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VOLUME 155
Tudor Protestant Political
Thought 15471603
By
Stephen A. Chavura
LEIDEN BOSTON
LEIDEN BOSTON
2011
Cover illustration: Hugh Latimer preaching before King Edward VI at Westminster in 1547,
from John Foxes Acts and Monuments.
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
320.55094109031--dc22
2011008583
ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 9789004206328
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
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provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
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Fees are subject to change.
Dedicated to my father
Rev. Dr. Michael Chavura
19502008
- C.H. Spurgeon
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Part I
The Reformation Context of
English Thought
Chapter One. The Reformation and its Ideas 19
Part II
God, Man, and Things
Chapter Two.Order and Will in Tudor Thought 39
Chapter Three. Reason, Nature, and Natural Law 89
Part III
Emerging Traditions of
Political Thought
Chapter Four. English Reformation Origins of Absolutism153
Chapter Five.Consent from Church to State181
Conclusion226
Bibliography229
Index245
Acknowledgements
The West is faced with political theology, from within and without. It
has never left Islamthere was never a secular Enlightenment that
swept through the Islamic worldand, in some ways, it has always
been with the West. Take, for example, Carl Schmitts 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 Schmitts 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
humanequality 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 Gods image universally distributed through-
out humankind? Even Kants 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 Gods 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
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.
xii preface
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 15001660 (Palgrave
Macmillan: NY, 2009) deals with ecclesiastical political thought at length.
xiv preface
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. 56. Arthur P. Monahan, From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late
Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 13001600, (Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queens 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.
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. 205206.
6
Pierre Mesnard, LEssor de la Philosophie Politique au XVIe Siecle, (Paris: Boivin,
1936), p. 663.
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. 78.
4 introduction
9
Norberto Bobbio, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition, Daniela
Gobetti(tr.), (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 89.
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, 15091688, (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. Macphersons
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.
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. 368413.
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, Englands 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 15551590,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 23. 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
6 introduction
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 didbut 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.
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.
introduction 7
23
On this see C. Behan McCullagh, The Truth of History, (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998), pp. 173177.
24
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956
[1946]), pp. 213214, 216, 222, 227.
25
I take the terms postitivist history and idealist history from Keith Sewells
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. 1416.
27
S.J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government 14851558, (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995),
p. 6. For an excellent example of a man acting on principle see J.E. Neales account of
Peter Wentworths 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. 263264.
8 introduction
28
A.F. Scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth-Century
Puritansim, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 131132.
29
G.R. Elton himself assured his readers that The stress so commonly laid in the
discussions of the Reformations 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. 109110. 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 Bezas 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 Cecils privately written notes on
usury, which show Cecils reasoning leading him to opt for its continued illegality in
England. William Cecil, pp. 169193.
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.
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 Kings Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political
Theology, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 8, 13, 1619.
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 Skinners 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.
10 introduction
42
Ibid., pp. 3132.
43
See my discussion of the body metaphor on pp.11930.
introduction 11
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 downresulting 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 Baumers 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
50
Ibid., pp. 2324.
introduction 13
51
Scott, Englands Troubles, p. 67.
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 15701640, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
16 introduction
53
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, 1991), pp. 1718. I thank Ian Tregenza for helpful discussions on
Oakeshotts writings on the history of political thought. See Tregenza (2003).
Part I
The Reformation Context of English Thought
Chapter One
1
W.J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance 15501640, (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.
20 chapter one
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 freedomfreedom
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 Kants enlightenment chal-
lengeSapere 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 Luthers attack on the church was an attack
on that institution that most epitomised organised hierarchy.9 Perhaps
Luthers 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 Reformersviz., Luther, Zwingli, and
Bucerwere enthusiastic to free Christians from a stifling system of
works and merits to a religion of sincerity and inward devotion, they
were equally nave 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
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.
the reformation and its ideas 21
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 Luthers 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
Steven Ozment, Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution, (New York: Image Books,
11
1991), p. 20.
12
Ibid., pp. 2021.
13
Bouwsma, Waning of the Renaissance, p. 95.
14
Jonathan Scott, Englands 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 (126567), ch.1, St.Thomas Aquinas
on Politics and Ethics, Paul E. Sigmund (ed. & tr.), (New York and London: Norton,
1988), p. 14.
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.iiiv, 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.
the reformation and its ideas 23
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. 471472.
28
Witte, Reformation of Rights, pp. 3980.
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.
24 chapter one
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,
Isay, 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.
32
Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis (153954), Corpus Reformatorum, vol.
29, p. 1102. For the Christian as pilgrim see Idem. Cf. Augustine, City of God, 19.17. See
Wittes discussion, Reformation of Rights, p. 48.
33
Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to
the Civil Constitution, 15601791, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1996), pp. 2223, 371.
the reformation and its ideas 25
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, 2728.
40
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 129.
26 chapter one
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 VIIIs 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 mans obsessive quest for a male heir,
rather than a nations search for the way back to the Church of the
Apostles.44 Yet the problem with interpreting the 1533 split with Rome
41
Pierre Mesnard, LEssor de la Philosophie Politique au XVIe Siecle, (Paris: Boivin,
1936), p. 13.
42
Cited in Daniel Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning Gods 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 and its ideas 27
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 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 thechurch 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.
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. 196197, 208.
47
G.W. Bernard, The Kings 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.
28 chapter one
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 Henrys 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 ofpower
left by Henrys 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
Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (Cambridge:
50
51
Philip Benedict, Christs 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 Shagans 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 15471553: An Alternative View, Sixteenth
Century Journal, XV/1 (1984): pp. 87104. 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. 439.
56
Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology, (Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2007). MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, pp. 173174.
30 chapter one
57
For a contemporary account see Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England dur-
ing the Reign of the Tudors, a.d. 1485a.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. 262263. Jennifer Loach consid-
ers the Western Rising as primarily religious and Ketts Rebellion as economic, Edward
VI, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 7088.
59
Alford, Kingship and Politics, p. 206.
the reformation and its ideas 31
Marian England
Edward VIs early death in 1553 and the ascension of his sister Mary
to the throne ushered in a brief English counter-reformation from
15531558.60 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,
ifthey had the means, fled to the Continent to wait for Englandonce
again to embrace the Reformation. Some eight hundred Protestantsfled
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 aswell.
Elizabethan England
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 15551560, (New
York: Peter Lang, 1999). For underground churches in Marian England, see J.W.Martin,
The Protestant Underground Congregations of Marys Reign, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 35/4 (October 1984): pp. 519538.
63
Benedict, Christs Churches Purely Reformed, p. 242.
32 chapter one
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 Calvins 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
amatter 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 Zurichs example?65 It was Elizabeths
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 queens
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
Elizabeths religious policy.
The Puritan and Nonconformist movements arose in reaction to
Elizabeths 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
64
Ibid, p. 244.
65
Kirby, Zurich Connection, pp. 23, 25.
66
Stuart Barton Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, (London: SPCK, 1962),
p. 4.
the reformation and its ideas 33
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. 12.
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.
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 15701625, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 5; Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan
Social Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 14.
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 15591625,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
76
Basil Hall, Puritanism: The Problem of Definition, Studies in Church History, 2,
(1965): pp. 283296.
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.
the reformation and its ideas 35
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).
Part II
God, Man, and Things
Chapter Two
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 Calvins 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 Gods dynamic will working
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 Walzers 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. 122
for a discussion of providentialism and its impact on political action. Cf Taylor, Secular
Age, p. 125.
40 chapter two
3
See W.H. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics: Two Traditions of English
Political Thought 15001700, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), passim;
Christopher Morris, Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1953), pp. 1626.
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, Englands Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability
in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 43.
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.350c.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 Ockhams cosmology that describe an
Ockhamist universe as a universe ruled by Gods arbitrary will, where all norms
couldhave easily been different. For Tierney, Ockhams 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 Luthers 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.
42 chapter two
Medieval order
8
J.P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 16031640, (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. 2466.
order and will in tudor thought 43
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 Augustines 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. 164165.
16
Unam Sanctam (November 1302), Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State
10501300, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p. 189.
44 chapter two
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. 84103.
20
Louis B. Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform, (Leiden: Brill, 1973),
pp. 1730.
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.
order and will in tudor thought 45
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, Englands Troubles, pp. 253, 270.
26
Vermigli, Ciuill and ecclesiasticall power, in Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 86.
46 chapter two
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. Carr holds
that discourse on fixed order was distinctively medieval. For Carr, the
thought of Richard Hooker was Englands 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 Gods 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 mans 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
inEnglish humanist literature for rational order in the universe and
27
G.R. Elton, England under the Tudors, (London: Methuen, 1955), p. 396.
28
Ibid, p. 261.
29
Meyrick H. Carr, 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.
order and will in tudor thought 47
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.
48 chapter two
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 15581585, (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 & xxvxxxi.
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.
order and will in tudor thought 49
some Great Chain of Being but used the plainer vocabulary of divine
arrangementvocation. Although a preoccupation with divine will
was evident in Henrician Protestant thought its importance increased
noticeably in Edwardian (154753) 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.
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 Gods 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
43
Homily on Obedience (1547), G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents
and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 15. Italics
added.
50 chapter two
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, Cranmers 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.
order and will in tudor thought 51
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
Calvins 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 ones salvation could be temporally confirmed by
worldly prosperity.51 By the beginning of Elizabeths 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
Elizabeths 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 Gods 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
54
Christopherson, Exhortation to Beware of Rebellion, (London, 1554), fol. Y v.
55
See Raab, English Face of Machiavelli, pp. 6970, 73; Markku Peltonen, Classical
Republicanism in Tudor England: The Case of Richard Beacons 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. 387388.
57
John Calvin, Institutio Religionis Christianae (153954), 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.
order and will in tudor thought 53
Traheron to Bullinger (Sept. 10, 1552), Original Letters relative to the English
59
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 (153954), 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. 3637. See also John Patrick
Donnellys study, which argues that Calvins theological influence was not as profound
as has been previously thought. Also, he argues that Peter Martyrso influential in
Edwardian Englanddid not get his predestinarianism from Calvin but from the
order and will in tudor thought 55
likes of Paul, Augustine, and Martin Bucer. Italian Influences on the Development of
Calvinist Scholasticism, Sixteenth-Century Journal, VII/1, (April 1976): pp. 81101, 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 Bullingers 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 15001640,
(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.
56 chapter two
70
John Hooper, Declaration of the Ten Holy Commandments of Almighty God
(1550), Early Writings, p. 272.
71
Ibid., p. 367.
72
Ibid., p. 363364.
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. 272294.
order and will in tudor thought 57
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 Gods 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 orders 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 Gods 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.
Hoopers 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
75
Hooper, Homily in Time of Pestilence (1553), Later Writings of John Hooper,
Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), pp. 161162 & 165.
76
Original Letters, vol. 1, pp. 324, 100, 273, 365, 143144; 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. 5860.
77
John Bradford, Meditation on the Commandments (1562), Bradford containing
Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, pp. 161162.
78
Martin Micronius to Henry Bullinger (August 14, 1551), Original Letters, vol. 2,
p. 574.
58 chapter two
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.
order and will in tudor thought 59
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 Gods 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 Gods 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 magistrates very
existence is the ordinance of God. Second, disobedience breaks
down Gods laws which troubleth the public and common peace, and
giveth other stomach and encouraging to disobey.84 This was not
Hoopers last word on the subject. In 1553, towards the end of King
Edwards life, he speculated in a publicly read homily on whether the
plague was Gods punishment for Englands lack of religious zeal. Rebels
in mind and deed were quite possibly responsible for Englands 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 Gods will.
Discourse on order and hierarchy was current during Englands most
radical period of Reformation, but the complex medieval metaphysical
Ibid., p. 105.
83
Ibid., p. 109.
84
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.
60 chapter two
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 Gods 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 tracts 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
Ponets 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.
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.
order and will in tudor thought 61
Yet Ponets 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 Ponets
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 Gods anger towards Englands 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 Ponets 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. Ponets celestial speculations may not have been true, but given
the belief of the time that God reveals his dispositions through natural
events, Ponets insistence on comets and birth deformities was surely
rational.92
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. 2756. Besides this, speculation of eschatological signs was common in Europe.
62 chapter two
It was a time when nature was a book and phenomena signified Gods 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. 4647.
97
Ibid., p. 96.
98
Ibid., p. 135.
order and will in tudor thought 63
Ponet and Knoxs, was basically unspeculative. But like Ponet, Goodmans
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 Goodmans 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 Gods
will. Gods will, being free and irresistible, is able to justify innovative
and, by medieval standards, almost counterintuitive political exhorta-
tions. In Ponets 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 Gods dynamic will.
discourse fusing divine will with cosmic order. At the same time, there
is a tension in Knoxs 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 Calvins argument, and simply
affirmed a double sovereignty of cosmic order and divine will. Calvins
desperate attempt to distance himself from Knoxs ideas was to no avail.
The book bore the insignia of Jean Crespins press in Geneva. Calvins
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
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, Calvins Doctrine of
Civil Government, Studia Biblica et Theologica, 11, (1981), p. 62.
101
Andrew Pettergree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies, (Aldershot: Scolar Press,
1996), pp. 145146.
102
Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, pp. 456, 479480, 483484, 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.126127; Martin Bucer, Common Places of Martin Bucer, D.F. Wright (tr. & ed.),
(Appleford: The Sutton Courtnay Press, 1972), pp. 97, 99. Cf. Troeltschs 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, 4457; Morris, Political Thought in
England, pp. 2021. Cf. Cary J. Nederman, Body Politics: The Diversification of Organic
Metaphors in the Later Middle Ages, Pensiero Politico Medievale, II (2004), pp. 5987.
order and will in tudor thought 65
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. 389390. 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.
66 chapter two
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 Aylmers belief that the political realm derives its or-
der from the natural realm. See Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State,
pp. 1617.
order and will in tudor thought 67
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.
68 chapter two
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.
order and will in tudor thought 69
115
Anonymous, The Epistle of a Banyshed Manne out of Leycester Shire (1554),
Knox, Works, vol. 3, p. 259.
116
Ibid., p. 261.
70 chapter two
117
Harro Hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State
c.15401630, (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. 1116.
order and will in tudor thought 71
J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the
121
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.
order and will in tudor thought 73
128
David Daniell, The Bible in English, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003),
pp.294295.
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. 94109.
131
Geneva Bible, 2 Thes. 3: 10.
132
Ibid., Prov. 11: 2.
133
Greaves, Traditionalism and the Seeds of Revolution, p. 95.
74 chapter two
134
For an examination of Optimates, see Kemp, Laurence Humphrey, pp. 7680.
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. 193194.
135
Laurence Humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye, (London, 1563), fols. A iiiii,
C iiiiiii, D ii.
136
Ibid., fol. B vii.
137
Ibid., fol. C vii.
138
auncientye
139
Ibid., fol. C vi.
140
Ibid., fol. E vii.
order and will in tudor thought 75
Thomas Norton, To the Queenes Maiesties Poore Deceiued Subiectes (n.c. 1569),
141
fol. A iii.
142
Ibid., fols. A ivB ii.
143
Ibid., fol. B i.
144
Ibid., fol. E iiii.
76 chapter two
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. 410418.
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.
order and will in tudor thought 77
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 womenbut all Kings, Queens, and other
governors are specially appointed by the ordinance of GOD.156 Nature
also had a way of enforcing Gods 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 Gods 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
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 15721651, (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 15581585, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), passim.
order and will in tudor thought 79
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 Gods 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.
Gods 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
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. 97120.
164
Nowell, Catechism, pp. 130131.
165
An Act againstbullsfrom the see of Rome (1571), Elton, Tudor Constitution,
pp. 418422. For an account of the passing of this act, see J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her
Parliaments 15591581, (London: Tha Alden Press, 1953), pp. 225234.
166
For example, the Jesuit, Peter Frarins 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.
order and will in tudor thought 81
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 mans power or right: we have disor-
dered no commonwealth.168 The assertion that we have decayed no
mans 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 Gods will
in natural aberrations. During Marys 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
Gods revelation and judgment in nature and polity. The liturgical serv-
ices of Elizabeths 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 Marys 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 Gods 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 Gods displeasure in the laxity of English social
order. The interpretation of the 1580 earthquake contains a succinct
John Jewel, The Defence of the Apology of the Church of England (15701),
168
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. 567568.
82 chapter two
171
Ibid, pp. 570571.
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 Queens most royal person
(1585), Elton, Tudor Constitution, p. 76.
order and will in tudor thought 83
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 Foxes Book of Martyrs, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (eds.), The Myth of
Elizabeth, (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2003): pp. 2755; Alexandra Walsham, A Very
Deborah? The Myth of Elizabeth I as Providential Monarch, idem, pp. 143168.
84 chapter two
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,
Troeltschs 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 Bud, 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
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. 67, 182, 196197.
184
An Exhortation to the Byshops to deale Brotherly with theyr Brethren (n.p. 1572),
fol. Biiii.
order and will in tudor thought 85
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 (16479)
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.
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 Salisburys 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. 3536. By and large
Salisburys Policraticus seems to have been ignored by ecclesiastics.
192
Edwin Sandys, Fifth Sermon, pp. 99100. Italics added. Cf. Cary J. Nederman,
Physiological Significance, passim.
193
Sandys, The Tenth Sermon (1585), Sermons, p. 186.
order and will in tudor thought 87
Conclusion
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. 4243. See also pp. 3031.
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.
88 chapter two
The presence of fixed order and the new emphasis on Gods dynamic
will did not sit well together. For fixed order was a limit to Gods power,
but Gods absolute power made fixed rank and order somewhat mean-
ingless. Knoxs political thought demonstrates such a tension. If the
old concept of fixed ranks can be used to argue against a political
innovationsay, gynaecocracyan appeal to Gods 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 Knoxs 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.
197
Scott, Englands Troubles, p. 73.
198
Ibid, pp. 73, 153.
Chapter Three
Introduction
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.
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. DEntreves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas,
Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker, (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), p. 95.
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 16031640, (London and New York: Longman,
1986), p. 14.
12
Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991),
pp. 112113.
13
Ibid., pp. 136137.
14
Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 1, p. 344.
92 chapter three
15
W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, (Sussex:
Harvester Press, 1984), p. 79. Cf. Brian Tierneys critique of historians who are quick
to characterise Ockhams 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.
reason, nature, and natural law 93
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.
August Lang, The Reformation and Natural Law, J. Gresham Machen (tr.),
18
William Park Armstrong (ed.), Calvin and the Reformation, (Grand Rapids, Baker,
1980 [1909]), p. 92.
19
See Francis Oakley, Locke, Natural Law and GodAgain, History of Political
Thought, XVIII/4, (Winter 1997): pp. 624651.
20
Ernest Barker, Translators Introduction, Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory
of Society 15001800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), p.xli.
21
Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law, p. 57.
94 chapter three
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 Gratians 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 Justinians 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 Christs Golden Rule of doing
for others what we would for ourselves. Natural law, for Gratian, was
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. 4748.
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.350c.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).
reason, nature, and natural law 95
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, 2.12.78, 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 (14681471), 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 ODonovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English
Reformation, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 3, 43. Cf. Baumer, Early Tudor Theory,
96 chapter three
pp. 128, 136137. Eppleys 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 Gods Will in Tudor
England, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 61141.
34
ODonovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 46.
reason, nature, and natural law 97
Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 81. See also W.D.J. Cargill
35
40
Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 185186.
41
Lang, The Reformation and Natural Law, pp. 7298.
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 3:2122.
45
Hugh Latimer, Sermon of the Plough (1548), Sermons by Hugh Latimer, Parker
Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), p. 69.
reason, nature, and natural law 99
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 Calvins life. Calvins 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 Aristotles views on the nature of money; he also gave
explicit approval of Aristotles 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 humankinds 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
46
John Patrick Donnelly, Italian Influences on the Development of Italian
Scholasticism, Sixteenth Century Journal, VII/1, (April 1976), pp. 8586.
47
Peter Munz exaggerates the Protestant hostility to Aristotle when he says that
To Protestants Aristotle appeared as the bulwark of scholastic philosophywhich
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 (15481550), 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. 283284.
50
Harding to Bullinger (October 19, 1551), ibid., pp. 309310; 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. 2122.
100 chapter three
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 Bradfords objection to the pursuit of quiddities and haecicities
he was happy to admit that, among other characteristics, humankinds
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 rulers will.60 Peter
Martyr Vermiglis 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
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
(15361554), 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. 356362.
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. 407408.
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.
reason, nature, and natural law 101
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
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.
102 chapter three
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.
reason, nature, and natural law 103
69
Miles Coverdale, The Christen Rule or State of All the Worlde (1547), p. 4.
70
Ibid., pp. 45.
71
Ibid., p. 5.
72
Ibid., p. 9.
73
Ibid. Cf. Romans 13:5.
74
Ibid.
104 chapter three
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. Coverdales 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 mens 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 Gods 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
asideas it would todayas quaint; Erasmus spent some time trying
75
Ibid., pp. 2223. 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 Buchanans 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.15401630, (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.
reason, nature, and natural law 105
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 life79in 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
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. 225226, 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 viiviii.
106 chapter three
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 Gods punishment for sin.83 The order of things
can be stopped only by will: if by Gods will, it is according to wisdom,
if by humankinds, 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 Bales 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 churchmens 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,
83
Ibid., fol. A viii.
84
Ibid., fol. B.
85
John Bradford, Prayer on the Ten Commandments (n.d.), Sermons, Meditations,
Examinations, pp. 256262.
86
Bradford, Meditation on the Commandments, p. 161.
87
Bradford, A Supplication unto the King and Queens Most Excellent Majesties
(c. November or December 1554), in Sermons, Meditations, Examinations, p. 403.
reason, nature, and natural law 107
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 Hoopers thought on natural law comes with his
discussion of the fifth commandment. Hoopers 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 dams 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
88
Henry Barrow, A Plaine Refutation of Mr. George Giffardes Reprochful Booke
(15901591), The Writings of Henry Barrow 15901591, 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 Penrys notes on Romans he commented
on 2:13 and 2:15, omitting 2:14the locus classicus for natural law theory (see idem,
p. 12).
90
John Hooper, Declaration, p. 359.
108 chapter three
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 Calvins theology of the Lords Supper; furthermore,
he was exceedingly displeased with Calvins 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 McNeills brief account of Bullingers natural law theory, Natural Law,
pp. 178179.
reason, nature, and natural law 109
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 2:1415.
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.
110 chapter three
106
Miles Coverdale, A Christen Exhortation unto Customable Swearers, (n.c.
1552), p. 6
107
Ibid., p. 7
108
Cf. DEntreves, Medieval Contributions, pp. 9192.
reason, nature, and natural law 111
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. 1112.
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.
112 chapter three
115
Knox, A Godly Letter to the Faithful in London, Works, vol. 3, p. 179180.
116
Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, p. 101.
117
Knox, Extract from Knoxs Book of Discipline (drafted in 1560 but not
published until 1621), Porter (ed.), Puritanism, pp. 198203.
118
Knox, First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, (1558), Works,
vol. 4, p. 374.
119
Ibid., p. 413.
120
Ibid., p. 448.
reason, nature, and natural law 113
121
Christina Garrett contends that Ponet took some inspiration from Peter Martyr
of Anglerias 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. 256257
122
Cited in Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, p. 141.
114 chapter three
123
Morris, Political Thought in England, p. 151. Cf. ODonovan, Theology of Law and
Authority, p. 7.
124
Hudson, John Ponet, pp. 131132; Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, pp. 102103.
125
Speaking of Ponet, Goodman, and Knox, DEntreves 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. 7071.
128
Goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd, p. 12.
reason, nature, and natural law 115
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 Goodmans 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 Knoxs 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
Knoxs 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.
129
Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 15551590,
(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 15581583,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 51.
116 chapter three
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, Calvins
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).
reason, nature, and natural law 117
136
Ibid., p. 393.
137
Ibid., p. 396.
138
Erasmus, Institutio, p. 212.
118 chapter three
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 Knoxs 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, Gods religion should be the chief concern of every
magistrate.140 It is clear from this that Knoxs 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 wasnever
to happen again in ecclesiastical political thought in the Tudor period.
The greatest achievement of Tudor political thought, Hookers 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
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 DEntreves, 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 (16471649) from the Clarke Manuscripts
with Supplementary Documents, (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938), Introduction,
pp.3839.
reason, nature, and natural law 119
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.
143
I say absurd because in Ponets and Goodmans 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, Kings
Two Bodies, pp. 255258, 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?
AView of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford, 1588), p. 34.
120 chapter three
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
Ponets use of the metaphor, indicating the divines 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. Ponets 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 Ponets use of the metaphor. Winthrop Hudson in
his substantial study of Ponets life and thought attributes the metaphor
to Ciceros 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 Ponets language and argument are
similar to Ciceros, Ponets 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,
Ponets use of the body metaphor is identical to Ciceros. Generally
speaking, Ponet is seen to have been inspired by the conciliarists of the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, most notably John of
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]).
reason, nature, and natural law 121
Paris and Pierre DAilly.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 Ponets 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.
Heassumed 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 Ponets argument made amputation
necessary but the English tradition of headship made it implausible.
Ponets 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 Ponets thought, heads were
deprived, not cut off: it is more in accordance with the light of nature
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 11501625, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 253.
149
Skinner, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 224, 227228.
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.
122 chapter three
152
John Maior, Disputation on pope and council (1518), Burns and Izbicky (eds.),
Conciliarism and Papalism, pp. 292293.
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. 157165.
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
Ponets body metaphor. Idem, pp. 228229.
reason, nature, and natural law 123
And by that justice and law, that lately hath been executed in England
(ifit 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 mans 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
Ibid., p. 108. Italics added. Cf. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VI.26; Cf. Starkey,
157
Dialogue, p. 105. Ponets natural law invocation is identical to John Maiors, 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. 292293.
158
David George Hale, The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English
Literature, (Paris: Mouton, 1971), p. 81.
124 chapter three
Christopher Goodman
159
Christina Garrett believed that in December 1555 he was directly involved in a
plot against Queen Marys 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 Ponets method as an anticipation of Hookers,
as far as the Protestant tradition is concerned. The Biblical Justification to Resistance
to Authority in Ponets and Goodmans 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 Goodmans 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. 185186.
165
Anderson, Royal Idolatry, pp. 174175.
reason, nature, and natural law 125
166
Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie (London, 1581),
(Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 22.
167
Ernst Kantorowicz, The Kings 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 Gersons 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.
126 chapter three
John Knox
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 Knoxs 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. 45. See also Francis Oakley, Christian Obedience and Authority, 15201550,
Burns (ed.), Cambridge History of Political Thought 14501700, pp. 194200; Roger
A. Mason, Knox, Resistance and the Royal Supremacy, Mason (ed.), John Knox,
pp. 154175.
175
Jewel to Martyr (n.d.), Zurich Letters, pp. 3334.
reason, nature, and natural law 127
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 15581585,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 1221.
reason, nature, and natural law 129
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.
reason, nature, and natural law 131
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 Platos 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
reasonreason sans revelationto apprehend Gods 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, Platos Laws and Commonwealth were to
be studied diligently along with Justinians 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
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 iiiiv.
193
Ibid., fol. Y vi.
132 chapter three
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. 4042. 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. 109110.
198
See Patrick Collinsons treatment, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London:
Jonathon Cape, 1967), pp. 168176.
reason, nature, and natural law 133
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.
134 chapter three
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 (15391554), p. 286.
204
Aylmer, Harborovve, fol. D.
reason, nature, and natural law 135
209
Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or The Law and the Prince (1644), (Harrisonburg,
Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1982).
210
Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 15721651, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), pp. 6364.
211
Epistle, Geneva Bible (1560), (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969),
fol.iii.
212
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 40.
reason, nature, and natural law 137
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 15001640, (London: Arnold,
1997), p. 248.
reason, nature, and natural law 139
222
Alexander Nowell, Catechism (1570), Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1853), pp. 138139.
140 chapter three
223
Ibid., p. 125.
224
Ibid., p. 137.
225
Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 16.
226
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 114.
reason, nature, and natural law 141
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 ones 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
Ibid, p. 152.
228
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.
142 chapter three
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. 195219.
234
Henry Barrow, Four Causes of Separation, (1587), The Writings of Henry Barrow
15871590, 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. 177179.
236
George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots: A Critical
Edition and Translation of George Buchanans 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.
reason, nature, and natural law 143
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 Vs Regnans in excelsisa 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 Pauls epistle to the Romans. Earlier
on in that epistle Paul charged humankind with knowing both the
splendor of God and his worthiness. Pauls natural law theory refers to
237
Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Introduction, pp. 9495. Cf. Captain John
Clarkes 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.
Andbefore this light can take place again that darkness must be removedthat can-
dleof reasonwhich doth seduce and entice us to wander from God. (idem, p. 38).
John Locke, in his 16631664 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 Pauls clear testimony to the contrary (Romans 2:1415)
necessarily flowed from Lockes rigid empiricism. Essays on the Law of Nature,
PoliticalEssays, 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, 15591581,
(London: The Alden Press, 1953), pp. 177234.
239
Dering, Sermon, fol. D i.
144 chapter three
240
Romans 1:1821
241
Edwin Sandys, Sermons of Edwin Sandys, Parker Society, (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1841), p. 203.
242
Romans 2:1415.
243
Justinian, Institutes, 1.2.
244
Norton, Declaration, fol. A a iiii
reason, nature, and natural law 145
Ibid., p. 98.
246
146 chapter three
247
Laurence Humphrey, A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford 1588),
p. 40.
248
Ibid., pp. 5556.
249
Ibid., p. 58.
reason, nature, and natural law 147
After this fleeting proof for his natural doctrines, Humphrey returned
to the example of the dog as the paradigm for political fidelity.
Humphreys 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 Hookers 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
Hookerthis great Protestant scholastic252considered 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 Hookers 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
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 Hookers 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. ODonovan, 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 Hookers suspicion of arguments from scripture alone see DEntreves,
Medieval Contributions, pp. 106107.
254
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 40. Cf. Hooker, Lawes, Preface, 8.6. For Hookers
exaggeration of Puritan biblicism, see Thompson, Philosopher of the Politic Society,
p. 24.
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 Hookers Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, (Leiden:
Brill, 1990), pp. 15, 17, 2021, 26, 60.
258
As was the case with the Oxford Aristotelian philosopher and contemporary of
Hooker John Case. See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, pp. 147148.
259
Hooker, Lawes, I.3.4, I.5.15.2.
260
Ibid., I.12.1.
261
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 206. Cf. DEntreves, Medieval Contributions, p. 89.
reason, nature, and natural law 149
Conclusion
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.
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 states origin and legitimacy in the individual wills of con-
tractors or covenantors. But how did English political thought become
1
Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, Ch.17, Richard Tuck (ed.), (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
2
Ibid.
154 chapter four
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.
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 Gods law and ordinance. If the subjects sin they must
be brought to the kings 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 Starkeys 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
3
Franklin Le Van Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship, (New York: Russell
and Russell, 1966 [1940]), pp. 8687, 127.
4
William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) cited in Daniel Eppley,
Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning Gods Will in Tudor England, (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007), p. 20.
5
Ibid, pp. 2032.
6
Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (15291532), 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. 344349.
english reformation origins of absolutism 155
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. Powernaively enoughwas 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 princes 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 BezaCalvins
successor in Genevaobserved 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
regale. See Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 15551590,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1924.
10
Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 6466.
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. 12621263, 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 15581585, (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.
156 chapter four
15
Dermot Fenlon, Thomas More and Tyranny, Journal of Ecclesiastical History,
33/4, (October 1981), pp. 468469.
16
Joan Lockwood ODonovan, 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. 5354; 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 15001800, (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, 22627.
21
S.J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government 14851558, (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995),
pp.184185. 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.
english reformation origins of absolutism 157
23
See Janine Garrisson, A History of Sixteenth-Century France, 14831598, Richard
Rex (tr.), (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 279318.
24
Jonathan Scott, Englands 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 Edwards 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 princes good.
The Letters of William, Lord Paget of Beaudesert 15471563, Barrett L. Beer and Sybil
M. Jack (eds.), Camden Miscellany vol. XXV, (London: Royal Historical Society, 1974).
Also, Loads, Tudor Government, pp. 1718. 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, Englands Troubles, pp. 54, 59.
28
Exodus 22; Psalms 82.
158 chapter four
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.
english reformation origins of absolutism 159
Ibid., p. 6.
32
Ibid., p. 20.
33
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.
160 chapter four
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. 163187.
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.
english reformation origins of absolutism 161
[Kings] be Gods Anointed, not in respect of the oil which the bishop
useth, but in consideration of their power which is ordainedand 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 Gods 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 Gods authority being mediated through popular or conciliar con-
sent.41 Cranmers 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 Cranmers exact words nearly forty years
later.43
40
Cited in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The Kings Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political
Theology, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 318. Cf. Graham
Arthur Cole, Cranmers 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
ODonovan, Theology of Law and Authority, p. 86. Cf. Cole, Cranmers 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.
162 chapter four
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 thatthe 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
Hoopers 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
Gods 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, Bradfords
45
Ibid., p. 366.
46
Hooper, Annotations on Romans XIII (1551), Later Writings of Bishop Hooper,
Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), pp. 103104.
47
Hooper, Declaration, pp. 352353, 360362, 364.
48
Ibid., pp. 362363.
49
This prayer was composed during the Edwardian reign but not published until
after Bradfords 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. 254255.
english reformation origins of absolutism 163
tone turned and he emphasised not the subjects allegiance to the prince
but the princes 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 Gods 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 Gods 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
Lords 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 kings 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.
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.
164 chapter four
ones 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 Traherons 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 15561558, 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 Gods 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 thoughtperhaps 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,
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 15721651,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 130.
english reformation origins of absolutism 165
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 Ponets 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? Ponets 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 Ponets Augustinian vision of politics coercive power is a manifes-
tation of original sin. Ponet located the origins of political power in
Gods 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 onebeastis
able to rule an other: and that therefore God ordained civil power(hismin-
ister) to rule him, and to call him back, whensoever he should passthelim-
its of his duty, and would that an obedience should be given unto him.63
Ibid., p. 4.
60
61
Ibid., p. 6. For Ponets 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. 13539, 149154.
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.
166 chapter four
64
Ibid., p. 98. Cf. Aristotle, The Politics, 1279b11280a1.
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. 208216.
68
W. Stanford Reid, John Knoxs Theology of Political Government, Sixteenth
Century Journal, XIX/4, (1988), p. 530.
english reformation origins of absolutism 167
69
Christopher Goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd (Geneva, 1558),
(Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), p. 148.
70
Ibid., pp. 148149.
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 155888, History of Political Thought, XVII/2, (Summer 1996),
pp. 245246.
168 chapter four
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 Gods 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.
73
Cited by A.F. Scott Pearson, Church and State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth
Century Puritanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 8081.
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 Elizabeths 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 Mulcasters Account of Queen Elizabeths SpeechJanuary 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.198199.
english reformation origins of absolutism 169
Martyr, the princes 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 Elizabeths
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 Elizabeths
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
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 Elizabeths speech dissolving Parliament, January
2, 1567, Collected Works, pp. 59 & 105.
81
McLaren, Political Culture in Elizabethan England, p. 32.
170 chapter four
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 Realms 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 fromat leastparliamentary 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
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 1597twelve. J.E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, (Middlesex: Penguin,
1963 [1949]), pp. 410411.
85
Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 16031714, (Edinburgh: Thomas
Nelson and Sons, 1961), pp. 5364.
86
Allen, Political Thought in the Sixteenth-Century, pp. 249250.
english reformation origins of absolutism 171
deal less jeopardy), considering the strife that could arise from com-
peting factions.87
Aylmers 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 Gods direct or close gov-
ernment from humankind, replacing Gods 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 majestytherefore 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 kings 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 Aylmers
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 Gods lieutenant our sovereign, in forwardness, and helping
her both with our goodsand bodies, when need is, every man in
87
John Aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithfull and Trevve Subiectes (Strasbourg, 1559),
fol. B2.
88
Aylmer, Harborovve, fol. M2.
89
Ibid., fol. M3.
172 chapter four
90
Ibid., fol. Q3.
91
Ibid., fol. H3.
92
Thomas Norton, To the Queenes Maiesties Poore Deceived Subiectes (1569), fol. C.
On the princes invincibility and the liturgical origins of the concept, see Kantorowicz,
Kings Two Bodies, p. 8. For the Aristotelian and theological origins of the matrimonial
metaphor, see idem, pp. 212218, 223.
93
Thomas Norton, A Warning agaynst the Dangerous Practises of Papistes (1569),
fol. B iii.
english reformation origins of absolutism 173
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 ofthe
people. It unequivocally stated that monarchy was simply theonlygodly
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 KingdomsandDominions
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 Elizabeths reign. Given Elizabeths distrust for
sermons composed by preachers beyond her surveillance, all parish-
ioners would have known that there is a similitudebetween the
heavenly Monarchy, and earthly kingdoms well governed. Indeed,
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. 179184.
96
An Homilie against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1570), Certaine Sermons
or Homilies Appointed to be Read in the Time of Queen Elizabeth I (15471571),
(Gainesville, Florida: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968), p. 278.
174 chapter four
Ibid., p. 278.
97
99
William M. Lamont in his essay The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson saw ambigu-
ity as the dominant feature of Bilsons 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 Lamonts interpretation of Bilsons 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.
176 chapter four
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.
english reformation origins of absolutism 177
107
Ibid., p. 257. Cf. p. 261.
108
McLaren, Political Culture, p. 142.
109
Bilson, Trve Difference, pp. 358359.
110
Ibid., p. 261.
111
Ibid., pp. 242243.
178 chapter four
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.
english reformation origins of absolutism 179
Laurence Humphrey, A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford, 1588),
116
pp. 3536.
117
Ibid., p. 39.
118
Ibid., pp. 4445.
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 Elizabeths reign with a new dedication to her.
180 chapter four
Conclusion
Introduction
1
Jonathan Scott, Englands 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, Hobbess Covenant
Theology and Its Political Implications, in P. Springborg (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Hobbess Leviathan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
p.263.
182 chapter five
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 theoristsPonet, 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
boynot even rulingthat 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
Elizabeths 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
3
Scott, Englands 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 15701625, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 235236.
consent from church to state 183
8
Philip Benedict, Christs 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, Christs Churches Purely
Reformed, p. 236.
11
Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, (London: Jonathon Cape,
1967), pp. 141142.
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
Iand Her Parliaments 15591581, 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.
184 chapter five
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 Goodmans and Knoxs seditious writings gave the Puritans
even greater reputation as trouble-makers. It was no secret that
Elizabeth disliked the Geneva school of Protestantism. Calvins 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 Gods 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 Pauls
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 Gods 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
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.
consent from church to state 185
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 Christianconformist or notwould 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. Gilbys assurance of no link between the Geneva tradition
and sedition made no impression. In Richard Bancrofts 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 councilConsis-
torymade up of pastors to scrutinise the moral habits of the congre-
gation was the elusive hope of the English Puritan and Separatist
movements. Thomas Cartwrights Presbyterian ecclesiology resembled
Calvins. Indeed, he stayed in Geneva in 1570, the year that he gave his
controversial lectures on Acts, which gave theoretical justification for
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. 4692.
186 chapter five
22
A.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 15361603,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), p. 53; Cf. Neal, Elizabeth I and Her
Parliaments 15591581, 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, Christs 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
Foxes Book of Martyrs, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, The Myth of Elizabeth,
(Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): pp. 2755.
31
An Act whereby certain offences be made treasons (Second Treasons Act of
Elizabeth) (1571), Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 7276.
consent from church to state 187
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.
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.
188 chapter five
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. 189233.
37
The one positive doctrine essential to and distinctive of the Elizabethan church
system was the doctrine of royal supremacyNo one could say precisely what it
was that the church was supposed to teach, unless it were the doctrine of royal
consent from church to state 189
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 VIIIs 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 wroteto
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
admitsof 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
supremacy. J.W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, (London:
Methuen, 1928), p. 180.
38
G.W. Bernard, The Kings Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English
Church, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 571.
39
Ibid, pp. 573574.
190 chapter five
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. 211212.
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.
consent from church to state 191
Bullinger and Gualter to Grindal and Horn (September 6, 1566), Zurich Letters,
46
p.254.
47
A.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Common
wealth 15581585, (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, Christs Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism,
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 248; Kirby, Zurich Connection,
pp. 367; Daniel Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning Gods Will in
Tudor England, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 147149.
192 chapter five
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.
consent from church to state 193
unto God for her Majestys 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 Majestys 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 Kirbys words, to resurrect
the jurisdictional pretensions of the papacy.56
The upshot of the Puritan attack on the Royal Supremacy wasareturn
to a medieval view of auctoritas and potestas. The government couldnot
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 Cartwrights 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
54
A Second Admonition to Parliament (1572), Puritan Manifestos, Frere and
Douglas (eds.), pp. 8586.
55
Zanchius to Elizabeth (September 10, 1571), Zurich Letters, p. 369.
56
Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 40.
57
Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 16031714, (Edinburgh: Thomas
Nelson and Sons, 1961), p. 80.
58
A.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 15351603,
(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
Cartwrights political thought see Michael Mendle (1985, pp. 648). More recently
194 chapter five
see Glenn Burgess (2009, 99100, 115, 11720); Peter Lake (2010, pp. 463495);
Michael P. Winship, (2009, pp. 105455) and Winship (2006, 43237).
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. 335336. Italics added.
64
Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie, (London, 1581),
(Amsterdam: Theartum Orbis Terrarum, 1972), pp. 1625.
consent from church to state 195
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, Cartwrights complaint that his opponents refused
to distinguish his ecclesiology from more broadly political issues was
nave. 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, andcouncils, Cartwright spoke of the preached word and the
congregation:
According to the rules of God prescribed in his wordthey [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 Cartwrights heavy emphasis on Elizabeths 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 Cartwrights return
to England from teaching in the Netherlands, served a warrant for his
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.ODonovan, 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. 295296; Dawley, John Whitgift, p. 143.
69
Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 6061.
196 chapter five
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.
consent from church to state 197
William Fulke, A Brief and Plain Declaration (written in 1573 and published in
74
1584), Leonard J. Trinterud (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1971), pp. 297298. Italics added.
75
Dawley, John Whitgift, p. 162.
76
Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 245246.
198 chapter five
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 Gods
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
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. 177178; 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.
consent from church to state 199
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. 656657; 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. 117118; 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, 155156.
85
Graham Maddox, Religion and the Rise of Democracy, (London and New York:
Routledge, 1996), p. 152. Cf, ODonovan, 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, Hobbess Science of Politics, (New York and London: Columbia
University Press, 1966), p. 150.
200 chapter five
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. 130131.
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 Luthers conciliarist phase (1510 and 1520, evident
in his To the Christian Nobility (1520), see Thompson, idem, pp. 137138.
91
Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, p. 703.
92
J.T. McNeill, The Democratic Element in Calvins 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. 6364.
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. 9193; Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution:
From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 15601791, (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.
consent from church to state 201
96
This was curiously omitted by Gooch, who spoke of Brownes 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. 6373.
202 chapter five
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 peoples 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 onlythe
magistrates chosen by them administer and govern the affairs of thecom-
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
mens hands: but after that they had once given the helm into the handsof
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 peoples 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 kings 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 Gods eyes their empire and
supreme power.110 Many of these ideas were more fully developed in
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 15551590,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 191192.
107
A Defence and True Declaration (1570), M. Van Gelderen (ed.), The Dutch
Revolt, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 20, 4647, 51.
108
Ibid, pp. 20, 52.
109
Address and Opening to Make a Good, Blessed and General Peace in the
Netherlands (1576), ibid, pp. 8285.
110
Political Education (1582) in ibid, p. 194.
consent from church to state 203
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
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. 2324.
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.
204 chapter five
ropositions, each of which was at odds with the current state of the
p
church. He advocated both the abolition of episcopacy and the congre-
gational election of ministers. Cartwight was forced to flee to Geneva
from 157072, 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 Whitgifts 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
Cartwrights 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 Cartwrights appreciation of consent.118 In 1573 it was feared
that the popularity of Cartwrights 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 Cartwrights 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
116
See Benedict, Christs Churches Purely Reformed, pp. 248250.
117
T. Cartwright, A Replye to An Answer Made of M. Doctor Whitgifte (n.p. 1573),
p. 44.
118
Ibid, p. 49.On Cartwrights 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. 89, 15, 19, 27, 7377, 153.
119
Pearson, Thomas Cartwright, p. 104. See also pp. 105106.
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.
consent from church to state 205
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.
206 chapter five
128
Ibid, p. 6.
129
Ibid, p. 60
130
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 Hookers 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. 289349.
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.
consent from church to state 207
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 Queens 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 Elizabeths 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
churchs 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 writtenHe 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
Brown was not the first Protestant to make the congregation the sphere of power.
137
Jean Morly was a French aristocrat who moved to Geneva in 1554 and began writing
and teaching congregationalism. For Morly, 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 Traict 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. 97101.
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. 156
140
Ibid., p. 157
208 chapter five
Browne, A booke which showeth the life and manners of all true Christians
142
143
Browne, A booke, pp. 334335.
144
Brachlow, Communion of Saints, pp. 157, 164, 177.
145
Browne, A booke, p. 334. Original italics.
210 chapter five
146
Browne, A booke, pp. 336339. All italics original.
147
The title page of Thomas Nortons 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. 191192.
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 Bilsons 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. 345346).
consent from church to state 211
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. Brownes 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
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. 4647.
160
Milton, Defence, p. 177.
consent from church to state 213
James VI and I, Basilicon Doron, p. 26. Brownists were also confused with the
161
English sect The Family of Love, who espoused a radical earthly equality and commu-
nism. See Kemp, Laurence Humphrey, p. 134.
162
Englands Memorable Accidents, 26 September2 October 1642, p. 27, cited in
Scott, Englands 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. 342344.
166
John Lilburn, A freemans 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. 3132, 34, 55 respectively. Note
Overtons 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.
214 chapter five
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. 112113
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
consent from church to state 215
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 Nyes sobering
words during the 1648 Whitehall Debates. A.P.S. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty:
Being the Army Debates (16471649) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary
Documents, (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938), pp. 146147. 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 15871590, Elizabethan Separatist Texts, (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1962), pp. 140141.
173
Barrow, The Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c. (1586), The Harlein Miscellany,
(London: Robert Dutton, 1809), vol. 2, p. 14.
174
Ibid., p. 20.
216 chapter five
175
Ibid., pp. 3031.
176
Cited in Hill, Century of Revolution, p. 80.
177
Munz, Place of Hooker, pp. 97, 131, 142.
consent from church to state 217
186
Ibid., pp. 5456. Michael McGiffert, Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of
Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism, Harvard Theological Review, 75/4,
(1982), pp. 472473.
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. 259261.
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 Foxes Book of Martyrs, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (eds.), The Myth of
Elizabeth, (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 2755.
191
Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c., p. 37.
consent from church to state 219
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. Bilsons 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 Elizabeths 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 Gods 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.
Bilsons 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:
192
Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 15721651, (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. 313314. Italics added.
195
Ibid., p. 339.
220 chapter five
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 Magistrates
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 Knoxs 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 Godcovenant
resistance theorywas 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 Elizabeths
excommunication by Rome. Eventually the theory became common-
place in Catholic resistance theory.199 When Bilson explicitly denounced
the idea that a princes legitimacy depends on the princes 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 Calvins
text, arguing instead that the Reformer merely counseled passive diso-
bedience, not active rebellion.201 Indeed, anyone other than the higher
196
Ibid., p. 348.
197
Ibid., p. 512.
198
Ibid., pp. 516517.
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. 499500.
201
Ibid., pp. 509510. 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
consent from church to state 221
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.
222 chapter five
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 placerepublics:
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 princes 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 mans law, and so not prohibited by
Gods 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 realms 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 authorisedand monitoredpresses in
England.
The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson, Journal of British Studies, 5/2 (May 1966), p. 22.
consent from church to state 223
Conclusion
It was the concern of both defenders and critics to ensure that Gods
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 aflat-
tened imagery of a society where, ideally, the members were equal.213
The thought of Barrow and Penry fits Wolins 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
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. Maddoxs discussion, Religion and the Rise of Democracy,
pp. 157169; Cf. Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, pp. 665666; Witte, Reformation
ofRights, pp. 277319.
213
Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 138.
214
McLaren, Political Culture, p. 48.
consent from church to state 225
215
The Epistle, The Marprelate Tracts, 1588, 1589, William Pierce (ed.), (London:
James Clarke, 1911), p. 80.
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 Gods 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
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
later the man who signed James sons 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 Gods 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 Godthe 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.
2
Oliver Cromwells Letters and Speeches, Thomas Carlyle, 3 vols., (London, 1857),
vol. 1, p. 295. Cited in Jonathan Scott, Englands 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
16071876, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 26.
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Index
131, 134, 155, 166167, 172, Coleman, Janet 9, 95, 102, 121
179, 207, 212, 215 Collingwood, R.G. 7
gynaecocracy and 64, 115116 Collins, Stephen L. 46, 63, 66, 120, 141
influence in England 24, 29, 32, Collinson, Patrick (see also monarchical
3940, 5155, 107108, 111, republic) xiii, 2, 34, 45, 132, 183, 190,
116, 124, 132, 182187, 191 193, 197
Institutio 23, 54, 75, 132 commonwealth 4748, 122, 127128,
Knox and 64 153, 167, 194
natural law and 63, 90, 136137 Conciliarism xi, 1, 120122, 125127,
political thought 9, 2324, 36, 161
199201, 220221 Condren, Conal 11
providentialism 41, 45, 5155 consent xiii, 4, 129, 153, Chapter Four
Cambridge University 29, 51, 54, 99, constitution
101, 131132, 201, 203, 206 mixed 155, 166, 193195
Cameron, Euan 21, 91 relativism 166, 194
Campi, Emidio 51 Cooper, Thomas 215
capitalism 51 Corcoran, Paul E. 9
Carr, Meyrick H. 46, 7071 covenant 217218, 220
Cartwright, Thomas xiii, 33, 35, 72, 140, Coverdale, Miles 30, 73, 102103, 110,
206, 211 158, 180
Calvin and 185186 Cox, Richard 72, 84
consent 203 Cranmer, Thomas 27, 29, 50, 52, 156,
critique of the church 193197 160161
republicanism of 193194 Cremeans, Charles Davis 52, 108, 130
Case, John 148, 211 Crespin, Jean 64
Catholicism (see also anti- Cromwell, Oliver 85
Catholicism) 4, 20, 49, 52, 57, Cromwell, Thomas 156
71, 75, 93, 95, 9798, 113, Cunningham, Andrew 56, 62
117118, 123, 143, 145146, 157,
172, 180, 219220 DAilly, Pierre 121
Cato 100, 131 Daniell, David 73
Cecil, William 8, 116, 142 Danner, Dan G. 31, 114, 124
Charles I 55, 70, 181, 227 Dante Alighieri 22, 44
Cheke, John 50, 75, 160, 201 Dawley, Powel Mills 76, 132, 186, 197
Christopherson, John 5152, 82, Dawson, Jane E. A 29, 53, 100, 115, 122,
117118 124, 126, 128, 218
Chrysostom, John 146, 179 Democracy
church and state 213 Puritanism and 15, 194, 204
Erastian model of 15, 174, 178, 196 religion and 6, 14
Hildebrandine model of 11, 15, 174, seventeenth-century 14, 129
196, 216 Tudor view of 210211
Marsilian model of 15, 182 DEntreves, A.P. 90, 110, 114, 147150
medieval 43, 81 Dering, Edward 35, 141,
Reformation and 12, 15 143144
Tudor theory of 15, 187, 197 Descartes, Rene 20
Cicero 46, 78, 94, 99101, 109, 112, Diarmid, John F. 2, 198, 201
120123, 126, 164165 Dickens, A.G. 26, 27, 156
Clarke, John 143 Divine Right 201
Cochrane, Charles Norris 64, 94, Donne, John 35
120, 214 Donnelly, John P. 54, 99, 101
Coffey, John 34, 55 Doran, Susan 83, 218
Cole, Graham A. 50, 161 Douglas, C. E. 33, 192
Cole, William 73 Dzelzainis, Martin 135, 196
index 247
Edward VI 5, 11, 13, 27, 31, 49, 60, 71, Garrett, Christina 31, 74, 113, 124
79, 83, 99, 101102, 110, 119, 157, Garrisson, Janine 157
160, 162, 172, 186, 188 Geneva 3132, 74, 111, 116, 126, 131,
Calvinism under 5153, 179 155, 166, 189, 197, 207, 215
doctrine of obedience 30, 55, 57 Geneva Bible 73, 136, 182187
kingship of 9, 182 Germany 183
rebellions under 30, 160 Gerson, Jean 44, 125
Reformation under 2830, 50, 57, 98, Gierke, Otto 93
107, 187 Gifford, George 216
republicanism under 30, 156157, Gilby, Anthony 31, 35, 73, 111, 133,
182 184187, 197198
Elizabeth 9, 27, 49, 51, 59, 70, 8081, Glorious Revolution (1688) xiii, 6
126, 128, 131132, 136, 142, 144, Goldie, Mark 143, 215
179180, 182, 206, 210 Goldsmith, M.M. 199
Act of Supremacy (1559) 15, Gooch, G.P. 201
3133, 169, 175, 180, 182, Goodman, Christopher 31, 66, 73, 80,
187188, 196 100, 118, 119, 128, 164, 182, 219
Act of Uniformity (1559) 15, body metaphor 124126
3133, 188 natural law 114115
Elizabethan Settlement 5, 13, 3133 providentialism of 6263
legitimacy of gynaecocracy 64, Gordon, Bruce 51
6768, 78, 89, 133135, 167, Grabill, Stephen J. 91, 93
172, 194 Gratian 94, 105, 144, 148
natural law in 90, 130150 Great Chain of Being (see Order)
Puritanism and 72, 83, Greaves, Richard L. 50, 73,
187198, 208 126, 167
Vestiarian Controversy (1566) 33 Green, Robert A. 142
Elton, G.R. 8, 11, 40, 4546, 49, 76, 77, Greenleaf, W.H. 40, 64
80, 102, 154, 173, 186, 188189 Gregory the Great 95
Elyot, Thomas 27, 47 Grell, Ole Peter 56, 62
Enlightenment xi, 20 Grey, Jane 31
Eppley, Daniel 26, 28, 96, 141, 154, Grindal, Edmund 72, 191, 196
191192, 198, 201 Grotius, Hugo 92
equality xi, 19, 25, 44, 200201, 224 Gualter, Rudolph 72, 84, 183
Erasmus, Desiderius 27, 47, 84, 98, Gunn, S.J. 7, 156
104105, 117, 131 Guy, John 11, 81, 156
Erastianism 12, 15, 155, 174, 178 Guyatt, Nicholas 71, 228
Evans, G.R. 95
Haddon, James 99
Family of Love 45 Haigh, Christopher 29, 55, 138
Fenlon, Dermot 156 Hale, David G. 123, 127
Fideler, Paul A. 45, 142 Hancock, Ralph C. 4, 23, 39
Field, John 191192 Harding, Thomas 81
Filmer, Robert 185, 213, 223 Harrington, James 157
Finer, S.E. 155 Harrison, Robert 35, 141
Fortescue, John 95, 119, 155, 178, 201 Hegel, G.W.F. 3
fortune 48, 52, 83 Henry VIII xii, 5, 4849, 60, 90, 102,
Foxe, John 83, 186 157158, 160, 180, 186, 188
Franklin, Julian H. 159 Act of Appeals (1533) 1113,
Frarin, Peter 80 154155, 158159
Freeman, Thomas S. 83, 186, 218 attack on Roman Catholicism 4, 27
Frere, W.H. 33, 192 church and state 1011, 26, 28,
Fulke, William 35, 204 155156, 189, 216
248 index
political thought of 22, 36, 155 Monahan, A.P. 1, 121, 161, 223
priesthood of all believers 1920, monarchical republic 2, 30, 182,
4445, 200 193195, 201202
providentialism of 45 monarchy 154, 157
William of Ockham 41 More, Thomas 84
Morly, Jean 207
McCullagh, C. Behan. 7 Morgan, Edmund S. 35
McGiffert, Michael 218 Morrall, J.B. 1
McGrade, A.S. 147, 223 Morris, Christopher 1, 40, 64, 90,
McGregor, J.F. 181 92, 98, 101102, 114
McLaren, A.N. 11, 48, 78, 115, 128, Muller, Richard A. 131
135, 155, 167169, 191, 224 Munz, Peter 43, 87, 99, 136, 140,
McNiell, J.T. 89, 108, 200 147148, 198, 216
MacCulloch, Diarmaid 26, 27, 29, 50, Murray, R.H. 89, 199
5253, 108, 183
Macpherson, C.B. 4 natural law 3, 11, 84
Machen, John G. 93 animals and 98, 104, 106, 117, 146
Machiavelli, Niccolo 48, 52, 61, 83, 102, Calvin and 63
167, 179 Hookers use of xiii
Machyn, Henry 59 ius gentium 6768, 102104, 135, 142,
Maddox, Graham 6, 23, 199, 213214, 144
224 Protestantism and 14, 91, Chapter
Magna Carta 6 Three
Maior, John 121123, 126 state and 21
Marshall, Peter 55, 138 Tudor theory of 14, 89, Chapter
Marshall, William 27, 156 Three
Marsilius of Padua 95 Neal, J.E. 7, 80, 119, 143, 170,
English Reformation and 12, 183, 217
27, 156 Nederman, Cary J. 64, 86
theory of church and state 15, 182 Neelands, W. David 147
Marprelate Tracts (158889) 217, 225 Netherlands 92, 115, 122, 155,
Martin, J.W. 31 190, 202203, 210, 219
Mary of Scots 6364, 119 nominalism 41, 92
Mary Tudor 5, 13, 31, 53, 59, 71, Northern Rebellion (1569) 75, 143
81, 106, 116, 121, 124, 130, 133, Norton, Thomas 7576, 144, 210
154155, 166, 183, 187 Nowell, Alexander 32, 79, 80,
Protestant exile under 31, 57, 138, 149, 174
60, 74
Protestant political literature Oakeshott, Michael 3, 16
under 31, 62, 6364, 74, Oakley, Francis 93, 121, 126
111130, 149, 162168, 219 obedience 58, 7581, 7980, 135136,
Marxism xi, 12 146147, Chapter Four
Mason, Roger A. 126, 129, 142 Ockham (see William of Ockham)
Mayer, T.F. 45, 47, 142, 193 ODonovan, Joan L. 9596, 114, 147,
Melanchthon, Philip 5253, 80, 165 156, 161, 199, 213
Mendle, Michael xiii, 193 order (see also providentialism)
Merbury, Charles 125, 194 ancient conception of 46
Mesnard, Pierre 2, 26 Augustine and 43, 6465
Micronius, Martin 57 Calvin and 41
Mildmay, Walter 119 cosmic 3940, 50, 77
millenarianism 61 decline of 42, 71, 8384
Milton, John 23, 70, 135, 196, Great Chain of Being 39, 42, 4950,
210, 212 6062, 7071, 76, 8384, 153
Moller, Jens G. 217218 humanism and 4648
250 index
Starkey, Thomas 47, 83, 123, 154 Van Kley, Dale K. 24, 200
state xii, 4, 125 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 41, 55, 100101,
St German, Christopher 26, 9596, 155, 156, 175, 187
192, 201 Elizabeth and 168169
Stein, P.G. 94 influence in England 5455, 71, 124,
Stoicism 54, 64, 94 126, 188
Strasbourg 31, 60, 130 medieval thought and 45
Strype, John 30, 104, 119, 157, Oxford professorship 29
183, 196
Sutcliffe, Matthew 211 Walsham, Alexandra 83
Switzerland 13, 33, 131, 183, 200 Walwyn, William 185, 213
Walzer, Michael 3940, 51, 69, 8384,
Taylor, Charles 8, 39, 43, 51, 199 9192, 112113, 118
Thomas Aquinas 21, 44, 70, 95, Watts, Michael 203, 207
100101, 108, 142, 145 Weber, Max xi, 51
Thompson, W.D.J. Cargill 1922, 41, Webster, Tom 55
45, 92, 97, 147148, 155, 200, 223 Weir, David A. 224
Tierney, Brian 43, 92, 94, 121, 211 Wentworth, Peter 7
Tillyard, E.M.W 1, 40, 70 Whitaker, William 195
Todd, Margo 6, 8, 3435, 42, 84, 98 White, John 183
Traheron, Bartholomew 31, 53, Whitgift, John xiii, 32, 55, 8586, 132,
116, 164 141, 172, 174, 193194, 197, 215, 217
Trainor, Brian xi Whittingham, William 73
Travers, Walter 35, 148, 201206 Wilburn, Percival 72, 183
Tregenza, Ian 16 Wilcox, Thomas 191192
Trinterud, Leonard J. 133, 204 William of Ockham 9, 41, 92
Troeltsch, Ernst 2, 19, 21, 41, 43, 51, Williams, George H. 45
6364, 84, 9091, 95, 199 Wilson, Thomas 130
Tuck, Richard 15, 78, 136, 148, 153, 164, Winship, Michael P. xiii, 194
211, 219 Winthrop, John 228
Tulloch, John 98 Witte, John 9, 20, 199200, 207,
Tully, James 7 218, 224
Tyndale, William xiii, 27, 48, 97, 154, Wolin, Sheldon S. 3, 25, 43, 89,
157158 200, 224
Wollman, David H. 124
Ullmann, Walter 44 Wood, Ellen Meiksins and Neal 45
Unam Sanctam (1302) 43 Woodhouse, A.S.P 85, 118, 143, 215
Wriothesly, Charles 30, 160
Valla, Lorenzo 27
Van Baumer, F.L. 1, 4, 11, 50, 90, 93, 95, Zagorin, Perez 185
113, 154, 156 Zurich 32, 71, 175, 189190, 219
Van Gelderen, Martin 5, 115, 122, 155, Zwingli, Ulrich 20, 22, 32, 36, 64, 80,
202, 210 108, 217