebels never prosper. rebels, always being on the run, must cloister themselves away in small, dark, and damp dwellings. Inevitably they become sick!157 arguments ranging from divine will to catching a cold all went to make the panoply of arguments for obedience. despite the variety of arguments, they all hinged on God’s will or providence: obey God out of duty or out of fear. neither the aristotelian and Ciceronian vocabularies had great impact on ecclesiastical defence of royal legiti-macy, which was almost completely theological.158 Interestingly the Homilie stressed not just male princes but also female. There was a lin-gering uneasiness in england over gynaecocracy, something that the english seem never to have got used to.159

elizabethan theologians kept the reformed commonplace of natural events as portents of divine disposition. The above homily was quick to


160 ‘homilie against disobedience’, p. 280.161 Ibid., p. 280. Italics added.162 alexander nowell, Catechism (1570), Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1853), p. 139.

point out that the death of King edward VI was owing to the sins of the english.160 The homily gives a theology of political change:

here you see, that God placeth as well evil Princes as good, and for what cause he doth both. If we therefore will have a good Prince, either to be given us, or to continue: now we have such a one, let us by our obedience to God and to our Prince move God thereunto. If we will have an evil Prince (when God shall send such a one) taken away, and a good in his place, let us take away our wickedness which provoketh God to place such a one over us, and GOD will either displace him, or of an evil Prince make him a good Prince, so that we first will change our evil into good.161

The rejection here of fixed hierarchy and immutable order was neces-sary for the project of exhorting congregations to obedience. The hom-ily here is arguing that God ordains a wicked prince; that is, God ordains disorder. This disorder need not necessarily be resisted by human efforts (rebellion), for it is part of God’s plan, an expression of his perfect and free will. such justification of tyranny would have been hard to formulate using the more rigid medieval conceptual tools. God’s irresistible will afforded any event its legitimacy.

For the elizabethan divine and the churchgoers exposed to this homily, political tyranny ultimately happens by the hand of God, the causes of which are found within our own souls. The same year that the Homilie against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion was written, english Puritan and Calvinist, alexander nowell, wrote his Catechism, written as a dialogue between a master and a student, containing an exposition of the decalogue. a good Calvinist, nowell thought, rather tenuously, that the issue of vocation was important enough to be raised in his Catechism. not really fitting in with any of his discussion of the two tables, nowell thought it felicitous to affirm that the Commandments do indeed stress calling and vocation. Written as a dialogue, the master asks the student where he thinks these two crucial concepts are taught in the Commandments. The student replies, ‘for as much as the law commandeth to give to every man his own, it doth in a sum comprise all the parts and duties of every man privately in his degree and trade of life’.162 In response to the english plague nowell composed his Homily

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163 alexander nowell, ‘an homily Concerning the Justice of God’ (n.d.), edmund Grindal, The Remains of Edmund Grindal, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), pp. 97–120.

164 nowell, Catechism, pp. 130–131.165 ‘an act against…bulls…from the see of rome’ (1571), elton, Tudor Constitution,

pp. 418–422. For an account of the passing of this act, see J.e. neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1559–1581, (London: Tha alden Press, 1953), pp. 225–234.

166 For example, the Jesuit, Peter Frarin’s An Oration against the Unlawfull Insurrections of the Protestantes, (antwerp, 1566).

167 Jakob Keller in his Tyrannicide (1611) gleefully pointed out that his resistance theory had been taught previously by Zwingli, Calvin, Buchanan, Beza, Knox, Goodman, and Melanchthon. hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought, p. 332.

Concerning the Justice of God in which he blamed the plague on the ungodliness of the english, which could have meant anything from carousing and whoremongering to crypto-Catholicism. nowell did not see the plague as just an unavoidable natural phenomenon; it was caused by a vengeful God. For nowell, this required real political and ecclesiastical change if such chastisement was to be averted in the future.163 God’s activity in nature and society also provided grounds for obedience, for when the student is asked whom he should obey, the answer is comprehensive: ‘…magistrates, ministers of the church, school-masters; finally, all they that have any ornament, either of rever-ent age, or of wit, wisdom, or learning, worship, or wealthy state…’ . The student then asks of the source of this authority. no mention is made of order, or plague, or utility. The elizabethan Christian obeyed the higher powers because such obedience is the ‘holy decree of the laws of God….For from thence they all, whether they be parents, princes, magistrates, or other superiors, whatsoever they be, have all their power and author-ity; because by these it has pleased God to rule and govern the world’.164 The following year a treason act was passed forbidding obedience to any roman bull, also declaring the Bishop of rome himself to have usurped his power. This act incorporated all the traditional arguments for obedience. rebels were ‘without respect of their duty to almighty God’ and behaving ‘unnaturally’. Considering that any seditious activ-ity could be punished as high treason, the act itself constituted good pragmatic grounds in favor of obedience.165 Part of the reason that Protestants were so keen to register a high opinion of the superior pow-ers was that Catholic critics were so quick to point out the excesses of radical Protestants in europe, equating chaos with Protestantism.166 The delight of Jesuit resistance theorists in appealing to Protestant authorities lasted well into the seventeenth-century.167 Writing in the


168 John Jewel, ‘The defence of the apology of the Church of england’ (1570–1), Works of John Jewell, 4 vols., Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850), vol. 4, p. 668.

169 Guy, Tudor England, p. 30.170 Liturgical Services, pp. 567–568.

very early 1570s the renowned Protestant divine, John Jewell, Bishop of salisbury, felt compelled to refute such claims. responding to Catholic apologist, Thomas harding, he pointed out that ‘we have overthrown no kingdom: we have decayed no man’s power or right: we have disor-dered no commonwealth’.168 The assertion that ‘we have decayed no man’s power or right’ would have embarrassed Catholic critics of Protestantism. The greatest struggles, both political and theoretical, over the last five hundred years had been caused by popes declaring wayward rulers illegitimate and dismissing their authority as usurped. any Catholic trying to convince a ruler or reader of the seditious nature of Protestantism would have hoped that his audience possessed a less than comprehensive knowledge of previous church-state relations in europe.

The elizabethan churchmen were also fixated on divining God’s will in natural aberrations. during Mary’s reign england experienced one of its two most severe famines of the sixteenth-century.169 This and similar catastrophes seem to have inspired some speculation about God’s revelation and judgment in nature and polity. The liturgical serv-ices of elizabeth’s reign give a clear indication of the worldview of the clerics of the church. after a brief survey of occasions in the Bible when ‘signs’ are recorded to precede great natural and social disasters, it is acknowledged that there are signs ‘now at home’ and that they may be used ‘for our benefit’. The liturgy goes on to list several uncommon natural phenomena such as ‘the sore Famine’ of Mary’s reign; also the recent earthquake that occurred in 1580, which was divined the most. Furthermore, there were the usual reports of ‘monstrous births’ of chil-dren and cattle; the ‘unseasonableness of the seasons’; a ‘wonderful new star’; ‘strange appearings of Comets’; ‘eclipses of the sun and Moon’; ‘great and strange fashioned lights seen in the firmament’, and many more besides, all interpreted as a sign of God’s imminent judgment for all sorts of moral and spiritual lapses.170 When the earthquake occurred in england in 1580 there was immediate call to penitence, interpret-ing the disorder as God’s displeasure in the laxity of english social order. The interpretation of the 1580 earthquake contains a succinct

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171 Ibid, pp. 570–571.172 Catholic apologist, John Christopherson, also saw the haughtiness of youth as

something ‘far out of order…’ . This he blamed on the ‘Lutherans’ liberty…’ . Christopherson, Exhortation, fol. t v.

173 Liturgical Services, p. 573.174 Ibid., pp. 562, 559, 661.175 Ibid., p. 661.176 Ibid., pp. 652, 659, 660, 662, 683, 685, 686, 687, 689.177 ‘an act for provision to be made for the surety of the Queen’s most royal person’

(1585), elton, Tudor Constitution, p. 76.

summary of the Protestant view of God’s efficacious will made manifest in natural history. Those who ascribed the earthquake to purely natural causes ‘deface the apparent working of God’. It was quickly concluded that the earthquake ‘proceeded not of the course of any natural causes, but of God’s only determinate purpose…to show the greatness of his glorious power in uttering his heavy displeasure against sin’.171 The sin was elaborated upon a bit further on in the liturgy as being the diminu-tion of right order in the english commonwealth. The liturgy describes a typical sixteenth-century conception of social order under threat: the youth seemed to have been appropriating a ‘looseness and untimely liberty’;172 rank seems to be dissolving as ‘servants are become master-like’. Furthermore, genders are becoming confused as men are accused of effeminacy as they ‘have taken up garish attire, and nice behaviour of women’. Finally, ‘Women, transformed from their own kind, have gotten up the apparel and stomachs of men…’ .173 It’s a wonder why the earthquake ever stopped!

There was also the same emphasis by the writers of the elizabethan liturgies as there was in the works of the radical Marian Protestants on God’s determinative will in political affairs. In the opening doxologies of no fewer than nine liturgical prayers from 1590 to 1600, there were direct references to God’s deterministic control in politics. God is the protector of the lives and estates of Christian kings, whose wellbeing is protected by his providence;174 it is by him that all kings and princes have their charge;175 england’s survival as a relatively ordered common-wealth is attributed wholly to God’s providence.176 This was not just a matter for religious liturgies. God’s providence as a sufficient explana-tion for the empire’s survival was present in elizabethan acts of parlia-ment. That certain plots against elizabeth had been foiled could only be attributed to ‘God’s merciful providence…’ .177 The same year saw the publication of edwin sandys’ sermons; these sermons give the


178 sandys, ‘Fifth sermon’ (1585), Sermons of Edwin Sandys, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841)p. 102.

179 see Thomas s. Freeman, ‘Providence and Prescription: The account of elizabeth in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’’, susan doran and Thomas s. Freeman (eds.), The Myth of Elizabeth, (hampshire: Palgrave, 2003): pp. 27–55; alexandra Walsham, ‘a Very deborah?’ The Myth of elizabeth I as Providential Monarch’, idem, pp. 143–168.

historian considerable insight into the elizabethan view of politics. sandys’ explanation for the survival of any monarch invoked providen-tialism. But, as was common with Protestant political thought, the providential explanation for elizabeth’s, and all estates’, authority con-tained a threat. If any ruler or noble should abandon their first love—pure religion—God will lay them low.178

The concept of providence was sufficiently flexible to justify both absolutist conceptions of power and to make threats to princes whose wills exceeded their office. This had considerable implications for tudor political polemic. For example, the martyrologist John Foxe’s emphasis on God’s providence in the accession of elizabeth increased propor-tionately with his displeasure at the queen’s escalating animosity to Puritanism during her reign. By emphasising God’s involvement in elizabeth’s inheritance of the crown, Foxe was reminding elizabeth that she was accountable to God for her religious policy. Providence implied covenant. God gave elizabeth power on the condition that she would restore the english church to its edwardian purity. The polemic became fierce when Foxe and numerous others reminded even the Queen of her own mortality.179 This is a far cry from the Machiavellian power of fortune espoused by starkey in the 1530s. It would be a mis-take to think that providentialism only ever functioned to secure the power of rulers and higher stations. Providentialism was a double-edged sword. God’s laws applied universally: to utter them against another was also to utter them against oneself. Preachers from edward VI until the end of the tudor reign could quite comfortably threaten the people with divine vengeance for disobedience and in the same breath threaten the ruler with the same for injustice or godlessness. as hobbes understood, providentialism has no partiality.

Fixed Order in Desuetude: Puritanism and Separatism

Walzer argues that Puritanism, by appealing to the dynamic will of God as a sufficient explanation for things, destroyed the Great Chain of

84 chapter two

180 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, passim.181 troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 344.182 Cox to Gualter (June 12, 1573), Zurich Letters, p. 421.183 todd, Christian Humanism, pp. 6–7, 182, 196–197.184 An Exhortation to the Byshops to deale Brotherly with theyr Brethren (n.p. 1572),

fol. Biiii.

Being and notions of static immutable order.180 But as this chapter has shown, the preference for divine will over impersonal order was char-acteristic of practically the whole Protestant tradition and Puritans and separatists generally ignored the medieval metaphysic altogether for a method of biblical proofs. speaking of medieval Christian sects, troeltsch’s words are remarkably relevant to radical elizabethan Protestants who also ‘rejected compromise with the world, and there-fore also relative natural Law’ and had ‘no conception of an architec-tonic scheme of society and of the universe, with all the relative elements and gradual evolution which such a conception involves…’ .181 It was from the epistles of the apostle Paul that Puritans and separatists concluded that no churchman was greater than another. and it was this parity which most alarmed critics of the movements. Indeed, their agenda was seen by their critics to have been ‘to revive the ancient pres-bytery of the primitive church, and to establish such an equality among all ministers, that they may be despised and rejected even by the church [elders] itself…’ .182

historian of elizabethan Puritanism, Margo todd, is prepared to allow for a Calvinistic or reformed explanation for the demise of the Great Chain of Being, but points out that humanism was also a move-ment that saw society as dynamic and not fixed. The humanist stress on virtue, as evidenced in the writings of eminent humanists like erasmus, Guillaume Budé, and Thomas More, detracted from the previous emphasis on hierarchy and looked more to character rather than meta-physics as a source of authority.183 The Puritanism and separatism of the sixteenth-century was almost completely indifferent to such abstract principles, possibly because they did not lend themselves to the sorts of polemical treatises that the Puritans and separatists felt compelled to produce. Certainly Puritanism, Presbyterianism, and separatism saw present order as secondary in importance to the true way of doing things. Indeed, one Puritan manifesto saw the gospel in just such sub-versive terms: ‘The truth may be accused of sedition, of trouble, or breaking of state, if it be so, it is no new thing…’ .184 Puritan biblicism


185 ‘Proclamation of June 11, 1573’, Frere, W.h. and C.e. douglas, Puritan Manifestos: A Study of the Origins of the Puritan Revolt, (London: sPCK, 1954), p. 153.

186 sandys to Burghley (aug. 28, 1573), ibid., p. 155.187 robert Browne, ‘a book which sheweth the life and manners of the true Christian’

(1582), Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, elizabethan separatist texts, vol. 2, albert Peel and Leyland h. Carlson (eds.), (London: allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 241.

188 a.s.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, (London: J.M. dent and sons, 1938), Putney debates, p. 17. Cf. p. 20.

189 Ibid., p. 15.

was pushed regardless of which traditions had to be overturned or hierarchies brought down. This was recognised in a 1573 royal procla-mation, which described the Puritan movement as ‘unquietly disposed, desirous to change, and therefore ready to find fault with all well estab-lished orders…’ . Indeed, Puritans ‘make division and dissention in the opinions of men and…breed talks and disputes against common order’.185 Bishop sandys thought the Puritans to have pronounced themselves ‘against the whole state’.186 It is true that the Puritan and separatist movements did not stress anything like a universal hierarchy finding its expression in nature and society. Indeed, one of the most radical separatists, robert Browne, had a perfect opportunity to draw the connection between natural and social harmony, but ignored the link altogether. In his most systematic writing, A Book which Sheweth the Life and Manners of All True Christians (1581), Browne spoke of universal order in nature as sustained directly by God, who ‘keepeth all his creatures, in their state of excellence and difference of kind…’ .187 at this point any conscientious Protestant or Catholic would have drawn the analogy between nature and society, but Browne did no such thing. his silence on any such nexus would come to be typical of political thought in the following century and beyond. no Puritan or separatist offered an explicit refutation of the Great Chain of Being or of medieval discourse on fixed impersonal order. They ignored it. By the time of the Puritan army debates of 1647–9, the whole purpose of discussion was declared to be ‘that we may seek God together…’ .188 For this was the foundation of all legitimate actions, according to oliver Cromwell, ‘to do that which is the will of God’.189

responding to the perceived egalitarian element of Presbyterianism—too close to democracy for some—some explicitly denied that social rank was abrogated by Christ’s injunction to humility. Christ, accord-ing to archbishop John Whitgift, far from denying the legitimacy of

86 chapter two

190 John Whitgift, ‘a defence of the answer’ (1574), Works of John Whitgift, Parker society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), p. 406.

191 If sandys’ sermon does display some salisburian influence, it is one of the rare examples of tudor political thought. at least its salisburian debt is more obvious than most. Laurence humphrey explicitly drew on John of salisbury’s concept of kingship in his A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster a polemic against seditious Jesuit politi-cal theorists and movements in england (oxford, 1588), pp. 35–36. By and large salisbury’s Policraticus seems to have been ignored by ecclesiastics.

192 edwin sandys, ‘Fifth sermon’, pp. 99–100. Italics added. Cf. Cary J. nederman, ‘Physiological significance’, passim.

193 sandys, ‘The tenth sermon’ (1585), Sermons, p. 186.

social superiors, exhorts all men and women to humility. It is therefore ‘the affection of the mind that Christ condemneth, not superiority, not titles of honour and dignity…’ .190 Bishop sandys thought order and rank significant enough to devote some traditional metaphors towards them. In a passage that is an exposition of st. Paul’s organic analogy but which reads like John of salisbury’s Policraticus,191 sandys illuminates social rank in terms of the human anatomy and aristotelian naturalism:

…and civil society, there must be diversity, as of members, so of func-tions. The prince is as the head.…The ministers of the word are as eyes to watch…and as the mouth to speak…The judges are as ears….The nobil-ity are as the shoulders and arms to bear the burden of the common-wealth, to hold up the head, and defend the body.…Men of lower degrees are set as inferior parts in the body…for the necessary sustentation of both themselves and others. All these members are so necessary, that none can want without the ruin of the whole. For every one hath need of other, and by the help of the other is maintained.192

The classic formulation of social ranks was restated by sandys in another sermon: prince over subject; master over servant; father over child; husband over wife.193 one wonders whether even God can inter-vene in society and raise up common folk and bring down rulers if, indeed, society is as fragile as an organism. sandys’ sermons give equal emphasis to medieval notions of fixed rank and hierarchy and to God’s free and irresistible will operating in society evidencing at the time.

The ambiguity that characterised the Protestant worldview during the later years of the tudor reign was absent from the greatest tudor Protestant theorist, richard hooker. hooker’s thought represented a golden mean between the medieval impersonal view of universal order spoken of by historians and the providentialist understanding of order espoused by so many Protestants. hooker’s dialogue with Puritanism


194 Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, (London: routledge and Keegan Paul, 1952), p. 51.

195 W.J. torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, (aldershot: ashgate, 2005), pp. 42–43. see also pp. 30–31.

196 ‘Lawes of ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593), I.2.4, Works of Richard Hooker, 6 vols., W. speed hill (ed.), (Massachusetts, nJ: Belknap, harvard University Press, 1977), vol. 1.

may well be described as a sustained argument for reason, as opposed to will, as the governing principle of the universe.194 The english divine explicitly drew upon dionysius’ angelic hierarchy in discussing spirit-ual and temporal order. hooker’s order was not the voluntarist expres-sion of an active God but ‘an order which is nothing less than the divine self-identity’.195 even God, for richard hooker, does not simply will things out of simple pleasure; indeed, ‘They err therefore who think that the will of God to do this or that, there is no reason besides his will’.196

Conclusion

although the reformation removed much of the certainty of the medi-eval mind and society, we must not err by thinking the sixteenth- century broke entirely from notions of rank and order, as though the reformation neatly separates the medieval from the modern world. on the contrary, the english Protestant view of society retained much that was traditional and medieval. The political and theological treatises, liturgies, sermons, prayers, and homilies of tudor england reveal that, for Protestants, politics was the product of the medieval mingling of heaven with earth, the participation of temporal society in the eternal heavenly hierarchy. however, although the conclusions look identical to what went before, the arguments used underwent a shift. sixteenth-century english Protestantism had, by and large, replaced any mean-ingful discourse about fixed order with God’s irresistible will. The Protestants envisioned a radically personal universe, obviating the need for intricate speculation on order and hierarchy. If God’s will is irresist-ible, then the current political and social climate must be an expression of such a will. This methodological shift is partly attributable to the influence of Continental reformed thought—Calvin’s in particular—in english theological speculation.

88 chapter two

197 scott, England’s Troubles, p. 73.198 Ibid, pp. 73, 153.

The presence of fixed order and the new emphasis on God’s dynamic will did not sit well together. For fixed order was a limit to God’s power, but God’s absolute power made fixed rank and order somewhat mean-ingless. Knox’s political thought demonstrates such a tension. If the old concept of fixed ranks can be used to argue against a political innovation—say, gynaecocracy—an appeal to God’s irresistible will can just as easily render any innovation legitimate. elizabethan politi-cal thought kept the presence of both medieval and reformed cosmol-ogies, though with an emphasis on divine will, which largely replaced metaphysical speculation on reason and essence as an explanation for rank and order. The conceptual difficulties in Knox’s system were never as stark in elizabethan thought, for there was never another elizabethan political theorist as radical as Knox advocating such upheaval yet at the same time espousing such cosmic harmony. With the Puritan and separatist movements the notion of fixed order was largely replaced with an emphasis on biblical proof texts. This is not to say that fixed hierarchy was forever lost, quite the contrary. order and providence would spectacularly clash in the seventeenth-century. The concept of fixed order was heavily invoked by archbishop Laud in his attempts to unify and homogenise english religion and do away with Puritanism.197 Yet in the same age a radical Protestant army was being raised to remove a tyrant king from the throne; an army whose ideology was providen-tialism, and whose aim was to earn ‘the return of divine favour’.198 We see in the writings of tudor churchmen an age of transition, where a new theology was making old commonplaces somewhat redundant. Though certainly not modern, the tudor age was not wholly medieval. It was an age working out its own universe.

1 John T. McNeill, ‘Natural Law in the Teaching of the Reformers’, Journal of Religion, XXVI, (1946), p. 168; Cf. R.H. Murray, The Political Consequences of the Reformation: Studies in Sixteenth Century Political Thought, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1926), p. 65; Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Second Edition (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1960]), p. 143.

2 McNeill, ‘Natural Law’, p. 172.

CHaPTER THREE

REaSON, NaTURE, aNd NaTURaL LaW

Introduction

Providentialism proved a powerful competitor to the impersonal necessity that philosophers and theologians had entertained in much social thought up until the sixteenth-century. This providentialist challenge to concepts of natural order could not but also touch upon traditional notions of natural law. For if nature is simply repeated instances of God’s will in creation, with no being of its own, as augustine argued, then what is considered natural is simply what God happens to will, and God can change his will. Thus, providentialism could also challenge robust theories of natural law. as witnessed, this was evident in the Knox/aylmer debate over the naturalness of Elizabeth’s reign. aylmer pointed out that Elizabeth’s reign could not be considered unnatural if nature is defined as simply that which God wills, for obvi-ously God willed Elizabeth to ascend to the throne, for what could overpower him? But it was not so much the enthusiasm for providen-tialism that took its toll on natural law theories in the sixteenth-century as it was Protestantism in general. The task of the historian of natural law in Protestant England is to explain why there was no sustained sophisticated tradition of natural law in ecclesiastical political thought before Richard Hooker.

In his classic study of natural law in the thought of the Protestant Reformers J.T. McNeill said that there was no real discontinuity between the natural law taught by the scholastic tradition and that espoused by the Reformers.1 Indeed, Luther is said to have been more reliant on the natural law tradition than previously thought.2 The scholastic division

90 chapter three

3 Ibid., pp., 172, 182.4 J.W. allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, (London:

Methuen 1958 [1928]), p. 188.5 Franklin Le Van Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, (New York: Russell

and Russell, 1966 [1940]), p. 130.6 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols, Olive Wyon

(tr.), (London: allen and Unwin, 1931 [1911]), vol. 1, p. 323.7 Christopher Morris, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker, (London:

Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 131.8 a.P. d’Entreves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas,

Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker, (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), p. 95.

of law into natural, divine, and human was retained by Reformers, though Calvin broke with the medieval tradition by declaring con-science, as opposed to reason, the diviner of natural law.3 J.W. allen was quite correct when he said that natural law was always gener-ally accepted in England: ‘Sceptics apart, if anyone in Elizabethan England denied it, it was the Puritans’.4 It may not even be the case that Puritans were too concerned with explicitly denying natural law; they generally ignored it. Baumer shows that natural law was the domi-nant vocabulary during the early stages of the Henrician Reformation in the 1530s.5 For some historians Protestantism would not even have been able to construct social theories independently of natural law ideas:

…even Protestantism—the new form of the Christian idea which arose out of the religious crisis of the sixteenth century—was only able to estab-lish a doctrine of society by reshaping and continuing this Catholic social philosophy. The social philosophy of Protestantism is also based upon the idea of Natural Law.6

It has been commonplace for historians of political thought to iden-tify sixteenth-century Protestant political literature as being hostile to natural law ideas, or, at least, not particularly comfortable with them. Morris provides a good example: ‘The appeal to a higher law, particu-larly to the Law of Nature, was easier for the Catholic than for the Protestant. It was the divine Will, far more than the divine Law, which operated in the Protestant’s universe’.7 d’Entreves goes further:

…it is undoubtedly true that among the first effects of the Reformation upon political theory was the forsaking of the rational arguments of nat-ural law, and of any systematic treatment of the highest problems of law and politics. Thus the law of the Bible and the law of the state were left as the main if not the only ground of controversy.8

reason, nature, and natural law 91

9 Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), p. 198.

10 Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 56.

11 Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640, (London and New York: Longman, 1986), p. 14.

12 Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 112–113.

13 Ibid., pp. 136–137.14 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 344.

Walzer, speaking of seventeenth-century Puritans, attributed the rejec-tion of the idea of natural law to their voluntarist universe.9 Yet the idea of a complete rejection of natural law in Protestant thought is scarcely less than a ‘caricature of Protestant ethics’.10 Sommerville shows that this was not the case with all seventeenth-century Protestants and it remained ‘central to much of the political thinking of the period’.11 Nonetheless, in terms of the Puritan tradition, there is much truth in Walzer’s analysis, though Euan Cameron’s contention that the natural law tradition was merely diluted at the hands of many Protestant theo-rists owing to the greater emphasis on sin and intellectual corruption is probably closer to the mark.12 Furthermore, the tactic of Martin Luther in responding to his detractors probably set the method by which future advocates of reform would defend their position. The issue of authority had to arise if Luther was going to attack the teach-ings of the church. Luther went above the authority of the pope and mostly ignored the scholastic tradition of natural law and appealed straight to scripture.13 For the most part Luther was uninterested in the natural law tradition and refused to interact with it.

However, it was not only the Protestant view of God’s will that led to the decline of natural law discourse but also the Protestant emphasis on sola scriptura. The truth is not so much that natural law flourished nor that it was rejected. Natural law was present in much Protestant politi-cal thought throughout the sixteenth-century, but in a rudimentary way. In fact, for the most part, the English Protestant tradition, until Richard Hooker, greatly resembles what Ernst Troeltsch called the ‘sect tradition of natural law’. The sect tradition, in Troeltsch’s words, ‘adopted an entirely different attitude towards Natural Law. They did not base their arguments upon learned patristic or aristotelian researches into the Law of God, but upon the plain Law of Christ, or the Sermon on the Mount’.14 Though it will be shown that there was

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15 W.d.J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1984), p. 79. Cf. Brian Tierney’s critique of historians who are quick to characterise Ockham’s philosophy as the elevation of dark arbitrary will over the light of reason. Like Protestantism and natural law, it is not so black and white. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 30.

16 Tierney, Idea of Natural Rights, pp. 239, 253.

neither a total rejection of aristotle nor of the church Fathers, the simplicity described by Troeltsch of the sect understanding of natural law typifies most of the Protestant natural law discourse in England from 1547–1593. W.d.J. Cargill Thompson’s comments are the most judicious on the issue of natural law and the Reformation:

There is no evidence to support the idea that there was a break in the natural law tradition between the end of the middle ages and the end of the sixteenth/beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was revived in protestantism by Hooker in England and Grotius in the Netherlands. On the contrary, natural law continued to play an important—if perhaps more limited—part in the thinking of all the major reformers and it is only among the extreme sects that it was attenuated almost out of existence.15

The remainder of this chapter seeks to explain why, in Thompson’s words, natural law played a ‘more limited’ role in English political thought during the second half of the sixteenth-century.

It is not easy to identify why natural law went undeveloped during this period, for Protestant theorists rarely attacked the idea. It seems that the tradition was entering a somewhat decadent and detached phase by the sixteenth-century. as Brian Tierney shows, most discourse on natural law and natural rights was firmly attached to current ques-tions regarding poverty. However, during the sixteenth-century there was a change in attitudes towards poverty brought about by the human-ist movement, which offered the poor less sympathy than the scholastic tradition previously. Consequently natural law and natural rights dis-course became detached from the issue of poverty and remained a free-floating debate without any immediate application to the real world. This led the humanists to deride the natural law and natural rights tradition as irrelevant scholastic excess.16 Certainly both Morris and Walzer are right in identifying a discomfort among English Protestants with natural law, but it should not be concluded that natural law was abandoned altogether. as will be shown, natural law was kept as an idea but its analysis and use was stifled by the Protestant doctrines of


17 Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, pp. 159–160.18 august Lang, ‘The Reformation and Natural Law’, J. Gresham Machen (tr.),

William Park armstrong (ed.), Calvin and the Reformation, (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1980 [1909]), p. 92.

19 See Francis Oakley, ‘Locke, Natural Law and God—again’, History of Political Thought, XVIII/4, (Winter 1997): pp. 624–651.

20 Ernest Barker, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society 1500–1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), p.xli.

21 Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law, p. 57.

the sufficiency of scripture and the emphasis on the corruption of the intellect by sin. In the area of natural law theory, English Protestant political thought displays a tension between theory and method. If natural law is, by its very nature medieval,17 then medieval political thought remained, but the new simplified non-scholastic method of discourse was unsuitable for its expression. The crudity of the Protestant use of natural law in England was owing to an uneasy relationship between traditional ideas and new Protestant theology.

The Christian Natural Law Tradition

Though its presence ebbed and flowed, natural law theory had always been a part of English intellectual history. It was inseparable from orthodox Roman Catholic thought. The judgment of august Lang stands: ‘Ius naturalis with all its political consequences must accord-ingly, so far as one may speak here at all of religious and ecclesiastical determination, be regarded, despite its beginnings in antiquity, as a thoroughly Catholic product’.18 There is some current debate as to whether natural law ever detached itself from its medieval tradition; could natural law be considered anything other than medieval?19 Whatever the case, the whole natural law tradition saw itself as a ration-alist enterprise; rationalist in the sense of autonomous: not relying on any revealed authority for its conclusions to hold. Indeed, the tradi-tion saw itself as in some ways independent from the authority of the church, even a measuring rod against which the church could be assessed.20 Yet Stephen Grabill is correct to point out that their was no single, unified tradition of natural law, ancient or medieval. approaches were various and, often, incompatible.21

The ancient world was immersed in ideas of natural law, which usu-ally referred to the divining of proper principles of conduct by observ-ing that which tends to human happiness and that which does not.

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22 Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 41.

23 Ibid., pp. 47–48.24 See Tierney, Idea of Natural Rights, p. 59.25 P.G. Stein, ‘Roman law’, J.H. Burns, The Cambridge History of Medieval Political

Thought c.350–c.1450, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 45.26 Justinian, Institutes, 1.2, Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (trs.), (Ithaca, New York:

Cornell University Press, 1987).

Such was the Stoic school of natural law. Cicero offered an extremely speculative account of natural law, believing all things were held together by reason. Reason connected person with person and, ulti-mately, persons with God.22 For Cicero, the laws of nature were: self-preservation; social intercourse; pursuit of truth; passion for prominence; and, a love of order.23 With exception to passion for prom-inence, these principles were wholly imbibed within the Christian nat-ural law tradition. In Gratian’s Decretum (c.1140), a medieval compilation of laws regarding ecclesiastical discipline, natural law, fol-lowing Isidore, referred to animal instinct and universal custom. By animal instinct theorists were referring to the proclivity of all living things to defend themselves from harm, to procreate, to have some sort of hierarchical structure (bees were the favorite example), the protec-tion by parents of their young, and filial piety.24 By universal custom, theorists meant those social practices and institutions that numerous cultures have come to endorse quite independently of one another, for example slavery and certain types of political constitution. It was inferred from this that human nature must have led these different peoples independently to endorse these institutions. Natural law as animal instinct was present in the Digest (530), an attempt to systema-tise Roman (Theodosian) law, yet it was never elaborated upon. Generally, in early-medieval political thought, natural law referred to natural reason common to all mankind.25 Justinian’s Institutes drew the distinction between ius naturale and ius gentium. Ius naturale is the nature that all creatures of the earth and sky possess. It is possessed by humans, who are led by it to marriage, intercourse, and family. Ius gen-tium is custom universally practised by all mankind. It is not, however, necessarily natural.26 despite the relative unimportance of animal observation in medieval political thought, such speculation became common in English Protestant political thought during the sixteenth-century. Gratian equated natural law with Christ’s Golden Rule of doing for others what we would for ourselves. Natural law, for Gratian, was


27 See Janet Coleman, A History of Political Thought: From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 47, 106; d.E. Luscombe and G.R. Evans, ‘The twelfth-century renaissance’, Burns (ed.), Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, p. 314.

28 Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis, 2.12.7–8, Richard Scholz (ed.), Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui in Usum Scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis, (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1932).

29 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 269.30 John Fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England (1468–1471), Shelly

Lockwood (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), passim.31 John of Salisbury, Policraticus (1159), I.3, Cary J. Nederman (ed. & tr.), (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1990).32 Salisbury, Policraticus, VI.21.33 Joan Lockwood O’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English

Reformation, (atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 3, 43. Cf. Baumer, Early Tudor Theory,

codified in the decalogue and Christ’s moral teachings.27 Marsilius of Padua wrote of two senses in which natural law may be described. First, that which is agreed upon by all men is natural in that, just as the behavior of senseless creatures is the same everywhere, so such cus-toms are universally practised by all peoples. Second, a law is natural if God ordains it, that is, if it is reasonable; though laws in this sense are not necessarily practised by all.28 Eventually Catholic civilisation became based on natural law guided by grace. Though certain things (temporal government) may be natural, their purpose reaches beyond nature towards some heavenly end.29 Something was natural if it was inevitable given the facts of human nature and distinctly human needs. If humans were left to themselves and found that the best way to live a good life was to gather into communities, which could only be sus-tained by introducing certain social institutions—for example govern-ment and money—then such institutions could be described as natural. Natural in the sense that they are essential to the development of human nature. The natural law tradition as carried on by Sir John Fortescue was entirely scholastic, in that his authorities were made up of aristotle, aquinas, Gregory the Great, and others in the scholastic tradition.30 Before Fortescue, John of Salisbury informed the twelfth-century reader that duty and nature may not be impugned.31 On numerous occasions he noted that nature was the best guide for living; if our con-duct does not imitate nature—he had the bees in mind on this occa-sion—then we are ‘bestial and brute’!32 In England there was a tradition of natural law inspired by the system of Thomas aquinas. Beginning with Sir John Fortescue and continuing through to Christopher St German, the tradition was often a remedy against royal absolutism.33

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pp. 128, 136–137. Eppley’s close analysis of St German shows that he actually came closest to absolutism of any apologist of the Henrician Royal Supremacy while employ-ing the medieval distinction between the laws of reason, God, and nature. Eppley notes, however, that it is the crown-in-parliament, not the crown solus, that is the highest authority in the realm. Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007), pp. 61–141.

34 O’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 46.

Essentially, natural law in its earliest Tudor expression was justice discerned by right reason.34

Reason during the Reformation

There were no elaborate treatises on natural law by any English Protestant until Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593). It cannot be argued that this was because of an open disdain for phi-losophy, the traditional scholastic curriculum, or even the philosophy of aristotle, for a keen appreciation for all of these was kept by most learned English Protestants. Though there was a general appreciation for aristotelian thought, the Protestant method of discourse was, by and large, scriptural. It was not that aristotle was rejected, but that the emphasis on sola scriptura made complex philosophical argument redundant. Thus, a method of inquiry that drew conclusions from a complex web of arguments based on first principles—scholasticism—was rare among English Protestant theorists. For this reason, there was no complex discussion of natural law by English churchmen until Richard Hooker, who eschewed the scriptural proof-text method when dealing with general issues of law and society. The Protestant view of the sufficiency of scripture did not create general disdain for complex philosophical exploration or for the philosophers themselves. It merely made it difficult to use such methods of inquiry. Therefore, concepts which would normally have been developed in detail by way of philo-sophical distinctions—such as natural law—were either ignored or expressed in their most crude form relying on standard scriptural proof texts. This characterised the concept of natural law among the Protestant churchmen in England.

The schoolmen held that revelation was needed owing to limitations of the mind. Reformers held that it was needed owing to the almost worthlessness of human reason in matters spiritual and ethical because of original sin. Luther was the most radical in his suspicion of reason as


35 Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 81. See also W.d.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘The Philosopher of the “Politic Society”: Richard Hooker as a Political Thinker’, W. Speed Hill (ed.), Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, (Cleveland and London: Case Western University Press, 1972), p. 30.

36 Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, D. Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 18, (Weimar: Harmann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1908), p. 184.

37 John Calvin, ‘Commentarius in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos’ (1539), 1:21, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. LXXVII, William Baum, Edward Cunitz, Edward Reuss (eds.), (Brunswig: C.a. Schwetschke and Son, 1892), p. 25.

38 William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, (1528), (Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1970), fol. xxxv.

39 Ibid., fol. xxxvi.

a reliable navigator. It should be kept in mind that Luther’s critique of reason was really a critique of speculation about God and salvation detached from the Bible. For Luther ‘reason’ and scholastic excess were synonymous.35 Indeed, reason ‘interprets the scriptures of God by its own inferences and syllogisms’. Furthermore, ‘it talks nothing but fol-lies and absurdities, especially when it displays its wisdom on sacred subjects’.36 Calvin concurred:

and thus their foolish mind, being enveloped in darkness, was not able to understand anything properly, but was hurled down in every way into errors and fictions. This was their unrighteousness, that they immedi-ately choked the seed of proper knowledge before it grew to maturity.37

It was for this reason that Luther and Calvin had to try to base all their doctrines on scripture, thus largely eschewing the scholastic method of assertion, critique, and response. If scripture lays bare many teachings on social organisation they are true by virtue of being scriptural. The English Lutheran, William Tyndale, ornamented The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) with attacks on scholastic philosophy as idola-trous, foolish, and heretical. Tyndale was sure that ‘We are all out of the right way, every man his ways: One judgeth this best, another that to be best. Now is worldly wit nothing but craft and subtlety to obtain that which we judge falsely to be best’.38 Tyndale then turned his scorn directly on Plato, aristotle, and the scholastics, whose pride he com-pared to the sin of whorish ostentation.39

Christian humanism made something of natural law by relying primarily on the pagan philosophers. Only the most rudimentary principles of natural law had been set forth by the pagan authorities. Consequently the achievement of the humanists in developing natural law theory was scarcely able to approach the mighty and authoritative

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40 Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 185–186.

41 Lang, ‘The Reformation and Natural Law’, pp. 72–98.42 Morris, Political Thought in England, p. 131.43 John Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the

Seventeenth Century, 2 vols., (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1872), vol. 1, p. 3.

44 Romans 3:21–22.45 Hugh Latimer, ‘Sermon of the Plough’ (1548), Sermons by Hugh Latimer, Parker

Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), p. 69.

systems of the Roman Catholic schoolmen. Erasmus praised animals, but only to turn the hierarchy of animals on its head as a critique of royalty and the nobility. He spurned the eagle and the lion while elevat-ing the dog and the beetle.40 during the Reformation, there was never a great system of natural law put forth. Furthermore, when natural law did begin to be revived by early seventeenth-century Protestants, they ignored their spiritual fathers—Luther, Calvin, and Bullinger—and restated medieval principles drawing on the scholastic tradition.41

For the Magisterial Reformers, reason was considered a ‘faulty’ and ‘dangerous’ instrument.42 This fact led one Victorian historian of thought to opine that the Reformers desired not so much ‘rational lib-erty’ but ‘spiritual salvation’.43 The Reformers’ suspicion of autonomous reason came from the Pauline epistles. Concerning the human race, the apostle proclaimed, ‘their foolish heart was full of darkness. When they professed themselves to be wise, they became fools’.44 Tyndale’s anti-rationalism did not take hold at Oxford in the Edwardian period, as Plato and aristotle were still studied for their ethical and political insights. The spirit of humanism that was sweeping England fed a demand for training in the philosophers. Protestant preacher, Hugh Latimer, praised the study of logic and philosophy as the key to a flourishing commonwealth:

Therefore for the love of God appoint teachers and schoolmasters, you that have charge of youth; and give the teachers stipends worthy of their pains, that they may bring them up in grammar, in logic, in rhet-oric, in philosophy, in the civil law, and in that which I cannot leave unspoken of, the word of God…that we shall another day have a flourish-ing commonwealth… ’.45

Even though the Reformation spoke of the corruption of the mind, it did not stop many Reformers from recommending a retreat to pagan philosophy for illumination. Paradoxically, the Reformers’ stress on


46 John Patrick donnelly, ‘Italian Influences on the development of Italian Scholasticism’, Sixteenth Century Journal, VII/1, (april 1976), pp. 85–86.

47 Peter Munz exaggerates the Protestant hostility to aristotle when he says that ‘To Protestants aristotle appeared as the bulwark of scholastic philosophy…which they rejected’. The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1952), p. 116.

48 See the letters of ‘ab Ulmis to Bullinger’ (1548–1550), Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols., Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), vol. 1, pp. 388, 403, 410, 412, 419.

49 Haddon to Bullinger (august, 1552), ibid, pp. 283–284.50 Harding to Bullinger (October 19, 1551), ibid., pp. 309–310; Wilcock to Bullinger

(May 12, 1552), idem, p. 315.51 John Philpot, ‘dedication’ (n.d), Examinations and Writings of John Philpot,

Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), pp. 21–22.

noetic corruption did not lead them to abandon hope being placed in education and secular philosophy. Reformed scholasticism was taking hold toward the end of Calvin’s life. Calvin’s theological method was basically biblicism; his work epitomised the pious motto sola scriptura. However, as Protestant heresies increased, biblical proof texts ceased to be sufficient. Reformed scholasticism grew out of a polemical necessity to meet the intricate arguments of heretics head-on.46

English Protestants were generally enthusiastic about the aristotelian curriculum they were being fed at university.47 despite Oxonian John ab Ulmis’ frequent belittling of scholastic ‘quiddities’, he showed a high appreciation for classical philosophy and praised the Oxford program of public disputations.48 aristotle was still considered a major authority among English Protestants. James Haddon, Cambridge graduate and Canon of Westminster, writing to Heinrich Bullinger in 1551, spoke highly of aristotle’s views on the nature of money; he also gave explicit approval of aristotle’s ‘admirable’ Ethics and Politics.49 Other Englishmen furnished their letters with references to Socrates, Plato, aristotle, and Cicero.50 In the dedication of one of his works of transla-tion, the archdeacon of Winchester, John Philpot, addressed Edward VI with liberal use of Boethius’ helpful views regarding the nature of philosophy.51

an admission of noetic corruption could coexist alongside an appreciation and use of aristotelian philosophy. The preacher, John Bradford, had nothing positive to say about humankind’s ability to understand hidden truths by way of reason. a confession in one of his prayers would have received assent by all English Protestants: ‘Blind is my mind, crooked is my will, and perverse concupiscence is in me as a

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52 John Bradford, ‘a Prayer for the Mercy of God’ (published in 1562), Writings of John Bradford containing Sermons, Meditations and Examinations, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), p. 203.

53 Ibid., p. 213. Cf. ‘Consequently we understand that the best way of inquiring after God, and the most appropriate order, is not that we attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate so as to investigate his essence…’ . Calvin, ‘Institutio Christianae Religionis’ (1536–1554), I.14, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 29, William Baum, Edward Cunitz, Edward Reuss (eds.), (Brunswig: C.a. Schwatschke and Son, 1863), p. 290.

54 Bradford, ‘Prayer for the Mercy of God’, p. 214.55 Bradford, ‘Meditations on the Commandments’ (published in 1562), Sermons,

Meditations, Examinations, p. 149.56 Bradford, ‘The Restoration of all Things’ (1555), ibid, pp. 356–362.57 John Hooper, ‘a declaration of the Ten Commandments’ (1550), Early Writings

of John Hooper, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), p. 361.

58 Ibid., p. 378.59 Ibid., pp. 407–408.60 Winthrop S. Hudson, John Ponet (1516?–1556): Advocate of Limited Monarchy,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 164.61 Jane E.a. dawson, ‘The Early Career of Christopher Goodman and his Place

in the development of Protestant Thought’, (Unpublished Ph.d. thesis, University of durham, 1978), p. 137, fn.62.

spring or stinking puddle’.52 This meant that a Christian should not try to think of God ‘as he is in himself ’ but as ‘by his word he teacheth us’.53 despite Bradford’s objection to the pursuit of quiddities and haecicities he was happy to admit that, among other characteristics, humankind’s capacity for wisdom was part of the image of God,54 and he was able to define a human in terms of an animal bestowed with reason, memory, and judgment.55 Furthermore, he was open to using the arguments of aristotle and Thomas aquinas to build his own ideas concerning prov-idence, nature, and the restoration of things.56 Bishop John Hooper invoked the authority of the pagan philosophers on many occasions; Plato, aristotle, Cicero, and Cato may be found in his writings. Hooper relied on aristotle in his account of the necessary principles for the proper governing of a commonwealth.57 Cicero was invoked to per-suade his readers to be less lavish with their clothing.58 Both Cicero and Cato were quoted approvingly against the evil of flatterers.59 Hooper seems to have been secular enough for John Ponet to have borrowed a quote from him supporting limitations upon the ruler’s will.60 Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Protestant scholasticism may have influenced Hooper, who wrote his Declaration of the Ten Commandments as an exile in Strasbourg, where Martyr was residing at the time.61

The scholastic programme persisted well into the Elizabethan regime. The Statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, made special mention


62 ‘Extracts from the Statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge’ (1585), H.C. Porter (ed.), Puritanism in Tudor England, (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 186.

63 donnelly, ‘Italian Influences’, p. 92.64 Bucer to Brentius (May 15, 1550), Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 543; Burcher to

Bullinger (april 20, 1550), idem, p. 663.

of the necessity for theological disputation; this ‘scholastic exercise in theology’ was considered necessary for an effective clergy.62 actually, the case seems to be that the Continental and English antipathy to rationalism was not so much directed towards the ancients and phi-losophy per se, but more towards scholastic excess—so-called triviali-ties, which seemed superfluous given the religious anxiety of the times. Italian Reformer and one-time Oxford theologian Peter Martyr Vermigli praised philosophy, affirmed the categories of aristotle as useful tools of analysis, and yet castigated scholastics.63 King Edward VI delighted in reading Cicero and aristotle; concurrently there were swipes from Oxford against Thomists and Scotists.64 This goes to show that although Reformation theology carried circumspection towards autonomous reason, philosophy and the scholastic tradition, these were never extinguished from England. There was always a place for the rational Englishman, but never the rational papist. The general view of scripture’s sufficiency, noetic corruption, and an appreciation for aristotelian philosophy resulted in most Protestant natural law being half-baked and platitudinous. There was an obvious need for the Bible to have the highest place in Protestant political theory, but often a need was also felt for rational proofs. Such proofs, however, could not be developed in any intricate way, for that would have been to usurp the place of scripture and to deny noetic corruption. Consequently, the intellectual nourishment traditionally given to natural law theory was diverted to humanistic biblical scholarship preventing natural law the-ory from growing beyond a mere shoot.

Natural Law among Edwardian Churchmen

The notion of natural law was more assumed than explored in Tudor ecclesiastical political thought. Given that examples of unnatural behavior usually involved intuitively suspect conduct like filial impiety, or downright horrid conduct like the common example of a starving mother devouring her child, ‘unnatural’ probably denoted a feeling of moral unacceptability. Probably Morris’ explanation of naturalis as

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65 Morris, Political Thought in England, p. 132.66 So says Coleman, History of Political Thought, p. 48.67 ‘an act against the bringing in and putting in execution of bulls and other instru-

ments from the see of Rome’ (1571), G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 419, 422.

68 Thomas Becon, ‘Preface to The Policy of War’ (1543), The Early Works of Thomas Becon, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1543), p. 232.

simply meaning ‘self-evident’ most captures the meaning of the term in Tudor literature.65 Part, if not all, of the problem with this tradition of natural law was its subjective nature: what seemed self-evident for some might not have been so self-evident for others.66 What many theorists wanted to do was to show how their injunctions were somehow condu-cive to the natural order, or in principle derivative from nature. It would have been a powerful proof if it could be done; why else would Elizabeth’s response to the Papal Bull Regnans in excelsis (1570)—which absolved all Catholics from obeying the ‘pretended’ English Queen—describe sedition as ‘unnatural’ and obedience ‘natural’ if people thought that nature had nothing to recommend?67 Bishop Thomas Becon affirmed that duty to parents and country was natural. It was clear to him that ‘there is no man so far estranged from civil humanity, which knoweth not how much every one of us is indebted to his native country. For…the duty that we owe to our parents, kinsfolk, friends, &c., be great even by the very law and instinct of nature… ’.68 Precisely what he meant is unclear; still, it is clear that Becon was trying to associate reverence and duty with something above and beyond individual will or preference: such affiliation is natural.

Miles Coverdale, shortly before the succession of Edward to the throne wrote The Christen Rule or State of All the Worlde (1547), in which he tried to set forth how all people in all stations should behave. High on the agenda was obedience, something universally applicable. One of the strongest exhortations to obedience from divine will to appear in the sixteenth-century was offered in 1547 by Miles Coverdale. The Christen Rule or State of all the Worlde was written and published while he was in exile in Strasbourg for preaching against confession and images. It is amazing that such a strong statement of royal legiti-macy could come from one exiled by his own prince. It raises the ques-tion of whether such exhortations really were devoid of conviction and merely devices of political strategy. Still, it could be plausibly argued that Coverdale’s tract was a Machiavellian attempt to ingratiate himself with Henry VIII. Coverdale’s efforts reflect the Reformation tradition


69 Miles Coverdale, The Christen Rule or State of All the Worlde (1547), p. 4.70 Ibid., pp. 4–5.71 Ibid., p. 5.72 Ibid., p. 9.73 Ibid. Cf. Romans 13:5.74 Ibid.

of making the new religion appeal to princes who were concerned, above all, with the loyalty of their subjects. It was from the Bible that Coverdale drew all of his arguments for obedience. although he did allow for the practical benefit of obedience, pointing out that dis-obedience can occasion even greater tyranny, his political thought was expressed with prophetic counsel. Coverdale began his treatise by quot-ing Romans 13. From there he could deduce that any resistance to God’s vice-regent was akin to resistance to God himself. Furthermore ‘they that resisteth shall receive their damnation’.69 Coming close to a ius gentium argument, Coverdale reminded his readers that if God requires even the pagan nations to observe the distinctions between ranks, a fortiori the English!70 Not only is rebellion against a ruler rebel-lion against God, but to seek to implement justice against a ruler is to usurp God’s role as judge of princes.71 Referring again to Paul’s teaching in Romans 13, Coverdale discerned three different types of subjects. The most reprehensible are ‘all together beastly, which in no wise receive the law in their hearts, but rise against princes and rulers… ’.72 The second group is ‘not so beastly’; its members ‘look on the pleasure, profit, and promotion that followeth the keep of the law, and in respect of the reward keep they the law outwardly with works, but not in the heart’.73 The third group is made up of the ideal Christian subject, the person who obeys out of duty to God’s law—‘written in their hearts’—and love towards the prince. as the apostle Paul described those gen-tiles who knew nothing of Moses’ decalogue yet knew God’s law and obeyed it, Coverdale described good Christian subjects as a ‘law unto themselves’: ‘These [good subjects] need neither of king nor officers to drive them, neither that any man proffer them any reward for to keep the law, for they do it naturally’.74

Coverdale’s next lengthy proof for obedience was by way of a medici-nal metaphor. as a patient would be foolish to resist the painful knife of a physician, so is a nation who resists God’s refining fire in the form of a tyrant:

Now if the sick resist the razor, the searching iron…doth he not resist his own health and is cause of his own death. So likewise is it of us,

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75 Ibid., pp. 22–23. Note that George Buchanan later used the same analogy in an apology for tyrannicide. George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots. A Critical Edition of George Buchanan’s de Iure Regni apud Scotos dialogus, (written in 1567, published in 1579), Roger a. Mason and Martin S. Smith (eds. & trs.), St. andrews Studies in Reformation History, (Hampshire: ashgate, 2004), p. 129

76 See Harro Hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540–1630, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192.

77 Hugh Latimer, ‘Sermon of the Plough’, p. 64. Cf. John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials relating chiefly to Religion and the Reformation of it and the Emergencies of the Church of England under King Henry VIII. King Edward VI. and Queen Mary I, vol. II, pt.II, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), p. 148.

if we resist evil rulers which are the rod and scourge wherewith God chastiseth us, the instruments wherewith God searcheth our wounds, and bitter drink to drive out the sin….75

If Coverdale was trying to appeal to all Englishmen, both common and noble, then the historian sees that the authority of scripture was considered sufficient. Coverdale’s injunction to obedience rarely strayed from a course firmly set in biblical commonplaces. Natural law and self-interest were considered neither necessary nor sufficient proofs for obedience to the higher powers. This became typical for sixteenth-cen-tury Protestant political thought until the work of Hooker. Furthermore, the emphasis on divine will came to be distinctively Protestant. Jesuits gave naturalistic aristotelian accounts of the origins and legitimacy of princely authority.76 Perhaps the Protestant preoccupation with provi-dence was responsible for the lack of any major philosophical discus-sion of the theory of government until Hooker.

Edwardian thought proved to be fecund ground for the animalistic theory of natural law, that is, the behavior of animals was the most popular way of expressing natural law ideas. Latimer, in his ‘Sermon of the Plough’ (1547), offered a strange eulogy for the butterfly, who ‘is not covetous, is not greedy, of other men’s goods; it is not full of envy and hatred, is not malicious, is not cruel, is not merciless. The butterfly glorieth not in her own deeds, nor preferreth the traditions of men before God’s word; it committeth not idolatry, nor worshippeth false gods’.77 Latimer believed that the butterfly exemplified the ideal con-duct for a person; behavior towards God and man is no subjective mat-ter, it is objectified in creation. Such talk would not have been brushed aside—as it would today—as quaint; Erasmus spent some time trying


78 Erasmus, ‘Institutio Principis Christiani’ (1516), The Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings, a.H.T. Levi (ed.), (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), vol. 5, pp. 225–226, 256.

79 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., Volume Two: The Age of Reformation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 99. The work was probably composed as early as 1532 and was first published in 1538.

80 Bale used ‘naturae lex’ as opposed to ‘ius naturalis’.81 John Bale, A Comedye Concernynge Thre Lawes, (n.c. 1548), fol. a iiij.82 Ibid., fol. a vii–viii.

to divine the proper nature and duties of a good king by describing the behavior of bees.78

The following year in 1548 John Bale republished his Comedye Concernynge Thre Lawes, a ‘scurrilous attack on the papacy and the monastic life’79—in which he explored the law of nature,80 the law of Moses, and the law of Christ. The typical Tudor understanding of natural order is exemplified in this little dialogue. However, Bale was more concerned with the descriptive lex or the universal order in crea-tion rather than the prescriptive ius, which makes such speculation properly political. Bale, in the tradition of Gratian, affirmed that the decalogue is simply the written record of the law of nature, for up until Moses the law of nature reigned in ‘the heart of Man, by his conscience for to steer… ’.81 In a beautiful definition of the law of nature, Bale affirmed it as that which gives order to the universe:

Such creatures as wane reason,My rules obey each season…

The sun and moon doth move,With the other bodies above,and never break their order.

The trees and herbs doth grow,The see doth ebb and flow,

and varieth not a nail.The floods and wholesome springs,

With other natural things,Their course do never fail.

The beasts and birds engender,So do the fishes tender,according to their kind.

alone man doth fall,From good laws natural,

By froward wicked mind.82

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83 Ibid., fol. a viii.84 Ibid., fol. B.85 John Bradford, ‘Prayer on the Ten Commandments’ (n.d.), Sermons, Meditations,

Examinations, pp. 256–262.86 Bradford, ‘Meditation on the Commandments’, p. 161.87 Bradford, ‘a Supplication unto the King and Queen’s Most Excellent Majesties’

(c. November or december 1554), in Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, p. 403.

So the law of nature is that which makes for an orderly and benefi-cent universe. Trouble arises when humans use will and intellect to break from the natural order of things. The character Naturae Lex is then challenged by Infidelitas to explain why, if natural law is so orderly, there is so much destruction in the world. Naturae Lex simply replies that such destruction is God’s punishment for sin.83 The order of things can be stopped only by will: if by God’s will, it is according to wisdom, if by humankind’s, it is according to sin. Finally the relationship between naturae lex, creation, and humankind is revealed. Naturae lex rules over humankind by the pricks of conscience, and by its sublime order-ing of creation it testifies to the glory of the Creator:

God hath appointed me,Mankind to oversee,

and in his heart to sit.To teach him, for to know,

In the creatures high and low,His glorious majesty….84

Bale obviously had the highest regard for naturae lex, though he never gave it any political application in his discourse, thus it is difficult to ascribe any political doctrine of natural law to him. If there is any clear message in Bale’s Comedye it is that nature is a guide to right, but nature seems to come down to conscience.

The most obvious place for the historian to look when divining the Tudor churchmen’s views of natural law is their expositions of the Ten Commandments. However, quite a few expositions have nothing to say about natural law at all: Bradford in his Prayer on the Ten Commandments did not even mention it.85 In his Meditations on the Commandments (1562), with the exception of a reference to animals as an example of obedience, natural law was completely avoided.86 He did, however, employ natural law concepts like equity, justice, and right when pro-testing to Queen Mary and King Phillip regarding the imprisonment of fellow Protestants.87 Over forty years later the Separatist, Henry Barrow,


88 Henry Barrow, ‘a Plaine Refutation of Mr. George Giffarde’s Reprochful Booke’ (1590–1591), The Writings of Henry Barrow 1590–1591, Elizabethan Separatist Texts, vol. 5, (London: George allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 54

89 John Penry, The Notebook of John Penry, 1593, albert Peel (ed.), (London: Royal Historical Society, 1944), p. 47. N.b. in Penry’s notes on Romans he commented on 2:13 and 2:15, omitting 2:14—the locus classicus for natural law theory (see idem, p. 12).

90 John Hooper, ‘declaration’, p. 359.

in his massive tome A Plaine Refutation (1590–1591) was to describe his conformist persecutors in a similar way; he did not need the Bible to tell him that the treatment of Separatists was contrary to ‘all sense, equity, and conscience’.88 about two years later another Separatist pleaded from prison that his accusers not punish him ‘against law equity and conscience… ’.89

John Hooper’s Natural Law

Bishop Hooper had more than most to say about natural law. In 1550 he published his Declaration of the Ten Commandments, a book with much speculative insight into law in general, and occasional references to natural law. Though Hooper was regarded as one of the most able of the Edwardian Reformers, his thought on law and politics is completely derivative. His treatise begins with a discussion of the very concept of law itself. In this discussion Hooper nowhere went into any detailed discussion of natural law; he remained completely theological. The first detailed glimpse into Hooper’s thought on natural law comes with his discussion of the fifth commandment. Hooper’s discussion demon-strates a competent knowledge of classical thought; it is by no means a sola scriptura argument. In the midst of his invocations of scripture and aristotle, Hooper submitted the following:

a thing more unnatural there is not, than to see the son dishonour the father, the subject his superior; as we learn not only by the scripture, but also by the examples of all other beasts of the earth and fowls of the air, except a few. Therefore, the book of Job sendeth us unto them to learn wisdom. Job xii. So doth Pliny, Lib. viii. Cap. 27, shew what wisdom the beasts of the earth hath taught man. Be not as the viper, that gnaweth out the belly of her dam, and seeketh her own life with her dam’s death. Follow the nature of the cicone [stork], that in her youth nourisheth the old days of her parents. Plin. Lib. X. cap. 23, Nat. Hist.90

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91 Ibid., p. 367.92 Ibid., p. 374.93 Justinian, Institutes, 1.3; d.E. Luscombe, ‘Natural Morality and Natural Law’,

Norman Kretzmann, anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 710.

94 Hooper, ‘declaration’, p. 427.95 Hooper, ‘annotations on Romans XIII’ (1551), Later Writings of Bishop Hooper,

Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), p. 103.96 Charles davis Cremeans, The Reception of Calvinistic Thought in England,

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949), pp. 30, 31; diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the English Reformation, (Penguin: London, 1999), p. 173; McNeill, ‘Natural Law’, p. 178.

97 Hooper was unsatisfied with Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper; furthermore, he was ‘exceedingly displeased’ with Calvin’s Commentary on First Corinthians (1546). Hooper to Bullinger (n.d), Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 38; Hooper to Bucer (June 19, 1548), idem, p. 48.

98 See McNeill’s brief account of Bullinger’s natural law theory, ‘Natural Law’, pp. 178–179.

Hooper also considered self-preservation to be a perspicuous teaching of nature; for ‘there is nothing more dear to man than his body and life, as the law of nature teacheth’.91 Hooper was equating instinct with nature. as all people instinctively strive to preserve their own bodies, this desire for self-preservation passes from the descriptive to the pre-scriptive: a law of nature. Hooper’s next identification of natural law is not so perspicuous: matrimony.92 Matrimony as natural law stretches right back to Justinian’s Institutes and was taught by the greatest doctor of natural law, Thomas aquinas.93 at the end of his treatise Hooper aligned natural law with the simple testimony of conscience.94 In his later writings he affirmed that natural law rendered all laws to the contrary void. Hooper specifically had in mind a commonplace of unnatural behavior: infanticide.95 again, exactly how infanticide is a transgression of natural law was not explained by Hooper, it was just assumed.

Though Cremeans identifies Hooper as a ‘confirmed Zwinglian’, if one were to insist upon some Continental influence on his natural law theory the best candidate would be Bullinger, ‘probably the most respected of that time in England’.96 By perusing the letters of the English Reformers, one finds that Hooper’s greatest theological debts lay with Bullinger. Hooper had little praise for Calvin, but occasional criticism.97 Bullinger’s natural law theory corresponded to the other Continental Reformers; indeed there is nothing unique about it.98 Bullinger simply lifted his definition of law from that provided by


99 Henry Bullinger, ‘The Second decade of Sermons’, The Decades of Henry Bullinger, First and Second Decades, H.I. (tr.), Thomas Harding (ed.), Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), p. 193.

100 Ibid.101 Ibid., p. 194.102 Ibid.103 Romans 2:14–15.104 ‘…I thought it well worth my while, night and day, with earnest study, and an

almost superstitious diligence, to devote my entire attention to your writings’. Hooper to Bullinger (c.1546), Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 34.

105 Micronius to Bullinger (May 20, 1550), Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 560.

Cicero in De Legibus.99 Not quite so affected by the doctrine of noetic corruption, Bullinger affirmed that natural law has its origins with God but is ‘brought to light by man’.100 While the prince has sway over the body, natural law has dominion over the conscience. It is the role of the law of nature to teach; it is ‘an instruction of the conscience, and, as it were, a certain direction placed by God himself in the minds and hearts of men, to teach them what they have to do and what to eschew’.101 all Reformers, including Calvin, taught this. Furthermore, Bullinger saw the law of nature as grace triumphing over nature; that is, God gives, or better, inscribes the law on the hearts of humans to overcome their natural proclivity to lawlessness:

Wherefore the law of nature is not called the law of nature, because in the nature and disposition of man there is of or by itself that reason of light exhorting to the best things, and that holy working; but for because God hath imprinted or engraven in our minds some knowledge, and certain general principles of religion, justice, and goodness, which, because they be grafted in us and born together with us, do therefore seem to be natu-rally in us.102

The imagery used is purely Pauline; ‘engrafted in our minds’ and ‘imprinted’ are to be found in Paul’s epistle to the Romans.103 By 1546 Hooper had read Bullinger’s commentaries upon Paul’s epistles.104 Furthermore, Hooper received Bullinger’s work on Kings during april 1550.105 If Hooper had read Bullinger’s First Decade by the time he came to write his Declaration of the Ten Commandments, then we could with more certainty affirm a Bullingerian influence on Hooper’s natural law teachings. although it is almost certain that Hooper was quite familiar with Bullinger’s thought on natural law, still, Hooper’s natural law teachings are purely medieval. There is no evidence of an explicitly Bullingerian influence on Hooper’s natural law. Though the historian

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106 Miles Coverdale, A Christen Exhortation unto Customable Swearers, (n.c. 1552), p. 6

107 Ibid., p. 7108 Cf. d’Entreves, Medieval Contributions, pp. 91–92.

can see similarities between Hooper’s thought and that of certain Continental Reformers, and can be fairly sure that Hooper had read the relevant books in which their natural law ideas were expressed, influ-ence cannot be confidently affirmed. This is simply because the ideas of the Continental Reformers were, by and large, not unique or distinct enough from traditional medieval explorations into natural law to distinguish between a possible medieval influence or a Reformed influence.

Much the same can be said for the natural law references to be found in Miles Coverdale’s thought. In his 1552 tract A Christen Exhortation unto Customable Swearers he made some off-the-cuff references to nature. Like Hooper and the whole Protestant tradition at the time, Coverdale’s natural law is general enough to make it impossible to pinpoint his sources. The Golden Rule is the restatement of natural law:

and to the performance of that his pleasure added he this natural law, that they should consider within themselves what they would have done to their own bodies, children, goods, or cattle, and upon that ground to conceive a rule how to use all other particular persons.106

The natural law was the way of life for certain godly men including adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, abraham, and Moses. The story of the pro-gressive sinfulness of the human race was considered by Coverdale to be the story of the gradual casting off of natural law.107

It is not so much that theories of divine will, noetic corruption, and scriptural sufficiency led Edwardian Protestants to reject natural law or even simply to abandon its use. Rather, such doctrines caused an ambivalence between commitment to principles of Reformed theology and method—noetic corruption and scriptural supremacy—and a gen-uine belief in the natural law. The coexistence of divine will, belief in radical intellectual corruption, and veneration of philosophy and phi-losophers created a hesitant and immature natural law tradition, which remained until the work of Hooker.108 Basic expressions of natural law—i.e. animal behavior, the Golden Rule, and conscience—were well represented among Edwardian political theologians, but nothing was


109 John Ponet, Shorte Treatise of Politike Power, (Strasbourg?, 1556), (amstrerdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 3.

110 Christopher Goodman, How Superior Powers Oght to be Obeyd, (Geneva, 1558), (amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 13.

111 Ibid., p. 10.112 Ibid., pp. 11–12.113 Ibid., p. 155.114 anthony Gilby, ‘admonition to England and Scotland’, (Geneva, 1558), Works of

John Knox, 6 vols., (New York: aMS Press, 1966 [1855]), vol. 4, p. 554.

developed. Edwardian Protestants seemed obviously uncomfortable with such a theoretical device, and therefore wielded it in an often inef-fective and clumsy manner.

Two Traditions in One: The Natural Law Theories of the Marian Exiles

Protestant polemic during the Marian reign retained the pessimistic view of the human intellect. However, this did not prevent promi-nent Protestant exiles from ornamenting their treatises with rational arguments and classical references. Ponet began his Shorte Treatise by categorically stating that human reason is ‘wonderfully corrupt’.109 Goodman, who spent time with Calvin in Geneva, had more to say about reason. Echoing Calvin’s doctrine of reason as the fount of all idolatry and false speculation, Goodman affirmed that all heresies have proceeded from the ‘stinking puddle of man’s brain… ’.110 In fact, Goodman located the Fall in adam’s use of his own reason independ-ent of God’s word. adam was inclined ‘at the persuasion of his wife [to] measure obedience rather by his own reason, than by the word and sentence of God before pronounced… ’.111 Furthermore, God wiped the world out by flood because the world had become a ‘very hell’ since humans ‘measured all things after their own corrupt reason… ’.112 It is significant that both Ponet and Goodman began their treatises with a discussion of the noetic effects of sin. Nevertheless, Goodman still saw aristotle’s authority worthy of invocation when he wrote that religion should be given the highest priority in a commonwealth.113 anthony Gilby, a friend of John Knox, in his Admonition to England and Scotland (1558), was sure to alert his readers to the fact that he would not resort to ‘profane histories, painted with man’s wisdom, vain eloquence, or subtle reasons… ’.114

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115 Knox, ‘a Godly Letter to the Faithful in London’, Works, vol. 3, p. 179–180.116 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, p. 101.117 Knox, ‘Extract from Knox’s Book of discipline’ (drafted in 1560 but not

published until 1621), Porter (ed.), Puritanism, pp. 198–203.118 Knox, ‘First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’, (1558), Works,

vol. 4, p. 374.119 Ibid., p. 413.120 Ibid., p. 448.

Knox rarely missed an opportunity to attribute false ideas of religion and divinity to the autonomous human mind.115 This is probably the reason why Knox and Goodman preferred to eschew their classical education in favour of direct scriptural exegesis. as Walzer aptly says, their politics was not ‘based on conventional knowledge as might also be available to magistrates and lords’, but both men’s appeal ‘was always to a special truth; tutored by the Holy Ghost… ’.116 Nevertheless, despite his dismissive words about the potential of human reason, Knox was far from abandoning philosophy for biblical exclusivity in his plan for education. He emphasised the need to learn philosophy, making par-ticular mention of Plato and aristotle’s writings on politics, ethics, and economics. Interestingly, Knox saw such education as necessitated by intellectual depravity. Because the human mind is in such sinful torpor, rigorous exercise is needed to prepare it for divine wisdom. Knox con-sidered liberal education as a path to virtue.117 Furthermore, Knox felt no qualms in appealing to the authority of aristotle to prove the unac-ceptability of gynaecocracy.118 Cicero was also mentioned in support of a natural law injunction against imperialism.119 He also had no prob-lem invoking the wisdom of such ancient worldlings as democritus and Themisticus.120 Ponet, Goodman, and Knox’s admission of human-kind’s intellectual corruption and the necessity of divine revelation did not stop them from using the ancient philosophers as authorities for their political ideas. Furthermore, for Ponet and Knox, their con-tributions to political thought used natural law ideas to a considera-ble degree. It would seem that the Reformed emphasis on intellectual depravity, for the most part, did not prevent the seditious use of natu-ral law ideas by Protestant political theorists. Yet this use of natural law was ephemeral in the history of Tudor Protestant thought. Like the radical literature it appeared in, the heavy use of natural law by Marian exiles became obsolete as soon as circumstances in England changed. The exiles’ use of natural law was a means of reaching as many people as possible by using the most general non-sectarian vocabulary


121 Christina Garrett contends that Ponet took some inspiration from Peter Martyr of angleria’s recently published Decades of a New World. Such books chronicling the discovery of foreign lands and people drew attention to the behavior of ‘worldlings’ who were without divine revelation. Glimpses of social organisation generated a firm conviction in natural law and ius gentium. The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of English Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), pp. 256–257

122 Cited in Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, p. 141.

possible. as soon as Protestantism was reestablished, the disinterest in natural law resumed. Natural law in the exile literature marked a brief departure from Tudor practice.

The project of the radical Marian political theorists was to present the most general case for resistance possible. In this they were appeal-ing not only to passionate Protestants but also to the more indifferent sort, who, though religious, drew much of their wisdom from the ancients and the philosophers. If Walzer is correct in seeing the evolu-tion of Protestant—particularly Puritan—political thought in terms of a transition from natural law and order to divine will, then the natural law doctrines in the works of John Ponet and John Knox show two types of political thought in their purity cohabitating in single systems. In other words there was an ambivalence between the natural law and divine will, that is, the equal stress of two political vocabularies within the one treatise: political aristotelianism and godly and prophetic counsel. according to Walzer, the latter was eventually to triumph over the former.

John Ponet’s Shorte Treatise shows so strong a reliance on natural law that it is unique in the history of English political thought before Hooker.121 His natural law was the most coherent and the most radi-cal during the 1550s. Certainly if Halifax’s contention is correct, that natural law was ‘a nail everybody would use to fix that which is good for them’,122 then Ponet’s thought is the best exemplification of such polemical opportunism in Tudor England, perhaps along with Knox. He built his radical political thought on the natural law of self-preservation. By likening the commonwealth to a body, he was able—though tenuously—to argue for the necessity of regicide. Much of what he said could have been said by a Roman Catholic, and his openness to natural law sets him apart from the scriptural purity of many Reformed Englishmen. Indeed Morris’ judgment reflects a close reading of the Shorte Treatise: ‘Strictly speaking, Ponet’s ideas were not new. He belongs, in a sense, to the mediaeval school of

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123 Morris, Political Thought in England, p. 151. Cf. O’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 7.

124 Hudson, John Ponet, pp. 131–132; Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, pp. 102–103.125 Speaking of Ponet, Goodman, and Knox, d’Entreves affirmed that ‘the predomi-

nant and favourite argument remained the appeal to the will of God, unmistakably set forth in Scripture’. Medieval Contributions, p. 101.

126 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 4.127 dan G. danner, ‘Christopher Goodman and the English Protestant Tradition of

Civil disobedience’, Sixteenth Century Journal, VIII/3, (1977), pp. 70–71.128 Goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd, p. 12.

natural law’.123 There is frequently the temptation to see Ponet’s political theories as secular;124 this is quite justified, but only to an extent. It can be considered secular only if its biblical references are ignored; refer-ences thought to be intrinsically authoritative.125

Nevertheless, Ponet was uninterested in doctrine, and to an extent, one need not even be committed to the Bible to be swayed by his ideas. Ponet carried forth the Pauline teaching that natural law is innate or written on the heart. He taught this alongside his doctrine of the radi-cal corruption of the intellect. Ponet also spoke of the decalogue as the codification of the natural law. God revealed the decalogue to shine through noetic darkness and reveal the natural law in its clarity, which was later simplified by Christ.126 The law of nature, or the Golden Rule, cannot be breached by any human and is prior to all political (positive) legislation.

To a lesser extent, Goodman appealed to natural law in his How Superior Powers Oght to be Obeyd (1558). as with Knox, there is noth-ing remotely original or particularly interesting about Goodman’s use of natural law in his political polemic. Out of the three radicals—Ponet, Goodman, and Knox—Ponet’s use of natural law is the most sophisti-cated and least ad hoc. Knox’s more resembles Ponet’s than Goodman’s in that Knox seems to be more comfortable with the concept.127 Like Ponet, Goodman affirmed that natural law runs in conjunction with God’s revealed law. appealing to the ante-Mosaic period of world his-tory, Goodman considered the traditions received by generations as corroborated by natural law. It is telling that it is at the beginning of Goodman’s treatise that the antediluvians had correct laws ‘ingrafted naturally in their hearts’.128 The eagerness of these theorists to affirm some natural law at the beginning of their polemics was simply to give an air of universality to their ideas. This goes to indicate just how seriously natural law was still taken in sixteenth-century England. Nevertheless, despite Goodman’s sporadic reminders of the weakness


129 Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 1 Cf. pp. 93, 151, 165, 198.

130 Jane E.a. dawson, ‘The Two John Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558 Tracts’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42/4, (Oct. 1991), p. 563. Cf. a.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1583, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 51.

of human reason apart from revelation, he, like all before him, thought natural law evident enough to teach that self-preservation is indeed an injunction of nature. In this way, Goodman affirmed an imperatival element in nature: ‘and when God hath made this common to all beasts, and inferior creatures, painfully to seek their preservation: hath he denied the same to man, whom above all others he will have pre-served?’ Eventually, in Goodman’s tract, natural law went to prove tyrannicide. With Ponet, Knox, and Goodman, traditional polemic sowed the seeds of revolution. Eventually similar sorts of natural law invocations would be used by the dutch to justify throwing off the yoke of Spanish rule, and in the formulation of republican principles. In the 1581 act of abjuration, which declared Spanish rule over the Netherlands to be illegitimate, the dutch considered their case to be ‘in conformity with the law of nature… ’.129

Knox was far less speculative than Ponet. In fact, it is indeed rare to find Knox referring to any authority other than Holy Writ. It is interest-ing that in Knox’s one attempt to compose a non-sectarian treatise, he used more extensively than anywhere else in his corpus the concept of nature as a guide to things political. There is very little doubt regarding Knox’s opportunist motive for appealing to the concept of nature; a concept he previously had no time for. Jane dawson has noticed that ‘he was prepared to appeal to any and every argument from authority: the workings of nature, divine law, the hierarchical ordering of society, and justice and equity….The very fact that he was willing to support his case by referring to texts other than the Word of God demonstrated his desire to reach and persuade as many Englishmen as possible’.130 This explains the use of natural law in the writings of Ponet, Goodman, and Knox in general. It was a polemical strategy, which both Goodman and Knox abandoned once the Catholic threat passed away.

Interestingly, Knox had been pondering the legitimacy of gynaecoc-racy for years. Knox asked Bullinger about its legitimacy in 1554. Bullinger pointed out that female submission was the clear teaching of both the Bible and nature; therefore gynaecocracy was unnatural.

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131 John Calvin, Letters of John Calvin, 4 vols., Jules Bonnet (ed.), Marcus Robert Gilchrist, (tr.), (New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), vol. 4, p. 47; Brandt B. Boeke, ‘Calvin’s doctrine of Civil Government’, Studia Biblica et Theologica, vol. 11, (1981), p. 62.

132 Knox, ‘First Blast’, in Works, vol. 4, p. 373.133 Ibid., p. 374.134 Bartholomew Traheron, A Warning to England to Repente, (n.c. 1558), fol. a v.135 Knox, ‘First Blast’, p. 376 (italics added).

Knox was encouraged in his conviction that gynaecocracy was contra naturam by Calvin. In 1559, trying to disassociate himself from Knox’s radical politics, Calvin recounted to William Cecil how Knox asked him his opinion concerning gynaecocracy. Calvin ‘frankly answered that because it was a deviation from the primitive and established order of nature, it ought to be held as a judgment on man for his dereliction of his rights just like slavery… ’.131 In his First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), Knox declared that gynaecocracy is ‘repug-nant to Nature… ’.132 all Knox was doing was tallying up all the defi-ciencies that he had commonly seen in women, deficiencies that were not conducive to a good ruler. From Knox’s observations he formed the inductive conclusion that women were by nature, unfit to rule. If one was to set out Knox’s argument from nature it would be something like: all women encountered have displayed character defects rendering them unfit for magisterial vocation; therefore women are by nature unfit to rule. It is like saying: all nails have rusted in salt water; there-fore nails by nature rust in salt water. This, it seems, is what Knox meant when he described gynaecocracy as ‘repugneth to nature’. But what are these character defects that Knox recognised? In Knox’s words: ‘…nature, I say, doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impa-tient, feeble, and foolish; and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regi-ment’. Furthermore, on aristotle’s authority, Knox considered the outcome of gynaecocracy inevitably to be ‘injustice, confusion, and disorder’.133 The same year, Knox’s former ecclesiastical colleague and one-time Geneva exile Bartholomew Traheron described Queen Mary of England in similar terms: ‘She is despiteful, cruel, bloody, willful, furious, guileful, stuffed with painted processes, with simulation, and dissimulation, void of honesty, void of upright dealing, void of all seemly virtues’.134 Knox took all of this a step further. Given all these defects in female rule, Knox, noting the cruel streak that women seem to have, passed from the mere enumeration of these attributes to the assurance of women’s ‘natural weakness and inordinate appetites!’135


136 Ibid., p. 393.137 Ibid., p. 396.138 Erasmus, ‘Institutio’, p. 212.

In this way, Knox’s understanding of gynaecocracy being ‘repugnant to nature’, turns out to be quite simple. Generally women are not capa-ble of ruling, therefore their incapability passes from mere accidental attribute to essential attribute or attribute ex natura. Though it was not a rare form of natural law, it was, in a way that will be shown, crude and vulnerable within the transitional period in which Knox was writing.

Knox also had a more simple argument from nature, one that was often repeated in sixteenth-century political literature. He noticed that among the animals, there is not once species ruled by the female. at least not one species Knox cared to mention. after mentioning the intrinsic ‘order’ that God placed in all living things, Knox noted, ‘…for nature hath in all beasts printed a certain mark of dominion in the male, and a certain subjection in the female, which they keep inviolate. For no man ever saw the lion make obedience, and stoop before the lioness… ’.136 Knox concluded that the English and Scottish nobility were ‘inferior to brute beasts, for that they do to women which no male amongst the common sort of beasts can be proved to do to their female, that is, they reverence them, and quake at their presence… ’.137 With Knox, and the sixteenth-century mind in general, common observa-tion and ancient opinion passed from the mere realm of observation and was elevated to prescriptive politics. By looking at nature enough, its political principles became perspicuous.

Knox’s arguments should not appear too outlandish. as was pre-viously pointed out, the greatest academic of the sixteenth-century, desiderius Erasmus, put forward an argument showing that no prince should love any nation more than his own. In support he offered an interesting analogy from bees and ants. Bees and ants never fly too far from their hives and nests, thus a prince should reserve his greatest attention for his own people.138 Four years earlier Catholic polemicist, John Christopherson, offered a beautiful exhortation:

and we should herein follow the example of the simple bees, which so tender their king and governor, that if he have missed his way, they will diligently seek for him, smell him out, and follow him to such time, as they have found him. and when he wareth old, and is not able to fly, they bear him upon their backs, and if he die, then depart they all from

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139 John Christopherson, Exhortation to Beware of Rebellion, (London, 1554), (amsterdam: da Capo Press, 1973), fol. O vii.

140 Knox, ‘an appellation to the Nobility and Estates’, (1558), Works, vol. 4, p. 481.141 according to d’Entreves, natural law was revived by the Marian writers ‘only

under the pressure of circumstances’. Medieval Contributions, p. 100.142 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, p. 198. Cf. a.P.S. Woodhouse, Puritanism

and Liberty: Being the Army debates (1647–1649) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, (London: J.M. dent and Sons, 1938), Introduction, pp. 38–39.

that place. doth not nature herein teach all subjects to tender and love their prince, as the poor bees do their king?139

It is clear that Knox’s appeal to animals was not unique for its time, though one need not think too long and hard to understand why the bees did not appear in his polemic! Furthermore, given their use by humanists and Catholics, such appeals obviously had quite a bit of per-suasive power. Knox also argued that nature taught that the first con-cern of every magistrate should be the prosperity of religion. The argument is that by nature all are the same. No one bears any natural marks that would single him or her out for rule. Nevertheless, some do rule. However, if it was not nature that placed them in this position, it was God. Therefore, God’s religion should be the chief concern of every magistrate.140 It is clear from this that Knox’s concept of natural law is equivocal.

What made the political thought of John Ponet and John Knox unique in the history of Protestant political thought in Tudor England was not that two distinct political vocabularies can be discerned in their work. It was that the two vocabularies were each highly developed within themselves and were each crucial in their overall arguments. Ponet and Knox pulled out all the rhetorical stops to convince all Englishmen and Scots to carry out their regicidal plans. Natural law was not used superficially in the political treatises of Ponet and Goodman, nor was divine will, for that matter. The fullest expressions of these concepts can be found in their political writings. This was never to happen again in ecclesiastical political thought in the Tudor period. The greatest achievement of Tudor political thought, Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, would eschew much divine will talk all together in favour of the most highly developed natural law discourse to appear that century. The necessity of the times led to a marriage of two distinct theoretical traditions in the thought of Ponet and Knox.141 Ultimately this marriage would not last. as Walzer shows, the two traditions both survived but went their own ways the following century.142


143 I say absurd because in Ponet’s and Goodman’s own age the notion of a body surviving without a head was not part of political rationality. Sir John Fortescue had declared that ‘decapitation is not a body….a community without a head is not by any means a body’. On the Laws and Governance of England, Shelly Lockwood (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 20. See also Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 255–258, 314, 364. Such a view extended into the later 1540s when Edward VI was asked whether ‘a multitude without a head may prosper…?’ Given the fact that this was asked of the head himself, the answer was surely negative. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 2, part I, p. 157. The body metaphor was used in parlia-ment by Sir Walter Mildmay to justify the Bond of association in 1584. The Bond of association was a document peddled around England and signed by all that were will-ing to risk life to defend Elizabeth from potential usurpers (i.e. Mary, former Queen of Scotland). If the head was attacked, how could the body survive? J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols., (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), vol. 2, p. 31. It was the assumption that the head constituted the most important and necessary part of the body that enabled Laurence Humphrey in 1588 to wax allegorical: ‘If Peter did ill in cutting off an ear of a servant, how much more do they offend that cut off the head?’ A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford, 1588), p. 34.

The Exiles’ Use of the Body Metaphor

One of the more creative arguments used by the exiles was the tradi-tional body metaphor. Its advantage was its basis in natural law, thus giving it a prima facie universalism: it could appeal to Protestants and Catholics of numerous varieties, as well as the religiously indifferent. The exiles’ use of the traditional body metaphor is unique. an ambiva-lence similar to that explored with regard to natural law led the Marian Protestants to use the body metaphor in a conceptually absurd man-ner.143 The failure of Protestants to produce any substantial discourse on natural law was a result of a double commitment to the good of philosophy and the new theology. The ineffective use of the body meta-phor was caused by a commitment to godly resistance theories and an equal commitment to traditional political commonplaces. The political situation in England during the Marian reign led exiled Protestants to formulate resistance theories, yet the need to convince readers led resistance theorists to use the body metaphor in formulating their seditious ideas. Out of this confrontation between radical politics and traditional commonplaces emerged a unique use of the metaphor in the history of political thought. The new use of the metaphor was at the cost of conceptual coherence, for the body was required to survive without a head. a marriage between the old ideas and the new led to a doomed attempt to use the traditional metaphor of the body for novel political ends.

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144 Stephen L. Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 17.

145 Hudson, John Ponet, p. 176.146 Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 187.147 Cicero, De Officiis, 3.6.32, Walter Miller (tr.), Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001 [1913]).

John Ponet

One of the more interesting proofs that Ponet offered for regicide was by way of the traditional body metaphor. Stephen L. Collins notes Ponet’s use of the metaphor, indicating the divine’s belief in cosmic order.144 Yet we see that Ponet used the body metaphor, not to uphold an existing political order, but to see it overthrown. Ponet’s use of the body metaphor hardly fits into the conservative Tudor scheme of things that Collins so ably describes. There are numerous candidates as major influences on John Ponet’s use of the metaphor. Winthrop Hudson in his substantial study of Ponet’s life and thought attributes the metaphor to Cicero’s De Officiis.145 Constantinian Christians saw the emperor as one membrum of the ecclesia, though not necessarily the head. Furthermore, like any other member of the church, he too was subject to ecclesiastical discipline.146 While Ponet’s language and argument are similar to Cicero’s, Ponet’s analogy was far more explicit and anatomi-cal. Cicero only spoke of cutting off members, he never even identified the tyrant as a head:

…for, as certain members (membrum) are amputated, if they show signs themselves of being bloodless and virtually lifeless and thus jeopardize the health of the other parts of the body, so those fierce and savage mon-sters in human form should be cut off from what may be called the com-mon body of humanity.147

Ponet not only identified the tyrant as a head but also exhorted the body to perform amputation on itself. He derived this from the natural law injunction to self-preservation. It is commanded by nature (instinct) to remove any part of the body that, if suffered, would destroy the whole. Though there is very little evidence to affirm actual influence, Ponet’s use of the body metaphor is identical to Cicero’s. Generally speaking, Ponet is seen to have been inspired by the conciliarists of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, most notably John of


148 Coleman, A History of Political Thought, 2 vols., From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 193, 196; Cf. Oakley, ‘Legitimation by Consent: The Question of the Medieval Roots’, Politics and Eternity, p. 121; Cf. Brian Tierney speaks more generally of the conciliarist presence in sixteenth-century resist-ance theory. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies in Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150–1625, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 253.

149 Skinner, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 224, 227–228.150 John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power: A Translation with Introduction of

the de Potestate Regia et Papali of John of Paris (1302/3), arthur P. Monahan (tr.), (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1974), chs.1, 3.

151 Ibid., ch.24.

Paris and Pierre d’ailly.148 This makes sense because Ponet did actually refer to the conciliar debate within his political treatise, and there are other instances of his thought that resemble conciliar theories.149 The great difference is Ponet’s unflinching use of the organic metaphor in arguing for tyrannicide. Take, for example, John of Paris, who in his fourteenth-century work De Potestate Regia et Papali argued for papal deposition without any organic language at all, despite the presence of the metaphor in other parts of the work.150 John of Paris found proofs in tradition and in teleology for the legitimacy of deposing a pope. He assumed that a pope is elevated to that office for the benefit of the whole congregation. Therefore, if for some reason a pope is no longer able to fulfill that duty, or chooses to rebel against it, it is only rational to remove him, given the final cause of the office. In John of Paris’ thought heads and members are not cut off, popes are deposed.151 The English emphasis on Queen Mary as Supreme Head led Ponet to go beyond Cicero in actually drawing an analogy between the tyrant and the head. The Ciceronian strand in Ponet’s argument made amputation necessary but the English tradition of headship made it implausible.

Ponet’s natural law invocation is similar to one made by John Maior in 1518. Maior admitted that one head was preferable to two, but he pointed out that the ideal polity was one where the head could be dis-ciplined ‘if he should work to the destruction of the whole body… ’. Maior did not give licence to cut the head off, but merely that it ‘may be cauterised by the rest of the body’. In the event that the head is beyond reform Maior shrewdly avoided amputatory imagery and counseled that ‘if he is incorrigible, he should be deprived of the papal office’. Maior, like Ponet, was happy to speak of discipline for the preservation of the body, but, unlike in Ponet’s thought, heads were deprived, not cut off: ‘…it is more in accordance with the light of nature

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152 John Maior, ‘disputation on pope and council’ (1518), Burns and Izbicky (eds.), Conciliarism and Papalism, pp. 292–293.

153 anonymous, ‘Political Education’ (1582), The Dutch Revolt, Martin Van Gelderen (ed. & tr.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 183. For a discussion of this tract consult, Van Gelderen, Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, pp. 157–165.

154 John Ponet, A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power, (Strasbourg, 1556), (amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 59.

155 dawson, ‘Christopher Goodman’, p. 229. See her brief but excellent discussion of Ponet’s body metaphor. Idem, pp. 228–229.

that an incorrigible head should be deprived of his authority, so that others may be deterred and moved to behave well’.152 The same rhetori-cal shrewdness was later evident in the anonymous 1582 dutch tract, Political Education. On removing a tyrant, the tract eschewed any talk of removing a head and, quoting Cicero, spoke only of amputating ‘some rotten limb’.153 Ponet’s body metaphor is one of the few instances when an explicit call is made to amputate the head.

What makes Ponet’s use of the metaphor so interesting is that, rather than using it to buttress the legitimacy of the established order, Ponet used it to encourage Englishmen to kill Queen Mary. Ponet’s use of the body metaphor was largely opportunistic. When it suited him he would stick closely to the traditional use of the metaphor, which demanded that the commonwealth was as organic and fragile as the human body, and its parts just as symbiotic. Earlier in his Shorte Treatise he asked, ‘How can that head live and continue, where the body is consumed and dissolved….where the sinews (the laws) are broken, and justice…utterly wasted and decayed?’154 Ponet was quick to point out that no head could survive if the sinews connecting it to the body were severed. But does not the same intuition apply to the fate of the headless Commonwealth? When the metaphor became a scandal to his cause he just as easily abandoned its careful use and suggested that a body may change heads. as Jane E.a. dawson notices, Ponet ‘got entangled in his metaphor’.155 In his Shorte Treatise he stated:

Next unto God men ought to love their country, and the whole common wealth before any member of it: as kings and princes (be they never so great) are but members: and common wealths may stand well enough and flourish, albeit there be no kings, but contrary wise without a com-mon wealth there can be no king. Common wealths and realms may live, when the head is cut off, and may put on a new head, that is, make them a new governor, when they see their old head seek to much his own will and not the wealth of the whole body, for the which he was only ordained.


156 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 61. Italics added.157 Ibid., p. 108. Italics added. Cf. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VI.26; Cf. Starkey,

Dialogue, p. 105. Ponet’s natural law invocation is identical to John Maior’s, who spoke of self-preservation as sufficient warrant for the head to be ‘deposed’ (not cut off!). Maior, ‘disputation on pope and council’ (1518), Burns and Izbicky (eds.), Conciliarism and Papalism, pp. 292–293.

158 david George Hale, The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature, (Paris: Mouton, 1971), p. 81.

and by that justice and law, that lately hath been executed in England (if it may be called justice and law) it should appear, that the ministers of civil power do sometimes command that, that the subjects ought not to do.156

With this instance of the body metaphor, Ponet insisted that a com-monwealth may continue to exist without a head. Furthermore, he allowed that a body might remove its own head if it should offend the other members.

Ponet later used the body metaphor more explicitly as an exhorta-tion to regicide. He drew his proof from the Ciceronian injunction to self-preservation. In the context of a completely traditional and deriva-tive discussion of natural law, Ponet, in its midst, employed the body metaphor in a surgical and seditious manner:

This law [self-preservation] testifieth to every man’s conscience, that it is natural to cut away an incurable member, which (being suffered) would destroy the whole body. Kings, Princes and other governors, albeit they are the heads of a politic body, yet they are not the hole body. and though they be the chief members, yet they are but members: neither are the people ordained for them, but they are ordained for the people.157

There was very little in the rationality of Tudor England that would allow this assertion to go unnoticed. Furthermore, a rigid application of the body metaphor would preclude such an absurdity as a body actually changing heads. Ponet squeezed the metaphor for all that he could get out of it, but he never really escaped the absurdity of his radical agenda requiring an animate decapitated body. Ponet used traditional concepts for seditious ends, but at the cost of intelligibility. The Jesuit polemicist, Robert Parsons, later used the metaphor in an identical way to persuade English Catholics to depose Elizabeth. The abuse of the metaphor was later pointed out by opponents of radical politics.158

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159 Christina Garrett believed that in december 1555 he was directly involved in a plot against Queen Mary’s life. However, dawson provides a good argument against any knowledge of such involvement. Cf. Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), p. 116; dawson, ‘Christopher Goodman’, p. 150.

160 Jewell to Martyr (april 28, 1559), The Zurich Letters or the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), p. 32.

161 david H. Wollman identifies Ponet’s method as an anticipation of Hooker’s, as far as the Protestant tradition is concerned. ‘The Biblical Justification to Resistance to authority in Ponet’s and Goodman’s Polemics’, Sixteenth Century Journal, XIII/4 (1982), p. 36.

162 Goodman to Martyr (26 august, 1558), Original Letters, vol. 2, p. 771. dawson shows how Goodman’s book must have been read and approved by certain authorities in Geneva. The city could not plead ignorance of the books they were producing. ‘Christopher Goodman’, p. 243.

163 danner, Pilgrimage to Puritanism, p. 41.164 ‘To Christopher Goodman’ (23 april, 1561), Letters of John Calvin, 4. vols.,

Marcus Robert Gilchrist (tr.), Jules Bonnet (ed.), (New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), vol. 4, pp. 185–186.

165 anderson, ‘Royal Idolatry’, pp. 174–175.

Christopher Goodman

Christopher Goodman went into hiding upon returning to England in 1559.159 The consensus among English churchmen was that Goodman was foolish to write what he had, but that his repentance from his ‘error’ should be taken into account.160 Goodman did not have the speculative abilities of Ponet, whose secular method of political theology disap-peared as soon as it emerged on the English Protestant theoretical landscape, to be replaced by a method of biblical proof texts. Goodman’s and Knox’s political methodology remained the orthodox technique for Protestant political thought right up until Richard Hooker, who used scholastic arguments from reason and nature to prove the limits of the biblical proof-text-method as used by the Elizabethan Puritans and Separatists.161 Goodman claimed that he sought and received the approval of Calvin for his ideas, though he admitted that Calvin thought they were a bit harsh.162 However, upon the publication of How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd Calvin said that he was unaware of the book.163 despite the confusion, Calvin could still write to Goodman in 1561 as a friend.164 Goodman also sought Martyr’s approval for his book, though he never got it.165

Goodman had the opportunity to improve upon Ponet’s use of the body metaphor, though it seems never to have occurred to him.


166 Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie (London, 1581), (amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 22.

167 Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 314

168 Ibid., p. 334.169 Cajetan noted Jean Gerson’s use of the Christ-as-head argument in defense of

the possibility of a council acting without a pope (head). ‘On the comparison of the authority of pope and council’, p. 66.

170 Christopher Goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd (Geneva, 1558), (amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 185.

For prior to his advocacy of tyrannicide Goodman addressed the com-mon objection to insurgency against a prince, namely, that if the head itself is under attack, what is guiding the attackers? Surely not reason and judgment, for these are a function of the head, the very member whose authority is under siege. Writing later, the English political theo-rist, Charles Merbury, stated the objection most clearly:

Inconvenience is that when Sede vacante, after the Prince is dead, and before a new can be chosen, the whole state remaineth in a very anarchy, without king, or any kind of government, like a ship without a Pilot in hazard to be cast away with every wind….166

The ‘purpetuity of the head’ objection was medieval, with Ernst Kantorowicz identifying it as a major obstacle to theories of election of and ecclesiastical autonomy from the pope. The head’s perpetuity was considered necessary in organic terms because the head was the rational part of the body. The conciliarists solved the problem by positing Christ as direct interrex between deposition and election.167 The ‘principle of continuity’, so necessary during the Middle ages, led ecclesiologists to theorise a ‘fiction’.168 Something like the concept of Christ as interrex was used by sixteenth-century conciliarists to lend cogency to their cause.169 When Goodman worked up the courage to say what he wanted to all along, that the subjects may independently and violently lay low a tyrant, he anticipated the objection with the conciliar solution:

and though it appear at the first sight a great disorder, that the people should take unto them the punishment of transgression, yet, when the Magistrates and other officers cease to do their duty, they are as it were, without officers, yea, worse then if they had none at all, and then God giveth the sword in to the people’s hand, and he himself is become imme-diately their head.170

This is the most explicit call to popular rebellion of any sixteenth- century resistance literature. Contained in this pericope is also an

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171 Goodman, Superior Powers, p. 190.172 Cf. dawson, ‘Christopher Goodman’, p. 292.173 Jane E.a. dawson, ‘Trumpeting Resistance: Christopher Goodman and John

Knox’, Roger a. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformations, St. andrews Studies in Reformation History, (aldershot: ashgate, 1997), p. 132.

174 discussions of Knox’s resistance theory are to be found in Richard L. Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation: Studies in the Thought of John Knox, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980) and J.H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of Monarchy in Early Modern Scotland, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), chs. 4–5. See also Francis Oakley, ‘Christian Obedience and authority, 1520–1550’, Burns (ed.), Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, pp. 194–200; Roger a. Mason, ‘Knox, Resistance and the Royal Supremacy’, Mason (ed.), John Knox, pp. 154–175.

175 Jewel to Martyr (n.d.), Zurich Letters, pp. 33–34.

answer to a typical objection, namely, how is unity maintained in the absence of a head? But Goodman abandoned the medieval fiction when he needed it most. In the midst of a discussion concerning the dangers of tyranny he declared it a duty of all people ‘to cut off every rotten member, for fear of infecting the whole body, how dear or precious so ever it be’.171 It would have been apt at this point to invoke the inter-rex argument, but Goodman missed his opportunity. Nevertheless, Goodman did eschew the use of the term ‘head’ when referring to the prince and replaced it with the more Ciceronian term, ‘member’, a slight improvement upon Ponet’s argument.172

John Knox

There is an ingenious subtlety in Knox’s use of the body metaphor. Knox and Christopher Goodman were the best of friends and it is cer-tain that both men would have discussed their political ideas while they were in exile together in Geneva just prior to Elizabeth’s acces-sion.173 The Scotsman often went out of his way to remind the recipi-ents of his letters and tracts that sometimes disobedience was the most pure form of obedience available to a Christian.174 By far the most polemical Briton of the sixteenth-century, he remained the most noto-rious of the Marian exiles thoughout the Elizabethan period owing to his eccentric denunciation of gynaecocracy. Certainly it was Knox’s emphasis on the womanly vices that led him to be banished from England.175 W. Stanford Reid speculates that perhaps Knox took his radical thought from John Maior. But there is little evidence or even need for such a view. Reid more plausibly goes on to suggest that


176 W. Stanford Reid, Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox, (Baker: Grand Rapids, 1974), p. 150.

177 Hale, Body Politic, p. 81.178 Cajetan, ‘Comparison’, pp. 3, 7, 10–11.179 Ibid., pp. 23–24.180 John Knox, ‘The First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’ (1558),

Works of John Knox, 6 vols., Peter Laing (ed.), (New York: aMS Press, 1966 [1855]), vol. 4, pp. 390–391. Italics added.

Knox’s immediate circumstances may be a sufficient explanation for his radical tendencies.176

david George Hale pointed out the conceptual absurdity of Ponet’s use of the body metaphor yet overlooked John Knox’s similar use of the metaphor in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), which attempted to avoid the more obvi-ous absurdities in Ponet’s deployment of the analogy.177 Knox stated that a body needs a head, and England, as a body, had no legitimate head. His emphasis on the necessity of a head for a body to remain animate was one commonly used during conciliar controversies up until the sixteenth-century. Cajetan had stated repeatedly that the power possessed by the church flows down from the head (pope).178 He even went as far as accusing those who would hold that a body may exist in a perfect state without a head as perpetuating a Hussite heresy.179 Writing in this tradition Knox derived a radical conclusion from the idea that power and life descend from the head. He deserves to be quoted at length:

…he [God] hath set before our eyes two other Mirrors and glasses, in which he will that we should behold the order which he hath appointed and established in nature: The one is the natural body of man; the other is the politic or civil body of that common wealth, in which God by his own Word hath appointed an order. In the natural body of man, God hath appointed an order that the head shall occupy the uppermost place; and the head hath he joined with the body, that from it doth life and motion flow to the rest of the members….For who would not judge that body to be a monster, where there was no head eminent above the rest…? Men, I say, should not only pronounce this body to be a monster, but assuredly they might conclude that such a body could not long endure.180

For Knox, the animation of the body and the order of the common-wealth come from the head. Here is the beginning of Knox’s argument for regicide from order and body. Queen Mary, being a woman, cannot

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181 Ibid., p. 391.182 ‘The Two John Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558 Tracts’, Journal of

Ecclesiastical History, 42/4 (October 1991), p. 564.183 Though see the debates in mid-sixteenth-century England over whether it was

appropriate to call Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth ‘Supreme Head’. a.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 12–21.

possibly function as the head of England. Therefore, England is, in a sense, decapitated:

and no less monstrous is the body of that Commonwealth where a Woman beareth empire; for either doth it lack a lawful head…or else there is an idol exalted in the place of the true head….for in despite of God…may a realm, I confess, exalt up a woman to that monstiferous honor, to be esteemed as a head. But impossible it is to man and angel to give unto her the properties and perfect offices of a lawful head; for…God…hath denied to woman power to command man, and hath taken away wisdom to consider and providence to foresee, the things that be profitable to the commonwealth; yea, finally, he hath denied to her in any case to be head to man, but plainly hath pronounced that “Man is head to woman, even as Christ is head to all man” ’.181

Knox’s argument was slightly different from Ponet’s and Goodman’s. He never said that a body could remove its own head. He simply said that Mary is not the head of England, therefore cutting her off would not be detrimental to the body politic. Jane dawson has noted that ‘The intellectual content of Knox’s arguments was neither particularly original nor startling, but his method of using and applying those assertions shocked his contemporaries deeply’.182 Though she does not specifically mention Knox’s use of the body metaphor, her observation describes it perfectly. Knox, in accordance with settled political opin-ion, stressed the need for a body with a head.183 The implication of Knox’s body metaphor was that the mere image of the head—Mary—needed to be replaced by a genuine one. In this way Knox argued for the replacement of Mary without having to talk about amputating a head or switching heads. Still, Knox had to assert that England was currently decapitated. But if it was decapitated, how had it managed to survive for the period of five years between Mary’s inheritance of the throne and Knox’s First Blast? Knox would reply that the country was in the process of dying, but unless it was common to see a man die five years after his beheading, Knox’s body metaphor was, at best, tenuous.


184 Kemp, ‘Laurence Humphrey’, p. 125.185 Humphrey, ‘Preservation’, pp. 215–216.186 George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots: A Critical

Edition and Translation of George Buchanan’s de Iure Regni apud Scotos dialogus (1579), R.a. Mason and M.S. Smith (eds.), St. andrews Studies in Reformation History, (Hampshire, 2004) p. 129.

Perhaps later radical Protestant political theorists consciously avoided the rhetorical traps that their predecessors fell prey to. Laurence Humphrey was a fellow English exile who wrote The Preservation of Religion and its True Reformation (1559), which was generally ignored in his own time.184 Humphrey was shrewder than Ponet, Goodman, and Knox and avoided making any references to surgery or decapita-tion in his resistance theory:

For the body and the whole is greater than the head itself or the parts. But neither is the body without its head and breast. It is ancient usage that he who proposes a law can repeal it and those who jointly proclaim some-one a magistrate, by the same consent, if he is unfit or betrays his country, they can depose him.185

Humphrey, like, Ponet, began by using the body metaphor—even men-tioning the head. Yet by the time he got to advocating deposition he had abandoned the metaphor altogether and spoke only of deposing a magistrate. Knox’s Scottish contemporary George Buchanan was able to speak of deposing tyrants, but he had to soften the body analogy to a doctor analogy. The tyrant was no longer part of the body but a malevolent physician. Just as anybody would dismiss and punish a mad physician, so may a commonwealth remove and punish a tyrant.186 Buchanan could easily justify regicide with this metaphor, but the medieval emphasis on the intimate and mutually dependent relation-ship of a ruler with the good of his realm was sacrificed for what was, effectively, a hired helper of the commonwealth.

The realisation of the body metaphor’s inability to carry radical poli-tics necessitated the search for alternatives, which led to the covenant and contract theories of the seventeenth-century. The wellbeing of one member of a contract need not be affected one whit by the destruc-tion of the other member. The benefits gained by both were by agree-ment and consent, not by symbiosis. By 1598 the whole idea of resistance premised upon the body metaphor could be scoffingly dis-missed as obviously absurd, for ‘what state the body can be in, if the head, for any infirmity that can fall to it, be cut off, I leave it to the

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187 James VI and I, ‘The Trew Law of Free Monarchies’ (1598), King James VI and I: Political Writings, Johann P. Sommerville (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 78.

188 Sir Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, for the Use of All Suche as are Studious of Eloquence, Sette Forth in English, J. Kingston (1553). Cited in Cremeans, Reception of Calvinistic Thought, p. 81.

189 Edwin Sandys, Sermons, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1841), p. 21. Cited in ibid., p. 82.

reader’s judgement’.187 The contorted uses of the body metaphor in Ponet, Goodman, and Knox were caused by political and rhetorical necessity. Political necessity led the exiles to write the radical books in the first place. Rhetorical necessity led them to express their ideas in ways identifiable by all. If the legitimacy of regicide could be shown to flow from basic principles and metaphors that all took for granted, then, rhetorically, the exiles had achieved their aim. The exiles were torn between a commitment to order and the need for radical change. The ambivalence between a genuine commitment to the similitude of the body with the commonwealth and a commitment to godly resist-ance led to an ambiguous vision of society as at once immutable and organic and at the same time dynamic and open to radical change.

The Elizabethan Understanding of Reason and Authority

after the Marian period, attitudes towards reason in England could be broadly called Reformed. The notion of noetic corruption was charac-teristic of Elizabethan theology up until Hooker. Charles Cremeans cites an interesting admission of noetic corruption from a textbook of rhetoric:

Man (in whom is poured the breath of life) was made at his first being an ever living Creature, unto the likeness of God, endued with reason, and appointed Lord over all other things living. But after the fall of our first father, Sin so crept in, that our knowledge was much darkened, and by corruption of this our flesh, man’s reason and entendment were both overwhelmed.188

Cremeans also cites a sermon by the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys, who had no problem preaching that ‘corruption is bred and settled within our bones; that we are both born and begotten in it; that with it all powers and faculties of our nature are infected; that still it cleaveth fast unto our souls’.189 Sandys was a refugee in Strasbourg, where he


190 I thank Professor Richard a. Muller of Calvin Theological Seminary for pointing out the loose use of ‘Calvinism’ in Reformation historiography. ‘Reformed’ would be more judicious.

191 Liturgical Services in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847), p. 654.

192 Laurence Humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye, (London, 1563), fols. Y iiii–v.193 Ibid., fol. Y vi.

could have imbibed such a view from both Bucer and Bullinger. Perhaps it would be more prudent to describe the Elizabethan view of postlap-sarian corruption as ‘Reformed’ rather than ‘Calvinistic’.190

The circumspection towards autonomous reason is evident in an Elizabethan homily, which affirmed that despite Plato’s rationalism, he managed to recognise some eternal truths concerning a good polity!191 Nevertheless, such an attitude did not dissuade the Elizabethan church-men from encouraging the studia humanitatis. despite the Elizabethan Protestants’ care frequently to point out the inability of autonomous reason—reason sans revelation—to apprehend God’s will and laws, they still placed a heavy emphasis on the study of philosophy as a path to enlightenment. Laurence Humphrey spent time in both Strasbourg and Geneva during the Marian years, returning to England to teach the Reformed doctrines that he soaked up previously. He soon took the post of Regius Professor of divinity at Cambridge University. While at Geneva in 1559 he composed the treatise Optimates, directed to the English nobility. It was translated into English and republished in 1563 as The Nobles or of Nobilitye. In this treatise Humphrey outlined a detailed study program for the sons of nobility. The curriculum was quite scholastic with a heavy emphasis on classical wisdom and rheto-ric. Young men were to study the arts of virtuous speaking and virtuous deeds. Children should be immersed in Cicero, Cato, Laelius, Chastalio, Terence, Chrysostom, demosthenes, Euripides, and a testament to his status, Erasmus. Furthermore, Plato’s Laws and Commonwealth were to be studied diligently along with Justinian’s Institutes and the whole course of civil law, as well as the laws and statutes of England. as well as this, the mathematical sciences and music were to be mastered. Children were to be kept from astronomy, possibly because it encour-aged divination.192 The aim of study was to understand the human con-dition, God, and to effectively run a household and a state. The culmination of study was the mastery of philosophy, the ‘Castle of knowledge… ’.193 Here was a programme of study that differed little

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194 as an undergraduate John Whitgift studied a curriculum of Latin, arithmetic, logic, moral and natural philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and a little Greek. The only difference between this and the education that preceded Protestant England seems to have been the absence of the Sentences and Canon Law from the course. Powel Mills dawley, John Whitgift and the Reformation, (London: adam and Charles Black, 1955), pp. 40–42. Cf. S.J. Knox, The Life of Walter Travers, (London: Shenval Press, 1962), p. 18.

195 Humphrey, The Nobles, fol. Y v.196 An Exhortation to the Byshops to deale Brotherly with theyr Brethren (n.p. 1572),

fol. B i.197 ‘a Second admonition to Parliament’ (1572), Puritan Manifestos: A Study of the

Origins of the Puritan Revolt, Frere, W.H. and C.E. douglas, (London: SPCK, 1954), pp. 109–110.

198 See Patrick Collinson’s treatment, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London: Jonathon Cape, 1967), pp. 168–176.

from the scholastic curriculum.194 Of all the authoritative theologians of the age, only one is singled out with explicit approval: John Calvin, ‘the chief of our age’. His Institutes, Catechism, and commentaries were recommended for the study of divinity.195

The sinful proclivities of the human mind were not lost on the Elizabethans. The potential both for wickedness and excellence were affirmed at the same time. Thus, in an exhortation to English bishops to exercise tolerance towards the Puritans, one Elizabethan pointed out certain doctrines that ‘murder our souls with a corrupt and poisoned water, drawn out of a stinking puddle of the filthy dunghill of men’s brains’.196 Later the same year the writer of the Second Admonition to Parliament criticised lack of learning among the English clergy. The writer did not reproach them for trying to find wisdom in the pagans, but because their actual learning did not match their claims, for it was obvious that they had simply perused florilegia!197 Greater study of the pagans, not less, would have impressed the second admonitioner.

One of the few exceptions in Elizabethan England to the general appreciation for philosophical and classical discourse was the Proph-esying Movement. This movement took place in numerous churches around England and encouraged church leaders and lay people to speak openly on what they thought a particular passage from scripture was communicating. The point of the exercise was to foster biblical literacy amongst the English clergy and laity.198 In 1575 one of the English prophesying congregations composed a book of rules to guide the congregation in the activity. One of the stipulations was that those who expound scripture should ensure that their prophesyings are devoid of ‘annoying allegations of profane histories, or ecclesiastical


199 ‘The Order of the Prophecy at Norwich in anno 1575, Begun Sede Vacante’ (1575), Leonard J. Trinterud (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 199.

200 anthony Gilby, A Dialogue between a Sovldier of Barvvick, and an English Chaplain, (n.c. 1581), p. 9.

201 See for example, Richard alison, A Confvtation of Brownisme, (London 1590), (amsterdam: da Capo Press, 1968), p. 17.

writers, applications of commonplaces and divisions not aptly growing out of the text’. Not that such things were intrinsically objectionable, but the movement was more concerned with ‘the sense of the Holy Spirit’ rather than with classical wisdom and scholastic distinctions.199 as anthony Gilby was to remark in 1581: ‘We must seek first of all the true wisdom, Which resteth not in man’s brain, but in God’s breast…to seek counsel at God’s Word, and to suspect our wits of fool-ishness’.200 The anti-intellectualism would pass into the Separatist movement, which was always considered unrefined for its total reliance on the Bible.201

The Elizabethan Crisis of Nature: the Knox-Aylmer Exchange

John Knox’s natural law arguments against Queen Mary provoked response, but from defenders of another Queen, Elizabeth. With the end of the Marian regime and the return of English Protestants to an accommodating and peaceful England, Protestant political theology had the opportunity to be freed from polemic and explore more specu-lative subjects. despite this opportunity, there still was no great explo-ration or statement of natural law until the end of the Elizabethan reign. The first ecclesiastical political manifesto of the Elizabethan period, written by the Bishop of London, made natural law an issue in the fight against sedition. Furthermore, its critique of John Knox’s use of natural law was one of the few examples in Tudor political pamphlets where the concept was actually the object of analysis. John Ponet and John Knox’s use of natural law provoked a unique exploration of the con-cept at the beginning of the Elizabethan period. Unique because it was the first time in English Protestant political thought that the concept itself was explored. Because natural law was used for wholly seditious ends by the exiles the whole theory had to be scrutinised and refined in such a way to make future radical use more difficult, thus saving the natural law.

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202 John aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes, (Strasbourg 1559), fol. C2.

203 Ibid., fol. C3. Cf. Calvin: ‘For this reason the author of the epistle to the Hebrews elegantly calls the world the spectacle of invisible things: because the composition of the world is like a mirror for us, by which we may contemplate God who is otherwise invisible’. ‘Institutio’ (1539–1554), p. 286.

204 aylmer, Harborovve, fol. d.

John aylmer’s An Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes (1559) was a brilliant response to Knox’s First Blast. Seeing that Knox employed natural law so heavily, aylmer responded in kind. aylmer, Bishop of London, understood Knox to be arguing that if something was against nature then it was contrary to the good of the commonwealth; but gynaecocracy is against nature; therefore it must be detrimental to the commonwealth.202 But what does it mean to be against nature? Why should the unnatural be a threat to the commonwealth? aylmer attempted to set forth a rather vague definition of nature as ‘a general disposition ingrafted of God in all creatures, for the preservation of the whole, and of every kind… ’. Invoking the authority of Seneca, aylmer affirmed that God himself resides in nature, in that ‘Nature is nothing else but God himself, or a divine order spread throughout the whole world, and ingrafted in every part of it… ’.203 The vagueness of this defi-nition of the natural was not important. More important for aylmer was what natural does not mean: it cannot simply be deduced from calculating many events or phenomena of the same type. This is exactly how aylmer interpreted Knox. He pointed out that if one defines nature as simply that which one is accustomed to experiencing, then suddenly numerous anomalies become dangerous to the commonwealth. Indeed, ‘the old man’s black hairs’ and ‘the woman’s two twins’ become contra naturam and detrimental to the commonwealth! The logic of Knox’s argument resulted in absurdity. Gynacocracy was vindicated.204

When discussing political lessons implicit in the created order, theo-rists generally defined natural and unnatural along the lines of that which is common or uncommon. What Knox did was to use such observations as a means to persuade his readers to regicide. It was for this reason and this reason alone that that sort of natural law argument came under scrutiny in England. The Knox/aylmer exchange repre-sents a crisis in the concept of nature in English political thought. The traditional school of thought represented by Knox saw nature as a book of practical politics, that is, statements concerning society and govern-ment may be derived from observation of nature. aylmer, responding


205 aylmer, Harborovve, fol. d2.206 John Milton, ‘a defence of the people of England’ (1658), in Political Writings,

Martin dzelzainis (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 153.207 For a detailed examination of Laurence Humphrey’s early Elizabethan apologies

see a.N. McLaren, Political Culture, pp. 120–131. See also Janet Kemp, ‘Laurence Humphrey, Elizabethan Puritan: His Life and Political Theories’, (Unpublished Phd. thesis, West Virginia University, 1978).

208 Humphrey, Nobles, fol. di. Cf. Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 108.

to Knox’s use of a traditional concept, turned this tradition on its head. aylmer offered an alternative definition of nature along pragmatic lines. If something does not tend to ruin, or has been shown not to destroy a commonwealth, then it is natural. The argument was obvious: ‘Wherefore, I reason against him thus: whatsoever preserveth com-monwealths, and destroyeth them not: is not against nature, but the rule of women hath preserved common wealths, ergo, it is not against nature’.205 No longer could political lessons be derived from observ-ing nature, on the contrary, by observing what works in society, the theorist learns what is and is not natural. Nature had become meaning-less, devoid of any explanatory power for the political theorist. What may seem unnatural could only be judged so in light of whether it could sustain a commonwealth. Speculation, instead of beginning with nature and then moving to the commonwealth, now began with the commonwealth. Eventually, for some theorists during the follow-ing century, it would begin and end with the commonwealth. John Milton would eventually reflect upon political arguments drawn from ‘natural philosophy’ and conclude that such tactics really ‘belong to the muses’.206

Laurence Humphrey in his The Nobles attempted to answer the ius gentium argument for rebellion.207 It is quite likely that he was respond-ing to the ius naturale and ius gentium arguments of John Ponet and John Knox, for both radical theorists expressed much of their sedition through the opinions of the ancients and from general consensus. With those two exiles in mind Humphrey acknowledged that some ‘both of our time and also of the ancient Ethnic sages, are of the opinion, a tyrant may justly be slain, and taken from amidst the quick’. Humphrey countered this appeal ad mores by showing numerous instances of ancient authorities denouncing tyrannicide, including ‘divine’ Plato.208 There is surely an assumption in Humphrey’s confidence in the ancients that they recognised an objective ius naturale, which led them to decry tyrannicide. What Humphrey did not address was the problem he had

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209 Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or The Law and the Prince (1644), (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1982).

210 Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 63–64.

211 ‘Epistle’, Geneva Bible (1560), (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), fol.iii.

212 Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 40.

just created. If the ancients could be appealed to in support of con-trary conclusions, in what sense is there a ius gentium? If there was no coherent ancient testimony regarding rebellion, then rebellion could not be considered by appeal to ius gentium. Humphrey’s attempt to prove the necessity of obedience by a counter appeal to ius gentium actually rendered such arguments problematic. It is little wonder that when later Protestants such as Samuel Rutherford took up natural law they completely ignored their Tudor fathers and went straight to the most sophisticated and thoughtful expositors, Roman Catholic scholastics.209

Elizabethan Ambiguity: Natural Law from 1560 to Richard Hooker

during the second half of the sixteenth-century there arose scepticism towards the idea of divine revelation, which led to an increased empha-sis on natural law among some thinkers.210 Concurrently there were the Puritan and Separatist movements, which, at their most narrow, seemed sceptical about the possibility of truth outside of revelation! The year following Elizabeth’s inheritance of the throne, the Geneva Bible dealt a blow to natural law. In the preface to the first edition of the Geneva Bible (1650) there was an attack upon the tradition, with a denial of any knowledge of moral norms outside of the verbal revelation of the Bible. This was indeed a very rare and—given the fact that the Geneva Bible itself contained Paul’s teaching to the contrary—odd suggestion. Nevertheless, the writer of the preface made himself clear: ‘…without this word we cannot discern between justice and injury, protection and oppression, wisdom and foolishness, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil’.211 It was this sort of myopia that would eventually feed the almost complete rejection of natural law by the radical Separatists later in the century, leading Richard Hooker to see Puritanism and reason as mutually incompatible.212 No Magisterial Reformer would have agreed with such a statement. Indeed, Calvin himself never had had such a


213 Humphrey, Nobles, fol. L iii.214 John Bradford, ‘a Meditation of God’s Power, Beauty, Goodness, &c’ (published

1562), Sermons, Wrtings, Meditations, p. 194.215 Bradford, ‘a General Supplication: Being a Confession of Sins and Prayer for

the Mitigation of God’s Wrath and Punishment for the Same’ (published 1562), ibid, p. 200.

narrow view of moral knowledge. This example represents the extreme in ethical agnosticism in English thought. One would be doing well to find another example.

In Laurence Humphrey’s The Nobles natural law received only the barest of mention, which was entirely derivative and unimportant to his overall argument. The strangest argument from nature in The Nobles is undoubtedly his proof against an idle class of citizens. The notion that the nobles should not have to work was popular in England. It was thought that culture could only flourish if there was a class free from manual labour with time for speculation. Humphrey drew an a fortiori argument against idleness from the fact that the two greatest parts of God’s inanimate creation—the sun and the moon—never rest. Therefore, how much more should a person avoid idleness!

But, are not all worldly creatures…enwrapped in restless labour? Nothing more honourable than the heavenly army, the sun, the Moon, the stars, nothing in the whole world more beautiful or excellent. Yet leapeth the Sun forth as a Giant to run his course. The moon taketh charge of the night, and serveth men, plants, living creatures. The Stars rise and set. To conclude, every creature labours and travails.213

Though Humphrey never stated it, such an argument could only be suggested if there was already a belief in a divine governor of nature. In actual fact, Humphrey’s understanding of nature was fairly typical among Tudor political writers. John Bradford, writing in the 1550s, stated the basic theology that allowed nature to be used politically. Indeed nature is created by a good God and is continually guided by his providence:

For to the end thou might declare thy riches, beauty, power, wisdom, goodness, &c., thou hast not only made, but still dost conserve all crea-tures to be, as david says of the heavens, declarers and setters-forth of thy glory, and as a book to teach us to know thee.214

Because churchmen considered God ‘Governor of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist’,215 nature and the way it operated must be good. Thus political lessons may be derived from observing

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216 Ibid., fol. C vii.217 Ibid., fol. N iii.218 Traheron, Warning to England, fol. B vii.219 Thomas Norton, To the Queenes Maiesties Poore Deceiued Subiectes, (n.c. 1569),

fol. a iii.220 Thomas Norton, A Declaration of the Fauourable Dealing of Her Maiesties

Commisioners (n.c. 1583), fol. a ii.221 Christopher Haigh, ‘The Church of England, the Catholics and the People’, Peter

Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, (London: arnold, 1997), p. 248.

what generally obtains in the natural realm. Wisely, Humphrey fol-lowed this up with a Bible reference enjoining all to work.

Humphrey was also concerned to discourage Catholic nobles from harming their new Protestant queen. Writing to nobles who may have been tempted to do to Elizabeth what Humphrey had tried to convince them to do to Mary, he reminded them that, ‘To slay your own coun-tryman nature and reason gainsay’. In apposition he wrote again: ‘To violate the magistrate, all laws both of God and man forbid’.216 So the laws of nature seem to be the laws of God. Exactly what is contrary to nature about regicide is not clear. Perhaps Humphrey had in mind the commandment not to dishonour one’s parents, interpreted with the standard definition of parents as including civil magistrates. Later in the same treatise Humphrey affirmed that ‘all men are enforced by nat-ural inclination to love their country… ’.217 This is more understandable. The common feelings of affection people have for their homelands are elevated to being natural. Just prior to Humphrey’s treatise Bartholomew Traheron bafflingly called the English rejection of Protestantism ‘unnatural behavior’.218 Eleven years later at the height of Catholic agi-tation the Reformed Parliamentarian and translator of Calvin’s 1559 Institutio, Thomas Norton, described the actions of the Catholics involved in the Northern rebellion as ‘unnatural doings’.219 In 1583 Norton defended the Elizabethan regime from the Catholic accusation of ‘unnatural tyranny’.220 The adjective seems to have become so popu-lar in polemic that is was rendered almost meaningless.

a significant, albeit brief, exposition of natural law was carried out by alexander Nowell, dean of St. Paul’s. His Catechism (1570) eventu-ally became the semi-official catechism for English clergy.221 Nowell’s writing on natural law is significant because it is a microcosm of the whole natural law tradition in England from 1547–1603. Nowell, admitting the existence of natural law, saw no need to explore it in any


222 alexander Nowell, Catechism (1570), Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), pp. 138–139.

meaningful way because of his belief in intellectual corruption and the necessity of scripture to illuminate humankind’s otherwise darkened mind. Though more careful than most of the merely discursive treat-ments of other Tudor churchmen, Nowell’s account was still very short. His exposition was distinctly Reformed in that he laid some emphasis on sin’s corruption of the human intellect. He began by reiterating Paul’s teaching that God’s law has been engrafted in all. He spoke of this law as being the ‘highest reason’ which was ‘by God grafted into the nature of man, while man’s nature was yet sound and uncorrupted, being created after the image of God; and so this law is indeed, and is called, the law of nature’. at this point a medieval theologian would have stopped and either begun to expound the law, or counsel the reader to look inward to divine its principles. Nowell, however, added that sin had rendered the innate law unclear and nebulous. It was from the Fall that ‘the nature of man became stained with sin… ’. Nowell’s discussion of natural law ended as soon as it started, owing to his belief in the sufficiency of scripture and the corruption of human reason. Though Nowell admitted the brilliance of the pagan philoso-phers’ efforts to codify it on their own, ultimately they had to fail. He pointed out that ‘although the minds of wise men have been in some sort lightened with the brightness of the natural light, yet in the most part of men this light is so put out, that scarce any sparkles thereof are to be seen… ’. For Nowell, this intellectual dullness explains the exist-ence of wicked actions. Nowell’s account sounds almost like Plato’s account of sin: sin is caused by ignorance. But whereas Plato located the cause of such ignorance in the shock of the soul being ensnared in the body, Nowell saw the cause of ignorance in terms of sin and corrup-tion: ‘…by original sin and by evil custom, so darkened, and natural judgment so corrupted, that man doth not sufficiently understand what difference is between honest and dishonest, right and wrong’.222 Nowell’s thought contains the ambivalence that goes to characterise sixteenth-century English Protestant natural law discourse in general. Orthodox theology and political ideas led him sincerely to affirm the existence of natural law, but the Reformed emphasis on intellectual depravity drew him away from it towards the propositional moral teachings of the Bible.

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223 Ibid., p. 125.224 Ibid., p. 137.225 Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 16.226 Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 114.

It made perfect sense for Nowell to truncate his discussion of natural law after admitting human intellectual inability. For how could he have then gone on to consider a law that he had just claimed was inaccessi-ble without special revelation? Nowell’s exposition of natural law ended when he finished expounding each of the Ten Commandments of God in his Catechism. Throughout the Catechism there are flashes of tradi-tionalism. Nowell, with tenuous biblical proof texts, insisted that nature teaches one to love both friends and their children.223 This was never elaborated upon; Nowell did not go into exactly how it is that nature teaches the love of friends and their children. Probably Nowell was using ‘nature’—like the other theologians surveyed—in the sense of pointing out a natural proclivity to love friends (trivially true) and their children. There is more of a clue later on when Nowell spoke of the Christian Golden Rule as simply being the natural proclivity of self-love directed outward to others. For Nowell, natural law is simply exter-nalising our own natural self-love.224 It appears that J.P. Sommerville is right not to presume that ‘the Protestant emphasis on the corruption of human nature would have led to a rejection of natural law’. Certainly natural law continued to be used by Protestant theorists well into the seventeenth-century.225 Sixteenth-century Protestant political thought supports Sommerville’s observation, but it is also evident that, although Protestant theology did not remove belief in natural law, it made it, by and large, insignificant in political polemic and hindered its develop-ment. Though Nowell affirmed the existence of the law of nature, its principles were discernible only by biblical revelation. If Nowell’s spec-ulation on natural law was truncated, it was not owing to any firm emphasis on divine will or divine law, but arose more from his belief in the radical corruption of the human intellect brought about by sin.

Natural law went completely undeveloped within the Presbyterian and Separatist polemical literature. This is not to say that Puritans and Separatists explicitly rejected natural law, merely that it was not part of their polemical method and was by and large ignored. Peter Munz has said that the Puritan ‘rejection’ of natural law was owing to belief in noetic corruption and sufficiency of scripture.226 Indeed, Cartwright found it impossible that we could ‘persuade and assure ourselves that


227 Cited in Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, p. 150.228 Ibid, p. 152.229 Stephen L. Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History

of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England, (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 6.

230 Edward dering, A Sermon preached before the Quenes Maiestie (1569), fol. Bi.231 John Knewstub, ‘The Lectures of John Knewstub upon the Twentieth Chapter of

Exodus and Certain other Places of Scripture’, (1578), Elizabethan Puritanism, Trinterud, Leonard J. (ed.), (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 351.

232 Robert Harrison, ‘Three Formes of Catechismes’, (1583), The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, (albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson (eds.), Elizabethan Separatist Texts, vol. 2, (London: allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 131. Italics added.

we do well but where as we have the word of God for our warrant… ’.227 The theorist of Presbyterianism also accused archbishop Whitgift of replacing scripture with reason. Whitgift denied the accusation.228 The few references to be found in the works of the Puritans and Separatists show that despite their radical ecclesiastical agendas, these movements had a completely trite approach to natural law. References to natural law were discursive and rarely of any importance to the overall argu-ments of their pamphlets. Stephen L. Collins perhaps goes too far in saying that Puritanism was a strand of Protestantism ‘denying the traditional idea of order and correspondence’ between nature and society.229 Certainly if they did not deny it outright with any counter arguments, they more or less completely ignored any analogies between nature and society.

The brilliant young Puritan academic and preacher, Edward dering, stated that the law of nature leads Christians to be thankful towards their saviour. It was immediately clarified as a reference to the Golden Rule. To know the natural law, for dering, is to look within and exam-ine one’s own conscience: ‘Who amongst us could bear it, to be rewarded with unthankfulness where we have well deserved?’230 In the midst of lecturing against dishonest trade, fellow Puritan John Knewstub also made reference to ‘the light of nature’, which teaches that ‘we may not do that unto another we would not have done unto ourselves’.231 The Separatist Robert Harrison appealed to nature in assuring his critics that his movement extolled obedience to magistrates:

all duties which we owe unto any of those, whom God have placed under him to govern us, whither they be Parents, Magistrates, church guides, or whosoever. and the Lord have comprehended them under one kind, whereunto the very bond of natural affection, if any spark be in us, bind us unto.232

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233 Cf. Robert a. Green, ‘Synderesis, the Spark of Conscience, in the English Renaissance’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 52/2, (april-June 1991): pp. 195–219.

234 Henry Barrow, ‘Four Causes of Separation’, (1587), The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, Elizabethan Separatist Texts, vol. 3, (London: allen and Unwin, 1962), p. 62. Cf. Luke 6:33; Romans 2:15.

235 Norman L. Jones, ‘William Cecil and the Making of Economic Policy’ Paul a. Fideler and T.F. Mayer, Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep structure, discourse and disguise, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 177–179.

236 George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots: A Critical Edition and Translation of George Buchanan’s de Jure Regni apud Scotos dialogus, Roger a. Mason and Martin S. Smith (trs. & eds.), St. andrews Studies in Reformation History, (Hampshire: ashgate, 2004), p. 51.

Here Harrison appealed to the ancient ‘spark’ metaphor, usually syn-onymous with instinct or conscience. The metaphor was part of a cruder—non-scholastic—tradition of natural law, which was popular throughout the English Renaissance. This tradition was adopted by English Protestants, who believed in some natural knowledge of right but, because of their emphasis on noetic corruption, limited it to a spark.233 a little later the radical Separatist, Henry Barrow, tried to shame his fellow Englishmen via a ius gentium appeal. Complaining of the lack of zeal for law among Elizabethan churchmen, Barrow asked, ‘do not the heathen so without the law?’ A fortiori God fearing Englishmen!234

Owing to a preference for the biblical exegetical method, the Puritan use of natural law was usually crude and unrefined. Generally Puritans and Separatists had little time for distinctions in the scholastic way. Consequently, natural law went virtually undeveloped in the debates between conformists, Puritans, and Separatists. The general attitude to natural law was cautiously positive among Elizabethan churchmen, more cautious than among statesmen or more secular theorists. The great parliamentarian, William Cecil, took natural law arguments seri-ously when considering whether Elizabethan anti-usury laws should be relaxed. deciding along aristotelian and Thomist lines that usury is against nature, and therefore against God’s law, Cecil concluded that the existing laws were apt.235 Still, until Richard Hooker reinvigorated the concept at the end of the century, there was little of the unre-strained enthusiasm towards natural law that one would find in, say, the contemporary Scottish humanist George Buchanan’s political writ-ing, who declared that ‘the voice of God and of nature is the same’.236 Puritans and Levellers the following century would reduce the law of nature to conscience, and espouse not an ‘intellectualist’ doctrine of


237 Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Introduction, pp. 94–95. Cf. Captain John Clarke’s words (Oct. 1647): ‘…we have submitted the Spirit of God unto the candle of reason, whereas reason should have been subservient unto the Spirit of God….and before this light can take place again that darkness must be removed—that can-dle of reason…which doth seduce and entice us to wander from God…. (idem, p. 38). John Locke, in his 1663–1664 lectures on natural law, would completely reject any anti-intellectualist or inward light understanding of the law of nature. Though the law is objective, it must be studied with the rigour of any other science to be prop-erly understood. Its principles are not incorrigible and immediately self-evident. Such a rejection of the apostle Paul’s clear testimony to the contrary (Romans 2:14–15) necessarily flowed from Locke’s rigid empiricism. ‘Essays on the Law of Nature’, Political Essays, Mark Goldie (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 85, 89.

238 For the parliamentary reaction to Regnans in excelsis, which resulted in the Treasons act (1571), see J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559–1581, (London: The alden Press, 1953), pp. 177–234.

239 dering, Sermon, fol. d i.

natural law, but one ‘thought of as common to all men and independ-ent of education’.237

It was around this time that the Catholic offensive against the Elizabethan regime went into full force with the Northern Rebellion of 1569. The Northern Rebellion was an attempt by English Catholics to install Mary, (former) Catholic Queen of Scots, onto the English throne. Furthermore, there appeared Pius V’s Regnans in excelsis—a bull excommunicating Elizabeth from the Catholic church and absolving all of England from obedience to her.238 amidst this religious cold-war there were calls to make the English church less Roman. One of the arguments used was from natural law. In 1570 dering preached before the Queen. The theme of the sermon was the preservation of right reli-gion. although he never really explained how, dering asserted that the preservation of right religion was not only a command of God but also a command of nature:

The law of nature hath engraved it in the heart of man, and what godly prince can now sleep in security if he hath no care unto it? Especially see-ing God is God of all magistrates, and they are his creatures. This is their greatest study, to show obedience unto him, to feed his people, and set forth his religion.239

dering gave some hints as to what he meant by care for religion being according to the ‘law of nature’. His reference to the law being engraved upon the heart is from the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Earlier on in that epistle Paul charged humankind with knowing both the splendor of God and his worthiness. Paul’s natural law theory refers to

144 chapter three

240 Romans 1:18–21241 Edwin Sandys, Sermons of Edwin Sandys, Parker Society, (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1841), p. 203.242 Romans 2:14–15.243 Justinian, Institutes, 1.2.244 Norton, Declaration, fol. a a iiii

an internal conviction of what is right.240 This seems to be what dering meant when he claimed that parliamentary consideration for right reli-gion is a ‘law of nature’. Such piety flows naturally from the fact that we are aware of our Creator and of our dependence on him. Because the principle was found directly in the Bible, dering saw no need to dem-onstrate it rationally. Like natural law theorists before him dering thought it sufficient to state the existence of the law, but considered it unnecessary to work it out.

archbishop Edwin Sandys occasionally referred to nature and law in his sermons, though nothing is spelled out in detail and the application is pure medievalism. Sandys was particularly opposed to usury, which he considered to be one of the main causes of poverty surrounding him in Elizabethan England. In a sermon preached at York and published in 1585 he described usury as ‘the canker of the commonwealth’; going on to say that ‘all reason and the very law of nature is against it… ’. Here is the association with reason and nature, exactly what this means may be revealed by Sandys’ apposite statement: ‘…all nations at all times have condemned… ’.241 Sandys here associated natural law with ius gen-tium, that is, the law of nations: a medieval commonplace.242 This was drawn from the apostle Paul’s brief discussion of the law that is known by non-Jews without access to special revelation. Furthermore it was codified in Justinian’s Institutes as one of the three types of law.243 Two years prior to the publication of Sandys’ sermons Thomas Norton justi-fied mild torture for lesser offences by appealing to ‘the more general laws of nations’.244 If general practice could be discerned, then this was sufficient to constitute the practice a law. description passes to pre-scription. Sandys did likewise. He simply noted that most nations rejected the legitimacy of usury; thus he categorised it under the rubric of natural law. His concept of natural law also contained the traditional notion of the necessity of self-preservation. again, this is something that Sandys claimed to perceive in all people; thus, again, natural law is linked to behaviour and custom. Sandys went on to give a Gratianist interpretation of self-preservation based on the Golden Rule. Nature,


245 Sandys, Sermons, p. 205.246 Ibid., p. 98.

as well as enjoining self-preservation, teaches with equal force the necessity of observing the wellbeing of one’s neighbour:

No man hateth his own flesh: no man is envious of his own commodity or preferment. Nature breedeth a self-love in every man. and as this law of nature doth work in us a very fervent and careful desire, both to pro-cure unto ourselves whatsoever we are persuaded is good, and to avoid whatsoever seemeth hurtful or noisome; so the law of charity requireth at our hands like readiness and cheerfulness to benefit others.245

This ‘debt of love’ is something that Sandys was particularly insistent on. Showing his genuine concern for the poor, Sandys invoked natural law vocabulary to inspire charity.

Like numerous other moralists, Sandys invoked nature as a guide to right living; actually, nature was used in a type of a fortiori argument, almost to shame his listeners into Christian charity:

In those very creatures which God hath left empty and void of under-standing, there is a kind of love: a consent we see there is in the stars, in the elements, in times and seasons, amongst the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, the fruits of the earth: every beast doth love his like, to our shame and reproach, if, having so many school-masters to teach us one thing, we learn it not; especially being so neces-sary as it is.246

However, one must bear in mind that Sandys had more to say about revealed commandments than innate principles of conduct. Given his high view of scriptural sufficiency he was clear in his affirmation that basically natural law is unnecessary for the Christian, scripture being sufficient quite apart from the law written on the heart. In the end natural law is undeveloped and quite peripheral to Sandys’ moral thought.

In 1588 Laurence Humphrey was compelled to write a polemical treatise against radical Catholic recusancy in England. Published as A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster, it was squarely aimed at a Catholic readership. Whereas previously in The Nobles Humphrey had drawn his proofs from classical philosophers and historians, his new work drew almost exclusively on ecclesiastical authors, who were considered authoritative by the Roman church, as well as some scho-lastic theologians such as Thomas aquinas. Because Humphrey was

146 chapter three

247 Laurence Humphrey, A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford 1588), p. 40.

248 Ibid., pp. 55–56.249 Ibid., p. 58.

trying to use Catholic arguments to counteract radical English Catholicism, he relied heavily on natural law arguments, or at least many references to nature as a guide to living. His use of natural law is devoid of abstract speculation and focuses entirely upon the example set by animals and inanimate natural bodies. Beginning his discourse on the obedience of animals as a shame to disobedient Catholics, he introduced the law of nature: ‘The Law of nature might instruct natural citizens, and countrymen to love, honour and obey their natural Sovereign. Shall I begin to our shame with the kindness of unreasona-ble beasts towards their masters and feeders?’247 Humphrey then went on to list numerous testimonies from early Christian writers such as Chrysostom, Basil, and ambrose of the fidelity of animals, particularly dogs, to their masters.

after his discussion of bestial obedience he affirmed the perspicuity of the moral teachings of nature:

Here we may see as in a glass the working of nature in brute beasts, in natural men and others before the Law of Moses, and in very Pagans, and Turks, how they hated, and plagued this horrible sin of treachery against them.…Treason is evil: evil to the Prince, evil to the country, evil to the workers themselves.248

The proof for the moral authority of nature is quite simple and Humphrey briefly hinted at it. dumb and reasonless nature is not capa-ble of planning and guiding itself to an orderly end. Yet, it is obvious that nature is ordered, animals behave in a predictable way and inani-mate creation displays regularity. This must be caused by some external agent powerful enough to direct all of creation. The Christian God, now being the explanation for natural order, would make things work towards a good order. as Bradford had written over thirty years earlier, if nature is the expression of God’s good will, then the behavior of nature is good and may be a guide to goodness for those who study it:

To return now to our particulars, I have declared the law of nature, how this common law is verified by creatures void of reason, and by men void of religion: which law of nature is established by the wisdom of God him-self, who hath created and directed all things in wisdom.249


250 W.J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, (aldershot: ashgate, 2005), p. 57. The accusation of scholasticism comes from the only critique of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity published during Hooker’s lifetime, A Christian Letter of Certaine English Protestants (1599). See ‘Christian Letter’ (1599) in The Works of Richard Hooker, 5 vols., (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1977), vol. 4.

251 Thompson, ‘Philosopher of the “Politic Society” ’, p. 20. Cf. O’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 9.

252 Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, p. 39.253 Richard Hooker, ‘The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593), Preface, 3.10, Works

of Richard Hooker, vol. 1. On usage and custom see W. david Neelands, ‘Hooker on Scripture, Reason, and “Tradition” ’, in authur Stephen McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, (Tempe, aZ: Medieval Texts and Studies, 1997), p. 93. For Hooker’s suspicion of arguments from scripture alone see d’Entreves, Medieval Contributions, pp. 106–107.

254 Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 40. Cf. Hooker, ‘Lawes’, Preface, 8.6. For Hooker’s exaggeration of Puritan biblicism, see Thompson, ‘Philosopher of the “Politic Society” ’, p. 24.

after this fleeting proof for his natural doctrines, Humphrey returned to the example of the dog as the paradigm for political fidelity. Humphrey’s doctrine of natural law never got beyond a most crude form of the argument. There was little by way of systematic or technical discussion on the nature of things, or the necessity of teleology imposed on nature from without as one would find in scholastic philosophy.

It is against this backdrop that Richard Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity appears so bright, even though his critics accused him of pro-moting ‘the darkness of school learning’.250 For the first time in English Protestant thought there was a substantial theory of natural law offered by a divine. Indeed, arguments from scripture and authorities seemed to be going nowhere. There was perceived to be a need to bring the debate back to the most basic principles of reason, and then see how well the varying ecclesiastical sects held up to its inflexible standards.251 Hooker—‘this great Protestant scholastic’252—considered the Puritan emphasis on the working of the Holy Spirit as so radically subjective that he limited his epistemology to two complementary foundations: revelation and reason; and when neither reason nor revelation could be decisive then ‘long usage and custom’ and ‘the voice of the church’ would decide.253 Hooker’s scholastic method was a means of overcom-ing perceived (and exaggerated) Puritan irrationalism.254 Indeed, Hooker saw the basic problem as epistemelogical. Speaking of the Presbyterians he diagnosed their error as their conviction that ‘the only law which God hath appointed unto men in that behalf is sacred

148 chapter three

255 ‘Lawes’, I.16.5.256 Thompson, ‘Philosopher of the “Politic Society” ’, p. 31. Hooker and the Puritan

polemicist and preacher, Walter Travers, clashed in 1586 when Hooker asserted the senses and reason to be more foundational to knowledge than Scripture, for Scripture is made valid by way of sense testimony and reason. See S.J. Knox, The Life of Walter Travers, (London: The Shenval Press, 1962), p. 75.

257 W.J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 15, 17, 20–21, 26, 60.

258 as was the case with the Oxford aristotelian philosopher and contemporary of Hooker John Case. See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, pp. 147–148.

259 Hooker, ‘Lawes’, I.3.4, I.5.1–5.2.260 Ibid., I.12.1.261 Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 206. Cf. d’Entreves, Medieval Contributions, p. 89.

scripture’.255 as Thompson points out, there was no substantial differ-ence between the natural law of Hooker and that of Continental Magisterial Reformers before him. The difference was one of degree. Hooker was able to explore the implications of natural law far more effectively because of his higher regard for the potential of human rea-son.256 Hooker outlined the law of God, the law of nature, and the laws of men in a detail rivaling the Roman Catholic scholastic tradition. Nonetheless, Hooker, theologically, was squarely in the Reformed tra-dition and his Lawes were essentially an attempt to square the Royal Supremacy with Reformed principles.257 His conception of the different types of laws was far more refined than other contemporary Christian philosophers, who still thought of the law of nature as being exhausted by providence, instinct, and habit, with less emphasis on reason.258 It is important to note that Hooker did not break from the substance of the scholastic, or for that matter, the English tradition. Hooker justified nature as a liber politicus on the grounds that the obvious teleology in nature must be imposed from without. Furthermore, since all things in nature strive for goodness, the force behind its motion must be good. But if nature and its guide are good, then imitation of nature is imita-tion of the good. Hence nature becomes a guide for the polity.259 Hooker also approved of Gratian’s less speculative definition of natural law as the Mosaic law and the gospel.260 Hooker’s natural law purity was in absence of any detailed scriptural exegesis. Unlike the Protestants before him, Hooker did not try to satisfy the demands of two distinct methods: philosophy and scripture. Consequently, Hooker was able to give all his attention to a philosophical exploration of natural law in a way that English Protestants had not yet done. It was this refusal to be torn between scriptural and scholastic methods which made Hooker ‘the last great representative of the medieval natural-law school’.261


262 Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, p. 61.

Conclusion

The uneasy marriage between Reformed theology and traditional political thought led to a tradition of natural law that was, for the most part, superficial and trite. The need to repond to Marian persecution led political theorists to draw untenable conclusions from political commonplaces. The Protestant attitude to natural law was, indeed, ambiguous, for its presence was evident enough to assure historians that it had not been completely abandoned, yet the weakness of its use and its general unimportance in arguments gives the impression that it was held in some contempt. Natural law was neither ignored by six-teenth-century Protestants nor enthusiastically embraced. It was admit-ted, but few theorists until Hooker really knew what to do with it. With exception to his body metaphor it was ably handled by John Ponet. John Knox placed heavy emphasis on the law of nature in arguing for the overthrow of the two Marian governments in England and Scotland. The radical use of natural law was generated by the crisis of the time. Consequently it disappeared as soon as Protestantism was restored to England. It was this radical use of natural law that called aylmer to scrutinize the traditional concept. In the process of trying to refine the concept to make it less amenable to radical political thought, aylmer emptied it of both its explanatory power and its conceptual usefulness. Kirby seems to be correct in saying that ‘there is a genuine dialectical difficulty in reconciling the authority of the natural law with the core assumptions of the Reformation soteriology and scriptural herme-neutics’.262 The Protestant emphasis on scriptural proof-texts rendered complex natural law discourse unnecessary. Furthermore, the Protestant emphasis on human corruption, though not extinguishing natural law, and, indeed, being compatible with it, made lengthy discourse and expostulation on it seem at best suspect. Certainly this was most obvi-ously the case with the thought of Nowell. The Protestant tradition of natural law in England, for the most part, shows a strong pull in one direction by the new method and doctrines of Reformed Protestantism, and a counter pull by the political heritage of natural law discourse. Perhaps such a tension was inevitable when the new religion encoun-tered old political commonplaces. as d’Entreves says, ‘The small part which was left to the law of nature would be hardly worth mentioning

150 chapter three

263 d’Entreves, Medieval Contributions, p. 101.

were it not to illustrate how confused and inadequate the theory had become’.263 Such a confrontation carried an ambiguity regarding the appreciation for natural law ideas in Protestant England, which was resolved by Hooker, who defended Reformed orthodoxy, though with a scholastic method. It was Hooker who saw the need to return to basic principles of rationality if any advance was to be made on the debate over the Royal Supremacy. Scripture was too flexible a nose of wax and raised too many questions of language, dogma, and interpretation to be alone decisive. Hooker restored the natural law doctrine to the centre of analysis, defending the Royal Supremacy from premises so founda-tional as to elude demonstration, all the time remaining within a Reformed theological paradigm.

Part III

EmErgIng tradItIons of PolItIcal thought

1 Thomas hobbes, The Leviathan, ch.17, richard tuck (ed.), (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1996).

2 Ibid.

chaPtEr four

EnglIsh rEformatIon orIgIns of absolutIsm

Introduction

both the rise of providentialism and the decline of the great chain of being owe their fortunes to shifts and revolutions in thought and poli-tics, European and English. The emphasis on providentialism was a two edged sword, now defending the higher powers, now attacking their pretensions. In this way the rise of providentialism enabled robust movements that could stress the legitimacy of the royal supremacy yet also movements that could undermine it. The divergent traditions would continue to widen and intensify into the following century with revolutionary saints seeking to overthrow a system whose claim to authority was just as rooted in the divine will as that of the forces seek-ing to destroy it.

In 1651 Thomas hobbes offered a vision of the state that bordered on idolatry. after describing how a commonwealth is generated he described the offspring as ‘that great leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently)…that Mortall god, to which wee owe under the Immortal god, our peace and defence’.1 hobbes then went on to describe the nature of this terrestrial deity: ‘and in him consisteth the Essence of the commonwealth; which (to define it,) is One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence’.2 hobbes’ political thought was unique in that it brought together two historically opposed visions of the state: the absolutist view of the state as a reflection of god, analogously hav-ing no dependence on its subjects for its rule, and the consensual view finding the state’s origin and legitimacy in the individual wills of con-tractors or covenantors. but how did English political thought become

154 chapter four

3 franklin le Van baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, (new York: russell and russell, 1966 [1940]), pp. 86–87, 127.

4 William tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) cited in daniel Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007), p. 20.

5 Ibid, pp. 20–32.6 Thomas starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (1529–1532), t.f. mayer

(ed.), (london: royal historical society, 1989), p. 36.7 ‘act of appeals’ (1533), The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary,

g.r. Elton (ed.), (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1962), pp. 344–349.

torn between these two models? chapters four and five show how the ecclesiastical debates in tudor England helped create an atmosphere in which the fully worked-out theories of royal absolutism and govern-ment by consent of the seventeenth-century could flourish.

Absolutism in Henrician England

for the most part, tudor political thought was at odds with absolut-ism.3 nonetheless, there were moments when zeal for reform moved Protestants to write write absolutist doxologies to kings. take tyndale for example:

god hath made the king in every realm judge over all, and over him there is no judge. he that judgeth the king judgeth god and he that layeth hand on the king layeth hand on god, and he that resisteth the king resisteth god and damneth god’s law and ordinance. If the subjects sin they must be brought to the king’s judgment. If the king sin he must be reserved unto the judgment, wrath and vengeance of god.4

It may be argued that tyndale was no absolutist because he allowed for godly disobedience.5 Yet tyndale did not allow the king to be limited by any earthly institution. If this is not absolutism then it is well nigh impossible to find absolutist thought in the whole history of christian political thought. after tyndale, Thomas starkey expressed preference for the mixed constitution. In his Dialogue between Pole and Lupset he affirmed that a constitution is relative to the type of people that it binds together; ruling out the universal necessity of monarchy. nevertheless, he did reveal a preference for government by a council. for starkey this type of government is largely ‘according to the nature of the people’, but ‘is more convenient the rule of a common council…’ .6 starkey’s ideal was in contrast with English legislation which mentioned nothing about a king-in-parliament.7 only gender could lead a prince to speak of the necessity of counsel. Queen mary defended her marriage to

english reformation origins of absolutism 155

8 John Proctor, The Historie of Wyates Rebellion, (london, 1554), p. 54. 9 The netherlands could be described in fortescuian terms as a regnum politicum et

regale. see martin Van gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1992), pp. 19–24.

10 Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 64–66.11 W.d.J. cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (sussex:

harvester Press, 1984), p. 28. cf. s.E. finer, The History of Government, 3 vols., Empires Monarchies and the Modern State, vol. 3, pp. 1262–1263, 1268, 1273.

12 Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 149, 153.13 a.n. mclaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and

Commonwealth 1558–1585, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1999), p. 77.14 beza to bullinger (september 3, 1566), Zurich Letters or the Correspondence of

Several English bishops and Others with some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1846), p. 246.

Philip by appealing not to her own will but to the approval of her (male) counselors.8 The preference for a mixed constitution was typical of most tudor political thought. both theoretical, and probably, class interests made this the case. Theoretical, because the mixed constitu-tion was favoured by most of the great christian political theorists and by the humanist movement in general; class, because such a model offered political influence to landholders qua aristocracy.9 for some theorists, like christopher st german, the king alone had no signifi-cance; England was a regnum regale et politicum and the sphere of influ-ence was strictly the king-in-parliament.10

The reformation attack on roman catholicism raised the status of the secular powers, as the duty fell on the magistrates to reform the church.11 luther himself never envisioned the princely control of the church to be permanent. Power—naively enough—was to be willingly handed over to the officers of the church once the reformation had been effected. luther was no Erastian.12 With the 1533 break from rome henry VIII took upon himself the titles and powers that were previously part of the papal office. Indeed, such nomenclature gave the king a new aura ‘conceived in hierocratic terms: king, not pope, as vicar of god’.13 Perhaps the English prince’s assumption of the papal powers over the English church was only fully realised during the Puritan con-troversies beginning in the 1560s. Indeed, realising that Elizabeth would have no truck with precisionist clergy, Theodore beza—calvin’s successor in geneva—observed in 1566 that ‘the papacy was never abolished in that country, but rather transferred to the sovereign’.14 The contemporary perception of the new English model of politics was, as one historian has described, ‘a state which knew no moral or religious

156 chapter four

15 dermot fenlon, ‘Thomas more and tyranny’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33/4, (october 1981), pp. 468–469.

16 Joan lockwood o’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English Reformation, (atlanta, georgia: scholars Press, 1991), pp. 12, 73.

17 baumer, Early Tudor Theory, p. 44.18 Ibid., pp. 53–54; J. ridley, Thomas Cranmer, (oxford: clarendon Press, 1962),

p. 65.19 a.g. dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation, (london: hodder

and stoughton, 1959), p. 49.20 Quentin skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., Volume

Two: The Age of Reformation, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1978), p. 101. John guy, ‘The henrician age’, J.g.a. Pocock (ed.), The Varieties of British Political Thought 1500–1800, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1993), p. 28, f.n.77. Thomas f. mayer was agnostic on marsilius’ influence on Thomas starkey. see Thomas Starkey and the Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1989), pp. 77, 226–27.

21 s.J. gunn, Early Tudor Government 1485–1558, (hampshire: macmillan, 1995), pp. 184–185. david loads holds that the Parliament was beginning to be seen as the highest power in the land. Tudor Government, (oxford: blackwell, 1997), p. 6.

22 martyr to bucer (december 26, 1548); martyr to bullinger (march 8, 1552), Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols., Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1847), vol. 2, pp. 469, 503.

boundaries beyond its will’.15 Joan lockwood o’donovan speaks of the marsilian project as having been most fully exemplified in henrician England, that is, that the potestas would now direct the auctoritas.16 There seems to be good evidence that marsilius did have some influ-ence on English political thought during and immediately after the henrician reformation. his Defensor Pacis, first printed in 1522, was Englished by William marshall in 1535, though his manuscript version was ready by spring 1533.17 baumer sees the English emphasis on councils as symptomatic of marsilius’ influence, and nods at the pos-sibility that cranmer may have been influenced by him, although Jasper ridley suggests it was more politics than political philosophy that motivated him.18 a.g. dickens saw marsilius’ influence in the church policy of Thomas cromwell.19 to suit the new absolutist climate, marshall omitted the passages on the popular origins of political authority, and interpreted marsilius’ citizen legislative body as mean-ing the English parliament.20 from the 1550s onwards parliamentary power was being increasingly acknowledged by political commenta-tors.21 The movement away from the prince was particularly obvious during Edward’s reign. In 1548 Peter martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformer residing in England, could write to martin bucer in stras-bourg informing him that the English Parliament was the ‘supreme power of this kingdom…’ . he affirmed the same again in 1552 in a let-ter to bullinger.22 a similar shift in emphasis would also take place in


23 see Janine garrisson, A History of Sixteenth-Century France, 1483–1598, richard rex (tr.), (london: macmillan, 1991), pp. 279–318.

24 Jonathan scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2000), p. 68.

25 This is evidenced by the letters of William Paget, which span from the beginning of Edward’s reign until 1563. Paget was one of the most powerful men in England, serv-ing as adviser and diplomat to henry VIII and Edward VI. his letter-book reveals his profound allegiance to the office of the monarch. he was a servant of the prince’s good. The Letters of William, Lord Paget of Beaudesert 1547–1563, barrett l. beer and sybil m. Jack (eds.), camden miscellany vol. XXV, (london: royal historical society, 1974). also, loads, Tudor Government, pp. 17–18. nevertheless, Paget spoke of the common-wealth being held together by religion and laws, with no mention of a king. Paget to Protector somerset (7 July 1549), John strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials relating chiefly to Religion and the Emergencies of the Church of England under Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Mary I, 3 vols., vol. 1, pt 2, (oxford: clarendon Press, 1822), p. 431.

26 loads, Tudor Government, p. 1; J.W. allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth-Century, (london: methuen, 1928), p. xvi.

27 scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 54, 59.28 Exodus 22; Psalms 82.

france from the 1560s onwards, owing to an orthodox catholic parlia-ment keeping the king from introducing laws permitting the liberty of public worship, which it deemed unconstitutional.23 harrington the following century described the monarchy from 1558–1642 as a ‘worryingly weak one’, not being able to prevent ideological and, even-tually, popular polarization.24 Though there may have been a shift away from the prince as the embodiment of power in practical affairs, the prince was still the most significant field of force in English politics.25 The dialectic between the authority of parliament, custom, laws, the prince, and god was probably symptomatic of a genuine absence of any concept of sovereignty—in the bodinian sense of undivided power—in tudor England.26 Even in the seventeenth-century parlia-ment could be described as an event as much as an institution, princes calling them arbitrarily and not being bound by their proposals.27 certainly the word ‘sovereignty’ was used, but with no precise mean-ing. nonetheless, English government for the tudor Protestant was embodied in the prince.

all theorists derived the god-king from the old testament,28 conse-quently English Protestant divines adopted the idea of the god-king or god’s earthly vicar. This conception of secular power was most condu-cive to magisterial Protestantism, which appealed to the secular magis-trates to reform and defend religion. William tyndale in his political apology for lutheranism made it clear that earthly rulers are a manifes-tation of god’s power. In a wink at monarchy tyndale asserted that ‘one

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29 William tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), (Yorkshire: scolar Press, 1970), fol.lxxviii.

30 Ibid., fol.xxx.31 miles coverdale, The Christen Rule or State of All the Worlde (n.c., 1547), p. 4.

king/one law/is god’s ordinance…’ .29 In the earliest Protestant expos-tulations on government a prince has no legitimacy outside some theo-logical framework. Indeed, ‘god therefore hath given laws unto all nations and in all lands hath put kings/governors and rulers in his own stead/ to rule the world through them’.30 It must be kept in mind that tyndale’s treatise was an attempt to bring magisterial Protestantism to the favour of henry VIII, thus it would be surprising to see anything other than an explicit affirmation of near absolute monarchy.

Miles Coverdale’s chisten rule (1547) and the Prince as God’s Politic Will Incarnate

miles coverdale’s political thought represents the strongest affirmation of royal authority to be found in the writing of any tudor Protestant. In his zeal to defend henry’s acts against rome, coverdale described him as a terrestrial deity and subject to no earthly institution. coverdale, who had become one of the most important English Protestants of the era through his translation of the entire bible into English (1535), declared government to be both fatherly and quasi-divine. Just as no father would let children take matters of justice in to their own hands, so the government takes it upon itself to arbitrate between citizens:

as a father over his children is both lord and judge, forbidding that one brother avenge himself on another, but…will have it brought unto him-self or his assigns, to be judged and corrected, so god forbiddeth all men to avenge themselves, and taketh the authority and office of avenging unto himself….

coverdale saw rulers as god’s politic will incarnate; vassals through whom god rules. god ‘in all lands hath put kings governors and rulers in his own stead, to rule the world through them’. Invoking the old testament, coverdale affirmed a quasi-divinity in kings: ‘…the judges are called gods in the scriptures because they are in god’s place [rowme] and execute the commandments of god’.31 coverdale also provided the contemporary historian of political ideas with some of the most abso-lutist affirmations of royal prerogative to be found in all tudor literature.


32 Ibid., p. 6.33 Ibid., p. 20.34 similar examples may be found in contemporary french political thought. see

Julian h. franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1973), p. 7.

35 James VI and I, ‘speech to Parliament, 21 march 1610’, Political Writings, Johann P. sommerville, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1994), p. 181.

The king is solutus legibus. furthermore, if he abuses this privilege then subjects should search themselves for sin. for god would only move a king’s heart to wickedness as a means to punish a wayward nation. Pondering why david never slew saul, despite all his wickedness, coverdale saw a political lesson in david’s restraint:

for god hath made the king in every realm judge over all, and over him is there no judge. he that judgeth the king judgeth god, and he that layeth hands on the king, layeth hand on god, and he that resisteth the king, resisteth god, and dampeth god’s law and ordinances. If the sub-jects sin, they must be brought to the king’s judgement. If the king sin, he must be reserved unto the judgement, wrath and vengeance of god.32

later in the treatise coverdale affirmed the same lesson, making it clear that no seeming iniquity could ever make a king illegitimate, for he is an incarnation of god’s will:

heads and governors are ordained of god, and are even the gift of god, whether they be good or bad. and whatsoever is done unto us by them, that doth god, be it good or bad. If they be evil, why are they evil? Verily for our wickedness sake are they evil. because that when they were good we would not receive that goodness of the hand of god and be thankful, submitting ourselves unto his laws and ordinances, but abuse the good-ness of god unto our sensual and beastly lusts. Therefore doth god make his scourge of them, and turn them into wild beasts, contrary to the nature of their names and offices, even into lions, bears, foxes, and unclean swine, to avenge himself of our unnaturally blind unkindness, and of our rebellious disobedience.33

coverdale’s theological justification of government and his belief in god revealing himself through the ruler led him to assert a most extreme form of absolutism.34 The spirit of coverdale’s thought sur-vived into the later thought of James I, who frequently likened the king to the ‘divine power’.35 but such an absolutist understanding of power grew out of henry’s struggles with rome and the eventual break. henry merely took the power given to the pope as vicarius Christi and applied it to himself. The 1549 catholic riots under Edward VI occasioned an

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36 Thomas cranmer, ‘answer to the fifteen articles of the rebels’ (1549), Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1846), pp. 163–187.

37 John cheke, The Hurt of Sedition (london, 1549), fol. a iiii.38 Ibid., fol. b iii.39 charles Wriothesly, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from

ad 1485 to 1559, 2 vols., William douglas hamilton (ed.), (new York: royal historical society, 1965 [1875]), vol. 1, p. 178.

emphasis on royal legitimacy. The king was not to be held accountable to any earthly institution. cranmer wrote an exhortation to obedience, but it was devoid of elaborate political theology.36 It was the humanist scholar and tutor, John cheke, who offered a political theology of the state in his The Hurt of Sedition (1549). Echoing coverdale, cheke assured English subjects that ‘…the magistrate is the ordinance of god, appointed by him….[that which] is done by the magistrate, is done by god, whom the scripture often times doth call god, because he hath the execution of god’s office’.37 The identity between god and magis-trate was again affirmed when cheke reminded the rebels that ‘that which is done to god’s officer, god accounteth it done to him…’ .38 by and large the anti-resistance literature spoke of the origins of kingly legitimacy only to show the impiety of rebellion. 1549 polemical reac-tion to social unrest was solely concerned with justifications of the state as a means to conciliating rebels.

With henry’s death and Edward VI’s ascension, talk of the king’s authority in the same breath as god’s remained prevalent. during his coronation ceremony Edward was described as ‘supreme head, imme-diately under god, on earth’.39 It was the Protestant understanding of authority that prevented theologians from allowing any earthly institu-tion to have any sort of authority over the prince. during the middle-ages it was held that the authority of the prince was from god though dispensed by the church, much as grace was from god though dispensed by the church through the seven sacraments. coronation ceremonies symbolised this mediation of power through the church in having a bishop hand the sword to the ruler being anointed. on the other hand, reformers rejected the efficacy of such ceremonies, asserting that nothing mediates between god and man. coronation ceremonies do nothing. They are merely visible symbols of invisible orders. no human ceremony can ever effect authority, it can only testify to it. Witness the words of archbishop Thomas cranmer during Edward VI’s coronation:


40 cited in Ernst h. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, (Princeton, new Jersey: Princeton university Press, 1957), p. 318. cf. graham arthur cole, ‘cranmer’s Views on the bible and the christian Prince: an Examination of his Writings and the Edwardian formularies’, (m.Th. thesis, university of sydney, 1983), p. 81.

41 John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power: A Translation, with Introduction, of the de Potestate regia et Papali of John of Paris, ch.5, arthur P. monahan (tr.), (new York and london: columbia university Press, 1974).

42 o’donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 86. cf. cole, ‘cranmer’s Views on the bible and the christian Prince’, p. 86.

43 Thomas bilson, The Trve Difference betvveen Christian Subiection and Vnchristian Rebellion, (oxford, 1585), (amsterdam: Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1972), p. 498.

44 John hooper, ‘a declaration of the ten commandments’ (1550), Early Writings of John Hooper, Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1843), p. 356.

[Kings] be god’s anointed, not in respect of the oil which the bishop useth, but in consideration of their power which is ordained…and of their persons, which are elected of god and indued with the gifts of his spirit for the better ruling and guiding of this people. The oil, if added, is but a ceremony: if it be wanting, that king is yet a perfect monarch not-withstanding, and god’s anointed as well as if he was inoiled.40

John of Paris had said the same thing in the early fourteenth-century, though cranmer, unlike the sorbonne theologian, mentioned nothing of god’s authority being mediated through popular or conciliar con-sent.41 cranmer’s speech was a declaration of war against ecclesiastical pretensions over secular authority, ‘an unguarded apotheosis of the royal supremacy over church and realm’.42 Thomas bilson, Warden of Winchester, was to use cranmer’s exact words nearly forty years later.43

The Divines’ Defence of the Higher Powers: The Political Theology of Bishop John Hooper and John Bradford

In 1550 bishop hooper affirmed the quasi-divinity of the prince on several occasions. discussing the commandments and acknowledging that god’s sovereignty can seem distant, hooper counseled his readers that ‘if thou wilt have a very true image to express god omnipotent, thy sole god and maker, unto thy reason and external senses, set those superior powers before thine eye…’ .44 further on hooper explicitly stated that the legitimacy of the royal powers is to be found in the fact that they are placed there by god; in ‘such as the lord hath appointed in the earth over us to rule, those we must reverence, honour, and obey,

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45 Ibid., p. 366.46 hooper, ‘annotations on romans XIII’ (1551), Later Writings of Bishop Hooper,

Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1852), pp. 103–104.47 hooper, ‘declaration’, pp. 352–353, 360–362, 364.48 Ibid., pp. 362–363.49 This prayer was composed during the Edwardian reign but not published until

after bradford’s martyrdom in 1555. John bradford, ‘meditation on the commandments’ (1562), Writings of John Bradford containing Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1848), p. 163.

50 bradford, ‘meditation on the Passion of our saviour’ (n.d.), Writings of John Bradford containing Letters, Treatises, Remains, Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1853), pp. 254–255.

with all fear and love…’ .45 later in his short career hooper affirmed the origins of political power as a restraint on the natural desire for free-dom. dissenting from the post-thirteenth-century conception of polit-ical thought, which posited the higher powers as natural and enabling, he held coercive government to be totally unnatural to fallen humans. Indeed, ‘naturally there is in every man a certain desire of liberty, and to live without subjection and all manner of laws, except such as please himself…’ . because such subjection kicks against the natural desire to be free, hooper speculated that the legitimacy of government had to be revealed in the bible, or else no one would obey. The bible, according to hooper, revealed a neat political syllogism: ‘…the office of a magis-trate is the ordinance of god: and seeing all the ordinances and powers of god are to be obeyed, necessarily it followeth that…the magistrate must be obeyed…’ . QED! hooper also reminded his readers that kings are called ‘gods’ in the bible, because ‘no man can come to the office of a magistrate but by the permission and sufferance of god’.46 This is not to say that hooper offered a hobbesian reduction of justice to royal will, for he repeatedly subordinated the private ambitions of the magis-trate to religion.47 furthermore, hooper declared that rulers have their power through law, not against law.48

hooper’s colleague John bradford spoke much the same in his trea-tise on the ten commandments. government was primarily an instru-ment of chastisement. affairs of state could not be separated from god’s discipline. In a prayer, bradford thanked god for instituting gov-ernment.49 reflecting on the human appetite for glory, bradford reminded himself that christ admonished his disciples ‘to leave that to the magistrates, which are for their office sake to be called ‘gracious lords’; for doubtless there they be very ‘gods’, as the scripture calleth them…’ .50 When Edward VI died and was replaced by mary, bradford’s


51 bradford, ‘a letter sent with a supplication to Queen mary, her council, and the whole parliament’ (1554), Writings, p. 26.

52 stephen alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 2002), p. 40.

tone turned and he emphasised not the subjects’ allegiance to the prince but the prince’s allegiance to god. bradford placed a great limit on the power of the magistrate:

It behooveth kings, Queens, and all that be in authority, to know that in the administration of their kingdoms ‘they are god’s ministers’. It behooveth them to know that they are no kings, but plain tyrants, which reign not to this end, that they may serve and set forth god’s glory after true knowledge. and therefore it is required of them that they would be ‘wise’, and suffer themselves to be taught; to submit themselves to the lord’s discipline, and to kiss their sovereign, ‘lest they perish’: as all those potentates with their principalities and dominions cannot long prosper, but perish indeed, if they and their kingdoms be not ruled with the scepter of god, that is, with his word….51

This understanding of the king’s subordination to religion was some-what medieval. Yet, there is no mention of the prince being subordi-nate to any other earthly institution in the political thought of either divine. Indeed, hooper spoke of the prince as needing to rule accord-ing to law, but he never unpacked this statement, nor did he outline an institutional strategy to deal with a prince who considered himself solutus legibus. In other words, ‘kings were accountable, but not to their subjects’.52 unlike in medieval thought, the king is subordinate to god, but not necessarily to the church. It was the affirmation of this latter sort of subordination, as espoused by later Puritans, Presbyterians, and separatists, which would force Protestant theorists to take sides between either a prince subordinate to nothing but his own conscience or a prince subordinate to a godly people.

Prayers and Tears: the Spirit of the Political Literature of the Marian Exiles

If the emphasis of the Edwardian period was the prince as god’s anointed, the emphasis during the marian period was the prince as god’s scourge; at best to be tolerated, at worst to be killed. John bale’s Sovereaigne Cordial for a Christian Conscience (1554) told English Prot-estants to hold tight under the marian regime. Persecution confirms

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53 John bale, A Soveraigne Cordial for a Christian Conscience (roane, 1554).54 A Warnyng for Englande (n.c., 1555).55 bartholomew traheron, A Warning to England to Repente (n.c., 1558).56 John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politike Power (strasbourg, 1556), (amsterdam:

Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1972), p. 52.57 Ibid., p. 14. cf aristotle, ‘The Politics’, II.4, The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2

Vols., (new Jersey: Princeton university Press, 1984), Vol. 2.58 for ciceronianism and aristotelianism in general during this period and their

relation to political thought, see richard tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1993), pp. 1–30.

one’s election. besides, history teaches that god will destroy the tor-mentors of his flock.53 The following year came A Warnyng for Englande, which reminded nobles of the tyranny that always accompanied spanish rule. drawing on the recent example of spanish rule in Italy, the tract warned the English nobility that their property rights would be plundered.54 bartholomew traheron’s A Warning to England to Repente was hardly flattering to the marian government, seeing it as a scourge of god and the occasion of plague.55 With the devastating attacks on royal legitimacy that came from the pens of others like John Ponet, christopher goodman and John Knox from 1556–1558, English Protestants had been fed a steady diet of suspicion or outright treach-ery from the continent.

The radical John Ponet tended to emphasise the divine origin of political government less than other ecclesiastics. nevertheless he espoused both theological and aristotelian conceptions of political authority. he affirmed magistrates as ministers of god’s power and also the political commonplace that the necessity for survival compels humans to gather.56 Indeed, no one is completely self sufficient because ‘nature hath not made every man apt for all things, but hath made one man more meet for one purpose than another.…’ consequently the will to survive and flourish ensures that ‘all be tied together in an indis-soluble strong bond of friendship’.57 Ponet discussed the divine origins of political government by attacking the ciceronian teaching that per-suasive rhetoric established coercive authority, which, given the popu-larity of ciceronianism in the sixteenth-century, would have raised some eyebrows.58 civil society did not arise from human reason as the ‘worldlings thought’—perhaps a direct reference to the ciceronian myth of civil society arising from persuasive rhetoric. Ponet attacked the humanist conviction that ‘this governor was their own reason’. furthermore: ‘reason they thought to be the only cause, that men first assembled together in companies, that commonwealths were made,


59 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 3. cf. romans 1.60 Ibid., p. 4.61 Ibid., p. 6. for Ponet’s views on the origin and purpose of government, see

Winthrop s. hudson, John Ponet (1516?–1556): Advocate of Limited Monarchy, (chicago: university of chicago Press, 1942), pp. 135–39, 149–154.

62 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 7. cf. hudson, John Ponet, p. 135. allen considers Philip melanchthon to be the source of this view for Ponet. allen, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, p. 119.

63 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 48.

that policies were well governed and long continued…’ . Ponet attacked classical civilisations for this sort of intellectual vanity and noted that in the history of the world they are but ephemeral. Echoing the apostle Paul, Ponet declared the pagan philosophers and statesmen to have been ‘utterly blinded and deceived in their imaginations, their doings and inventions (seemed they never so wise)…’ .59 In Ponet’s final attack on the ciceronian view he pressed the point: ‘Where is the wisdom of the grecians? Where is the fortitude of the assyrians? Where is both the wisdom and force of the romans become?’ Ponet’s answer cut at the root of renaissance humanism: ‘all is vanished away, nothing almost left to testify that they were, but that which well declareth, that their reason was not able to govern them’.60 Thus Ponet, right at the beginning of his Shorte Treatise, affirmed that civil society cannot be based on mere reason, but must find its foundations on a more secure edifice, offering a surprisingly modern and realist definition of the state: an institution with a legitimate monopoly on violence.61 Ponet began with a theological defense of government, then focused on nature, only to return to god.

In Ponet’s augustinian vision of politics coercive power is a manifes-tation of original sin. Ponet located the origins of political power in god’s ordination for people to exercise corporal punishment over one another. Prior to political government god was long-suffering. nevertheless after the deluge ‘he was constrained to change his lenity into severity, and to add corporal pains…’ .62 The anarchism of the anabaptists gave Ponet his rhetorical fodder:

for the anabaptists mistake christian liberty, thinking that men may live without sin, and forget the fall of man, whereby he was brought into such misery, that he is no more able to rule himself by himself, than one beast is able to rule an other: and that therefore god ordained civil power (his min-ister) to rule him, and to call him back, whensoever he should pass the lim-its of his duty, and would that an obedience should be given unto him.63

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64 Ibid., p. 98. cf. aristotle, ‘The Politics’, 1279b1–1280a1.65 Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 8. There is no reason to think that Ponet would have had

any group in mind other than the nobility.66 Ibid., p. 9.67 hudson, John Ponet, pp. 208–216.68 W. stanford reid, ‘John Knox’s Theology of Political government’, Sixteenth

Century Journal, XIX/4, (1988), p. 530.

swapping augustine for aristotle, Ponet considered various types of constitutions. he offered a christian approach to optimal and corrupt constitutions: ‘there is no better nor happier common wealth nor no greater blessing of god, than where one ruleth, if he be a good, just and godly man…’ . conversely there is ‘none worse nor none more misera-ble, nor greater plague of god, than where one ruleth, that is evil, unjust and ungodly’.64 regarding the actual type of state, Ponet was pragmatic. he pointed out that there are really no necessary reasons for preferring any type of constitution over another. Ponet demonstrated a biblicism here that would later characterise English separatism. also, like the biblicism of separatism, Ponet’s would lead him to advocate republican principles. because of the absence of biblical guidance on the issue, the people may determine their own constitution.65 This being said, there is a humanist preference in Ponet’s thought for the ‘mixed state’ which ‘men by long continuance have judged to be the best sort of all’.66 Ponet’s theory of government drew upon both theological and aristotelian tra-ditions of political thought. far from advocating a government without any earthly rival, Ponet eventually declared a godly nation to be the government’s superior. This proved too alarming even for Puritans and separatists, who at their most radical settled for the discipline of the local congregation—excommunication—as the greatest force against princely pretensions. Ponet’s real impact was in the seventeenth- century when his Shorte Treatise was reprinted in 1639 and 1642 to bolster sup-port for the revolutionary Puritans.67

neither christopher goodman nor John Knox stressed royal legiti-macy in their political works. such stress would have been counterpro-ductive to their whole project of inspiring the English to overthrow Queen mary. Ponet influenced neither Knox nor goodman’s political vocabularies in the slightest. W. stanford reid considers it unlikely that Knox had read Ponet’s Shorte Treatise. Knox and goodman, however, were prominent members of the same church while in exile in calvin’s geneva. It is impossible that the two wouldn’t have discussed the situ-ation in England.68 both christopher goodman and John Knox were


69 christopher goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd (geneva, 1558), (amsterdam: Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1972), p. 148.

70 Ibid., pp. 148–149.71 richard l. greaves, ‘calvinism, democracy, and the Political Thought of John

Knox’, Occasional Papers of the American Society for Reformation Research, (st. louise: n.p., 1977), p. 81.

72 a.n. mclaren, ‘delineating the Elizabethan body Politic: Knox, aylmer and the definition of counsel 1558–88’, History of Political Thought, XVII/2, (summer 1996), pp. 245–246.

indifferent to any discourse regarding the types of constitutions as con-ceived by aristotle. like machiavelli before him goodman cautioned against two extremes of government. The first is that ‘magistrates per-mit not to their subjects overmuch liberty…’ . The consequences for such licence are devastating to order. It will lead to the magistrates falling into the ‘contempt and subjection of their people’, which brings ‘for the most part, all kind of dissoluteness, and carnal liberty, subver-sion of all good laws and orders, alteration of commonwealths and policies, contempt of god and man: and to be short, all things turned to disorder and confusion’.69 The second excess to avoid is when ‘all power and liberty’ be taken from the people. This leads to people being treated ‘not as reasonable creatures, but brute beasts: as though they had no portion or right at all…’ . This results in mindless subjects equat-ing right law with the magistrate’s will.70 This being the case, there is still no appraisal of any particular type of regime in goodman’s polemic. That he preferred a mixed state is probable. nevertheless, he never made it explicit. as richard l. greaves says about calvin’s and Knox’s attitudes to political theorising, both ‘had a great deal to say about poli-tics, but not about the ideal form of government’.71 goodman may be included here. There is no account of aristotle’s three types of constitu-tion and their corrupt equivalents. certainly there is no hint of the humanist disdain for monarchy in the works of either Knox or goodman. although they share calvin’s suspicion of monarchs the actual office is never attacked. Knox eventually considered Elizabeth I as legitimate because he considered her authority to have been bestowed by god, as opposed to his critic, John aylmer who saw her authority as conditional on her submission to counsel.72 Knox’s strong predestinari-anism excluded anything other than a divine source of legitimacy. If god is sovereign then ‘it is neither birth, influence of stars, election of people, force of arms, nor finally whatsoever can be comprehended under the power of nature, that maketh the distinction betwixt the

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73 cited by a.f. scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth Century Puritanism, (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1928), pp. 80–81.

74 John Knox, ‘first blast against the monstrous regiment of Women’ (1558), The Works of John Knox, 6 vols., Peter laing (ed.), (new York: ams Press, 1966 [1855]), vol. 4, p. 366. cf. mclaren, Political Culture, p. 56.

75 ‘Queen Elizabeth’s first speech, hatfield, november 20, 1558’, Elizabeth I: Collected Works, leah s. marcus, Janel mueller, mary beth rose (eds.), (chicago: university of chicago Press, 2000), p. 52.

76 ‘richard mulcaster’s account of Queen Elizabeth’s speech…January 14, 1559’, ibid., p. 54. cf. cook to bullinger (december 8, 1558), in Zurich Letters, p. 1.

77 W.J. torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, (leiden: brill, 2007), p. 188.

78 Peter martyr Vermigli, ‘Epistle to the Princess Elizabeth’ (1558), ibid, pp. 198–199.

superior power and the inferior, or that doth establish the royal throne of kings; but it is the only and perfect ordinance of god’.73 notoriously, Knox had a patriarchal view of government, and firmly held that gynae-cocracy is a ‘monster in nature’.74 nevertheless, for Knox, monarchy was a perfectly legitimate constitution.

like Ponet, both goodman and Knox held the prince to be account-able to godly citizens. With exception of the nobility, neither posited any earthly institution to which the ruler should genuflect. There was only talk of submission to god’s word and the consequences of not doing so. The limits placed on rulers in the political theories of Ponet, goodman, and Knox really only operated in the most extreme of cir-cumstances, when the people of god were being plundered. Theirs were books of crisis. There is no talk of a visible institution established to monitor and discipline the prince.

The Elizabethan Period: Sectarian Dialectic and Noisy Vestiges of Rome

When Elizabeth ascended to the throne she described herself as ‘the minister of his heavenly will’.75 The emphasis was less on princely legitimacy from god than on princely accountability to god. as Elizabeth was reported to have said the following year, power from god demands responsibility to god: ‘…princes be set in their seat by god’s appointing and therefore they must first and chiefly tender the glory of him from whom their glory issueth…’ .76 Peter martry Vermigli in his panegyric to Elizabeth upon her accession reminded her that she was appointed ‘solely by divine gift’.77 also, he spoke of a duo of godly Elizabeths. as human Elizabeth was to practise humble piety, yet as queen she was to establish piety.78 Indeed, for


79 Ibid, p. 200.80 she asserted sovereignty as early as 1558. furthermore she did not hesitate to re-

mind the parliament in 1567 that she was the head of the body and they were but the feet: ‘…who is so simple that doubts whether a prince that is head of all the body may not command the feet not to stray when they would slip? god forbid your liberty should make my bondage…’ . ‘Queen Elizabeth’s speech dissolving Parliament, January 2’, 1567, Collected Works, pp. 59 & 105.

81 mclaren, Political Culture in Elizabethan England, p. 32.

martyr, the prince’s charge was to steer and, if necessary, be the force of religious reform:

If bishops and ministers of churches shall not do their duty, if in han-dling of doctrine and administering of the sacraments they forsake the just rules of holy scriptures: who but a godly Prince shall revoke them into the right way? let not your majesty expect, (as things now be) that those men are stirred up to these things of themselves: unless they be moved thereunto by princely authority, they will not repair the ruin of the temple of god.79

The royal supremacy was spoken of by some European and English reformers not as a right but as a duty. from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign there was the admission of accountability to an invisible author-ity, but she was far from asserting a similar subordination to the church or any other visible institution. Indeed, she was forced to press her sov-ereignty when the matter of her marriage arose. It took time for the parliament to learn that their Queen had little interest in counsel regarding marriage; even longer to realise that their authority on the issue was fanciful.80

Identifying English institutions of political influence was an impor-tant matter for Protestants to sort out. They needed to know to whom they should direct their exhortations for full reformation. In Elizabeth’s maiden speech she spoke of the nobility as being a part of the mecha-nism governing the commonwealth.81 laurence humphrey in The Nobles or of Nobilitye, first published in latin in 1559, hedged his bets and treated both the prince, and to a greater extent the nobility in par-liament, as the field of force in English politics:

and presently who swarm in princes courts but noble men? Who their counselors but they? Who wieldeth chiefest dignities, Who are present? who presides as well in private as public affairs, but the highest and noblest? Who leadeth in the parliament, overwayeth in the law, swayeth both far and near? Even princes and nobles. Who bids, forbids, doeth, undoeth, twineth untwineth, all things? Who maketh and unmaketh

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82 laurence humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye (london, 1563), fol. c i.83 Ibid., fol. n v.84 ‘In 1563 she vetoed six, in 1567 seven, in 1581 one, in 1585 nine, in 1593 one, and

in 1597…twelve’. J.E. neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, (middlesex: Penguin, 1963 [1949]), pp. 410–411.

85 christopher hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714, (Edinburgh: Thomas nelson and sons, 1961), pp. 53–64.

86 allen, Political Thought in the Sixteenth-Century, pp. 249–250.

laws? Who wieldeth the common wealth in peace, or wageth war against the enemy, but great and noble men?82

given that humphrey could also affirm that ‘in the Princes, is com-prised the realm’s safety’, he saw the need for a single personal power to halt any excess of factions, but at the same time considered the bulk of power to reside in the individuals who went to make up the parlia-ment.83 although it would not always work out in practice, the notion of princely power apart from—at least—parliamentary participation was fading. still it must be kept in mind that theory was moving faster than politics. Elizabeth always had the power to veto any bill. furthermore, she happily exercised this right in every parliament, sometimes in spite of almost unanimous parliamentary opposition.84 It is easy to sympathise with christopher hill who, speaking of James I and VI, said ‘his ideas on the prerogative or divine right were no more extreme than those of Elizabeth had been’.85

John Aylmer’s Defence of Elizabeth

upon the ascension of Elizabeth to the throne English Protestant churchmen set to work defending her legitimacy. allen may have been right when he suggested that no great defence of royal legitimacy occurred until the end of Elizabeth’s reign, but there were some capable attempts along the way.86 The best apology for government in the early Elizabethan reign came from bishop John alymer. his thoughtful response to Knox’s blast not only affirmed the legitimacy of gynaecoc-racy, but also discussed the legitimacy of government in general. An Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes contained a proof for kingly legitimacy from both nature and theology, with a little pragma-tism thrown in for good measure. alymer simply declared that Elizabeth had been brought into the line of royal succession by god and warned that it is safer to keep the current prince than to seek a new one (‘a great


87 John aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithfull and Trevve Subiectes (strasbourg, 1559), fol. b2.

88 aylmer, Harborovve, fol. m2.89 Ibid., fol. m3.

deal less jeopardy’), considering the strife that could arise from com-peting factions.87

aylmer’s view of princely legitimacy was expressed in purely theo-logical terms. he conceded that without the magistracy the strong would plunder the weak, but, for aylmer, the ideal government is no government at all. The ideal condition was in the garden of Eden, where humankind had direct access to the voice of god and obeyed out of reverence not coercion. The fall removed god’s direct or close gov-ernment from humankind, replacing god’s sway over conscience with coercive government:

and though it be his peculiar property, to have dominion and rule, as the only king and monarch: yet because our dullness cannot conceive his brightness, nor our infirmity his majesty…therefore he communicateth not only his power, rule, honour, and majesty to men: but also his own name, calling them gods: that by their manhood, they might confer with men, as men, and by their name and office, represent a divine majesty as god.

aylmer spoke in salisburian terms of a king’s two natures, the human and the divine:

Thus it pleased god to adorn his anointed with so noble a name: that we which be of nature rebellious, should behold in them not only flesh and blood, which they have common with us, but also a divine and godly majesty, which they have given them of god.88

aylmer then went on to point out the chaos that would ensue if god did not ordain such an order in nature. Indeed, ‘…all things would grow to confusion, while every man, as he were of greater power: so could and would oppress such as were of less…’ .89 here aylmer’s thought straddles between the medieval and modern conceptions of politics. Even though he pointed out, albeit discursively, the social ben-efit of government, in the end government exists so that humans will serve god. magistrates are legitimate because god has set them over the rest. because of this aylmer could enjoin his readers to be obedi-ent to ‘god’s lieutenant our sovereign, in forwardness, and helping her both with our goods…and bodies, when need is, every man in

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90 Ibid., fol. Q3.91 Ibid., fol. h3.92 Thomas norton, To the Queenes Maiesties Poore Deceived Subiectes (1569), fol. c.

on the prince’s invincibility and the liturgical origins of the concept, see Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, p. 8. for the aristotelian and theological origins of the matrimonial metaphor, see idem, pp. 212–218, 223.

93 Thomas norton, A Warning agaynst the Dangerous Practises of Papistes (1569), fol. b iii.

his calling’.90 here, aylmer was able to exhort Englishmen to lay down their property and lives for their prince, with no reference to their self-interest. This was possible because aylmer’s view of government was not so much rooted in individual consent but in divine will.

Ironically, in his enthusiasm to silence Elizabeth’s opponents, aylmer softened her political significance to an almost unparalleled degree. he declared that ‘…it is not she that ruleth but the laws, the executors whereof be her judges, appointed by her, her justices of peace and such other officers…’ .91 aylmer declared the real sphere of influence in England to be the laws as understood and executed by the parliament and nobility. In his haste to answer John Knox’s critique of gynaecoc-racy, aylmer diluted Elizabeth’s power to such an extent that she resem-bled more the royalty of England after the glorious revolution of 1688 than of the sixteenth-century.

concurrently with the Puritan minimisation of royal jurisdiction there was also a movement to extol royal authority. defenders of the Elizabethan government against catholic critics, like Edwardian theo-rists before, tended to emphasise the Queen’s calling and authority. In 1569 the calvinist parliamentarian, Thomas norton, described the Queen’s power as ‘invincible’ and used the medieval metaphor of prince as ‘mother and nurse of all her good subjects’ and ‘husband of the common weale’.92 The same year in another piece of polemic norton identified the life and soul of the prince with the life and soul of the realm.93 There was no separating the nation from the person of the Queen. after the appearance in 1570 of Pius V’s Regnans in excelsis, which called upon all English catholics to disobey the excommunicate Elizabeth, the duty of defending the Queen’s authority became urgent. There were practically no critiques of monarchical government during the Elizabethan period. This is hardly surprising given that Elizabeth’s regime gradually became more and more preoccupied with smoking out seditious literature and punishing authors and printers as traitors. archbishop of canterbury, John Whitgift, strove to make printed and


94 robert P. adams, ‘despotism, censorship, and mirrors of Power Politics in late Elizabethan times’, Sixteenth Century Journal, X/3 (1979), p. 6.

95 ‘star chamber decree concerning printers’ (1586), Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 179–184.

96 ‘an homilie against disobedience and Wilfull rebellion’ (1570), Certaine Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in the Time of Queen Elizabeth I (1547–1571), (gainesville, florida: scholars’ facsimiles and reprints, 1968), p. 278.

hence public criticism impossible.94 by 1586 the star chamber had leg-islated that the only authorised printers were select ones in cambridge, oxford, and london. all others were to be shut down.95

one of the most interesting and widely heard political manifestos was the Homilie against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1570). Written for captive congregations the Homilie did not wax about con-stitutional diversity or how constitutions are relative to the nature of the people. It unequivocally stated that monarchy was simply the only godly commonwealth. Thousands of churchgoers were repeatedly exposed to the medieval commonplace that a political constitution will resemble the universal or heavenly constitution: one god, one prince:

as the universal monarch and only King and Emperor over all, as being only able to take and bear the charge of all: so hath he [god] constituted, ordained, and set earthly Princes over particular Kingdoms and dominions in earth, both for the avoiding of all confusion, which else would be in the world, if it should be without governors, and for the great quiet and benefit of earthly men their subjects, and also that the Princes them-selves, in authority, power, wisdom, providence, and righteousness in government of people and countries committed to their charge, should resemble his heavenly governance, as the majesty of heavenly things may by the baseness of earthly things be shadowed and resembled.96

The reason the speculation here is so monarchic is that the Homilie was specifically for a popular audience. given the frequent riots and plots in Elizabethan England, to allow the people to even hear of the possi-bility that there are other legitimate forms of government would have been political folly.

The notion of a good ruler being the image of god was a major theme in the Homilie against Rebellion. This description of the ruler as Deus-princeps would have been heard by anyone who attended reli-gious services during Elizabeth’s reign. given Elizabeth’s distrust for sermons composed by preachers beyond her surveillance, all parish-ioners would have known that there is a ‘similitude…between the heavenly monarchy, and earthly kingdoms well governed…’ . Indeed,

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97 Ibid., p. 278.98 alexander nowell, Catechism (1570), Parker society, (cambridge: cambridge

university Press, 1853), p. 17. Italics added.

‘the kingdom of heaven is resembled unto a man, a king: and as the name of the king, is very often attributed and given to unto god in the holy scriptures…’ . furthermore, ‘god himself in the same scriptures sometime vouchsafe to communicate his name with earthly Princes, terming them gods: doubtless for that similitude of government which they have or should have, not unlike unto god their King’.97

The same year nowell’s, Catechism or First Instruction and Learning of Christian Religion was published, which reaffirmed the king’s right to rule from ‘The holy decree of the laws of god, by which they are become worshipful and honourable…’ . furthermore, ‘for from thence they all, whether they be parents, princes, magistrates, or other superiors, what-soever they be, have all their power and authority; because by these it has pleased God to rule and govern the world’.98 There is no speculation here on rank, order, or similitude. rulers are legitimate simply because it has pleased god to establish them. There is not even any suggestion that government might be natural. It was against such visions of royal authority that the Puritan movement seems so seditious by compari-son. If, as the Homilie declared, the king’s dominion is similar to god’s, then how can the king be said to be limited? The Puritan movement represented an assault on the idea of the prince resembling god, for the prince was said to be accountable to an earthly institution—the church—which was both blasphemous and seditious.

Royalist Apologies and Anti-Catholic Polemic

up there with the most substantial pre-hookerian defences of the Elizabethan church of Jewell and Whitgift was the Warden of Winchester, Thomas bilson’s, The Trve Difference betvveen Christian Subiection and Vnchristian Rebellion (1585). This was one of the largest tomes published during the Elizabethan reign and, surprisingly, one of the more lucid reads. bilson’s Trve Difference is significant because it attempted to accommodate both the hildebrandine and Erastian model into a single system. The result was nothing but tension giving way to


99 William m. lamont in his essay ‘The rise and fall of bishop bilson’ saw ambigu-ity as the dominant feature of bilson’s thought, not so much because bilson was con-fused or vague in understanding, but because of his ‘reluctance to draw out the implications of his principles…’ . I differ from lamont’s interpretation of bilson’s Trve Difference, not in its vagueness, but in my belief that it tends towards state supremacy rather than ecclesiastical supremacy, as lamont suggests (p. 26). Journal of British Studies, 5/2 (may 1966), p. 22.

100 Peter martyr Vermigli, ‘of ciuill and ecclesiasticall power’ (1561), Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 91.

absolutism.99 by affirming the act of supremacy and yet admitting a type of ecclesiastical moral authority over the prince, bilson effectively made ecclesiastical authority meaningless. The royal supremacy and the claims of the church could not coexist in any coherent way.

bilson’s Trve Difference was a systematic dialogue rebutting Jesuit criticism of the Elizabethan regime and also an exposé of the seditious doctrines taught by that society. The treatise also gives the historian of political thought a glimpse at the difficulties tudor theorists encoun-tered when trying simultaneously to preserve the royal supremacy and the autonomy and authority of the church. bilson’s thought turns out to be stretched in opposite directions. on the one hand he asserted royal supremacy over the English church and on the other he affirmed that the ruler is subject to ecclesiastical discipline and to the words of preachers. although bilson set out to defend the Elizabethan policy, he wound up describing her powers in terms similar to those being espoused by separatists. furthermore, his concern to elevate the will of god as revealed in the scriptures to the highest point of priority for the commonwealth caused him eventually to minimise the importance of those English institutions—courts, judges, and lawyers—that would, by their existence, limit the power of the sovereign.

In essence bilson’s thought differs little from the Zurich theology of obedience preceding it. In fact, it carries all the ambiguities, tensions, and dangers that characterized the political ideas of bullinger and Vermigli:

In sum, there is no great king or emperor who is exempt from the power of the divine word, which is preached by the ministers. similarly, there is no bishop who, having offended, should not be reproved by the civil magistrate.100

bilson was concerned to refute the Jesuit charge against England that Elizabeth embodied all the iniquities that English reformers had

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101 bilson, Trve Difference, p. 125.102 Ibid., p. 130.103 Ibid., 249, 251.104 Ibid., p. 147.105 Ibid., p. 165.106 Ibid., p. 220.

previously ascribed to the papal office. contrary to catholic critiques Elizabeth, unlike the pope, is able to err; her will is not synonymous with justice.101 bilson affirmed the prince’s coercive power over both ecclesiastical and secular spheres, that is, a prince may punish a subject in the name of religion as well as in the name of justice.102 he likened a ruler of a commonwealth to the father of a household. If a father should take pains to ensure the spiritual progress of his household, a fortiori a prince with regard to the commonwealth!103 bilson defended princely autonomy from the roman see so strongly that he actually described a prince who answered only to god. sounding remarkably like coverdale, he expounded the meaning of the royal supremacy:

This very claim [papal supremacy] was the cause why the word supreme was added to the oath: for that the bishop of rome taketh upon him to command and depose Princes as their lawful and superiour judge. to exclude this wicked presumption, we teach that princes be supreme rul-ers, we mean subject to no superiour judge to give a reason of their doings but only to god.104

by ‘subject only to god’ bilson seems to have meant that the prince ought to ponder the counsel of divines; but this turned out to be not much of a limit on princely power, for ‘We are not bound to their fan-cies or pleasures, but only to the word of truth proceeding from their mouths’. also, ‘…obedience here required is no corporal subjection to their persons, but an inward liking and embracing of their doctrine’.105 In other words, that class of preachers who have the most authority over the prince have no power at all. What emerged was a prince who, in reality, was subject to nothing other than his own conscience:

as princes are bound to hear preachers directing them unto truth because the words of god are in their mouths, and he that despiseth those things despiseth not man but god: so likewise are preachers bound to obey Princes commanding for truth….and the Prince’s obedience to be not due to Preachers persons or pleasures, but their message delivered them by god the lord and ruler of Princes….106

bilson recognised the absolutist implications of what he was saying, implications whose refutation was the raison d’etre of his treatise!


107 Ibid., p. 257. cf. p. 261.108 mclaren, Political Culture, p. 142.109 bilson, Trve Difference, pp. 358–359.110 Ibid., p. 261.111 Ibid., pp. 242–243.

consequently he laboured the necessity of counsel to the prince, assur-ing that ‘We be not loathe they be directed, but rather exhort all Princes to take great care, and spare no pains to come by faithful and true direc-tion in those things that pertain to god’. admitting that Princes often summon councils to guide their decisions, bilson offered an a fortiori argument for the same concern for counsel in matters ecclesiastical. Immediately fearing that his words might be misconstrued as placing some earthly authority above the prince, bilson ambiguously told read-ers that ‘neither Prince, nor people stand bound to the persons of men, but unto the truth of god, and unto their teachers so long as they swerve not from truth’.107 bilson’s stress on counsel was not quite in keeping with Elizabeth’s increasing independence. In 1582 during a conflict with her counselors Elizabeth asserted that she, not her coun-selors, was absolute; counsel was not even necessary.108 It is evident throughout bilson’s Trve Difference that he was torn between his duty to extol the powers of the English monarch and at the same time to place some holy limit on royal will. The result was repeated affirma-tions of the prince’s obligation to the preached word, only to be fol-lowed by assurance that the prince is subject to no person.109 bilson’s thought on princely authority was sufficiently ambiguous and protean to lend support to views both of limited royal authority and the most absolutist doctrines which were to emerge the following century.

at the same time, bilson urged that a ruler was just as subject to ecclesiastical discipline as any other person. Indeed, there is that radi-cal sense of equality throughout bilson’s thought that was equally char-acteristic of the separatist movement in general. he took pains to point out that both prince and subject are equally accountable to god’s word, for ‘there is [sic] no distinctions of persons with god’.110 furthermore, despite having declared the prince to be subject to no other person on earth, bilson emphasised that the prince is not solutus legibus, that is, the ruler is not allowed to break the laws of god, land, or reason.111 despite this pious affirmation, bilson never really explained how this was to be interpreted in light of his frequent affirmations that the prince is subject to no earthly person. If bilson simply meant that a prince is subject to no person qua that person, but to laws, he need not have

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112 John fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England, shelly lockwood (ed.), (cambridge: cambridge university Press, 1997).

113 Ibid., p. 540.114 James VI and I, ‘basilicon doron’, pp. 20, 22. ‘…since he [god] that hath the only

power to make him [king], hath the only power to unmake him…’ . James VI and I, ‘trew law’, p. 68.

bothered; no one in the history of christian political thought had asserted anything contrary to that. bilson’s ultimate aim was never to subordinate all things to Elizabeth; on the contrary, the purpose of his polemic was to show how all things must be made subordinate to god’s will as revealed in the laws recorded in the bible. Yet bilson had a con-flict of duties. on the one hand he had to defend an increasingly abso-lutist regime and on the other he had to preserve fidelity with the christian tradition of accountability and also the English tradition—in theory, at least—of limited royalty, or what fortescue called a regnum regale et politicum.112 The result was an unresolved tug of war between his duty to defend the royal supremacy and his own commitment to religion—ultimately leading to an ambiguous political theory. surely if a ruler is convinced of god’s will, let all earthly authorities perish! ‘When god commandeth, all human bars and laws do cease. If they join with god, they may be used: if they impugn the truth, they must be despised’. bilson anticipated his catholic opponent’s objection: if a king need only worry about doing god’s will, wherefore the right of courts, judges, and laws? bilson’s reply admitted defeat: ‘This is childish wrangling’.113 The king, effectively, was accountable only to conscience. laws and religion could only exhort, never force. bilson’s effort to sub-ordinate the ruler to god ended up with a ruler subordinate only to god. bilson’s political thought is significant because it exemplifies the tensions emerging in Elizabethan England between the medieval and Erastian systems. If Protestantism had become a house divided by the incompatible demands of both systems, bilson’s attempt to accommo-date both produced a system that was microcosmic of English Protestant political thought in general. his views on princely accountability to the church resembled the Presbyterians both contemporary and of the fol-lowing century. Yet his frequent assertion that the prince is accountable to god alone equally resembled the absolutist political theory of James VI and I, who could speak for folios on the subject of princely legitimacy without even mentioning the people.114

If there was one factor that led English churchmen to labour the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s reign it was claims to the contrary by catholic


115 Kemp, ‘laurence humphrey’, p. 84.116 laurence humphrey, A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (oxford, 1588),

pp. 35–36.117 Ibid., p. 39.118 Ibid., pp. 44–45.119 Ibid., p. 71. cf. John calvin, ‘commentariorum in Isiam prophetam’, 3:5, Corpus

Reformatorum, vol. lXIV, (brunswick: schwetschke and sons, 1888). This commen-tary was originally published and dedicated to King Edward VI in 1550. It appeared again in Elizabeth’s reign with a new dedication to her.

propagandists. laurence humphrey was led to write another substan-tial political treatise after his The Nobles or of Nobilitye. humphrey’s attacks on Jesuits were not of a theological nature; Jesuits were traitors rather than heretics.115 In his View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (1588) he presented numerous evidences of the Queen’s legitimacy as demonstrated by sources throughout the history of christendom; authorities that catholics could not dismiss. humphrey affords the his-torian of political thought one of the few evidences of John of salisbury’s influence in Elizabethan England. Throughout his View humphrey invoked the medieval philologist’s argument that the prince bears two distinct images of god: the image of god in his humanity, and the image of god in his authority. salisbury’s theory of the quasi-god-king was used by humphrey to express Elizabeth’s legitimacy in a theologi-cal vocabulary: ‘a Prince is a public power, and in earth a certain image of the divine power’. The prince ‘is a god himself ’. humphrey also reminded dissident catholics that the scriptures informed all princes that ‘Ye are gods…’ .116 furthermore humphrey declared to dissidents that the double nature of a prince generated a double duty in all. as a man who bears god’s image the prince demands safety from harm; as a ruler bearing resemblance to god’s rule over creation he demands awe and obedience.117 rulers are instituted to punish the guilty and reward the good. humphrey offered practical as well as theological rea-sons for the legitimacy of government. Invoking the authority of chrysostom, and sounding a little like machiavelli, humphrey sug-gested that without government fortune would turn society upside down. government is the ‘politic’ wisdom of god.118 again invoking the authority of chrysostom and augustine, yet sounding remarkably like calvin, humphrey allowed for practical reasons for government: ‘Even so if thou takes away Prince from cities, we shall lead a life more unreasonable, than unreasonable wild beasts, biting and devouring one another, the man of might him that is the poorer, the bolder him that is the simpler’.119 coercive government was respectable theologically and

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necessary practically. If the separatists were led to emphasise the limits of royal authority by their critique of the English church, others, like humphrey, were led to emphasise royal authority in response to Puritan, separatist, and catholic critiques of English government. to some extent the two Protestant understandings of royal authority were both reactions to and nourished by one another.

Conclusion

The political thought of conformist Protestantism was, by and large, manipulated by henrician and, later, Elizabethan politics. although the enthusiastic endorsement of absolutist kingship found in the late henrician thought of coverdale was never repeated with quite the same gusto, apologists for Elizabethan Protestantism often found them-selves forced to affirm a practically unlimited kingship in response to catholic and Puritan attempts to subordinate kingly authority to the church, whether it was in rome or in England. although occasionally ecclesiastical political thought lent itself to the absolutism and divine right of Kings famously advocated by James VI and I, it was usually led down this path reluctantly. owing to the catholic and Puritan assaults on Elizabeth’s authority any talk of a limited monarch became a shibbo-leth; assurance that there still was such a thing as counsel, courtly or ecclesiastical, was often little more than a shy whisper. during the Elizabethan period dual visions of princely power emerged. one react-ing to catholicism, Puritanism, and separatism emphasised the rights of the prince over the subjects and institutions of the commonwealth, the other, reacting against the royal supremacy, emphasised the duties of the prince to god and the church as an institution. both traditions bore fruit in the following century as both made possible a robust vocabulary and literature of absolutism and popular sovereignty respectively. It is to this latter tradition that we now turn as we examine the political thought and legacy of sixteenth-century Puritanism and separatism.

1 Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 247. Cf. B. Reay, ‘Radicalism and Religion in the English Revolution: an Introduction’, J.F. McGregor and B. Reay, Radical Religion in the English Revolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 2.

2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch.44, Richard Tuck (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 427. On this point see Franck Lessay, ‘Hobbes’s Covenant Theology and Its Political Implications’, in P. Springborg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 263.

CHaPTER FIvE

COnSEnT FROM CHURCH TO STaTE

Introduction

While political thought was developing in the direction of royal abso-lutism among defenders of the Church of England it was frequently coming into conflict with the church’s critics who, in ecclesiastical and sometimes secular polity, saw power as mediated from God down to the people and back up to the rulers. although, as Hobbes showed, royal absolutism and consent are not necessarily incompatible, the importation by Puritans of consent into ecclesiastical polity functioned to permanently remove the prince’s authority from instituting bishops and pastors over congregations. Because congregational consent was seen as part of Christ’s plan laid down for churches, it was perennial and could not be given up. In other words, consent permanently limited the prince’s authority to meddle in the affairs of churches. This freedom could not be given up in a Hobbesian bargain. It stood eternally opposed to royal absolutism in matters ecclesiastical and, in some instances, civil.

If the English Civil War of the seventeenth-century can be said to have had theological dimensions, these dimensions have their origins in the rise of Puritanism and Presbyterianism the previous century.1 Hobbes accused the Presbyterians of challenging the power of their own kings ‘no less than the Pope challengeth it universally’.2 The phi-losopher of Malmesbury was merely reaffirming the sentiments of the late kings James vI and I and Charles I, whose hostility to Presbyterianism

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3 Scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 98, 110.4 Stephen alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 41.5 Ibid.6 Ibid, pp. 41, 43.7 Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist

Ecclesiology 1570–1625, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 235–236.

was largely owing to its hostility to absolute monarchy.3 Until this stage in Protestant political thought, political authority was generally char-acterised as presiding over all other earthly institutions, certainly over the church. Those theorists—Ponet, Goodman, Knox, and aylmer—who emphasised princely accountability to other earthly powers usu-ally meant the people of God acting as a unit in the name of religion. That the secular powers had authority over the ecclesiastical was never questioned. However, it was the Puritan and Separatist movements arising in the mid 1560s that began to challenge this Marsilian model. Indeed, as alford has written, ‘Royal power was absolute and it could not be limited in a physical sense’.4 Yet, in the mind of the Edwardian divine, despite the absolute power of the king, ‘it was necessarily defined and shaped by the Word of God’.5 Preachers saw themselves as those to whom the king was accountable. It was the preachers’ high view of themselves developed under the minority government of Edward vI that caused so much strife during the Elizabethan reign. For to tell a boy—not even ruling—that he must hear the advice of the clergy was very different from telling a mature woman of no mean ability and with full executive power that she is not free to disregard clerical coun-sel.6 The counsel of Puritan divines occasioned only conflict during Elizabeth’s reign as she strove fully to deploy her rights under the Royal Supremacy to bring about religious uniformity. For the first time in English Protestant political thought there was the claim that royal authority had no dominion over the church, whose head was Christ, not the king. Furthermore, it was bluntly claimed that the prince was subject to the discipline of the church. While Puritans and Separatists submitted to the Royal Supremacy, in reality their theories would seek to restrict the authority of Elizabeth to the dictates of scripture inter-preted by a body of learned clerics along the lines of the Genevan model. The Word, not the prince, was supreme.7

From the reign of Edward there were assertive movements in England looking to establish Reformed and specifically Calvinist disciplines in

consent from church to state 183

8 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, (new Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 240.

9 MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, p. 83.10 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 478; Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely

Reformed, p. 236.11 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London: Jonathon Cape,

1967), pp. 141–142.12 John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, relating chiefly to Religion and the

Reformation of it, and the Emergencies of the Church of England, under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1824), vol. 3, pt.2, p. 542. Cf. Robert D. Linder, ‘Pierre viret and the Sixteenth-Century English Protestants’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichter, 58, (1976), p. 149; neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1559–1581, p. 57; Jewel to Martyr (January 26, 1559), The Zurich Letters or the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), p. 14.

13 Gualter to Masters (January 16, 1559), Zurich Letters, p. 14.14 Beza to Bullinger (September 3, 1566), Zurich Letters, p. 248.

the local congregations. Historian of Calvinism, Philip Benedict, says that even the Edwardian church, when compared with the Reformed churches in Switzerland, ‘remained only partially transformed… ’.8 During the Edwardian period great care went into converting West-minster into a Reformed-type city-state like those on the Continent, with an emphasis on preaching and compulsory lectures for the clergy.9 Polish reformer John á Lasco presided over the Stranger church in London, exercising a church polity ‘that characterized John Calvin’s version of presbyterian polity at Geneva’.10 The same was attempted at northampton by the Calvinist preacher Percival Wilburn in 1571; though it did not survive beyond the following year.11 When scores of Protestants fled England to settle on the Continent, about twenty five percent of the eight hundred found their way to Geneva. at Mary’s funeral John White, Bishop of Winchester, prophesied that ‘the wolves be coming out of Geneva, and other places of Germany, and have sent their books before them, full of pestilent doctrines, blasphemy, and heresy, to infect the people’.12 The exiles had planned upon their return to England to rid the nation of all vestiges of Catholicism.13 In 1562 The Lavves and Statutes of Geneua was published in English and dedicated to the powerful Lord Dudley. notwithstanding English enthusiasm for Geneva, by the mid-1560s it was known even on the Continent that Elizabeth held Geneva and its religious tradition in low esteem.14 The shadow of Geneva was not distasteful to Catholics only, for English conformists occasionally lamented the influence of that small

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15 See Richard Hooker reminding Presbyterians that Calvin is not God, ‘Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593), Preface, 4.8, in Works of Richard Hooker, 6 vols., (Belknap, Harvard University Press, 1977), vol. 1.

16 Beza to Bullinger (September 3, 1566), Zurich Letters, p. 248.

republic.15 It did not help that many Puritans, and to a lesser extent Separatists, openly drew their inspiration from the ecclesiastical tradi-tion of Geneva. The suspicion of that city aroused by the publication there of Goodman’s and Knox’s seditious writings gave the Puritans even greater reputation as trouble-makers. It was no secret that Elizabeth disliked the Geneva school of Protestantism. Calvin’s succes-sor, Theodore Beza, told Bullinger that it was on account of its ecclesi-astical austerity and history of seditious publications that Elizabeth remained cold towards the city.16 Even during the 1580s the hotter sorts of evangelicals found themselves defending their Genevan experience from charges of sedition and treachery. anthony Gilby, who fled to Geneva during the Marian reign, tried to clarify the doctrine of disobe-dience, showing his to be no different from anything that had gone before. In his Dialogue between a Sovldier of Barvvick, and an English Chaplain (1581) he took the time to address charges against London ‘Genevians’, who were thought to deny magisterial authority. Gilby pointed out that ‘all is not good policy, that beareth the name of policy’. Surely ‘cursed is that policy that maintaineth any Popish powling, idleness, superstition, or Idolatry’. Indeed such a policy should not be issued by a ruler nor considered authoritative by any subject for ‘Both the commander and the obeyer have their limits in Christ… ’. Gilby limited the power of the prince to the words of scripture; indeed, scrip-ture was to be his perennial counselor:

But this must all Christian Princes know, that the King himself is bound to have God’s Book by him continually, and thereby to direct his policy, that he turn neither to the right hand nor to the left. For when he casteth away the Word of God from his policy, there is no wisdom therein.

But Gilby anticipated that his opponent would quote the apostle Paul’s injunction to obey the magistrates out of conscience. Reflecting on this Gilby retorted with the traditional doctrine of disobedience:

This sentence of the apostle, doth bind us in conscience, to have a love and reverence unto our Prince, as unto God’s Lieutenant, and of a faithful heart and conscience to obey him and to assist him with our bodies, and to aid him with our goods, so long as he doth this office, in maintaining


17 anthony Gilby, A Dialogue between a Sovldier of Barvvick, and an English Chaplain (n.c., 1581), p. 19. Italics added.

18 Richard Bancroft, A Svrvay of the pretended Holy Discipline, (London, 1593), (amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 15.

19 Ibid., p. 52.20 ‘…some over zealous favourers of the Geneva discipline have built a perilous con-

clusion, which is ‘that the people or multitude have power to punish or deprive the prince if he transgresses the laws of the kingdom’ ’. Sir Robert Filmer, ‘Patriarcha’ (1680), Patriarcha and Other Writings, Johann P. Sommerville (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 3.

21 William Walwyn, ‘Toleration justified’ (1646), The English Levellers, andrew Sharp (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 27. Perez Zagorin has recently written on the Magisterial Reformers and toleration. See How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 46–92.

good things and good persons, and punishing evil men and wicked doings.17

Here the ‘Genevian’ could not state his loyalty to the prince without at the same time reminding the prince of his limits. Loyalty was strictly conditional. although no Christian—conformist or not—would even think of advocating obedience to the prince over God, it was the quan-tity rather than the quality of the Puritans’ stress on the limits of mag-isterial authority that achieved for them a reputation for despising such authority. Gilby’s assurance of no link between the Geneva tradition and sedition made no impression. In Richard Bancroft’s 1593 critique of Puritanism and Separatism, A Svrvay of the Pretended Holy Discipline, the ‘Bishops of Geneva’ were still regarded as the inspiration ‘for the authorizing of subjects in many cases, to depose their Princes’.18 Goodman and Knox were specifically in mind.19 Geneva never lost its reputation for being the spring of sedition throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries.20 Yet some of the most radical advocates of political liberty would, the following century, minimise the authority of the Continental Reformed tradition. That tradition may have guarded subjects from political tyranny, but with its hostility to religious tolera-tion, it was discarded by those who sought protection from the reli-gious tyranny of the seventeenth-century Presbyterians.21

The Geneva model of a Presbyterian polity and a council—Consis-tory—made up of pastors to scrutinise the moral habits of the congre-gation was the elusive hope of the English Puritan and Separatist movements. Thomas Cartwright’s Presbyterian ecclesiology resembled Calvin’s. Indeed, he stayed in Geneva in 1570, the year that he gave his controversial lectures on acts, which gave theoretical justification for

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22 a.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 1536–1603, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), p. 53; Cf. neal, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1559–1581, p. 291.

23 anthony Gilby, A Dialogue between a Sovldier of Barvvick, (London, 1581), pp. 4, 5, 11.

24 ‘The Examinations Henry Barrow’ (1585), The Harleian Miscellany; or, a Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, (London: Robert Dutton, 1809), p. 32.

25 Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, p. 251.26 ‘Of what account the Master of the sentences was in the Church of Rome, the

same and more amongst the preachers of reformed Churches Calvin had been… ’. Richard Hooker, ‘Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity’, Preface, 2.8, The Works of Richard Hooker, 6 vols., W. Speed Hill (ed.), (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1977), vol. 1.

27 Ibid., Preface, 4.8.28 Dawley, John Whitgift, p. 209.29 Oliver Ormirod, A Picture of a Puritane, (London, 1605), fol. H3. Italics original.30 Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Providence and Prescription: The account of Elizabeth in

Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ ’, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, The Myth of Elizabeth, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): pp. 27–55.

31 ‘an act whereby certain offences be made treasons’ (Second Treasons act of Elizabeth) (1571), Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 72–76.

the Presbyterian movement.22 By the 1580s London ministers had been characterised as ‘Genevians’. The suspicion was such that former Geneva exile anthony Gilby wrote a dialogue to defend them from accusations of sedition and innovation.23 John Penry admitted to hav-ing been influenced by the Reformed cities on the Continent in formu-lating his Separatist platform.24 In both 1584 and 1586 parliamentary bills were proposed and rejected, calling for the replacement of the Prayer Book with the Geneva liturgy.25 By the 1590s Calvin could be referred to as the Lombard of Protestantism.26 Indeed, Calvin’s influ-ence seemed so great that Hooker took the time to remind English Puritans that God is to be trusted over the Geneva divine, and that he was not infallible.27 In 1595 an anti-Calvinistic sermon caused an uproar.28 Early in the seventeenth-century one anti-Puritan and Separatist polemicist accused them of liking ‘of nothing well but of that which cometh from Geneua’.29 By 1572, it was becoming clear that Elizabeth had no intention of conforming the English church to the Geneva exemplar. For the more radical Protestant, the stress on obedi-ence as a consequence of Elizabeth’s divine appointment was getting harder to make.30 It was also this year that Elizabeth decided to reintro-duce the austere 1534 treason act of Henry, which had been temporar-ily abrogated by Edward.31 Despite the fact that Presbyterians and Separatists said nothing explicitly seditious, the reputation for disloyalty


32 Peter Lake, ‘ ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of archbishop Grindal) Revisited’, in John F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007), p. 131.

33 Peter Martyr vermigli, ‘Of ciuill and ecclesiasticall power’ (1561), W.J. Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 90, 91, 93, 98.

never left them. The upshot of the struggle was the ever-increasing claims for the Royal Supremacy provoking stronger counter-claims for ecclesiastical autonomy.32 The Puritan reform movement of the 1560s predictably led to the breakaway Separatist movements of the 1580s. The Separatist critique of English religion partly constitutes the origins of early-modern English theories of consent. Puritan and Separatist discourses on consent in the church and state normalised a vocabulary that would be wielded powerfully the following century in England and new England. Terms like ‘consent’, ‘assent’, ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’, and ‘covenant’ arose repeatedly throughout debates between defenders of the Elizabethan Supremacy and the Puritan and Separatist movements. Certainly the activism of Puritanism and Separatism must be counted among the numerous strands of political culture contributing to the dualism of monarchy and parliament. Perhaps there was a trichotomy of tension between the monarch, the parliament, and restless clerics. Indeed, when Puritans could see no way forward with the queen they petitioned the parliament to continue reforming the church. It was ref-ormation without tarrying for monarchy.

Presbyterianism, Separatism, and the Royal Supremacy, 1572–1581

It was never a platform of Edwardian Protestantism to seek total eccle-siastical autonomy from the state. nor did the most influential theolo-gians advocate such a church-state separation. Both Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr vermigli explicitly rejected ecclesiastical autonomy, teaching the magistrate’s duty for the cura religionis.33 The 1559 act of Supremacy reintroduced the Henrician laws regarding royal and eccle-siastical authority that had been abrogated by the Marian parliament. It was reaffirmed that there would be no foreign authority over England. Furthermore, all authority and initiative for reforming the English church was given to the prince. Indeed all authority ‘for reformation, order and correction of the same and of all manner of errors, heresies,

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34 ‘act of Supremacy’ (1559), Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 365.

35 Ibid., p. 366.36 Kirby, Zurich Connection, pp. 189–233.37 ‘The one positive doctrine essential to and distinctive of the Elizabethan church

system was the doctrine of royal supremacy…no one could say precisely what it was that the church was supposed to teach, unless it were the doctrine of royal

schisms, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities, shall forever by authority of this present Parliament be united and annexed to the impe-rial crown of this realm’.34 also, all men with any ecclesiastical post, be it preaching or presiding over a bishopric, had to swear an oath uphold-ing the Queen’s authority over ‘all spiritual or ecclesiastical things… ’.35 These supremacist doctrines coupled with the act of Uniformity (1559), which reintroduced the Edwardian liturgy, were bound to create ten-sion among those who would consider even the smallest compromise as occasion to obey God over prince. Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical policy was a via media between Henry vIII and Edward vI. She was, by and large, happy with Protestant theology, but was also quite fond of the Catholic aesthetic. For many Elizabethan clerics this via media was not an affront to their conscience, but for others, the thought of re-institut-ing liturgical procedures that connoted the old religion was too much to bear. Immediately advice was sought from Zurich as to the right-eousness of conforming to Elizabeth’s requirements. Of chief concern was the dress required of bishops, which would distinguish them from other clergy. Both Bullinger and vermigli considered the contentious issues to be matters of indifference and recommended conformity for the sake of order and the progress of national reform.36 In 1560 the bishops required their clergy to wear a cope during communion and a surplice in other services. The hotter Protestants immediately refused. In 1566 Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, in his Advertisements declared certain vestments to be compulsory. This gen-erated a literary skirmish between conformists and Puritans who wanted ecclesiastical practice to be stripped to the bare essentials as practised by the early church. The political problem was that to deny the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical policy was to assert that Elizabeth’s authority did not extend over all temporal spheres. It was a denial of both the act of Supremacy and the act of Uniformity. Puritan protest implied that Elizabeth was beyond her proper calling or juris-diction in legislating on matters ecclesiastical. Whatever Elizabeth’s supremacy meant, Puritan protest was a direct assault on it.37 Indeed,


supremacy’. J.W. allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, (London: Methuen, 1928), p. 180.

38 G.W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church, (new Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 571.

39 Ibid, pp. 573–574.

this was not new. In fact we must conclude that any time the state med-dles with the content of religion then theological heterodoxy becomes civil disobedience. In 1540 Stephen Gardiner was remonstrated by William Jerome in a sermon accusing the bishop of Winchester of error in thinking that the magistrate cannot make indifferent things not indifferent.38 Theologian and diplomat, Robert Barnes, was arrested for advocating an evangelical reformation as opposed to Henry vIII’s more humanistic moral reform of the church. Henry felt threatened by evangelical religion, seeing it as a direct assault on his own reforma-tion.39 Furthermore, Edwardian Bishop John Hooper was notoriously outspoken in his view that the church was reforming too slowly and for his disgust at the 1549 Prayer Book, which he considered barely Protestant.

In some ways the Elizabethan Puritan movement was merely more of the same, though on a larger scale. The problem was in what to do in matters of adiaphora or indifference. Things indifferent were things neither forbidden by scripture nor mandated, such as clerical dress and, according to some, the constitution of the church. as soon as con-formity was pressed by the queen and archbishop Matthew Parker questions of freedom and consent arose. The central issue was not so much royal authority in matters ecclesiastical but royal authority to enforce certain liturgical practices that, although in themselves indif-ferent, were considered tainted by their use in Roman Catholic serv-ices. The question was never whether to sin so that good may come in the form of a largely evangelical church. Rather, it was whether it was sinful to engage in liturgical ceremony that connoted Roman Catholicism, thereby prolonging its national death. Thomas Sampson, former Zurich and Geneva exile and likely episcopal candidate wrote to Bullinger in Zurich in Feburary 1566 asking questions such as: ‘Whether the prescribing habits of this kind be consistent with ecclesiastical and christian [sic] liberty?’; ‘Whether the nature of things indifferent admits of coercion; and whether any violence should be offered to the consciences of the many who are not yet persuaded?’; ‘Whether any-thing of a ceremonial nature may be prescribed to the church by the

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40 T. Sampson to H. Bullinger (16 Feburary 1566), in The Zurich Letters of the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with Some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), pp. 211–212.

41 Heinrich Bullinger, ‘Concerning thapparel of Ministers’ (1566), in Kirby, Zurich Connection, p 222.

42 Ibid, p. 231.43 Ibid, p. 232.44 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London: Jonathan Cape,

1967), p. 302.

sovereign, without the assent and free concurrence of churchmen?’40 In a letter to several English ecclesiastics Bullinger encouraged conscien-tious and willing conformity in matters indifferent. Ecclesiastics were to realize the supreme importance of unity and freely conform ‘to con-tinue you in one consent and unity’.41 Bullinger stressed that clerical vestments were a matter of indifference, which meant that it was no sin to conform to the queen’s demands. Throughout Bullinger’s letter the stress is on willful submission. In matters indifferent consent is neither cast off nor a license for contumacy. The individual must make a moral judgment on the issue based on the circumstances and act freely. Bullinger described those who conformed as ‘wise and politic…because they think this will maintain concord… ’.42 He then addressed the issue ‘Whether the prince may prescribe anything touching ceremonies, without the will and free consent of the clergy?’ Faced with a standoff between the prince and conscience Bullinger came down squarely in the corner of the prince. Consent could often hinder progress and God-forbid we should resubordinate the prince to the church as was the dream of Rome then and in ages past.43 When matters of indifference gave rise to a standoff between conscience and the prince the Zurich theologians ranked consent lower than order. For most reformers con-sent and liberty were precious, but were never meant to undo the fabric of society. It was this subordination of conscience to princely preroga-tive in matters of indifference that would eventually be too much for some Puritans to bear; some eventually taking their case directly to parliament and others eventually taking off completely to the netherlands and a new World.

Puritan and Separatist polemic against the powers of the monarch only led to the aggrandisement of royal power. as Professor Collinson has said, what bothered the Queen the most was that in all the Puritan talk regarding church assemblies and discipline not once was the Queen’s consent even mentioned.44 It was the Marian exiles who


45 alford, Kingship and Politics, p. 182.46 Bullinger and Gualter to Grindal and Horn (September 6, 1566), Zurich Letters,

p. 254.47 a.n. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Common-

wealth 1558–1585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 138.48 Cf. J.G.a Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the

Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton, new Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 336.

49 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism, (new Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 248; Kirby, Zurich Connection, pp. 36–7; Daniel Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007), pp. 147–149.

presented the queen as an accountable public officer, and Elizabeth would spend much of her reign in conflict with that persistent portrait of royal power.45 There were frequent complaints about restrictions imposed on rectors who ventured to criticise the Elizabethan church policy before their congregations.46 Indeed, the first time Elizabeth asserted the sufficiency of her own will apart from counsel was in 1576 when she dismissed the archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, for his sympathy with the prophesying movement.47

In 1572, seeing that they would get nowhere by trying to change the English church by appealing to the conformist clergy and the queen, English Puritans composed and submitted a manifesto to the English parliament regarding episcopal government and the wearing of gowns. Composed by Thomas Wilcox and John Field—who were imprisoned the following year—the Admonition to Parliament (1572) was in many ways a document of the highest significance in English political his-tory, running into three editions. Indeed, in terms of tracking civic consciousness in England it must be considered one of the principal manifestations of heavenly citizenship breaking forth into civic activ-ism in the Tudor kingdom.48 It was a document calling for radical changes without a hint of concern for royal consent. The Prayer Book and episcopacy were attacked as unscriptural and without place in a true church. In the place of bishops was to be a ‘proper system of con-sistorial discipline’ akin to that of Calvin’s Geneva, where the civil mag-istrate has no authority over the affairs of the church, which is administered by elected presbyters.49 although its language was softer than the language used by those who would later become Separatists, the essence of the crisis of authority that characterised Separatist rela-tions with the Elizabethan government was present in the Admonition. The whole radical Puritan and Separatist approach to government

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50 ‘an admonition to Parliament’ (1572), W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (eds.), Puritan Manifestos: A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt, (London: SPCK, 1954), p. 15.

51 Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, p. 114.52 Powel Mills Dawley, John Whitgift and the Reformation, (London: adam and

Charles Black, 1955), p. 135.53 Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth (1682), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990),

p. 2.

authority was captured in the following words contained in the Admonition: ‘…that nothing be done in this or any other thing, but, that which you have the express warrant of God’s word for’.50 This was the crisis of authority brought about by the Protestant Reformation. no one doubted that the word of God limited all earthly authority. However, add to this the principle that anybody can conscientiously read and understand the Bible and the Royal Supremacy becomes void. Secular powers are not only limited by the word of God, but by the lowest sort who has understood it to teach a non-episcopal and congre-gational ecclesiastical polity. Hooker thought the Presbyterian herme-neutic so subjective and dangerous that he saw little to distinguish it from the excesses of the radical anabaptists. St German had, decades earlier, foreseen the same problems and prescribed the king-in-parlia-ment as the hermeneutical principle that must bind the consciences of English Christians.51 as one historian of the controversy has summed up: ‘a movement that began with a refusal to wear a surplice ended with a denial of the royal supremacy’.52 Thomas Hobbes the following century would remember men such as Wilcox, Field, and the Separatists as ‘the enemies which arose against his Majesty from the private inter-pretation of the Scripture… ’.53

The writer of the 1572 Second Admonition to Parliament launched into a doxology towards Elizabeth. However, Elizabeth’s glory was inseparable from and entirely contingent upon her willingness fully to reform the English church:

…we heartily, plainly and faithfully profess, that the chief governors in civil matters, have chief authority over all persons, in their dominions and countries, and are the foster fathers, and nurses of Christ’s church. and as Jehosaphat having chief authority, did by his authority set up, and defend not only the civil government, but also the true reformation of the church at that time, in his dominion and Cyrus in his, so we refer the same authority to our sovereign, beseeching her Majesty, and the whole state, to proceed in it. and this is most true, that her Majesty shall not find better subjects in her land, than those that desire a right reformation, whose goods, bodies, and lives, are most assured to her Majesty, and to their Country, and which cease not to pour forth their hearty prayers


54 ‘a Second admonition to Parliament’ (1572), Puritan Manifestos, Frere and Douglas (eds.), pp. 85–86.

55 Zanchius to Elizabeth (September 10, 1571), Zurich Letters, p. 369.56 Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 40.57 Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714, (Edinburgh: Thomas

nelson and Sons, 1961), p. 80.58 a.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 1535–1603,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), p. 28.59 Patrick Collinson, ‘The Politics of Religion and the Religion of Politics in

Elizabethan England’, Historical Research, 82/215 (February 2009), p. 77. On Cartwright’s political thought see Michael Mendle (1985, pp. 64–8). More recently

unto God for her Majesty’s long and happy reign in much prosperity, to be an ancient matron of Israel, in the church of God in England, and her dominions, to defend and maintain the same in much peace and godli-ness, all the days of her Majesty’s natural life….54

It was just this sort of conditional legitimacy that annoyed Elizabeth about the whole Puritan movement. The previous year she had been told by a foreigner, writing in defence of English Puritans, that she could not ‘with a good conscience’ force English ministers to wear ecclesiastical clothing resembling Rome.55 The whole Presbyterian plat-form was seen as an attempt, in Torrance Kirby’s words, to ‘resurrect the jurisdictional pretensions of the papacy’.56

The upshot of the Puritan attack on the Royal Supremacy was a return to a medieval view of auctoritas and potestas. The government could not do that which the word of God forbade. The secular government should consult with the church regarding the boundaries set forth in scripture. Indeed, in this way the Puritan and Separatist movements were bring-ing the relationship between the church and secular powers back to its Hildebrandine model, or the potestas being directed by the auctoritas. Christopher Hill saw the profundity of the Puritan agenda, which involved ‘an administrative revolution with far-reaching consequences for the state’.57 as early as 1570 Thomas Cartwright’s project to reform the constitution of the English church by installing a Presbyterian sys-tem was described as an attempt to ‘overturn and overthrow all ecclesi-astical and civil governance that now is… ’.58 Cartwright had to defend his belief in the legitimacy of the state throughout his career. It did not help that Cartwright rejected the idea that monarchy is the best sort of government, preferring the aristotelian mixed constitution, which he thought was the true model for the church and actual modus operandi of English government. Perhaps there is good reason to concur with Professor Collinson who recently called Cartwright a ‘closet republi-can’.59 His nemesis, archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, described

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see Glenn Burgess (2009, 99–100, 115, 117–20); Peter Lake (2010, pp. 463–495); Michael P. Winship, (2009, pp. 1054–55) and Winship (2006, 432–37).

60 Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 95.61 John Whitgift, ‘Defense of the answer’, in The Works of John Whitgift, 3 vols.,

Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), vol. 3, p. 194.62 Ibid., p. 197.63 Thomas Rogers, ‘Exposition of the 39 articles’ (1579, 1585, 1607, actual edition

not indicated), The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1856), pp. 335–336. Italics added.

64 Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie, (London, 1581), (amsterdam: Theartum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), pp. 16–25.

Cartwright’s mixed constitutionalism as ‘suspicious speech’.60 Speaking of church polity Whitgift maintained that there is no injunction ‘in the whole Bible that enforceth or proscribeth that kind of government as necessary or convenient for all times… ’.61 However, he soon qualified this by criticising the mere suggestion of democracy, affirming the optimality of monarchy:

For it is too absurd to say that popular estate is the best state; neither would any affirm it but those that would be popular. You are never either to show, either ‘by divinity or philosophy’, that there are more lawful kinds of government than three; that is, democratical, aristocratical, and monarchical; and of these both the scripture and philosophy alloweth of the monarchy as simply the best.62

Thomas Rogers, fellow apologist for the Elizabethan church, wrote similarly. He began by stating the relative nature of political constitu-tions. However, by the time he had finished his brief discourse on the three types of constitutions, he affirmed that monarchy is favoured in the Bible:

Divers and sundry be the forms of commonweals and magistracy. For some, where many, and they be of the inferior people, bear the sway, as in a democracy; some, where a few, and that of choice, and the best men do govern, as in an aristocracy; and some, where one man or woman hath the preeminence, as in a monarchy: such is the government of this king-dom. notwithstanding whatsoever the government is, either democrati-cal, or monarchical, God’s word doth teach us, that ‘There is no power but of God…’ …but of the monarchical government, special attention is made in the writings of the prophets and apostles.63

This sort of talk—the affirmation of constitutional relativism followed by an appraisal of monarchy—was eventually enshrined in the stand-ard Elizabethan treatise on the subject, Charles Merbury’s Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie (1581).64 Cartwright was forced to take


65 a.F. Scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth Century Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 4, 99, 129; J.L. O’Donovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English Reformation, (atlanta: Scolars Press, 1991), pp. 130, 126.

66 Whitgift, ‘Defense of the answer’, p. 189.67 Ibid., p. 295.68 Ibid, pp. 295–296; Dawley, John Whitgift, p. 143.69 Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 60–61.

the bull by the horns and deny the optimality of monarchy. Thus room was made for alternative constitutions within the church, namely con-gregational election of ruling elders.

as Pearson says, Cartwright’s complaint that his opponents refused to distinguish his ecclesiology from more broadly political issues was naïve. Given the present relationship between the church and the Elizabethan government, and frequent comparisons between the con-stitution and hierarchy of the church and the state, Cartwright could not critique the former without critiquing the latter.65 The fact is that the whole Presbyterian movement would have made the English monarch so subject to the church that England would have been a microcosm of medieval Europe. Instead of using terms such as pope, priests, and councils, Cartwright spoke of the preached word and the congregation:

according to the rules of God prescribed in his word…they [rulers] be servants unto the church, and as they rule in the church, so they must remember to subject themselves unto the church, to submit their scept-ers, to throw down their crowns before the church….66

The ruler must ‘see that the laws of God, touching his worship, and touching all matters and orders of the church, be executed and duly observed… ’.67 Cartwright was happy to admit the authority of the crown, but just as eager to dispel any Royal Supremacy over matters ecclesiastical: ‘although her authority be the greatest in the earth, yet it is not infinite, but it is limited by the word of God’.68

It was Cartwright’s heavy emphasis on Elizabeth’s subjection to the will of God that even led some fellow Puritans to distance them-selves from his cause. Fellow critic of all things Roman, William Whitaker, stated that his most serious problem with Cartwright and Presbyterianism was the denial of the Royal Supremacy that his views entailed.69 Indeed, in 1585 aylmer, upon hearing of Cartwright’s return to England from teaching in the netherlands, served a warrant for his

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70 Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 229.71 John Strype, The Life and Acts of Edmund Grindal, (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1821), p. 574.72 William Bradshaw, ‘English Puritanism’ (1605), English Puritanisme and Other

Works, (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers, 1972), p. 11.73 John Milton, ‘The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates’ (1650), Political Writings,

Martin Dzelzainis (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 25.

arrest and committed him to prison for about a month on suspicion of sedition and disloyalty.70 Cartwright effectively divided Protestant political thought into two camps: the Erastian and the Hildebrandine. Cartwright was just as determined to make the prince accountable to the church as his opponents were to subordinate the church to the prince. Eventually the division would cause strife in the attempt to render to Caesar without robbing God. The whole Puritan political vocabulary was one of conditions. The prince’s glory is conditional on the progress of religion. Subjects may obey on the condition that their obedience does not entail disobedience to God. It is not so much that these ideas were new, but that they were being emphasised to an extent unheard of since the seditious literature that came out of the Marian persecutions. as archbishop Grindal was to say to Elizabeth when she demanded a stop to the prophesyings: ‘In God’s matters, all princes ought to bow their scepters…to serve God with fear and trembling’.71

although the Puritan tendency was to emphasise a limited sover-eign, this was by no means the tendency of all or even most Protestant churchmen. The common tendency was to repeat the analogy between Elizabeth’s authority and that of God. To Puritans the queen as vicar of God entailed obligations that the ruler was to fulfill. Puritans never lost their reputation for being hostile to monarchy. In his 1605 defence of Puritanism William Bradshaw assured suspicious readers that the Puritan’s ecclesiastical reforms ‘are no ways repugnant to any civil State whatsoever, whether Monarchical, aristocratical, or [interest-ingly enough] Democratical… ’. Rather exaggeratedly, he declared that Puritans acknowledge monarchy to be the ‘best kind of civil Government for this Kingdome’.72 nonetheless, it was the Puritans’ emphasis on the ruler’s obligation to God that led Milton the following century to con-sider them the monitors of princes.73 Tudor Puritans and Separatists never forgot the Queen’s authority, but held that it did not extend into the ecclesiastical realm. This may have been a neat and innocuous dis-tinction to some of them, but the fact remains that such a separation of spheres flew in the face of the 1559 act of Supremacy, which gave the


74 William Fulke, ‘a Brief and Plain Declaration’ (written in 1573 and published in 1584), Leonard J. Trinterud (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism, (new York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 297–298. Italics added.

75 Dawley, John Whitgift, p. 162.76 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 245–246.

Queen authority over ecclesiastical policy, including defining heresy, abuses, and schisms. Indeed, the authority of the ecclesia was derived from the imperial crown. Furthermore, it became necessary for any person assuming some ecclesiastical office to swear to the act of Supremacy. Responding to the political doctrine contained in the act of Supremacy the Puritan divine and friend of Thomas Cartwright, William Fulke, cautiously agreed to the Royal Supremacy:

Of the title of the prince’s supremacy, if it be truly understood, we move no controversy; but [agree] that it doth properly appertain to the civil mag-istrate to be the highest governor of all persons within his dominion, so that the sovereign empire of God be kept whole.

But Fulke could not help but draw a silent analogy between the author-ity of the Queen and the usurped authority of the pope over matters ecclesiastical. He declared the pope’s authority as ‘usurped tyranny’, ‘blasphemy against Christ’, and that ecclesiastical authority ‘may not be usurped by any civil magistrate’. Fulke was then quick to reaffirm that ‘every prince in his own dominion ought to cast off the yoke of his sub-jection and to bring all ecclesiastical persons unto his obedience and jurisdiction’. nevertheless, not wanting to back-pedal, he immediately declared that God ‘forbiddeth princes to meddle with reformation of ecclesiastical matters, or to make any laws pertaining to causes of reli-gion… ’. Essentially, Fulke was saying that there are two spheres of authority: the temporal and the ecclesiastical. Temporal policy belongs to the prince and parliament, ecclesiastical policy belongs to the pastors.74

although Fulke composed his alternative doctrine of church/state relations in 1573, it was only published in 1584, probably in response to archbishop Whitgift’s Eleven articles of October 1583, which reaffirmed the authority of the Queen over all ranks, civil and ecclesi-astical.75 as Collinson points out, the Queen’s authority over all peo-ple, including ecclesiastics, regarding temporal matters was not the least bit contentious.76 The former Genevan exile, anthony Gilby, was happy to confess in 1581 that government ‘is an Ordinance of God

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77 anthony Gilby, A Dialogue between a Sovldier of Barvvick, and an English Chaplain (n.c., 1581), p. 12.

78 Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 177–178; Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought, (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1952), p. 72.

79 See Ethan Shagan, ‘The Two Republics: Conflicting views of Participatory Local Government in Early Tudor England’, in John F. Diarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, (aldershot: ashgate, 2007).

80 Leviathan, ch.18, p. 121.81 Ibid.82 Ibid, pp. 282, 283.

most necessary’.77 nevertheless, Puritan and Separatist ministers objected to the compulsory use the Prayer Book. Though neither the acts of Supremacy nor Uniformity were mentioned, Whitgift’s Eleven articles were obviously an attempt to pull Puritans into line with them. When one reads the Puritan assault on the Queen’s supreme authority, it becomes clear why Whitgift thought it a doctrine worthy of empha-sis. For Whitgift, Hooker, and Hobbes in the following century there were no two societies—church and commonwealth—only a single society, which needed only one head.78

Robert Browne’s congregational political thought

By the time Hobbes wrote his Leviathan the language of consent was already common in English political theory and was also practiced to some degree in local government.79 Hobbes’ contribution was not in giving political science a new vocabulary of consent but in giving the concept a secular, philosophical rigor it had not possessed previously. His very definition of the commonwealth included the concept: ‘One Person, of whose acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author… ’.80 ‘From this Institution of a Common-wealth are derived all the Rights, and Facultyes of him, or them, on whom the Soveraigne Power is conferred by the consent of the People assembled’.81 Hobbes even found ample biblical support for the concept, defining the Kingdom of God along identical lines: ‘…the Kingdome of God, is properly meant a Commonwealth, instituted (by the consent of those which were to be subject thereto) for their Civill Government… ’. He even said that God’s kingdom arises ‘by force of our Covenant, not by the Right of Gods Power… ’.82 Exactly how Hobbes could feel so free to make not merely the legitimacy of the state but the Kingdom of God contingent upon


83 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 156.

84 E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., Olive Wyon (tr.), (London: allen and Unwin, 1931 [1911]), vol. 2, pp. 656–657; R.H. Murray, Political Consequences of the Reformation, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1926), pp. 86, 92; a.D. Lindsay, The Essentials of Democracy, (London: Oxford University Press, 1935 [1929]), pp. 10, 19; a.D. Lindsay, The Modern Democratic State, (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), pp. 117–118; Robert M. Kingdon and Robert D. Linder (eds.), Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Democracy?, (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1970), p. x; Taylor, Secular Age, pp. 146, 155–156.

85 Graham Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, (London and new York: Routledge, 1996), p. 152. Cf, O’Donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 161.

86 John Witte, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 80.

87 Leviathan, ch.18, p. 121.88 M.M. Goldsmith, Hobbes’s Science of Politics, (new York and London: Columbia

University Press, 1966), p. 150.

individual consent becomes more apparent as we consider the Puritan and Separatist critique of the state during the late Tudor period.

It is, as Charles Taylor has recently said, difficult to track the exact relationship—conceptual and historical—between ‘spiritual outlook and economic and political performance’. Yet this is no reason why his-torians cannot make ‘sensible judgments about the relationship of cer-tain social forms and certain spiritual traditions’.83 There is a connection between the Reformation and modern democracy, namely, congrega-tional models of ecclesiastical polity informed early-modern advocates of political democracy.84 Graham Maddox has contended that when ‘the focus of political debate shifted largely to secular affairs, the politi-cal legacy of Puritan congregationalism remained deeply embedded in democratic thought and practice’.85 Most recently John Witte Jr. in his unrivalled study of the Calvinist contribution to modern Western democ-racy shows how at numerous points ecclesiastical democracy contrib-uted to the development of political democracy, particularly in america. Indeed, ‘What Calvin adumbrated, his followers elaborated. In the course of the next two centuries, European and american Calvinists wove Calvin’s core insights on the nature of corporate rule into a robust constitutional theory of republican government, which rested on the pillars of rule of law, democratic process, and individual liberty’.86 Interestingly Hobbes himself, when describing individuals gathered to consent to their sovereign called them a ‘Congregation’.87 as M.M. Goldsmith wrote in his study of Hobbes, it was the Presbyterians (and Separatists) who developed the vocabulary of consent the century prior to Hobbes’ Leviathan.88 This was partly an influence of Reformation

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89 Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Second Edition, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004 [1960]), pp. 130–131.

90 Martin Luther, ‘On Secular authority’ (1523), Martin Luther and John Calvin, On Secular Authority, Harro Hopfl (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 33. Cf. W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (Sussex: Harvester Press,1984), p. 128. For Luther’s conciliarist phase (1510 and 1520, evident in his ‘To the Christian nobility’ (1520), see Thompson, idem, pp. 137–138.

91 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, p. 703.92 J.T. Mcneill, ‘The Democratic Element in Calvin’s Thought’, Church History,

XvIII, (1949), p. 165.93 Harro Hopfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1982), p. 126.94 Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 63–64.95 John Calvin, ‘Institutio Religionis Christianae’ (1559), 4.3.15, Opera Selecta, vol.

5, Pater Barth and William niesel (eds.), (Munich: n.p., 1962). Cf. Hopfl, Christian Polity, pp. 91–93; Dale K. van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791, (new Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 24. John Calvin, ‘Institutio Religionis Christianae’ (1559), Opera Selecta, vol. 5, p. 478. But see Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 6, 71.

theology and partly the original contribution of English Separatists. Sheldon Wolin has spoken of the ‘important political elements’ and ‘strong political overtones’ of Luther’s theory of the church. Wolin sees Luther’s ecclesiology as ‘basically a demand for ecclesiastical constitu-tionalism’, which ‘owed not a little to conciliarist inspiration’.89 For Luther, because all are equally far from God no one is spiritually supe-rior. Thus no one may impose or prescribe any rite or belief on another without their consent. no one has a spiritual right to rule another.90 Yet Luther’s spiritual egalitarianism found no expression in his political thought. The same is largely true for Calvin. Calvin was immersed in the Swiss political climate of republican cantons, which, according to Troeltsch, was reflected in the ecclesiology that emerged from the Swiss Reformed tradition.91 In a classic article J.T. Mcneill affirmed that Calvin ‘associates theocratic and democratic concepts and blends the patterns of government for church and state’.92 Later Harro Hopfl spoke of a ‘homology between Calvin’s reflections about ecclesiastical and civil polity’.93 Despite Calvin’s advocacy of an element of congregational consent, he never fully trusted the people to act wisely. nonetheless, Calvin saw the benefit in electing officials in secular government. He constantly encouraged magistrates to remain accountable to elected officials.94 Yet Calvin himself never seems to have explicitly drawn a connection between his somewhat congregational ecclesiology and his advocacy of a ‘system mixed with aristocracy and democracy’.95 This


96 This was curiously omitted by Gooch, who spoke of Browne’s radically democratic ecclesiology but made no mention of its reflection in his political thought. English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, (new York: Harper and Row, 1957 [1898]), p. 43.

97 Brachlow, Communion of Saints, p. 160. 98 Lake, Moderate Puritans, p. 89. See also David Zaret, The Heavenly Contract:

Ideology and Organisation in Pre-Revolutionary Puritanism, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 108.

99 Brachlow, Communion of Saints, p. 168.100 James vI and I, ‘Basilicon Doron’ (1598), Political Writings, J.P. Somerville (ed.),

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 6.101 James vI and I, ‘Speech to parliament, 19 March 1604’, ibid., p. 138.102 Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, p. 118.103 John F Diarmid, ‘Common Consent, Latinitas, and the ‘Monarchical Republic’ in

mid-Tudor Humanism’, Diarmid (ed.), Monarchical Republic, p. 56.104 Ibid, pp. 63–73.

connection was, on the other hand, made by the English Separatist, Robert Browne.96 It was the Continental Reformed view of the ministry that the radical Elizabethan churchmen seized upon.97 Historian of Puritanism, Peter Lake, speaks of the ‘separatists’ populist revolt against any sort of ministerial elite… ’.98 Stephen Brachlow sees a new elevation of popular will in the Separatist movement, which ‘had the unques-tionable impact of elevating the status of the English laity to a new, more prominent level in church affairs’ and ‘discovering democratic meanings in the scriptures’.99 For this Robert Browne and fellow Separatist John Penry were remembered by Divine Right theorists as ‘brain-sick and heady preachers’, who showed ‘contempt of the civil magistrate’100 and were ‘impatient to suffer any superiority’.101

Certainly there was a literature in England and on the Continent advocating church and secular government by consent. The tradition goes back at least to Fortescue, whose ideas found systematic expres-sion in St German’s dialogues in the late 1520s and early 1530s. The king rules by consent (‘assent’) of all Christians through their repre-sentatives in parliament.102 The Cambridge humanists—Bishop John Ponet, Thomas Smith, John Cheke, and Bishop John aylmer—from the 1540s to the 1560s spoke of laws and government by consent.103 Laws were analogous to language, arising from the community and finding their legitimacy through common usage.104 Often, however, govern-ment by consent was accompanied by cautionary qualifications. For example English Presbyterian, Walter Travers, argued for congrega-tional consent in electing ecclesiastical officers. Yet after Travers admit-ted that there were examples in acts 6 and 14 of direct congregational

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105 W. Travers, A Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline owt of the Word off God, (n.p. 1574), p. 55.

106 M. van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 191–192.

107 ‘a Defence and True Declaration’ (1570), M. van Gelderen (ed.), The Dutch Revolt, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 20, 46–47, 51.

108 Ibid, pp. 20, 52.109 ‘address and Opening to Make a Good, Blessed and General Peace in the

netherlands’ (1576), ibid, pp. 82–85.110 ‘Political Education’ (1582) in ibid, p. 194.

election he pointed out that this was a special case, in the sense that not every church decision should be made by direct election. Travers, drawing an analogy between the commonwealth and the church, thought direct democracy best for appointing representatives, who would then completely take over the reins of the state:

For as in commonwealths not only such where the people is to be made sovereign, or a few, but also even where the kingdom of one is to be estab-lished before it be confirmed all the power is in the people’s hands, who of their free will choose magistrates unto them under whose authority they may after be governed: and afterwards not all the people, but only the magistrates chosen by them administer and govern the affairs of the com-monwealth. So it cometh to pass in the establishing of the church: So that when as yet there were none set over them, all the authority was in all men’s hands: but after that they had once given the helm into the hands of certain chosen men, this power no longer belonged unto all, but only to those who were chosen by them to steer and govern the church of god.105

By 1578 there had been populist manifestoes published and circulating in the netherlands.106 A Defence and True Declaration of the Things Lately Done in the Low Country (1570) declared the prince to be in a covenant obliging him to preserve the people’s liberty.107 Furthermore, the prince is elected by and entirely subject to a nobility and parlia-ment, apart from which he has no power.108 The Address and Opening to Make a Good, Blessed and General Peace in the Netherlands (1576) also affirmed that the king’s authority comes from the nobility or estates and that he is under contract to serve the interests of the whole realm.109 The tract Political Education (1582) frequently drew analogies between the feudal oaths of masters and servants and oaths between princes and God. a king contracts with God to rule in accordance with right. If that contract is broken then ‘they forfeit in God’s eyes their empire and supreme power… ’.110 Many of these ideas were more fully developed in


111 Vindiciae contra Tyrannos: or, Concerning the Legitimate Power of a Prince over the People, and of the People over a Prince (1579), George Garnett (ed. & tr.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 21, 29, 35.

112 Ibid, pp. 23–24.113 Ibid, p. 46.114 Ibid, p. 48.115 But see M.R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution.

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 31.

the Vindiciae, contra Tyrannos (1579) which was widely read by radical Dutch political theorists. The Vindiciae was a Huguenot treatise advo-cating limited government and the right of tyrannicide. It also con-tained a defence of election. The Vindiciae spoke of a covenant (foedus) between the prince and God, which limits the power of the king. The idea of covenant is derived by the writer from both feudal law and scriptural passages such as II Kings 11:17, II Chronicles 23:16, and Deuteronomy 7:6 and 14:2.111 Furthermore, if a prince should break his agreement (pactum) with God to rule Christianly he thereby forfeits his kingdom.112 Indeed, magistrates should be chosen by the people, but the author elaborates: ‘When we speak of the whole people, we mean those who have received authority from the people… ’.113 The democracy advanced in the Vindiciae was representative. The nobility or estates choose the lesser magistrates who would go on to elect a prince. Despite being an early-modern wink at broad political partici-pation, the traditional suspicion of making politics open was plainly evident. Officers representing the masses are necessary due to the impossibility of the masses being able to govern themselves.114 We see that by the time Robert Browne had settled in the netherlands there was a literature advocating consent as a necessary condition of author-ity. Yet despite the fact that Browne had moved to the netherlands in c.1581/2, where he wrote his Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying and his Booke which Showeth the Life and Manners of all True Christians, there is little textual evidence confirming that he took his political ideas from the literature circulating in the Low Countries.115

The thought of Browne almost certainly had its immediate precedent and influence in the writings of Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Both Cartwright and Travers built their notoriety on criticizing the Elizabethan church for, among other things, its exclusion of congrega-tional participation. Cartwright was appointed Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1569 and began lecturing his way through the book of acts. In his 1570 lectures (now lost) he set forth six

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116 See Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, pp. 248–250.117 T. Cartwright, A Replye to An Answer Made of M. Doctor Whitgifte (n.p. 1573),

p. 44.118 Ibid, p. 49.On Cartwright’s sources, which were primarily scriptural and patris-

tic, see John K. Luoma, ‘The Primitive Church as a normative Principle in the Theology of the Sixteenth Century: The anglican-Puritan Debate over Church Polity as Represented by Richard Hooker and Thomas Cartwright’, (Ph.D thesis, The Hartford Seminary Foundation, Connecticut, 1974), pp. 8–9, 15, 19, 27, 73–77, 153.

119 Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 104. See also pp. 105–106.120 William Fulke, ‘a Brief and Plain Declaration’ (written in 1573, published in

1584), Leonard J. Trinterud (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism, (new York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 240.

121 Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 112.

propositions, each of which was at odds with the current state of the church. He advocated both the abolition of episcopacy and the congre-gational election of ministers. Cartwight was forced to flee to Geneva from 1570–72, where he came to know Theodore Beza and acquired a more intimate knowledge of Reformed ecclesiology.116 He published his Replye to an Answer made of M. Doctor Whitgifte in 1573, which was a response to Whitgift’s Answere to a certen Libel intituled, An Admonition to the Parliament (1572). Cartwright at numerous points affirmed the necessity of the election of ministers in the church. Reflecting on the book of acts Cartwright cautioned that ‘election ought not to be in one man his hand, but ought to be made by the church… ’. Whitgift had previously argued that the new Testament taught apostolic ordination of ministers rather than congregational election. Cartwright responded by pointing out that there were numer-ous examples of congregational election in the new Testament and that the apostles merely ordained those already elected by the people.117 Cartwright’s arguments were almost completely based on the Bible. He admitted that both reason and experience lend support to election, yet as far as Cartwright was concerned the necessity of election in a church was owing to the teachings of scripture. not philosophy but theology informed Cartwright’s appreciation of consent.118 In 1573 it was feared that the popularity of Cartwright’s thought would incite a ‘democratic rising’ where ‘the lower orders of society would assert their rights’.119 The same year the Puritan, William Fulke, found himself denying accu-sations of sedition for his criticism of the Elizabethan church.120 The following year Cartwright’s friend, Walter Travers’ Ecclesiastica Disciplina was described as a book of ‘treason’ and ‘rebellion’.121

Travers had as much to say about the need for consent as Cartwright. Publishing his Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline


122 Travers, Full and Plaine Declaration, p. 30.123 Ibid, p. 44.124 Ibid, p. 45.125 Ibid, p. 45.126 Ibid, p. 54.127 Ibid, p. 61.

the year after Cartwright’s Replye, Travers on many occasions pointed out the need for consent in a church. Travers even went so far to say that those not chosen to take their offices in a church may be ejected.122 For Travers the proper way to call a minister to preside over a congre-gation is for a group of elders, who represent the whole church, to elect a minister. That decision is then taken to the people, who may approve or disapprove.123 Without troubling the reader with argument Travers affirmed that election is necessary for the health and survival of a church.124 He also pointed out that the power given to the elders is from the church. The power to elect a minister should not be possessed by any except with the consent of the whole church.125 In his desire to show that he was not advocating the sort of oligarchy that aristotle described as a degeneration of aristocracy, Travers summed up his whole teaching on election:

neither do I bring in here any Oligarchy or tyrannous rule of a few and retain still the same tyranny in the church, changing only the persons. For I would not that the judgment of the rest of the church should be contemned and neglected or that the counsel or elders of the church whom they list against the churches will, but that the Elders going before, the people also follow, and having heard and understood their sentence and decree, may either by some outward token or else by their silence, allow it if it be to the liked of, or gain say it if it be not just and upright: and not only gain say it, but if just cause of their disliking may be brought make it altogether void and of none effect, until at the last a mete one may be chosen by the authority and voices of the Elders, and allowed of by the consent and approbation of the rest of the church….126

as Cartwright had written the previous year, election prevents unwor-thies from taking office, as well as facilitating the dismissal of unsuita-ble officeholders.127

Travers was most clear on the source of his teaching on congrega-tional consent. By and large he spoke of it as a revelation from God, confirmed by the successful operation of contemporary Reformed churches in Europe. Setting himself in opposition to the perceived pragmatic approach to matters of church organisation adopted by the

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128 Ibid, p. 6.129 Ibid, p. 60130 Ibid, p. 9. Cf. pp. 10, 13, 15, 48, 54.131 S.J. Knox, The Life of Walter Travers, (London: Shenval Press, 1962), p. 75.132 W.J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, (Leiden:

Brill, 1990), p. 22.133 For biographical information on Robert Browne see Dwight C. Smith, ‘Robert

Browne, Independent’, Church History, 6/4, (December 1937): pp. 289–349.134 K.L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of

the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (Leiden: Brill, 1982), p. 30.135 Ibid., p. 31.

Elizabethan bishops, Travers affirmed that ecclesiastical polity comes from ‘no other fountains but from the holy scriptures… ’.128 Even though Travers did admit that his doctrines could be confirmed by nature and reason,129 he was clear that the rule of church government was left by Christ himself and was both sufficient, necessary, and perpetual:

I affirm that Christ hath left us so perfect a rule and Discipline, I under-stand it of that discipline which is common and general to all the church, and perpetual for all times, and so necessary, that without it this whole society and company and Christian common wealth cannot well be kept under their Prince and king Jesus Christ.130

Travers’ preference for extolling revelation over experience, seeing the former as more basic to knowledge than the senses, was so determined that it led to a clash between himself and Richard Hooker, with whom he was sharing a parish during 1585–6.131 Indeed, Hooker’s intuition was always that the Presbyterian platform espoused by Cartwright in the 1570s was seedbed from which Separatism grew in the 1580s.132

Born in Rutland, Robert Browne went to Cambridge where he came under the influence of Thomas Cartwright’s 1570 lectures on the book of acts.133 Graduating from Corpus Christi in 1572, Browne started to develop his Puritan views in a Separatist direction. He began preaching around Cambridgeshire, declaring that the authority of bishops was usurped. after being arrested twice, he, his friend Robert Harrison, and his English congregation in either late 1581 or early 1582 emigrated to the netherlands, meeting for services in Browne’s house in Middelburg.134 While abroad Browne published his most important treatises, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying (1582) and his Booke which Showeth the Life and Manners of all True Christians (1582). Owing to theological and personal conflicts he returned to England in 1584, disillusioned with the Separatist experiment.135 He was arrested in 1585 and saved from the gallows by his cordial relationship with


136 Watts, Dissenters, p. 33.137 Brown was not the first Protestant to make the congregation the sphere of power.

Jean Morély was a French aristocrat who moved to Geneva in 1554 and began writing and teaching congregationalism. For Morély, church officers were to be elected by the congregation and individual churches should have a large degree of autonomy from external bodies. In 1562 he published his Traicté de la disclipine et police chrestienne where he drew up a model of church polity at odds with the Genevan system. He called his system democratic and was condemned by both Calvin and Beza. His books were burned and he was declared a heretic in 1563. See Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 97–101.

138 Robert Browne, ‘a treatise of reformation without tarying’ (1582), The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Brown, Elizabethan Separatist Texts, albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson (eds.), (London: allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 152.

139 Ibid., p. 156140 Ibid., p. 157

Lord Burghley.136 He lived the rest of his life in obscurity, yet was fre-quently involved in minor conflicts with the local churches. Imprisoned in 1633 for striking an English constable, he died there in custody the same year.137

In his 1582 A Treatise of Reformation without Tarying Brown pointed out that the Queen’s ‘authority is civil’ and ‘that power she hath as high-est under God within her Dominions, and that over all persons and causes’. Furthermore, ‘she may put to death all that deserve it by law, either of the church or common Wealth, and none may resist Her or the Magistrates under her by force or wicked speeches, when they exe-cute the laws’.138 Here the Separatists were totally orthodox in Tudor political dogmatics. In fact Browne stated Elizabeth’s civil authority more clearly than most, emphasising her ius gladii. Yet such a pledge was merely a prolegomenon to an equally forceful statement of the church’s freedom from royal dominion:

If they [magistrates and bishops] therefore refuse and withstand, how should they be tarried for? If they be with them, they are no christians, and therefore also there can be no tarrying. For the worthy may not tarry for the unworthy, but rather forsake them, as it is written…He that will be saved, must not tarry for this man or that: and he that putteth his hand to the plow, and then looketh back, is not fit for the kingdom of God.139

Browne admitted what Elizabethan churchmen like Whitgift had known all along, opposition to royal ecclesiastical policy was opposi-tion to princes themselves. Yet he had no reservations in declaring that ‘we also [have] an authority against which if the Kings and nations do set themselves, we may not be afraid of their faces, nor leave our calling for them’.140 For all Protestants, conformist or Separatist, ultimately the

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141 Ibid., p. 158. Italics added.142 Browne, ‘a booke which showeth the life and manners of all true Christians’

(1582), ibid., p. 330

Queen was not supreme at all—God was supreme. nevertheless, it was the Separatists whose consciences were most burdened by Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical policy. Separatism was an affront to Elizabeth’s preten-sions to authority over both civil and ecclesiastical realms. Regarding Elizabeth’s banning of prophesying, that is, congregational discussion of the text of the Bible, Browne simply dismissed her:

For if either Magistrate or other would take from us, we must not give place by yielding unto them, no, not for an hour….Therefore the Magistrate’s commandment, must not be a rule unto me of this and that duty, but as I see it agree with the word of God….and this dispensation did not the Magistrate give me, but God by consent and ratifying of the church, and therefore as the Magistrate gave it not, so can he not take it away.141

It was Browne’s tendency to see the magistrate’s authority as limited and derivative. Indeed he spoke more often of the ruler’s obligations to God than the subject’s obligations to the ruler.

In 1582 Browne published his most important political ideas in A Booke which Sheweth the Life and Manners of all True Christians, which contained a political theology remarkably dissonant with most other ecclesiastical political speculation. Browne held that the neces-sary conditions of a governor’s legitimacy were that he should be per-sonally assured of his calling, that he should have a special command or charge by God to rule, that other men agree that it is fitting for him to rule, and that he have noble blood.142 These conditions were fairly conventional. What was not conventional was that Browne offered a model of magisterial legitimacy drawn from his belief in congrega-tional sovereignty. When considering how the minister of a congrega-tion is to be instituted, Browne said that there must be ‘an agreement of the church’. again he said that the ‘due consent and agreement of the church’ is necessary for another to preside over it. Considering the legitimacy of the magistrate, Browne simply lifted the criterion from his ecclesiology and applied it to civil authority: ‘For civil Magistrates, there must be an agreement of the people or Commonwealth’. Repeating himself on the next page, he expressed the following conditions: ‘by consent and agreement of the people and subjects’; ‘received by the


143 Browne, ‘a booke’, pp. 334–335.144 Brachlow, Communion of Saints, pp. 157, 164, 177.145 Browne, ‘a booke’, p. 334. Original italics.

consent or choice of the people… ’.; and ‘agreement of men’. He also discursively spoke of ‘laws by public agreement… ’.143 all the while, Browne kept stating that rulers, both ecclesiastical and political, receive their ‘authority and office of God’ or that they are ‘authorised of God’. Precisely what Browne meant by this is unclear, but he may have intended his democratic conditions to stand in apposition to the divine will condition, that is, God has ordained if the people have consented. Election is a heuristic device for discerning God’s politic will. This is as close as Tudor political thought got to vox populi vox Dei. It should be pointed out that Separatists, Browne included, did not argue for the direct election of ministers by the congregation. They proposed that democratically elected presbyters should elect a minister, who would then be brought before the congregation for approval. Separatists wanted to avoid both tyranny from above and tyranny from below.144 Browne immediately repeated his claims for congregational election saying that the congregation must ‘receive them by choice’. Browne did not speak of consent apart from its application to the church polity. His principles were derived from scripture, not political philosophy. Immediately below this congregational recommendation Brown rec-ommended that ‘The agreement also for the calling of civil magistrates should be like unto this… ’.145 Here we have Browne directly drawing his political thought from his congregational ecclesiology. Browne’s politi-cal thought is the perfect exemplification of the nexus between ecclesi-astical and political conceptions of legitimate power.

against his consensual model of government Browne determined all other models incompatible with liberty. Referring to the Roman Catholic church, he spoke of consent as opposed to naked force: ‘They undermine, and take away by craft the liberty of the church, and bring them into bondage. They come upon them by power and force, and yoke them by cruel laws and penalties. The like may be said of Tyrants which usurp civil authority’. The stress in Browne’s political thought was consent. Without consent a ruler could not rule properly, nor could a commonwealth obey properly. Speaking of the church, Brown wrote:

agreement of men is the willingness or glad consent both of the Governors to rule, and the people or inferiors to obey, for the assurance

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146 Browne, ‘a booke’, pp. 336–339. all italics original.147 The title page of Thomas norton’s 1569 tract, A Warning agaynst the Dangerous

Practises of Papistes, had the inscription: Vox populi Dei, vox Dei est. Rather than being a democratic treatise in any sense, the tract was a manifesto calling to suppress Catholics.

148 Humphrey, ‘The Preservation of Religion and its True Reformation’, Janet Kemp (tr.), Kemp, ‘Laurence Humphrey, Elizabethan Puritan: His Life and Political Theories’, (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, West virginia University, 1978), p. 209.

149 Gelderen, Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, pp. 191–192.150 John Milton, ‘a defence of the people of England’ (1658), Political Writings,

p. 218.151 Thomas Bilson, The Perpetval Governement of Christes Church, (London 1593),

p. 358. It should be noted that Bilson’s attitude to popular election was ambivalent. On the one hand he was happy to admit that election may ‘stand upon the grounds of rea-son and nature [and] Christian equity and society’ (p. 339), yet he could still point out its proclivity to tumult and irrationality (pp. 345–346).

they have in God, of welfare by each other.…Receiving by choice, is an agreement of partaking of conditions between Governors and inferiors, that so long as the Governors have right use of the submission and serv-ice of inferiors, and the inferiors also have the right use and welfare of their authority and guiding, they shall hold that communion, or else make a breach thereof, when once it shall tend to confusion and destruc-tion. We give these definitions so general, that they may be applied also to the civil state.146

This is probably the most radical advocacy of government by consent offered by any Protestant churchman of the sixteenth-century.147 Laurence Humphrey had written over thirty years earlier that sedition is an affront to the sovereignty of the people, but he never explained precisely what he meant by this.148 Certainly in the netherlands there was later some talk of rulers being elected on the grounds of virtue rather than succession149 and by the mid-seventeenth-century parlia-mentary supremacy could be boldly asserted,150 but such talk was rare in Elizabethan England. Indeed, the Tudor view of the people was of a many-headed hydra. Witness a typical discussion:

I hope the gravity and the prudence of the Magistrate may worthily be preferred before the rashness and rudeness of the many, that are often led rather with affection than with discretion, and are carried with many light respects and lewd means as with faction and flattery, favour and fancy, corruption and bribery, and suchlike baits, from which Governors are, if not altogether free, yet far freer than the intemperate and unruly multitude.151


152 Matthew Sutcliffe, A Treatise of Ecclesiasticall Discipline, (London, 1590), p. 201.153 Typical is Bilson, Perpetval Governement of Christes Church, p. 356.154 Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1551, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1993), p. 148.155 Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law,

and Church Law 1150–1625, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 182.156 Browne, ‘answere to Master Cartwright’ (1583), ibid., p. 480.

Or:

…but sure it would be very ridiculous, if the base sort of people leaving the shuttle, the plough and spade, and shopboard, should busy their heads in discussing of matter of religion, and government.152

Most talk of popular sovereignty soon assured the reader that it was voluntarily invested into government for the salvus populi.153 John Case, a contemporary Oxford aristotelian, contended that sovereignty begins with the people, who mediate it to the monarch.154 actually, the idea of the consent of the governed as a necessary condition for legitimate gov-ernment was common in Europe by the early fourteenth-century.155 In his Answere to Master Cartwright (1583) Browne clarified the differ-ences between ecclesiastical and political discipline, yet there remained an air of insincerity and a wink at sedition.

But here again we answer, that the discipline of the Church and of the common wealth are unlike in this, that ungodly men may be sometimes lawful officers and magistrates in a common wealth: and therefore Heathen Kings, yea Idolatrous kings and princes are lawful Magistrates at this day. Otherwise we should condemn our own Kings and Queens which heretofore have been Popish and Idolatrous, as being no lawful Magistrates: But in the Church of God, this holdeth not. For if any be wretched liver, or an Idolater, he can neither be minister nor lawful min-ister in the church: yea he is no part nor member of the Church.156

Browne went out of his way to say that the deposition of an ecclesiasti-cal minister could not be analogised into the political realm. Why? He never stated. Browne’s analogy between the church and the state went far enough for him to be considered a serious pest, but stopped just short of warranting the capital charge of sedition. The same year Browne published his True and Short Declaration in which his more radical political views were again revealed by his discussion of ecclesiology. The tract was a polemic against episcopal authority, which Browne considered to be tyrannical and usurped. That a minister may be

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157 Browne, ‘a True and Short Declaration’ (1583), ibid., p. 401. Italics added.158 Oliver Ormerod, The Pictvre of a Puritane, (London, 1605), fol. E.159 Richard alison, A Confvtation of Brownisme, (London 1590), (amsterdam: Da

Capo Press, 1968), pp. 46–47.160 Milton, ‘Defence’, p. 177.

appointed to preside over a church without any congregational consent was considered to be a totally illegitimate appointment. The English church was not ruling for the good of its congregations but only for the good of its hierarchy. Here Browne saw an analogy between the church and the government:

…they seek their own advantage, or glory, or mischievous purpose, than the welfare and benefit of the church. Yea they all look to their own way as sayeth the Prophet, Esa. 56. 11. everyone for his advantage and for his own purpose. Who knoweth not also, that by due consent and agree-ment, they are either antichrists in the church or commonwealth.157

Here again Browne espoused a view of magisterial legitimacy perfectly consistent with republican ideals. Leaders not appointed by a larger constituency are not legitimate and may be considered no better than usurpers. It is important to recognise that despite the fact that Browne was one of the most determined advocates of government by consent during the sixteenth-century, at no point did he ever advocate any for-cible removal of usurpers. He was silent on that particular issue. Still, with Browne’s high emphasis on the accountability of the higher to the lower and his frequent analogies between the constitution of the church and the civil government, it is no wonder that one seventeenth-century polemicist explained to his readers in his dialogue between an Englishman and a German that though ‘Our Puritans will make as sol-emn protestations as any men can do…But I marvel they would attempt to overthrow the Magistracy’. To this the German responded, ‘It is not to be marvelled at, for they sought…to be free from all laws, and to doe what they listed’.158 Critics of Brownism invoked the typical Elizabethan portrayal of the people as prone to fail ‘either through lightness or by evil practices, or tumult’, who are ‘ill conditioned’ and ‘void of grav-ity’.159 Yet Browne’s political thought was unique in that it was explicitly drawn from his Reformed or Calvinist ecclesiology. no wonder that Brownists were remembered even seventy years later as being anti-absolutist.160 King James vI and I decried English Presbyterians (which he considered Browne a member of) as those who ‘fantasy to themselves


161 James vI and I, ‘Basilicon Doron’, p. 26. Brownists were also confused with the English sect The Family of Love, who espoused a radical earthly equality and commu-nism. See Kemp, ‘Laurence Humphrey’, p. 134.

162 England’s Memorable Accidents, 26 September–2 October 1642, p. 27, cited in Scott, England’s Troubles, p. 150.

163 This was exploited to the full by James vI and I, ‘The Trew Law of Free Monarchies’ 1598, Political Writings, p. 76. Cf. Sir Robert Filmer, ‘Patriarcha’ (1680), Patriarcha and Other Writings, Johann P. Somerville, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

164 The distinction was repeated by the Puritan, Richard Mather, in 1643. See Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, p. 152.

165 Browne, ‘a booke’, pp. 342–344.166 John Lilburn, ‘a freeman’s freedom vindicated’ 1646; Robert Overton with

William Walwyn, ‘a remonstrance of many thousand citizens’ 1646; Richard Overton, ‘an arrow against all tyrants’ 1646, The English Levellers, andrew Sharp (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 31–32, 34, 55 respectively. note Overton’s declaration that neither the king nor the people but the law is sovereign, idem, p. 58. So universal had ideas of popular sovereignty become, that Robert Filmer could frustratingly admit that both Catholic and Protestant divines were captured by them. ‘Patriarcha’, p. 2.

167 Leviathan, ch. 20, p. 139.

a democratic form of government’.161 Royalists into the 1640s contin-ued to lump Brownists in with ‘anabaptists and atheists’ who ‘ende-vour the destruction of Church and State’.162

as an early theorist of consent Browne rejected the patriarchal meta-phor that Robert Filmer would exploit for the royalist cause the follow-ing century. If a king was like a father, then subjects may not violently resist him any more than children may their own father.163 Browne, on the other hand, made a distinction between the bonds of the household and other hierarchical relationships. The former is a natural covenant and the latter is a covenant by agreement and, consequently, can be dis-solved by will, for its origins lie in the will, not in the nature of things.164 Thus the prince’s calling may be dissolved if he breaches the agreement that led him to be appointed to his post in the first place.165

The idea of popular consent eventually became a commonplace the following century, to the point when it was considered by some to be almost self-evident.166 Hobbes enthusiastically banished natural domin-ion even from the household and argued that a parent governs by ‘the Child’s Consent, either express, or by other sufficient arguments declared’.167 If O’Donovan’s assertion is true, that in the seventeenth-century, ‘Reformation ideas respecting…democratic church polity were refracted in the democratic and republican sentiments’, then Robert Browne must be of some interest to historians of early-modern

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168 C.n. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 130.

169 Robert Harrison, ‘a Treatise of the church and the Kingdome of Christ’ (1583), Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Brown, p. 61.

170 Harrison, ‘a Little Treatise upon the firste verse of the 122. Psalm’ (1583), ibid., pp. 112–113

171 Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, p. 134. Even some Puritans hesitated over the emphasis on conscience as supreme, for conscience was not merely concerned with matters of religion, but with all external acts towards others. The supremacy of

English political thought as the only theorist to explicitly draw such a connection between ecclesiastical and secular debates on the legitimate exercise of power.

Farewell to Royal Consent: The Thought of Robert Harrison and Henry Barrow

Browne’s radical Separatism makes it easy to appreciate the suspicion that Elizabethan apologists had towards the Separatists. The Separatist attitude to royal authority was reminiscent of the attitude of some ancient Christians to Roman pomp. Though never denying the author-ity of the emperor in toto, Tertullian warned believers not to address him as dominus et deus.168 The charge that Separatists rejected princely authority was commonly made. The Separatist, Robert Harrison, accused conformists of confusing Elizabeth’s will with the will of God. Full reformation was too important to wait and see ‘what the L[ord] sayeth to him by the mouth of ye magistrate… ’.169 Certainly Harrison did not consider Elizabeth’s consent as necessary for a total overhaul of her ecclesiastical policy. as far as Harrison was concerned, when one has a full appreciation of the gravity of the Christian life and the splen-dor of God, the Queen’s will recedes into complete insignificance:

For certainly the great and noble Potentates of this world, if they do not entertain the kingdom of Christ Jesus, though their name reach the clouds: yet in truth their honour and renown is small, and scarcely to be accounted an handful, which when it is spent, they die.…Then is a living dog better than they.170

With such disregard for the pomp of princes, what else could Separatists expect but to be held in suspicion by bishops and defenders of the national church? If Maddox’s understanding is true, that ‘The Reformation began as an attack on a particular authority, but slid head-long into the dethronement of authority itself ’,171 then English Separatism


conscience, if taken to its logical conclusions, not only removed royal dominion from the church, but also from the subjects of the commonwealth! See Phillip nye’s sobering words during the 1648 Whitehall Debates. a.P.S. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–1649) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938), pp. 146–147. John Locke in his early thought gave the most eloquent cautions against supremacy of conscience. See ‘First Tract on Government’ (1660), Political Essays, Mark Goldie (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 36; ‘Second Tract on Government’ (c.1662), idem, p. 67.

172 Henry Barrow, ‘The first part of the platforme’ (1590), The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, Elizabethan Separatist Texts, (London: George allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 140–141.

173 Barrow, ‘The Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c’. (1586), The Harlein Miscellany, (London: Robert Dutton, 1809), vol. 2, p. 14.

174 Ibid., p. 20.

was the ultimate expression of such a lapse. Critic of Separatism, Thomas Cooper, correctly pointed out that ‘to abolish this present min-istry’ is to veto decisions ‘confirmed by sundry parliaments’, the result being that all who ‘speak against them and their proceedings, are ene-mies unto, and speak against the peaceable estate of this land’.172 When Separatist preacher Henry Barrow told archbishop Whitgift that it was none of his business when he last attended an English church service, the archbishop responded: ‘You are a schismatic, a recusant, a sedi-tious person… ’.173 Barrow was incapable of admitting Elizabeth’s dominion without at the same time limiting it to that prescribed by the teachings of the Bible:

I think the Queen’s Majesty supreme governor of the whole land, and over the church also, bodies and goods; but I think that no Prince, nei-ther the whole world, neither the church itself, may make any laws for the church, other than Christ hath already left in his word.174

For the Separatists there was simply no concept of royal authority apart from definite obligations to the congregation of the faithful, even to the point of subordination to the church. In the Separatists’ haste for a Reformed system of church government, they derogated from the maj-esty of the ruler to an unheard of degree:

Quest. May this people and presbytery reform such things as be amiss, without the prince?Answ. They ought to practise God’s laws, and correct vice by the censure of the word.Quest. What if the prince forbid them?Answ. They must do that, which god commandeth, nevertheless.

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175 Ibid., pp. 30–31.176 Cited in Hill, Century of Revolution, p. 80.177 Munz, Place of Hooker, pp. 97, 131, 142.

Quest. If the prince do offend, whether may the presbytery excommuni-cate the prince, or no?Answ. The whole church may excommunicate any member of that con-gregation, if the party continue obstinate in open transgression.Quest. Whether may the prince be excommunicate?Answ. There is no exception of person; and I doubt not, but her majesty would be ruled by the word; for it is not the men, but the word of God, which bindeth and looseth sin.Quest. Whither may the prince make laws in the government of the church, or no?Answ. The scripture hath set down sufficient laws for the worship of God, and government of the church, to which no man may add, or diminish.Quest. What say you to the prince’s supremacy? Is her majesty supreme head of the church and over all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal?Answ. a supreme magistrate over all persons, to punish the evil, and defend the good.Quest. Over all causes?Answ. no; Christ is only head of his church, and his laws may no man alter.175

Here was an explicit subordination of the prince to the discipline of the congregation, considered the discipline of God himself. Who could blame King James vI and I for his remarks to the English bishops: ‘If once were out, and they [the Presbyterians] in place, I know what would become of my supremacy’.176 For Barrow, an ungodly prince could be excommunicated and banned from the sacraments. apart from the significant difference in that Barrow never authorised the congregation to declare the magistrate’s authority void—a papal prerogative, accord-ing to the Jesuits—there was little to distinguish this from the Hildebrandine model that Henry vIII abolished. Richard Hooker was not objecting to merely an alternative view of church/state relations, he was objecting to the medieval model being reestablished in England by fellow Protestants!177

The Separatist critique of the church could not be removed from broader politics. Barrow could not have cared any less for conformist objections, calling them ‘politic’ and ‘carnal’. Opponent of Separatism, George Gifford, accused Separatists of anabaptism and disregard for the Queen’s authority. Barrow was unmoved: ‘[It is not] any injury to the prince, when the faithful witness against and refrain anything that


178 Henry Barrow, ‘a plain refutation of M.G. Giffardes reproachful booke’ (1591), Writings of Henry Barrow, pp. 50–51.

179 Ibid., p. 193.180 ‘…and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the

right or to the left. Then he and his descendents will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel’.

181 ‘Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c’., p. 37.182 J.E. neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584–1601, (London: Jonathan Cape,

1957), pp. 220–221.183 ‘Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c’., p. 36.184 Jens G. Moller, ‘The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology’, Journal of

Ecclesiastical History, XIv/1 (april 1963), p. 48.185 Ibid., p. 50.

is contrary to God’s word… ’.178 Later, in the same reply, Barrow declared the Queen’s assignment of titles and dignities to bishops illegitimate, for ‘Christ hath so expressly and often forbidden them’.179 John Penry, Separatist preacher and writer, spoke in similar terms:

and, as to the law of God, all kings and princes are bound thereby, to be so far from thinking themselves tied by no bands unto their subjects, as they are plainly forbidden even to be lifted up in mind above their breth-ren (Deut. xvii. 20.)180 for so the word, in that place, calleth their subjects and servants.181

Penry was suspected by Whitgift of being instrumental in the writing of the Marprelate Tracts (1588–1589), a series of scurrilous satires of the English church, which declared the bishops to be incompetent, immoral, and usurped. Barrow and Penry were both arrested on the accusation of writing seditious literature. The printers who were tried for producing the tracts were scrutinised under the 1581 statute against seditious words. To critique the church was to critique the state: schism was sedition.182 When asked why he encouraged his followers to disre-gard the English church, Penry responded in apocalyptic terms: ‘I per-suade all men unto the obedience of my prince, and her laws; only I dissuade all the world from yielding obedience and submission unto the ordinances of the kingdom of antichrist… ’.183 Furthermore, Penry envisioned a radical covenant theory, which goes back to the very beginnings of Protestant theology. Both Zwingli and Bullinger stressed the idea of a covenant or agreement between humankind and God. Humankind agreed to obey and God agreed to save.184 The idea of a covenant between humankind and God was imported to England through the writings of Tyndale, the first English covenant theolo-gian.185 Bullinger’s significant influence in Edwardian England would

218 chapter five

186 Ibid., pp. 54–56. Michael McGiffert, ‘Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism’, Harvard Theological Review, 75/4, (1982), pp. 472–473.

187 Jane E.a. Dawson, ‘The Early Career of Christopher Goodman and his Place in the Development of English Protestant Thought’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1978), pp. 259–261.

188 Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 124, 135.189 Moller, ‘Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology’, p. 57.190 See Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Providence and Prescription: The account of Elizabeth

in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (eds.), The Myth of Elizabeth, (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 27–55.

191 ‘Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c’., p. 37.

also have been responsible for the popularisation of covenant theology during that period.186 Goodman saw the Mosaic law in terms of a cov-enant between humankind and God.187 Calvin’s emphasis on a covenant between humankind and God began to have massive influence during the Elizabethan period. Beza would continue the teaching in Geneva after Calvin’s death.188 The word ‘covenant’ was used far more in the Geneva Bible (1560) than in any other previous English translation.189 Eventually the idea of a covenant was applied to ruler and to God. The ruler was legitimate as long as he kept the covenant with God to bring ecclesiastical reformation to fulfillment. John Foxe, the martyrologist, constantly spoke of Elizabeth’s legitimacy as contingent upon her ful-filling her duty of reformation.190 It was not long before the idea of a covenant between God and his people was transformed by Separatists into a covenant between ruler and subject: ‘[I]t appeareth’, Penry declared, ‘that it is not without great warrant of the word, that princes should enter covenant with their subjects, and that subjects should require promise and oath to be kept with them, otherwise, whereto serveth the covenant?’191

Thomas Bilson’s Trve Difference betvveen Christian Svbiection and vnchristian Rebellion (1585)

Ecclesiastical defences of limited sovereignty did not always build upon the idea of consent. By 1585 it was becoming acceptable to speak of constitutional resistance to tyrants. It was inevitable that the issue would be raised again, for it was a major preoccupation of Jesuit politi-cal thought. Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Worcester, rejected absolute non-resistance and suggested a right to resistance grounded on the


192 Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 105.

193 Thomas Bilson, The Trve Difference betvveen Christian Svbiection and Vnchristian Rebellion, (Oxford, 1585), p. 200.

194 Ibid., pp. 313–314. Italics added.195 Ibid., p. 339.

national constitution. Because of this Bilson was able to allow for the right to resistance but also declare its absolute illegitimacy in England. Bilson was the only other significant divine to raise the subject after the Marian exiles nearly thirty years beforehand. Bilson’s radically situated right to revolt was completely irrelevant for England. It was the revolu-tionary Protestant movements in the netherlands that he was trying to justify. Indeed, the civil war in the netherlands became one of the most dominating events for Elizabethan politics during the last twenty years of Elizabeth’s reign.192 as the Zurich Reformers had stressed earlier, Bilson started with the premise that the cura religionis was the principal duty of the civil magistrate.193 Bilson was happy to acknowledge the Christian tradition of priests admonishing wayward magistrates, but certainly no individual has the right to depose a prince:

They [prophets] never offered violence to their Persons, nor prejudice to their States; only they did God’s message unto them, without halting or doubling: and so should every Preacher, and Bishop not fear with meekness and reverence to lay before Princes the sacred and righteous will of God, without respect whether Princes took it in good or evil part: But farther or other attempts against Princes, than in words to declare the will and pre-cepts of God, God hath not permitted unto Preachers, Prophets, Prelates, nor Popes.194

notwithstanding his approbation of religious censure, Bilson consid-ered the idea of priestly resistance or priestly calls to resistance Jesuitical. Bilson’s resistance theory was deliberately vague. He allowed for mag-isterial resistance but rejected the possibility that the subjects may be enlisted by the lesser magistrates to carry out the deposition.195 In this he was clearly distancing himself from the radical theories of Ponet, Goodman, and Knox. Furthermore, Bilson explicitly denied that an idolatrous (Catholic) ruler could be deposed on grounds of irreligion. He admitted that the apostles commanded that no respect should be given to idolaters, but to extend this to the office or person of the mag-istrate was exceedingly dangerous. Bilson seemed now to be saying that no resistance to any sort of tyranny was permitted:

220 chapter five

196 Ibid., p. 348.197 Ibid., p. 512.198 Ibid., pp. 516–517.199 For the Jesuit appropriation of Protestant resistance theory, see Hopfl, Jesuit

Political Thought, p. 121. For a Jesuit expression of covenant resistance theory, see idem, p. 262.

200 Bilson, Trve Difference, pp. 499–500.201 Ibid., pp. 509–510. Cf. ‘For earthly princes give up (abdico) all their earthly pow-

er (potestas terrena) when they rise up against God, and are unworthy of being

The directions which the apostles gave to shame the disordered and shun the wicked, when as yet there were no Christian Magistrates, to repress them or punish them, may not rashly be stretched to the Magistrate’s person or function, neither must you so force general and indirect speeches of the Scripture, that they shall avert the special and express commandments of God. But God hath expressly prescribed subjection and tribute to vicious, tyrannous, and Idolatrous Princes….196

Despite the fact that Ponet, Goodman, and Knox had argued that resist-ance to idolaters is a Christian duty, Bilson called such an ideal Jesuitical.197 Bilson claimed he had not read Knox’s First Blast and he seems to have minimised its radicalism, understanding Knox merely to be making a case for aristocratic deposition in realms where the prince is elected by the nobility or aristocracy.198 not so! England was a hered-itary monarchy and Knox saw the deposition of Mary as a universal duty to God, not as a right of the few on the condition that she was elected in the first place. The idea that the people may withdraw their loyalty from a king, who has withdrawn his loyalty from God—covenant resistance theory—was advocated by some Protestants, most memora-bly by Knox. notwithstanding the Protestant use of the idea, it was just as strongly denounced by Protestants as it was utilised, for Jesuit theo-logians were beginning to use it as well in response to Elizabeth’s excommunication by Rome. Eventually the theory became common-place in Catholic resistance theory.199 When Bilson explicitly denounced the idea that a prince’s legitimacy depends on the prince’s fidelity to religion he was distancing his ideas from the most subversive elements of both the Protestant and Catholic traditions.200 actually, Bilson believed that Jesuits had twisted the words of the most important Protestant political theorist of his generation, John Calvin. Responding to the notion that Calvin, in his notes on Daniel 22:25, advocated a resistance theory, Bilson rightly denied any such teaching in Calvin’s text, arguing instead that the Reformer merely counseled passive diso-bedience, not active rebellion.201 Indeed, anyone other than the higher


counted among the number of mankind. We ought rather to spit on their heads than to obey them whenever they are so bold and wish to spoil God of his rights, and, as it were, to occupy his throne and draw him down from heaven’. John Calvin, ‘Praelectiones in Danielem’, 6:22, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 69, (Brunswig: C.a. Schwetschke and Son, 1889).

202 Bilson, Trve Difference, p. 354.203 Ibid., p. 446.204 Ibid., p. 514.205 Ibid., p. 518.

powers who wields the sword is a minister of Satan. Throughout most of Bilson’s discussion he was principally concerned with ecclesiastical calls for deposition and rebellion.202

Though Bilson had advocated an absolutist conception of kingship in his Trve Difference he also offered a constitutional resistance theory, which he formulated shrewdly enough to be completely harmless to Elizabeth. Bilson hinted at the usefulness of magisterial resistance after over four hundred pages of polemic. Speaking of princes in the past, Bilson admitted that many had been deposed, but not by the mob nor by popes, but by ‘their own states and realms, and that for their extreme tyranny… ’. If anyone should be authorised to depose a prince it is the nobility, not the lower sorts or the priests. Indeed, ‘…if princes were to choose their judges among men, they were far better refer themselves to the general consent of their nobles and commons at home, than hold their scepters at the pleasures of disdainful and seditious popes… ’.203 Bilson later approved of a distinction between lawful depo-sition by constituted authorities and popular rebellion.204

It was not until page 518 of his treatise that Bilson gave explicit approval of constitutional rebellion against a tyrant. again, he made it clear that he was talking about deposition by the nobles, not the masses, which he again described as Jesuitical. Referring the German princes who were licensed by the Treatise of Magdeburg to overthrow a tyrant emperor, Bilson cautioned:

They were magistrates and bear the sword in their own dominions: you are private men, and want lawful authority to use the sword. Their states be free and may resist any wrong by the laws of that Empire: you be sub-jects and simply bound by the laws of your country to obey the prince, or abide the pain, which the public state of this realm hath prefixed. The German Emperor is elected, and his power abated by the liberties and prerogatives of his princes….205

Immediately Bilson pointed out that such a model of resistance cannot apply to England, for Elizabeth’s authority is not from her subjects,

222 chapter five

206 Ibid., pp. 520–521. Italics added.207 On the protean nature of Bilson’s thought in general, see William M. Lamont,

‘The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson’, Journal of British Studies, 5/2 (May 1966), p. 22.

owing to the fact that she was not elected. a little later, Bilson made this clear. Though he only ever gave ambiguous approval for constitutional resistance, he was clear that it could only operate in ‘free realms’, that is, realms where consent was necessary for the installation of the ruler in the first place—republics:

By superior powers ordained of God we understand not only princes, but all politic states and regiments, somewhere the people, somewhere the nobles, having the same interest to the sword, that Princes have in their kingdoms: and in kingdoms where princes bear rule, by that sword we do not mean the prince’s private will against his laws: which, though it be wicked, yet may it not be resisted of any subject with armed violence. Mary when Princes offer their subjects not justice, but force: and despise all Laws to practise their lusts: not every, not any private man may take the sword to redress the Prince: but if the laws of the land appoint the nobles as next to the king to assist him in doing right, and withhold him from doing wrong, then they be licensed by man’s law, and so not prohibited by God’s to interpose themselves for the safeguard of equity and innocence: and by all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed, but in no case deprived where the scepter is inherited.

This passage is surely the most thoughtfully evasive and ambiguous statement of a realm’s rights against its prince to be committed to print during the sixteenth-century. It begins by declaring political authority to be distributed beyond the mere person of the prince to other lesser magistrates, according to the constitution of the land. Then it assures the reader that no subject may violently resist a prince, yet a lesser magistrate may ‘withhold him from doing wrong’ by ‘all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed… ’. all this with the restriction that no prince may be deprived ‘where the scepter is inher-ited’.206 Technically, Bilson never said that a prince cannot be anywhere deprived, only in those realms where the crown is determined by birth, which, according to providence, is determined by God.207 He gave enough slack for republican movements to rid themselves of a tyrant prince, but restricted his resistance theory just enough to make his Trve Difference completely innocuous in England. The book was published in Oxford, one of the only two authorised—and monitored—presses in England.


208 Hooker, ‘Lawes’, I.10.4.209 Ibid, I.10.4–5. See W.D.J.C. Thompson’s discussion of consent—‘the most impor-

tant principle of his theory of government’—in Hooker’s thought. While acknowledg-ing Hooker’s doctrine of original popular sovereignty and consent, Thompson sanely refutes ideas that Hooker’s thought bore any significant similarities with the later thought of John Locke. ‘The Philosopher of the “Politic Society”: Richard Hooker as a Political Thinker’, W. Speed Hill, Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, (Cleveland and London: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1972), pp. 34–50. For a more recent treatment see arthur P. Monahan, ‘Richard Hooker: Counter-Reformation Political Thinker’, in a.S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, (Tempe, aZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 203–217. Despite Hooker’s views on parliamentary repre-sentation, he was still invoked by Robert Filmer the following century to support an argument for absolutism! Filmer, ‘Patriarcha’, p. 57.

Responding to the Puritan and Separatist attacks on Elizabethan policy Richard Hooker offered a far more articulate statement of legiti-macy by consent, but based his case on reason rather than revelation. Because we are not naturally equipped to sustain ourselves as individu-als without the aid of others we gather into communities. Over time ‘mutual grievances, injuries, and wrongs’ become so incommodious that ‘only by growing unto composition and agreement amongst them-selves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquility, and happy estate of the rest might be procured’.208 now because all people are naturally equal ‘without consent, there were no reason, that one man should take upon him to be Lord or Judge over another… ’. Furthermore, ‘the cor-ruption of our nature…doth now require of necessity some kind of regiment’, yet ‘the kinds thereof being many, nature tieth not to any one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrary’.209 Given Hooker’s pop-ularity the following century we would not argue that legitimacy by consent became common solely owing to the sixteenth-century Presbyterian and Separatist writings. But given the fact that many dem-ocrats and republicans in the seventeenth-century were themselves Presbyterians, Separatists, Independents, or, to speak broadly, Puritans, it is surely reasonable to hold that the Presbyterian and Separatist emphasis on ecclesiastical consent and limited monarchy helped fur-nish democrats and republicans with a vocabulary and conceptual framework within which to express their political ideas. Hobbes cer-tainly thought so.

224 chapter five

210 Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, p. 153.211 Kingdon and Linder (eds.), Calvin and Calvinism, p. 3.212 David a. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society, (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 2005), p. 8. Cf. Maddox’s discussion, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, pp. 157–169; Cf. Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, pp. 665–666; Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 277–319.

213 Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 138.214 McLaren, Political Culture, p. 48.

Conclusion

It was the concern of both defenders and critics to ensure that God’s will was manifest in church and state that nourished the conflicts over Elizabethan ecclesiastical policy. There was also the fuel added by the Reformed notion of the sufficiency of scripture that led Puritans and Separatists to reject any policy not explicitly set out in scripture. Protestantism was a victim of its own success. Maddox reminds us that it is ‘important to emphasize how close in its origin the modern politi-cal contract idea was to the church covenant’.210 Emile Doumergue called the impact of contract theory the triumph of Calvinism.211 Reformed covenant theology would become part of the american experience of government as new England Puritans ‘adapted the prac-tice of church covenanting to the establishment of civil authority, thus generating a series of civil covenants that paralleled the church cove-nants’.212 Sheldon Wolin has spoken of the radical sense of equality that was implicit in the theology of Martin Luther, a theology offering a ‘flat-tened imagery of a society where, ideally, the members were equal’.213 The thought of Barrow and Penry fits Wolin’s description well. It was this sort of radical Protestantism that created a general hatred towards anti-hierarchical theology during the 1640s, for it was always feared that spiritual parity would attempt to break loose into the social and political realm, which, of course, it did. as Englishmen the following century discovered, the Bible, in certain hands, could be the most radi-cal text of politics available. Within the writings of the Separatists we witness that powerful political vocabulary identified by McLaren as ‘godly and prophetic counsel’.214 It spoke of duty, obligation, and divine wrath. In a time when royal pretensions to power were escalating to levels that would give rise to seventeenth-century absolutist theory, the political polemic of the Separatists proved confronting. The 1588 vic-tory against the Spanish raised English patriotism to such a degree that


215 ‘The Epistle’, The Marprelate Tracts, 1588, 1589, William Pierce (ed.), (London: James Clarke, 1911), p. 80.

Separatism was beginning to be seen with the same disgust as Catholic recusancy. as far as both criticised the English government and reli-gion, both were seen as disloyal to the commonwealth. Indeed, Martin Marprelate demanded the English bishops to stop portraying the Separatists as ‘enemies of the State’.215 Browne’s call for congregational autonomy and consent would anathematize him until the end of the following century. Barrow’s and Penry’s emphasis on the ruler’s obligations rather than her liberties proved to be a capital offence: Barrow was hanged in 1590, Penry in 1593. It was the Presbyterian and Separatist emphasis on limited power and consent that provoked abso-lutist theories and inspired democratic theories the following century. In the history of political thought the Elizabethan protestors must again be placed at the centre as inspiring and providing a vocabulary for much that would become foundational for modern politics.

ConClusion

Most historians locate the shift from the medieval world to the modern as occurring roughly during the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries. of course, epochal shifts are neither neat nor final and every age is a haunted house. i have only given a partial narrative of the movement from medieval to modern politics; a partial glimpse of a storm that destroys, reorders, uncovers, and buries. The ideas were often in ten-sion or in a losing struggle with new ways of thinking and new political realities. latin Christendom, perhaps the closest there ever came to being a Europa, was fracturing and disappearing: national religions were proclaimed, vernaculars were used, and sovereign territories were being defined. As well as this, traditions of absolutism and civic activ-ism were emerging, traditions that would evolve into divine absolut-ism, enlightened despotism, democracy, and republicanism over the next two centuries.

The fragile universe of the middle ages was challenged by the new theology of the Reformers. The new emphasis on divine will could fill all stations with a self-confidence that was considered divine mandate. Preachers admonished princes on behalf of the true religion. Princes admonished preachers and the laity to obey God’s anointed. The people could admonish the prince and the church for betraying their calling to rule in a godly and just manner. The infusion of providentialism into the sixteenth-century mind gave oppositionalism a new vigor. Yet, it was not just new theology, it was a new model of church and state that shook the certainty that characterized conceptions of society up until the sixteenth-century. England is the supreme example, for witness how religion was simply changed by the whim of monarchs and elites. How shocking it must have been to a people who could barely conceive alternative ways of thinking and living seeing their beloved icons smashed, then restored, then smashed again. The experience of seeing religion treated so summarily must surely have become part of national memory for many countries, contributing to the disenchantment of religion itself, no longer necessary in its particulars or even in its essen-tials, but determined by the caprice of rulers. The natural law also fell victim to the times. For if all phenomena are simply the revealed will of God, who could just as easily do things another way, what does it mean

conclusion 227

to describe certain things as natural and unnatural? And what good is there to try to discern the laws of morality by reason when the Bible tells us all we need to know? To be sure, the Bible speaks of natural law, but Christians are beyond that. They have the law written in the gospels far more vividly than anything the pagans may have written on the heart. indeed, God has revealed a natural law to the world, but he has revealed a far more perspicuous revelation in the Bible. The natural law could never compete. The aims and theology of the Magisterial Reformation also facilitated absolutism and republican traditions. one of Magisterial Protestantism’s great advantages for princes was its rejection of the historic programme of the Roman Catholic Church to subordinate all earthly scepters to the Roman see. Thus, part of the appeal of Protestantism, one of its selling points, was that it would not try to control the prince. Certainly princes were limited, but not by any earthly institution. Yet, at the same time, Puritans and dissenting sects began to challenge the authority of the prince over the church, even saying that the church has authority over the prince in matters of reli-gion. Furthermore, the Puritan and separatist vision of ecclesiastical equality often spilled over into political thought proper, idealizing a polity not dominated by any single force, where the prince, parliament, and people have a balance of rule. if it was good enough for the saints it was good enough for the citizens.

During the following century the Reformation produced statist and anti-statist movements. Caroline state-building in seventeenth-century England may be considered a response to the radical elements of the Reformation which challenged the supremacy of the state over the con-science of individuals and religious communities. Yet the absolutist claims of the prince were couched in a language of providentialism and supported by an Established church whose autonomy and character depended on the pleasure of the magistrate. The absolutist claims of stuart monarchs and the fervor of the new Model Army were fuelled by Reformation ideas placing God at the centre of the universe. nothing could stand in opposition to God’s will, neither magistrates nor sub-jects. Thus James Vi could counsel subjects to arm themselves ‘with patience and humility, since he that hath the only power to make him (the prince), hath the only power to unmake him…’ .1 Yet a generation

1 James i and Vi, ‘The Trew law of Free Monarchies’ (1598), in Political Writings, Johann P. sommerville (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1994), p. 68.

228 conclusion

2 Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, Thomas Carlyle, 3 vols., (london, 1857), vol. 1, p. 295. Cited in Jonathan scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth Century English Political Instability in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2000), p. 156.

3 Quoted in nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States 1607–1876, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2007), p. 26.

later the man who signed James’ son’s death warrant could say with equal assurance: ‘surely, sir, this is nothing but the hand of God; and wherever anything in this world is exalted, or exalts itself, God will pull it down…’ .2 it was also partly owing to fear of God’s judgment on England that compelled countless purists, Anglican or Dissenting, to the new World. John Winthrop was certain that ‘God will bring some heavy Affliction upon this land, and that speedily’.3 These several move-ments which upheld and protested against the establishment are not a case of the Reformation and its ideals now being threatened, now being vindicated. These forces, royalist and republican, establishmentarian and dissenting, all sprung from the Reformation itself.

The political and intellectual upheavals of the sixteenth-century left the political thought of the period in two minds. Traditional well-established ideas and methods were confronted with new ones brought about by the new religion. if much of the political thought of the period was derived from the basic principles that were going through transi-tion, then the political thought exemplified the same uncertainties as those more basic views of God, the universe, and humankind from which politics flowed. The dialectic between new ideas and institutions with the old ones created a world where ideas and institutions were forced into an uncomfortable cohabitation. if the Tudor churchmen produced an overall ambiguous view of the world and the state, the ambiguity was caused by something completely clear and dominating in their minds: fidelity to the will of God as revealed in the Bible. ultimately the ambivalences and ambiguities in ecclesiastical political ideas were a manifestation of an intense desire to render to Caesar what was his without robbing God—the ultimate source of earthly authority. it was genuine conviction confronted with novel ideas and institutions that led to the ambiguous nature of Protestant political speculation, which was, in the end, heavenly conscience negotiating with worldly necessity.

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absolutism 2, 14, 83, 95, Chapter Four, 181, 212

Ab Ulmis, John 99Adams, Robert P. 173adiaphora 32, 189–190Admonition Controversy (see

Puritanism)Alford, Stephen 8–9, 28, 30, 163, 182,

191Alison, Richard 133, 212Allen, J.W. 1, 90, 157, 165, 170, 189ambiguity 1, 12, 39, 63, 86, 130, 136,

139, 150Ambrose 146America xi, 35, 71, 190, 199, 224, 228Anabaptism 22–23, 45, 57, 80, 192, 213,

216Anderson, Marvin W. 55, 124anti-Catholicism (see also

Catholicism) 1, 13, 15, 26, 62, 72, 75–76, 80, 101–102, 143, 145–146, 155, 183, 189, 209

Aquinas (see Thomas Aquinas)Aristotle 3, 10, 21, 62, 78, 97, 100–101,

107, 112–113, 116, 142, 148, 164, 166, 172, 193, 205, 211Reformation and 44, 55, 91–92,

96–97, 100auctoritas (see also potestas) 11–12Augustine 21, 64, 89, 165–166, 179

Calvin and 24John Knox and 65Luther and 20–21order 43–44Peter Martyr Vermigli and 55Zwingli 64

Aylmer, John xiii, 32, 149, 167, 182, 195, 201debate with Knox (1559) 63, 66–67,

89, 133–135, 170–172

Babbage, Stuart Barton 32Bale, John 30, 105–106, 163–164Bancroft, Richard 185Barker, Ernest 93Barnes, Robert 189Barrow, Henry 34–35, 106, 142, 215,

217, 224–225

Basil 146Basle 31Baylor, George 45Becon, Thomas 48, 102Beer, Barrett L. 157bees 94, 105, 117–118Bellarmine, Cardinal 77Benedict, Philip 29, 31, 51, 182, 186,

191, 204Bernard, G.W. 27, 189Berry, Lloyd E. 73Beza, Theodore 8, 80, 155,

183–184, 207Bible 20, 65, 68, 144, 158, 194, 224Bilson, Thomas 72, 161, 174–178,

210–211, 218Black, Antony 41Bobbio, Norberto 3Bodin, Jean 157body metaphor 14, 74, 86, 119–130Boeke, Brandt B. 64, 116Boethius 99Bond of Association (1584) 119Bouwsma, William J. 19, 21Brachlow, Stephen 34–35, 182,

201, 209Bradford, John 30, 57, 99–100, 106,

137, 146, 162–163Calvin’s influence on 54, 57

Bradshaw, William 196Browne, Robert xiii, 15, 34–35,

85, 133theory of consent 15, 198–214, 225

Bucer, Martin 20, 27, 29, 55, 64, 101, 131, 156

Buchanan, George 80, 104, 129, 142Budé, Guillaume 84Bullinger, Heinerich 98, 131, 155, 168

Calvin and 51English Protestantism and 29, 32,

35, 51, 52, 55–57, 99, 101, 108, 115, 183–184, 188–190, 217–218

Burgess, Glenn xiii, 194Burns, J.H 41, 94, 123, 126

Cajetan, Cardinal 125–126Calvin, John/Calvinism 23, 26,

73–74, 79, 80, 84, 87, 97, 99–100, 109,

INdEx

246 index

131, 134, 155, 166–167, 172, 179, 207, 212, 215gynaecocracy and 64, 115–116influence in England 24, 29, 32,

39–40, 51–55, 107–108, 111, 116, 124, 132, 182–187, 191

Institutio 23, 54, 75, 132Knox and 64natural law and 63, 90, 136–137political thought 9, 23–24, 36,

199–201, 220–221providentialism 41, 45, 51–55

Cambridge University 29, 51, 54, 99, 101, 131–132, 201, 203, 206

Cameron, Euan 21, 91Campi, Emidio 51capitalism 51Carré, Meyrick H. 46, 70–71Cartwright, Thomas xiii, 33, 35, 72, 140,

206, 211Calvin and 185–186consent 203critique of the church 193–197republicanism of 193–194

Case, John 148, 211Catholicism (see also anti-

Catholicism) 4, 20, 49, 52, 57, 71, 75, 93, 95, 97–98, 113, 117–118, 123, 143, 145–146, 157, 172, 180, 219–220

Cato 100, 131Cecil, William 8, 116, 142Charles I 55, 70, 181, 227Cheke, John 50, 75, 160, 201Christopherson, John 51–52, 82,

117–118Chrysostom, John 146, 179church and state 213

Erastian model of 15, 174, 178, 196Hildebrandine model of 11, 15, 174,

196, 216Marsilian model of 15, 182medieval 43, 81Reformation and 12, 15Tudor theory of 15, 187, 197

Cicero 46, 78, 94, 99–101, 109, 112, 120–123, 126, 164–165

Clarke, John 143Cochrane, Charles Norris 64, 94,

120, 214Coffey, John 34, 55Cole, Graham A. 50, 161Cole, William 73

Coleman, Janet 9, 95, 102, 121Collingwood, R.G. 7Collins, Stephen L. 46, 63, 66, 120, 141Collinson, Patrick (see also monarchical

republic) xiii, 2, 34, 45, 132, 183, 190, 193, 197

commonwealth 47–48, 122, 127–128, 153, 167, 194

Conciliarism xi, 1, 120–122, 125–127, 161

Condren, Conal 11consent xiii, 4, 129, 153, Chapter Fourconstitution

mixed 155, 166, 193–195relativism 166, 194

Cooper, Thomas 215Corcoran, Paul E. 9covenant 217–218, 220Coverdale, Miles 30, 73, 102–103, 110,

158, 180Cox, Richard 72, 84Cranmer, Thomas 27, 29, 50, 52, 156,

160–161Cremeans, Charles davis 52, 108, 130Crespin, Jean 64Cromwell, Oliver 85Cromwell, Thomas 156Cunningham, Andrew 56, 62

d’Ailly, Pierre 121daniell, david 73danner, dan G. 31, 114, 124dante Alighieri 22, 44dawley, Powel Mills 76, 132, 186, 197dawson, Jane E. A 29, 53, 100, 115, 122,

124, 126, 128, 218democracy

Puritanism and 15, 194, 204religion and 6, 14seventeenth-century 14, 129Tudor view of 210–211

d’Entreves, A.P. 90, 110, 114, 147–150dering, Edward 35, 141,

143–144descartes, Rene 20diarmid, John F. 2, 198, 201dickens, A.G. 26, 27, 156divine Right 201donne, John 35donnelly, John P. 54, 99, 101doran, Susan 83, 218douglas, C. E. 33, 192dzelzainis, Martin 135, 196

index 247

Edward VI 5, 11, 13, 27, 31, 49, 60, 71, 79, 83, 99, 101–102, 110, 119, 157, 160, 162, 172, 186, 188Calvinism under 51–53, 179doctrine of obedience 30, 55, 57kingship of 9, 182rebellions under 30, 160Reformation under 28–30, 50, 57, 98,

107, 187republicanism under 30, 156–157,

182Elizabeth 9, 27, 49, 51, 59, 70, 80–81,

126, 128, 131–132, 136, 142, 144, 179–180, 182, 206, 210Act of Supremacy (1559) 15,

31–33, 169, 175, 180, 182, 187–188, 196

Act of Uniformity (1559) 15, 31–33, 188

Elizabethan Settlement 5, 13, 31–33legitimacy of gynaecocracy 64,

67–68, 78, 89, 133–135, 167, 172, 194

natural law in 90, 130–150Puritanism and 72, 83,

187–198, 208Vestiarian Controversy (1566) 33

Elton, G.R. 8, 11, 40, 45–46, 49, 76, 77, 80, 102, 154, 173, 186, 188–189

Elyot, Thomas 27, 47Enlightenment xi, 20Eppley, daniel 26, 28, 96, 141, 154,

191–192, 198, 201equality xi, 19, 25, 44, 200–201, 224Erasmus, desiderius 27, 47, 84, 98,

104–105, 117, 131Erastianism 12, 15, 155, 174, 178Evans, G.R. 95

Family of Love 45Fenlon, dermot 156Fideler, Paul A. 4–5, 142Field, John 191–192Filmer, Robert 185, 213, 223Finer, S.E. 155Fortescue, John 95, 119, 155, 178, 201fortune 48, 52, 83Foxe, John 83, 186Franklin, Julian H. 159Frarin, Peter 80Freeman, Thomas S. 83, 186, 218Frere, W.H. 33, 192Fulke, William 35, 204

Garrett, Christina 31, 74, 113, 124Garrisson, Janine 157Geneva 31–32, 74, 111, 116, 126, 131,

155, 166, 189, 197, 207, 215Geneva Bible 73, 136, 182–187Germany 183Gerson, Jean 44, 125Gierke, Otto 93Gifford, George 216Gilby, Anthony 31, 35, 73, 111, 133,

184–187, 197–198Glorious Revolution (1688) xiii, 6Goldie, Mark 143, 215Goldsmith, M.M. 199Gooch, G.P. 201Goodman, Christopher 31, 66, 73, 80,

100, 118, 119, 128, 164, 182, 219body metaphor 124–126natural law 114–115providentialism of 62–63

Gordon, Bruce 51Grabill, Stephen J. 91, 93Gratian 94, 105, 144, 148Great Chain of Being (see Order)Greaves, Richard L. 50, 73,

126, 167Green, Robert A. 142Greenleaf, W.H. 40, 64Gregory the Great 95Grell, Ole Peter 56, 62Grey, Jane 31Grindal, Edmund 72, 191, 196Grotius, Hugo 92Gualter, Rudolph 72, 84, 183Gunn, S.J. 7, 156Guy, John 11, 81, 156Guyatt, Nicholas 71, 228

Haddon, James 99Haigh, Christopher 29, 55, 138Hale, david G. 123, 127Hancock, Ralph C. 4, 23, 39Harding, Thomas 81Harrington, James 157Harrison, Robert 35, 141Hegel, G.W.F. 3Henry VIII xii, 5, 48–49, 60, 90, 102,

157–158, 160, 180, 186, 188Act of Appeals (1533) 11–13,

154–155, 158–159attack on Roman Catholicism 4, 27church and state 10–11, 26, 28,

155–156, 189, 216

248 index

Erasmus and 27Royal Supremacy 26–28, 96,

154–158Hill, Christopher 170, 216historiography 7–8, 12Hobbes, Thomas xi, 3–4, 40, 83, 153,

181, 192, 198–199, 213, 223Homily against Disobedience (1570) 77,

173Hooker, Richard (see also natural

law) xiii–xiv, 14, 25, 104, 113, 130, 149, 174, 216consent 223medievalism and 46–47, 68, 86–87natural law and 89, 91–92, 96–97,

110, 118, 136, 147–148providentialism and 46, 68Puritanism and 34, 86, 124, 136,

147–148, 184, 186, 192, 206Hooper, John 30, 52, 55, 100, 189

Calvin and 108Bullinger and 56, 108–110doctrine of obedience 57–59,

161–163natural law and 107–110providentialism of 57

Hopfl, Harro 45, 70, 77, 80, 104, 200, 220

Horn, Robert 35, 72Hudson, Winthrop S. 60–61, 100, 114,

120, 165humanism 25, 27, 46, 52, 73, 84, 92,

97–98, 104, 118, 131, 155, 165Humphrey, Laurence 31, 32, 35, 67–68,

73–75, 86, 119, 131, 137–138, 145, 169, 179, 210on Goodman, Ponet, and Knox 66,

129Hunt, William 34

Islam xi, 146Izbicky, Thomas M. 123

Jack, Sybil M. 157James VI & I 11, 129–130, 159, 170, 178,

180–181, 201, 212–213, 216, 227Jesuits (see Society of Jesus)Jewell, John 81, 124, 126, 174John of Paris 21–22, 120–121, 161John of Salisbury 86, 95, 123John Scotus Erigena 44Jones, Norman L. 5, 8, 142Jones, Whitney R.d. 27Justinian 94, 108, 131, 144

Kant, Immanuel xi, 20Kantorowicz, Ernst 9, 119, 125,

161, 172Keller, Jacob 80Kemp, Janet 33, 66, 74, 135, 179, 210,

213Kenny, Anthony 108Kethe, William 73Kingdon, Robert 8, 199, 224Kirby, Torrance xiii, 29, 32, 41, 45, 55,

71, 87, 147–149, 168, 175, 187–188, 190–191, 193, 206

Knewstub, John 141Knox, John xiii, 9, 14, 31, 63, 66,

69, 73, 80, 111, 118, 149, 164, 182, 219Aylmer’s response to 63, 89,

133–135, 170–172Calvin and 64gynaecocracy and 64, 88, 115,

133–135, 167, 172natural law 115–118order and 63–70political authority 166–168providentialism of 68–69,

167–168Knox, S.J. 148, 206Kretzmann, Norman 108

Lake, Peter xiii, 2, 8–9, 34, 187, 194–195, 201

Lamont, William M. 175, 222Lang, August 93, 98à Lasco, John 27, 183Latimer, Hugh 30, 98, 104Lessay, Franck 181Levellers 45, 142, 185liberalism xiiLilburn, John 213Lim, Paul C.H 34, 55Linder, Robert d. 183, 199, 224Lindsay, A.d. 199Loach, Jennifer 30Loades, david 4, 156–157Locke, John 40, 143, 215Lowers, James K. 76Lovejoy, Arthur O. 42Luoma, John K. 204Luscombe, d.E. 95, 108Luther, Martin 82, 96–98

equality 19–20, 44, 224individualism 19–20medieval tradition 20, 91political effects of 21, 25

index 249

political thought of 22, 36, 155priesthood of all believers 19–20,

44–45, 200providentialism of 45William of Ockham 41

McCullagh, C. Behan. 7McGiffert, Michael 218McGrade, A.S. 147, 223McGregor, J.F. 181McLaren, A.N. 11, 48, 78, 115, 128,

135, 155, 167–169, 191, 224McNiell, J.T. 89, 108, 200MacCulloch, diarmaid 26, 27, 29, 50,

52–53, 108, 183Macpherson, C.B. 4Machen, John G. 93Machiavelli, Niccolo 48, 52, 61, 83, 102,

167, 179Machyn, Henry 59Maddox, Graham 6, 23, 199, 213–214,

224Magna Carta 6Maior, John 121–123, 126Marshall, Peter 55, 138Marshall, William 27, 156Marsilius of Padua 95

English Reformation and 12, 27, 156

theory of church and state 15, 182Marprelate Tracts (1588–89) 217, 225Martin, J.W. 31Mary of Scots 63–64, 119Mary Tudor 5, 13, 31, 53, 59, 71,

81, 106, 116, 121, 124, 130, 133, 154–155, 166, 183, 187Protestant exile under 31, 57,

60, 74Protestant political literature

under 31, 62, 63–64, 74, 111–130, 149, 162–168, 219

Marxism xi, 12Mason, Roger A. 126, 129, 142Mayer, T.F. 4–5, 47, 142, 193Melanchthon, Philip 52–53, 80, 165Mendle, Michael xiii, 193Merbury, Charles 125, 194Mesnard, Pierre 2, 26Micronius, Martin 57Mildmay, Walter 119millenarianism 61Milton, John 23, 70, 135, 196,

210, 212Moller, Jens G. 217–218

Monahan, A.P. 1, 121, 161, 223monarchical republic 2, 30, 182,

193–195, 201–202monarchy 154, 157More, Thomas 84Morély, Jean 207Morgan, Edmund S. 35Morrall, J.B. 1Morris, Christopher 1, 40, 64, 90,

92, 98, 101–102, 114Muller, Richard A. 131Munz, Peter 43, 87, 99, 136, 140,

147–148, 198, 216Murray, R.H. 89, 199

natural law 3, 11, 84animals and 98, 104, 106, 117, 146Calvin and 63Hooker’s use of xiiiius gentium 67–68, 102–104, 135, 142,

144Protestantism and 14, 91, Chapter

Threestate and 21Tudor theory of 14, 89, Chapter

ThreeNeal, J.E. 7, 80, 119, 143, 170,

183, 217Nederman, Cary J. 64, 86Neelands, W. david 147Netherlands 92, 115, 122, 155,

190, 202–203, 210, 219nominalism 41, 92Northern Rebellion (1569) 75, 143Norton, Thomas 75–76, 144, 210Nowell, Alexander 32, 79, 80,

138, 149, 174

Oakeshott, Michael 3, 16Oakley, Francis 93, 121, 126obedience 58, 75–81, 79–80, 135–136,

146–147, Chapter FourOckham (see William of Ockham)O’donovan, Joan L. 95–96, 114, 147,

156, 161, 199, 213order (see also providentialism)

ancient conception of 46Augustine and 43, 64–65Calvin and 41cosmic 39–40, 50, 77decline of 42, 71, 83–84Great Chain of Being 39, 42, 49–50,

60–62, 70–71, 76, 83–84, 153humanism and 46–48

250 index

medieval 42, 46political thought and 69providence and 39–41, 49, 55, 61, 63,

71, 77, 89Puritanism and 42, 83Reformation view of 42, 44Tudor England Chapter Two

Organic metaphor (see body metaphor)Ormerod, Oliver 212Overell, M.A. 29Overton, Robert 213Oxford University 29, 51, 98–99, 101,

148, 211, 222Ozment, Steven 8, 20–21

Padgen, Anthony 9–11Paget, William 157Palonen, Kari 7Parker, Matthew 54, 188parliament 156–157, 167, 169, 172, 191Parsons, Robert 123Pascoe, Louis B. 44patristics 91–92, 146, 179, 214Paul 22, 55, 59, 84, 86, 98, 103, 109, 136,

139, 143, 165, 184Pearson, A.F. Scott 7–8, 35, 168, 186,

193–196, 204Peltonen, Markku 15, 52Penry, John 35, 107, 186, 217, 224–225Pettegree, Andrew 26, 31, 64Philpot, John 99Pinborg, Jan 108Plato 42, 97, 99–100, 112, 131, 135, 139Plutarch 46Pocock, J.G.A 8–10, 15, 42, 44, 46, 71,

156, 191political thought

anti-Catholicism and 15Calvinism and 9Christian 2conceptual background to 41, 61conceptual transition in 4–5, 10–11,

13, 16, 39–40, 51, 59, 70language and 10–11medieval 4, 93modern 4Oakeshott on 3order 69political theology xi, 2Protestant 1, 3, 5–7, 12providentialism in 13, 24, 39–40,

51–52, 54, 59, 75Reformation 1, 11, 16, 40religion and 8–9, 11, 14

secular historiography of 5–6, 9–10seventeenth-century 5sixteenth-century 1–6, 8Tudor xii–xiii, 1–2, 10vocabularies of 10–11

Ponet, John 31, 63, 66, 70, 100, 115, 118, 119, 135, 182, 201, 219body metaphor 120–123Conciliarism 120–122Great Chain of Being 60–61, 70mixed constitution 166natural law 111–114political authority 164–166Wyatt’s Rebellion (1554) 60

Poor Law Reform (1536) 27Porter, H. C. 54, 101potestas 11Presbyterianism (see also Thomas

Cartwright, Puritanism, Separatism) 84, 147–148, 181, 192, 193–197natural law and 140–141political thought of 7, 212–213sermons of 9Royal Supremacy and 15, 72, 163,

186–187predestination (see providentialism)Proctor, John 155Protestantism

authority and 14reason and 14, 55, 65, Chapter Three

providentialism (see also order) 43Calvin and 39–41, 51–55Homily on Obedience (1547) and 49Tudor England Chapter TwoKnox and 68medieval thought and 51, 60, 63natural portents and 61, 78, 81obedience and 58, 77–81order and 45, 49, 77, 84plague and 56, 80predestination 50, 52–53, 55Puritanism and 51, 54, 83political interpretations of 52seventeenth-century 55, 85, 153

Pseudo-dionysius 43–45, 77, 87Puritanism (see also Presbyterianism,

Separatism, Thomas Cartwright) xi, 2, 6, 14, 23, 32, 48, 72, 124, 148, 163, 166Admonition to Parliament

(1572) 32–33, 191–193challenge to authority 15, 35, 85, 147,

174, 180, 182, 199consent 181

index 251

democracy and 15, 212, 223equality and 84essence of 33European influence on 36Fortress of Fathers (1566) 35impact on seventeenth-century 33,

70, 85, 166, 185, 212, 223, 227meaning of 34–35natural law and 90–91, 113, 136,

140–143order and 40, 42, 71, 83–84providentialism of 51, 54, 83republicanism and 15, 223Royal Supremacy and 15, 72, 180,

187–198Swiss influence on 33, 72,

184–191

Raab, Felix 52Reay, B. 33, 181rebellion 79Regnans in excelsis (1570) 76, 143,

172, 220Reformation

church and state 12, 26church and 19effects of 20–21, 25English 13, 26–29English Revolution and 21equality and 25freedom and 20ideas and 8individualism and 19medieval political thought and 21modern politics and xii, 20, 199–201order and 44political thought and 16, 21, 89–90reason and Chapter Threescholasticism and 44, 91, 99Switzerland and 13, 28–29, 31, 175,

187–191, 219transitional epoch 19

Reid, W. Stanford 126–127, 166, 183republicanism (see also monarchical

republic) 156, 166–167, 172, 182, 200, 201–203, 222anti-Catholicism and 15, 209Calvin and 24classical 11, 15Puritan and Nonconformist 2, 15,

194–195Protestant 2, 15, 209religion and 14–15seventeenth-century 14

secular historiography of 2Separatism and 15

resistance theory 7–8, 13, 80–81, 119–130, 138, 149, 218–223

Ridley, Jasper 156Ridley, Nicholas 57Rogers, Thomas 194Royal Supremacy xiii–xiv, 15, 182,

187–198Rutherford, Samuel 136

sacerdotium 19Sampson, Thomas 73, 189–190Sandys, Edwin 32–34, 82–83, 85–86,

130, 144–145scholasticism xiv, 71, 89, 91, 92, 95–97,

131–132, 136Schmitt, Carl xiScott, Jonathan xiii, 5, 14, 21, 40, 45, 88,

157, 181, 213, 228Scotus, duns 101Seneca 134Separatism (see also Puritanism,

Presbyterianism, Robert Browne) xi, 32, 72, 85, 106–107, 166, 175, 185, 186, 191challenge to authority 15, 71, 163,

180, 182, 186–198consent 198–218democracy and 15, 223equality 25, 45, 71, 84essence of 33, 35natural law and 136, 140–142Puritans and 34–35republicanism and 15sermons of 9

Sewell, Keith 7Shagan, Ethan 29, 198Sharp, Andrew 185, 213Skinner, Quentin 4–5, 7, 9, 61,

105, 121, 156Slavin, A.J 4Smith, dwight C. 206Smith, M.S. 129, 142Smith, Thomas 201Society of Jesus 32, 70, 77, 123,

175–176, 216, 219–220Socrates 99sola scriptura 14, 30, 91, 93, 96, 99, 101,

138–139, 149Sommerville, J.P. 41–42, 91, 130, 140,

159, 185, 201, 213, 227Springborg, Patricia 181Sprunger, K.L. 206

252 index

Starkey, Thomas 47, 83, 123, 154state xii, 4, 125St German, Christopher 26, 95–96, 155,

192, 201Stein, P.G. 94Stoicism 54, 64, 94Strasbourg 31, 60, 130Strype, John 30, 104, 119, 157,

183, 196Sutcliffe, Matthew 211Switzerland 13, 33, 131, 183, 200

Taylor, Charles 8, 39, 43, 51, 199Thomas Aquinas 21, 44, 70, 95,

100–101, 108, 142, 145Thompson, W.d.J. Cargill 19–22, 41,

45, 92, 97, 147–148, 155, 200, 223Tierney, Brian 43, 92, 94, 121, 211Tillyard, E.M.W 1, 40, 70Todd, Margo 6, 8, 34–35, 42, 84, 98Traheron, Bartholomew 31, 53,

116, 164Trainor, Brian xiTravers, Walter 35, 148, 201–206Tregenza, Ian 16Trinterud, Leonard J. 133, 204Troeltsch, Ernst 2, 19, 21, 41, 43, 51,

63–64, 84, 90–91, 95, 199Tuck, Richard 15, 78, 136, 148, 153, 164,

211, 219Tulloch, John 98Tully, James 7Tyndale, William xiii, 27, 48, 97, 154,

157–158

Ullmann, Walter 44Unam Sanctam (1302) 43

Valla, Lorenzo 27Van Baumer, F.L. 1, 4, 11, 50, 90, 93, 95,

113, 154, 156Van Gelderen, Martin 5, 115, 122, 155,

202, 210

Van Kley, dale K. 24, 200Vermigli, Peter Martyr 41, 55, 100–101,

156, 175, 187Elizabeth and 168–169influence in England 54–55, 71, 124,

126, 188medieval thought and 45Oxford professorship 29

Walsham, Alexandra 83Walwyn, William 185, 213Walzer, Michael 39–40, 51, 69, 83–84,

91–92, 112–113, 118Watts, Michael 203, 207Weber, Max xi, 51Webster, Tom 55Weir, david A. 224Wentworth, Peter 7Whitaker, William 195White, John 183Whitgift, John xiii, 32, 55, 85–86, 132,

141, 172, 174, 193–194, 197, 215, 217Whittingham, William 73Wilburn, Percival 72, 183Wilcox, Thomas 191–192William of Ockham 9, 41, 92Williams, George H. 45Wilson, Thomas 130Winship, Michael P. xiii, 194Winthrop, John 228Witte, John 9, 20, 199–200, 207,

218, 224Wolin, Sheldon S. 3, 25, 43, 89,

200, 224Wollman, david H. 124Wood, Ellen Meiksins and Neal 4–5Woodhouse, A.S.P 85, 118, 143, 215Wriothesly, Charles 30, 160

Zagorin, Perez 185Zurich 32, 71, 175, 189–190, 219Zwingli, Ulrich 20, 22, 32, 36, 64, 80,

108, 217

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