SHCT 155 Chavura - Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547-1603 PDF

Tudor Protestant Political Thought 15471603
Studies in the History of

Christian Traditions
General Editor
Robert J. Bast
Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with
Henry Chadwick, Cambridge
Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee
Eric Saak, Liverpool
Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York
Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen
John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana
Founding Editor
Heiko A. Oberman
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.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chavura, Stephen A.
Tudor Protestant political thought, 1547-1603 / by Stephen A. Chavura.
p. cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; 155.)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20632-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Political science--Great Britain--
History--16th century. 2. Christianity and politics--Great Britain--History--16th century.
3. Great Britain--Politics and government--1485-1603. I. Title. II. Series.
JA84.G7C43 2011
320.55094109031--dc22
2011008583
ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 9789004206328
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Dedicated to my father
Rev. Dr. Michael Chavura
19502008
Children are often very reticent to their parents.A strange feeling

of diffidence pervades a seeking soul, and drives it from its friends.
- C.H. Spurgeon
Contents
Acknowledgements 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
This book began in 2001 under the supervision of Professor (now

Emeritus) Graham Maddox at the University of New England,
Armidale, New South Wales. Working with Graham was a humbling
and uplifting experience. His analysis of my work, and the period of
thought in general, proved to be both intellectually refining and excit-
ing. He is a wonderful exemplar of what a scholar should aspire to.
I was also pleased to have the opportunity to get to know his wife,
Carol, as well as his remarkably gifted family (those who live in
Australia, anyway).
I also thank the examiners of the original dissertation for their very
able criticism and encouragement: Paul Corcoran, John Tonkin, and
Glenn Burgess. Of course, they bear no responsibility for any short-
comings of this study.
The best experience I had while researching this book was to spend
a month as a Student Fellow at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin
Studies, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. In hindsight there is
no way I would have been able to complete my research without the
materials I gathered from the Meeter Center. The assistance given to
me by Dr. Karin Maag, Mr. Paul Fields, and Mr. Kalvin Budiman made
my research experience most pleasant. My roommate, Dariusz Bricko
(now Dr Bricko), showed me around Grand Rapids and the neighbour-
ing towns, introducing me to all his friends on the way. The time
I spent at Grand Rapids will always be treasured.
Over the years I have spoken and corresponded with numerous
people who have offered insights. Some of them did not even know
I was writing this book, so they must be distanced from any of its
deficiencies. In no particular order I thank Conal Condren, Bruce
Mansfield, David Rollison, Dan Eppley, Richard Muller, Wilfred Prest,
Paul Corcoran, Nicholas Aroney, Andrew Sharp, Phil Lynott, Tod
Moore, and Robert Linder. My colleague at Macquarie University,
Ian Tregenza, kindly read the entire manuscript and his comments
were insightful and constructive. I also thank those who participated
in the Australasian Political Studies Association conferences of 2004
and 2005, the New Zealand Political Studies Association conference
2004, and the Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and
x acknowledgements
Early-Modern Studies conference, 2005 where I presented parts of

this book. I am grateful to Cary J. Nederman for inviting me to the
American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington,
D.C. 2005 to present on his panel. I also appreciated the opportunity
to present some of my research to the Evangelical History Association,
Robert Menzies College, Macquarie University, 2006. I especially thank
Associate Professor Stuart Piggin and Professor Robert Linder for
their comments. Others who contributed to the intellectual life of
this work are David and Bronwyn Gawthorne, Gino Erispe, Adam and
Alphia Possama, Eric Jones, the Politics Department at Macquarie
University, and the regular attendees of the Evangelical History
Association meetings, especially Meredith Lake and Geoff Treloar.
The staff at Brill were a model of guidance and professionalism.
Ivo Romein was always prompt in communication and happy to guide
me through the alien world of publishing. His constant encourage-
menthelped fuel my motivation. I owe a huge debt to the anonymous
expert reader and to Series Editor Professor Robert J. Bast, whose
comments and suggestions on the original manuscript uncovered all
sorts of sins of omission and commission. Good proof-readers cover a
multitude of howlers. The later stages of the publication process were
aided by the wonderful work of Meredith McGroarty and Debbie de
Wit. Their time, patience and effort is greatly appreciated.
If my siblingsJulianne, Kristy and, Timlived in early-modern
England they may have complained about the households useless
member which contributeth nothing to the body oeconomic.
Nonetheless, I thank them for not cauterizing me or cutting me off.
I thank my mother, Merilyn, who encouraged my research at all
times.
To my wife, Xanthi, I give thanks for being so patient with me as
I worked on this manuscript. You joined me half-way through this
journey as my best friend and finished it with me as my wife. What
took us so long?
Preface
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
he defines it as the only sphere where power is intrinsically legitimate.

The state can coerce because it is the state. Whether we like it or not, as
a matter of historical fact, our thought is to a great degree shaped by a
collective theological subconscious.
In many ways the story of modern political thought is of a quest to
find non-theological justifications for political and social givens, which
previously had their justifications in Christian visions of God, human-
kind, and the good. Whole shelves are filled with weighty tomes by the
twentieth-centurys most gifted philosophers seeking to demonstrate
that we should on occasion set our power to the side and accommodate
the needs of the weak. This is so much liberalism, but prior to the
Enlightenment most philosophers only needed to read the Sermon
on the Mount to be convicted of obligations that have only tenuous
rational foundation, or duties that are destroyed when based on theo-
ries of enlightened self-interest. If the liberal state is like a hotel, as it
has been likened to, where people live and dwell together but partici-
pate in no collective goal or endevour, then it is a hotel haunted by
whispers of a religious past, whispers which may be mistaken by the
guests as moral intuitions.
This study offers an account of the political ideas of Tudor Protestant
ecclesiastics, thus it is an account of early-modern political theology.
It is the suspicion of many historians that modern politics arises out of
the Reformation, for it was there that the medieval ideal of the church
dominating the state was overcome, that the state found itself without
any earthly rival, that the individual was roused with a duty to work out
his own salvation directly before God, and that individual conscience
became the centre of the moral universe for so many. The central argu-
ment of this book is that the social, political, and religious upheavals of
the time were having their toll on political ideas, which bore the impres-
sion of an age in which traditional institutions and modes of thought
were being redefined and replaced. If political ideas bear the impres-
sion of the institutions and ideas of the society from which they spring,
then the tumultuous nature of sixteenth-century Europe must account
for the tensions, ambivalences, ambiguities, and incoherence of much
Tudor Protestant political thought.
There have been many excellent studies of Tudor political thought
published over the last few years and I hope I have made good use of
the best of them. This is certainly not meant to be a definitive history of
English Reformation thought, indeed, the thought of Protestants under
Henry VIII is barely dealt with. In many ways this is not a conventional
history of thought at all. It is not a seamless, chronological account of
preface xiii
political ideas. I am more interested in a history of concepts. This has

its limitations, for a history of concepts will inevitably involve repeti-
tion, as each chapter revisits familiar events and personalities to recon-
sider their ideas in the light of a new concept, whether natural law or
government by consent. However, a conventional history of political
thought will tend to anchor ideas and texts to the relentless flow of
events throughout the period, leaving little time to explore aspects of
thought that are fascinating in themselves but difficult to fit into an
account where social and political history take priority over the ideas
of the time. I hope my readers will not begrudge me offering, in many
ways, several independent though related, studies of concepts in six-
teenth-century England.
I have focused on ecclesiastical thought because the most celebrated
accounts of early-modern political thought tend to ignore it. Where are
the debates between Knox and Aylmer, Whitgift, Browne, Cartwright,
and Hooker in the most important surveys of early-modern political
ideas written since the mid-1970s? They are largely ignored.3 Yet they
were considered vital debates in their day and, as some historians
including myself suspect, prepared the path for absolutism, consent,
popular participation, and sovereignty to become political common-
places. This is far from a definitive account of Tudor Protestant politi-
calthought and there is a great need for a modern chronological study
of Protestant political ideas from Tyndale right up to the Glorious
Revolution.
One final note must be made. Although the thought of Richard
Hooker is referred to throughout this study, references to his ideas
are, however, merely cursory. This has nothing to do with this writers
opinion regarding the worth or significance of Hookers contribu-
tion to political ideas, which stands as the culmination of theologi-
caland political thought in sixteenth-century England. It was Hooker
who succeeded most in assimilating the learning of the day into a
coherent defence of the Royal Supremacy. Hookers ideas on natural
law and consent will be addressed as a way of pointing out inconsisten-
cies in the ideas of the churchmen who wrote before him. Although,
for Hooker, the scholastic method was his choice of approach, he was
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
always a Reformed theologian who tried to demonstrate Reformed

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

great historian of political ideas, J.W. Allen, it was essentially medieval.
Yet Franklin Le Van Baumer in his classic study stressed the innovative
character of Tudor political thought. E.M.W. Tillyard declared the
Elizabethan world picture to be wholly medieval. Christopher Morris
largely concurred. More recently Arthur P. Monahan has stressed the
innovative character of Reformation political thought as a result of new
(Protestant) theological premises.1 Could it be that the very nature of
sixteenth-century thought leads to such divergent understandings of
its spirit and content? John B. Morrall called the period between the
fifteenth-century and the seventeenth-century the age of ambiguity.2
I think Morralls judgment is compelling, especially in the light
of Protestant ecclesiastical political thought of Tudor England from
15471603. These dates are significant for it was during this period that
England ceased being merely anti-Roman and affirmed and encour-
aged Reformed Protestantism. Morralls term ambiguity will be used
in this study. Yet the terms tension and ambivalent are also appropri-
ate, for often in English Protestant political thought there existed an
uneasy marriage between numerous traditions of thought. I wish to
give an account of ecclesiastical political thought in Tudor England,
but I also want to show how political thought was shaped by political
and intellectual revolutions that were taking place at the time. The
ambiguity and ambivalence of political ideas reflected an age of mate-
rial, political, and religious transition and uncertainty.
These theoretical tensions paralleled synthetic tensions within the
English polity; tensions between the absolutist claims of the prince and
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
the conciliar claims of parliament. In short, there were absolutist and

republican traditions co-emerging in England throughout the post-
Henrician period and political theology contributed to both traditions.
In a now famous article Patrick Collinson claimed that Elizabethan
England was a republic which happened also to be a monarchy: or vice
versa.3 The cohabitation of these traditions was often stormy for there
were two governments both trying to govern: queen and council.
Collinsons insight has generated an enormous literature over the last
twenty years. The tensions in the Tudor polity inform much of this sur-
vey of Tudor political thought and I hope to show how the Puritan and
Nonconformist movements added to the republican ideals of civic par-
ticipation and limited monarchy, though in their own unique way. In
many ways parts of this study aim to address and correct what Peter
Lake has recently identified as the inherently secular account of the
republican strand in Tudor political culture.4 Among other things
I hope this study will contribute to our knowledge of the distinctively
Protestant republican tradition emerging throughout Tudor England
that would find its most mature and revolutionary expression the fol-
lowing century.
Ernst Troeltsch, speaking of Christian social thought, described
much of it as a dialogue between systematic thought and contingent
historical circumstance:
still the fundamental ideas in the great fruitful systems of life are not
simple and uniform; rather, to a great extent, they themselves are already
the result of a complex. On the other hand, in the unending and involved
interplay of various forceseverywhere we have to take into account the
element of accident and surprise, i.e. the clash of independent causal
sequences, which have no inner connection with each other.5
Pierre Mesnard saw the sixteenth-century as an age where Catholic
and feudal forms try to embrace new national realities.6 The same is
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
true for Protestantism. The ambivalence between older systems of

thought and newer ones and between allegiances to the state and to the
church generated ambiguities in English thought. Sheldon S. Wolin has
spoken of a tendency in the history of political thought for theoretical
traditions, old and new, to coexist in the same age with the old subtly
affecting the new:
the past is never wholly superseded; it is constantly being recaptured at
the very moment that human thought is seemingly preoccupied with the
unique problems of its own time. The result isa coexistence of diverse
elements, partly new, partly inherited, with the old being distilled into
the new, and the new being influenced by the old.7
Wolins observation captures the Protestant tradition of political
thought in Tudor England. It was a religious tradition with several tra-
ditions of political speculation within it, often in conflict. This is most
obvious in the discussion of the concepts of order and providence in
Chapter Two of this study. Protestant political thought harboured ten-
sions between cosmologies and theologies, old and new, as well as ten-
sions generated by Protestantisms new-found official status as
state-religion and its perennial needubiquitous in the history of
Christianityto critique the state from outside the space of power pol-
itics. The pull in various opposing directions, which was inevitable
given the introduction of a new vision of society and the world, created
an overall ambiguity in thought regarding the universe, natural law,
and the higher powers.
Historians of political thought have debated exactly what constituted
the transition from medieval political thought to the thought that
emerged from the seventeenth-century onwards. Michael Oakeshott in
his famous introduction to Hobbes Leviathan divided the history of
political thought neatly into three traditions: reason and nature (ancient
and medieval), will and artifice (early-modern, especially Hobbes), and
rational will (Hegel onwards).8 Norberto Bobbio says much the same,
distinguishing the Aristotelian tradition from the modern (Hobbesian)
tradition by Aristotles justification of political society from nature and
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
Hobbes from will and consent.9 Franklin Le van Baumers definition of

the medieval concept of kingship, particularly in England, is made up
of four factors. First, the king is subject to laws; second, it is necessary
for the king to have advisors; third, the king is responsible to God for
the public good; fourth, non-resistance is not emphasised.10 Given
Baumers definition of medieval political concepts, much Tudor eccle-
siastical political thought was not medieval, as the kings power over all
things, including the church, was stressed along with obedience and
absolute non-resistance. According to David Loads, medieval andearly-
modern political thought always started with God as the ultimatesource
of power.11 Quentin Skinner has defined modern political thought, the
thought that arose out of the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth and
thirteenth-centuries, as naturalistic, that is, not drawn from religious
or revealed premises, nor seeking to derive its political principles from
some ordo naturalis, nor concerned with eternal principles.12 Wood
and Wood speak of a transition between medieval and modern by
highlighting a shift in focus from corporatism to individualism, that is,
from an emphasis on the common good to the profit of the individual.13
But surely this does not exhaust the differences. A.J. Slavin says that in
attacking Roman Catholicism Henry VIII brought into question the
link between a transcendent order, which functioned to legitimise a
temporal order. Henry VIII replaced God with tradition.14 Skinner has
offered a history of the concept of the state identifying the transition
from a medieval to a modern state theory as a transition of the state
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
from a personal entity to an impersonal entity.15 The theme of transi-

tion from the personal to the impersonal is also explored by Norman L.
Jones, who identified personal explanations for social ills as pre-
modern and institutional explanations as modern.16 Jones also opines
that the divining of Gods will was a necessary concern for the pre-
modern theorist.17
Though the following account of Protestant political thought identi-
fies signs indicating a medieval/modern transition, I am primarily con-
cerned with how the confrontation between political events and
theological trends affected political thought. Of interest is the confron-
tation of political ideas with political change (Henrician Reformation,
Edwardian Protestantism, Marian persecution, and the Elizabethan
Settlement) and theological doctrines (providence, intellectual corrup-
tion, sola scriptura). Although, owing to space, the political thought of
the seventeenth-century cannot be explored exhaustively in this study,
the reader will notice the authors hunch that the concepts and lan-
guage of the Tudor ecclesiastical thought softened and fertilized the
soil from which seventeenth-century ideas of absolutism and govern-
ment by consent grew. If the seventeenth-century experienced a con-
fessionalisation of politics in which religious passionsdrove political
ones then interest in the political theology of the sixteenth-century
needs no further justification.18
In the historiography of early-modern English political thought
sixteenth-century ideas have received far less attention than those of
the seventeenth-century. There is now a general awareness that the
sixteenth-century has been under researched.19 The lack of research is
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
Could the lack of interest stem from historians scepticism regard-

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

reformers were primarily religious.28
The tendency to avoid taking ideas, particularly theological ideas, seri-
ously has certainly resulted in Protestant ideas of the sixteenth-century
being unrepresented in the literature.29 Reformation historian, Steven
Ozment, criticises the tendency of much historiography to isolate
religion from politics and society and to treat it as secondary and
epiphenomenal.30 Fortunately the indifference and hostility to ideas as
effective throughout history has receded. Charles Taylor has recently
defended a varied approach taking into account the economic, politi-
cal, and ideal nature of history.31 None of this should be taken to stand
at odds with Pococks most valuable reminder that history is little more
than an intelligible story of how mens actions produce results other
than they intended.32
There is no justification for overlooking the political ideas of Tudor
churchmen. Todd points out that The sermon was, after all, the pri-
mary vehicle by which ideas were propagated in early modern
England.33 Peter Lake gives evidence that many Presbyterians
became Separatists by being influenced by sermons.34 Stephen Alford
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:
introduction 9
identifies sermons as some of the best sources on the Edwardian ideal

of kingship.35 The importance of the sermon has been pointed out by
more general historians of political communication.36 Ernst Kantorowicz
showed that theological speculation shaped discourse well beyond the
ecclesiastical realm. Indeed, a theological vocabulary was utilised by
Elizabethan lawyers to express their views.37 John Witte, in one of the
best histories of early-modern political thought written over the past
thirty five years, has shown how contemporary political ideals such as
government by consent, equality, and human rights had their origins in
early-modern Calvinist theology and political thought.38 Perhaps there
have been those who have denied any political status to theological
speculation, and, hence, have not considered the works of divines
worthy or necessary for analysis by historians of political ideas.39 Janet
Colemans comments regarding William of Ockham are apt: But to
say that his theological focus on scriptural truths makes him a non-
political or anti-political writer is to adopt a twentieth-century view of
secular intentions behind political expression.40
The same lack of interest in ecclesiastical political thought is evident
in contemporary scholarship on political language and vocabulary.
For J.G.A. Pocock, writing the history of political thought is writing
the history of political discourse.41 Pocock notes that it should be of
interest to the intellectual historian how ideas, vocabulary, and argu-
ments interact with the changing circumstances of the times:
35
Stephen Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, (Cambridge:
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
When the conventions, paradigms and directives of which a political lan-

guage may be thought of as composed are applied to and in political cir-
cumstances other than those which it conventionally presupposes, two
processes may be seen taking place. First, the new wine will be poured
into the old bottles; the new circumstances, and the problems in thought
and action which they generate, will be assimilated to those presupposed
by the old conventions, so that the latter may continue to rule them.
The historian will find this process fascinating to watch, because it high-
lights the presuppositions of the old language, informs him as to what
sort of universe its users were encouraged to presume they were living in,
and enables him to form judgements regarding the historical situations
in which it had been formed and was being used.But needless to say,
there is a process in the contrary direction; the new circumstances gener-
ate tensions in the old conventions, language finds itself being used in
new ways, changes occur in the language being used, and it is possible to
imagine this process leading to the creation and diffusion of new lan-
guagesthough exactly what this phrase would mean remains to be
specified. Our historian will try to study the sequences in which such
things may be seen happening.42
According to Pocock traditional political discourse, when confronted
by a change in some social fact, can do two things. It can be assimilated
with the social change, in which case the presuppositions and argu-
ments traditionally employed can accommodate and defend the new
social fact (i.e. the Henrician elevation of the state over the church).
Alternatively, if the new social fact forces the traditional political dis-
course to be contorted beyond credibility in the attempt of accommo-
dation, a new political discourse with new presuppositions can emerge
in response to the changing social conditions.43
What is a political language and what were the political languages in
Tudor England? A political language is a set of presuppositions that are
coherent, to which theorists and politicians need to submit, demon-
strating how their proposals are conducive to such presuppositions.
If one was only interested in knowing whether a certain political pro-
posal or theory was in accord with Gods will, one could be said to use
a theocentric vocabulary. Anthony Padgen has distinguished four
different political languages or vocabularies used by early-modern
political theorists. First, law of nature or political Aristotelianism; sec-
ond, language of classical republicanism; third, political economy;
42
Ibid., pp. 3132.
43
See my discussion of the body metaphor on pp.11930.
introduction 11
fourth, science of politics.44 We must be careful not to assume that these

vocabularies are unrelated, for, as Conal Condren reminds us, to sepa-
rate natural law (or perhaps any medieval and early-modern political
vocabulary) from theology would be anachronistic.45 John Guy has
argued that there were two languages of political counsel in early-
modern England: humanist-classical and feudal-baronial.46 Neither
Pocock nor Guy identified any specifically religious vocabulary. This
was pointed out and corrected by A.N. McLaren, who added the lan-
guage of godly and prophetic counsel to Guys list.47 In many ways this
study is a history of what McLaren calls godly and prophetic counsel
in England from the reign of Edward VI to James I.
It is undeniable that social and political innovation often leads to
theoretical change and innovation. The nature of this relationship
and the terms used to express it are the more interesting question.
Entailment, causality, epiphenomena, and influence are all terms that
have been seized upon to describe a characteristic of human history,
namely, that institutions and material events and conditions shape and
inform ideas, and vice versa. In his 1940 study, The Early Tudor Theory
of Kingship, Baumer argued that the 1533 revolution in English govern-
ment occasioned a similar revolution in political thought. In 1533
Henry VIII officially declared himself supreme head of the whole
English realm.48 By abrogating papal authority in England Henry VIII
afforded the English monarch practically unlimited authority; at least
authority in both temporal and ecclesiastical realms. According to
Baumer the English Reformation created a revolutionary theory of
kingship, quite foreign to the medieval tradition.49 The revolution
replaced the Hildebrandine model of church/state (auctoritas/potestas)
relationswhere, essentially, the church had significant authority over
princesin preference for a reverse model where the prince had the
Padgen, Introduction, Padgen (ed.), Languages of Political Theory., p. 3.

44
Conal Condren, Political Theory and the Problem of Anachronism in Andrew

45
Vincent (ed.), Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1997).
46
John Guy, The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England, Dale Hoak (ed.),
Tudor Political Culture, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 292310.
47
A.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and
Commonwealth 15881585, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 48.
48
Act of Appeals (1533), G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and
Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 344.
49
Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, pp. 23.
12 introduction
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
coreformers on the Continent were deeply interested in the progress of

the Reformation in England. The English were frequently given to see-
ing successful reformations in Switzerland as blueprints for what may
happen in England, institutionally and intellectually. For the most part
the Protestants covered in this study are those who held official posi-
tions in the English church or whose vocation was defined by some
religious office. Thus bishops, deans, divines, preachers, and translators
of religious literature will be the focus of study. All these men had anti-
Romanism in common, but, as will be shown, this was not sufficient to
produce a completely coherent political theory. The sources used are
mainly printed texts from the period. This includes sermons, liturgies,
prayers, treatises, and tracts. There is also considerable use of letters
and state documents.
Chapter One begins by a discussion of the importance of the
European Reformation for the early-modern view of society and poli-
tics. Theological upheaval led to new visions of the universe and soci-
ety. The new theological ideas were imported to England and were used
by Protestants to express their political ideas. The chapter provides a
brief overview of the Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan periods.
The main events of those periods which affected political thought are
introduced, though they will be continually discussed throughout the
whole body of the text. It was events such as the Henrician break with
Rome (1533), the introduction of Reformed theology during the
Edwardian period (154753), anti-Protestant rebellions, the Marian
persecution of Protestants (15538), the Elizabethan Settlement, the
perceived Catholic threat to the Elizabethan throne, and the Puritan
and Separatist movements that generated most of the ecclesiastical
political thought. It was the theoretical problems caused by the interac-
tion and tension between old ideas with new ideas, the demands of the
state and conscience, and the need to create an innovative political
theory with traditional concepts which tended to characterize Tudor
political thought.
Chapter Two argues that the worldview in the writings of the English
churchmen was ambiguous. Traditionally historians consider the idea
of fixed rank and hierarchy, as opposed to the alternative idea of Gods
dynamic will immediately causing all things (providence), to have been
distinctly medieval. Far from arguing that providence completely
replaced the order and hierarchy in Tudor ecclesiastical thought,
I argue that both traditions were kept side by side with a bias towards
divine will, thus showing that the Tudor worldview was neither wholly
14 introduction
medieval nor completely un-medieval. It was a worldview pulled in

either direction by two traditions. Furthermore, certain theoretical
tensions arising from this ambivalence will be explored with special
attention to John Knox. Ultimately Chapter Two shows how these two
traditions were not suitable partners to produce coherent political the-
ories. For this reason the two separated into two distinct traditions best
represented by the thought of Richard Hooker and the thought of the
radical seventeenth-century Puritans.
Chapter Three turns to the concept of natural law. It has been said
that Tudor England witnessed a revival in natural law discourse, and
also that the Protestant movement as a whole was distinctly uncom-
fortable with the concept. I wish to show that the failure to produce
anything substantial or innovative on the concept of natural law was
owing to the confrontation between natural law as a traditional politi-
cal commonplace and the new Protestant emphases on sola scriptura
and on intellectual corruption of humankind through sin. English
Protestants found themselves torn between two theoretical commit-
ments. On the one hand, a genuine appreciation for philosophy and
ancient wisdom, including the legitimacy of natural law discourse.
On the other hand, a firm conviction that scripture, not philosophy, is
necessary and sufficient to resolve problems. This latter belief was
joined with an equally strong conviction that the human intellect has
been corrupted by sin and, consequently, cannot stray too far from
the guidance of biblical revelation before it becomes a factory of idols.
The first commitment kept natural law discourse alive, but the second
prevented it from flourishing. Also, when certain writers did make
substantial use of natural law concepts, such as the body metaphor,
the political and religious circumstances prompting them to take it
up also led them to contort and misuse the concepts in a clumsy and
ineffective way.
Chapters Four and Five consider the concept of political authority
within the writings of the English Protestants, which was, for the most
part, a divide between conformists and the Puritan and Separatist
movements. The seventeenth-century would experience both extremes
of monarchical absolutism and republicanism.51 Chapters Four and
Five seek to show how the ideas and vocabularies conducive to
absolutism, republicanism, and democracy were nurtured the previous
51
Scott, Englands Troubles, p. 67.
introduction 15
century in religious controversy. The conformists, those who defended

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

for neat transitions or clear nodal points identifying paradigm shifts:
The appearance of a new intellectual character is like the appearance of
a new architectural style; it emerges almost imperceptibly, under the
pressure of a great variety of influences, and it is a misdirection of inquiry
to seek its origins. Indeed, there are no origins; all that can be discerned
are the slowly mediated changes, the shuffling and reshuffling, the flow
and ebb of the tides of inspiration, which issue finally in a shape identifi-
ably new.53
This study is an account of a great variety of influences, political, social,
theological, that were leaving their mark on political thought in Tudor
England. I do not wish to identify any single thinker or event as the
single catalyst of a new age of political thought. Yet, I do believe that
the Reformation period is the single most important period in terms
of attempting to come to grips with the political ideas and institu-
tionsof the last three hundred years. This does not rule out studies on
Renaissance, medieval, and even ancient thought in trying to track the
history of the present. The sixteenth-century was, nonetheless, recog-
nized at the time and by commentators the following century as the age
of transition. The following study takes the intuition of the time seri-
ously and offers a glimpse of one aspect of a restless age.
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
The Reformation and its Ideas
The European Reformation
William J. Bouwsma in his study of early-modern Europe describes a

transitional period from the rigidities of social organization and from
arbitrary and oppressive government.1 Surely the Reformations on the
Continent and in England were central to that transition, yet the social
and political effects of the Reformation of the sixteenth-century
werealmost certainly unanticipated by its earliest advocates. Luthers
attempts to free the laity from the authority of the priesthood (sacerdo-
tium) would eventually lead to an egalitarianism extending far beyond
the walls of the cathedral. By attacking the penitential cycle, the
Reformers raised doubts in the minds of many regarding the need for
the institution of the church. If the church existed as a mechanism to
dispense the infinite grace stored up in heaven by the work of Christ
and the saints, and now such grace could appropriated by anyone with
a simple faith and a contrite heart, then wherefore the church?2 The
new theology also introduced a novel individualism into the European
consciousness. Ernst Troeltsch pointed out early in the twentieth-
century that the really permanent attainment of individualism was due
to a religious, and not to a secular movement, to the Reformation and
not to the Renaissance.3 Luthers rejection of the idea of an institutional
mechanism dispensing saving grace removed the possibility of a spir-
itual hierarchy on earth. No Christian was in any way dependent on
another for salvation. All would now fear and tremble before God,
individually and directly.4 The awe generated by the sacerdotium was
under siege. Indeed, The notion of society as forming a huge pyramid,
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
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
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
g overnment was a function of the natural proclivity to form societies.

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

talk of spiritual freedom would inevitably be twisted into talk of tem-
poral freedom. In the 1536 edition of his Christianae Religionis Institutio
Calvin declared the distinction between spiritual freedom and political
freedom to be as profound as that between spirit and matter:
Indeed, there are those who hear that the gospel promotes a freedom, which
knows no king and no magistrate among men, but looks to Christ alone,
and think they are not able to have the fruit of their freedom as long as they
see any power established over them. They therefore think that nothing
will be safe unless the whole world is reformed anew, where there are
neithercourts, nor laws, nor magistrate, nor anything that in their opin-
ion restricts their freedom. But truly, whoever knows how to discern
between body and soul, this present changing life and that future eternal
life will understand without difficulty Christs spiritual kingdom and the
civil order to be things very much distinct.spiritual freedom can well
exist with political bondage.26
These words were kept by Calvin in all editions of his Institutio right
up to the 1559 Latin edition.27 This should not lead us to conclude
thatCalvin was indifferent to political liberty. Throughout his career
heshowed uncommon appreciation for liberty, both for the individ-
ual and the institutions of what we now call civil society.28 Indeed,
Witte argues that Calvins great contribution to Western politics
was three-fold: rule of law; democracy; and spiritual freedom.29
Though his profound distinction between spiritual and political
freedom would be completely rejected by radical Puritan theorists
the following century,30 Calvins words served to assure rulers and
nobility that the new religion was perfectly compatible with existing
social structures. Ralph C. Hancock holds that one of Calvins main
aims was to generate a sort of piety towards the civil order by showing
how it fitted in with Gods overall order.31 For Calvin, civil government
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.
It was difficult for the Reformation not to become a popular event. If

the target of the Reformers were the doctrines and moral condition of
the church, it would be of immediate appeal to those subject to the
church, whether they were really oppressed or not. Remember the real-
ism of Richard Hooker writing at the end of the century: He that
goethabout to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed
as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hear-
ers.34 The Reformation generated a literature aimed specifically at
the uneducated. Flugenschriftenpamphlets popularising the ecclesi-
astical controversywere printed and carried all around Europe for
mass readers and audiences.35 Humanists were also beginning to see
the salvation of the church as residing in the hands of the masses. If the
people could read the Bible for themselves, then perhaps there would
be a popular movement in favour of ecclesiastical moral reform.36 By
1519 the second edition of Luthers Latin works was being published.
Six hundred copies were being distributed to booksellers all around
Europe.37 However, contrary to the warnings of many critics of the
Reformation, who correctly saw the dangers of the new doctrines if
misunderstood by a restless peasantry, the Reformation brought about
no political revolutions. Generally speaking the Reformation remained
an age more fearful of anarchy than of tyranny and preoccupied more
with problems of continuity and order than with ways to bring about
change.38 No Reformer seriously suggested the possibility of social
equalityan absurdity in the sixteenth-century akin to the possibility
of reviving rank and station in modern liberal democracies. All thatwas
desired was to spread Protestantism throughout Europe.39 However, as
Sheldon Wolin has pointed out, Luthers apolitical theology would
exercise significant influence over subsequent political thought.40
English Separatist preachers and writers, seized by the leveling nature
of Reformation theology, would come to express political ideas with a
similar egalitarian strand.
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
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
26 chapter one
The Reformation in England
It did not take long for the ideas of the Continental Reformers to find
fertile soil around Europe. This was owing, in part, to the fact that
sixteenth-century thought was very much international. As Mesnard
wrote, One cannot understand Calvinism if one only sees it as a
Genevan phenomenon, nor the ideological impact of French opinion
without appealing to a Machiavelli or a Buchanan, nor the political
shudder of Althusius without Calvinist theology and Bodinian sociol-
ogy.41 Soon the issue of conversion was not merely a matter for the
individual conscience. It was beginning to be a matter of politics: the
conversion of a commonwealth. As the English jurist and defender of
Henry 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.
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
The Henrician emphasis on the king as vicarius Dei was retained

throughout the reign of the Tudor dynasty. When Henry died he was
succeeded by his sickly son Edward VI, who for most of his brief reign
was king in name and blood only, being a minor.50 It was during this
period that the church became most distinctively Protestant, or, more
accurately, Reformed. It was the Reformed leanings of Tudor elites that
tilted the church towards Switzerland rather than Germany. Probably if
Edward lived longer the church would have moved much closer to the
Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 69.

49
50

Reformed churches in Switzerland.51 Upon Edwards coronation there

were immediate changes to visible religion. A book of evangelical hom-
ilies was introduced, as well as lay participation in both the bread and
wine of communion. In 1548 church images were removed and in 1549
the Uniformity bill was finally passed, which meant that the Latin rites
were replaced by Cranmers Book of Common Prayer. In 1550 the altars
were exchanged for communion tables and in 1551 a team of proselyt-
ising preachers was sent to parishes. In 1553 the remaining instruments
of the traditional mass were removed.52 The Edwardian emphasis was
continuous preaching and lecturing, though there was always an acute
shortage of qualified preachers.53 The English parishioners took the
new religion hard. Many took to arms over Edwards Prayer Book of
1549, which was made even more explicitly Protestant in 1552.54
Protestant theologians were headhunted from the Continent. Martin
Bucer was made Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, while Peter
Martyr Vermigli received the same honour at Oxford, though that lat-
ter University was far less open to new theological ideas.55 During this
period Swiss theologian Heinerich Bullinger was having a significant
impact on the English church, though his influence would be rivaled
during the Elizabethan reign by the more systematic offerings of John
Calvin. In fact, one cannot over emphasise the Zurich connection
when coming to grips with the church under Edward and Elizabeth.
The English Reformation and its political thought must be viewed in
the wider context of the events and ideas in Europe; Protestant wars in
France, Germany, and Holland, as well as Swiss theology. In some
respects it was the ideas of men such as Heinrich Bullinger, Peter
Martyr Vermigli, and John Calvin that animated the English church
and its troubles throughout the Edwardian and Elizabethan periods.56
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
The Reformed emphasis on sola scriptura and on the inability of the

intellect to understand certain truths wholly apart from revelation was
now accepted by all Protestant divines. This led to a theological method
of biblicism and a hesitancy to wander off into lengthy philosophical
speculation on the nature of God or his moral law.
The most significant political events during the Edwardian period
were the numerous rebellions in reaction to both economic and reli-
gious policy. Catholic rebels and the poor, who were crippled by infla-
tion from greater land taxes on their landlords, rose against the religious
and economic Edwardian reforms.57 In response to the uprisings
numerous ad hoc preaching licenses were prepared for willing preach-
ers to travel and preach the doctrine of obedience and absolute non-
resistance.58 Out of the Western Rebellion of 1549 there arose some
political literature produced by the English church, most notably by
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Another crucial devel-
opment was the emerging idea that the king was not of absolute neces-
sity in governance. The experience of minority government taught
many noblemen that a commonwealth can function quite well with
power localized in a council and parliament rather than an absolute
monarch. This period proved crucial in the transition from the ideal
that the monarch was the state to a polity conscious of existence beyond
the life of the king or queen and capable of defining itself ideologically
as Protestant.59 Edwards reign was absolutely formative in the long
transition from absolute monarchy to monarchical republic spoken of
by contemporary historians. The most important figures for this study
who wrote during the Edwardian period are Miles Coverdale, Hugh
Latimer, John Bale, Thomas Cranmer, John Hooper and John Bradford.
The prayers and liturgies produced by the Edwardian church are also
highly significant.
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.
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
Protestant fugitives prophecies of Marys imminent judgment did not

have to wait long to be fulfilled. In 1558 she died and was replaced by
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.
Gods word for.67 This is the essence of Puritanism and Separatism.

From the beginnings of the Edwardian church there were certain gar-
ments that were compulsory for all clerics to wear. Upon returning
from exile in Switzerland many newly appointed clerics, accustomed
to the ecclesiastical simplicity of Continental Reformed churches,
simply abstained from wearing them. Elizabeth turned a blind eye to
this until Autumn 1564 when she began enforcing the act. By 25th
January 1565 Elizabeth had pressured Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, to get complete conformity from his priests. In March
1566 Parker published his Advertisements, which stipulated the priestly
requirements, and began to enforce conformity; thirty-seven ministers
were suspended for refusing to conform. In the end this Vestiarian
Controversy led many zealous Puritans to turn their attention away
from merely the clerical dress to more fundamental issues like the
scope of government authority. Eventually the Vestiarian Controversy
led to a handful of Protestants demanding ecclesiastical autonomy
from the state.68 The anti episcopal movement among Puritans, led
by Thomas Cartwright, would eventually express itself most strongly
in the English Revolution and the Long Parliament the following
century.69
It should perhaps be of no surprise that in the controversy over the
publication of the Puritan manifesto, An Admonition to Parliament, the
Puritans had gained a reputation as seditious. Writing to Lord Burghley
in 1573, the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys, noted that the word and
the spirit of the Puritan movement seemed at odds. Reflecting on the
people of London, Sandys noted the boldness and disobedience these
new writers have already wrought in the minds of the people and that
against the Civil Magistrate whom in words they seem to extol but
whose authority in very deed they labor to cast down.70 The following
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
month he perceived the aim of the Puritan movement to be railing not

only against particular men but also against the whole state.71
Exactly to whom the term Puritan should be applied has been
a subject of debate in the historiography of Elizabethan England.72
Indeed, the term was coined by their enemies and, hence, must be used
carefully.73 Their contemporary detractors often offer the modern his-
torian with caricatures rather than clear definitions.74 Whereas previ-
ously in historiography Puritans were considered to have been those
separated from the English church, contemporary scholarship defines
them as those who remained in the church, yet were perennial moni-
tors and critics. Patrick Collinsons magisterial The Elizabethan Puritan
Movement pays close attention to the hotter sorts of Protestants who
stayed within the English church yet remained critical.75 Basil Hall
defines Puritans as restlessly critical, but, none the less, non-separated
members of the English church.76 Peter Lake identifies Puritans as those
evangelicals harbouring a tension between principle and conformity.
They also had a vision of a godly community built up through the
preached word.77 William Hunt, perhaps a bit too broadly, considers as
Puritans those who saw Rome as the Antichrist and extolled the preach-
ing and reading of the Bible in place of ceremonies. Also, they encour-
aged a strict moral discipline for society at large.78 Hunts definition
could be applied to Separatists like Robert Browne and Henry Barrow,
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
Cambridge University Press, 1982), passim.
78
William Hunt, The Puritan Movement, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Yale University
Press, 1983), pp. xxi, 119.
who considered themselves to have little in common with Puritans

such as Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers.
I will use Margo Todds definition of a Puritan as one who wanted
the total purging of all things Roman from the English church, while
advocating a godly discipline to be adopted by society at large made
possible by the preaching of the Bible in all churches. Furthermore, the
advocates of such ecclesiastical reforms remained within the English
church, conforming for the greater good of a future complete reforma-
tion through their internal efforts.79 Puritans include such men as
Anthony Gilby, Thomas Cartwright, Walter Travers, the younger
Laurence Humphrey, Edward Derring, and William Fulke. Separatists
include Robert Browne, Henry Barrow, John Penry, and Robert
Harrison. It has been said that the Separatists deserve their own cate-
gory because of their radical views of congregational autonomy and
their repudiation of the idea of an established church.80 A further dis-
tinction between the Puritans and the Separatists was the view of the
former that it was no sin to remain in an imperfect institution in order
to change it. The latter group saw no difference in remaining in the
institution to change it and perpetuating the imperfections of the
institution.81
In 1566 Bullinger, sympathising with nascent Puritanism, wrote to
the Puritan Bishop Horne telling him that it would be prudent for
him not to discuss the limits of magisterial authority, lest it should
generate any disorders in the realm.82 The popular association between
Puritanism and subversion lasted well into the seventeenth-century,
with John Donne preaching a sermon in 1622, in which he ruefully,
though quite rightly, observed that Puritans would have the king cen-
sured and corrected!83 In the Puritan-compiled Fortress of Fathers
(1566) there were numerous calls to obedience to God over prince.
Todd, Christian Humanism, p. 14.

79
Stephen Brachlow, Communion of Saints, p. 9.

80
81
For Cartwrights response to his Separatist critics, see A.F. Scott Pearson, Thomas
Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 15351603, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1925), pp. 219221. On the outcome of Separatist inflexibility see Edmund S.
Morgan, Roger Williams: Church and State, (New York: Norton, 1987), p. 80. As early
as 1609 people were leaving for the New World because it was thought that the English
churchs incomplete reform was inviting destruction akin to that visited upon Sodom
and Gomorrah.
82
Bullinger to Horn (November 3, 1566), Zurich Letters, p. 204.
83
36 chapter one
When justifying the compilation of the opinions of the most learned

European Reformers, the title page of the Fortress defined itself against
those who appoint the authority of princes and prelates larger than the
truth is. Peter Martyrs authority was invoked to remind the Englishman
that if he [prince] would go beyond those bounds [Gods laws], and
command anything that is contrary to godliness or the law of God, we
ought rather to obey God than men.84 When quoting Melanchthons
comments on Romans 13:1, the Fortress ignored the unusually lauda-
tory account that Melanchthon wrote of secular government and pro-
vided only those sections where he stressed obedience to God over
government.85 Wolfgang Musculus was quoted admitting that subjects
must render obedience to the magistrate, but that they should remem-
ber that they belong not to the magistrate but to God.86 Finally the
authority of Rudolph Gualter was appealed to in warning readers of the
dangers of being over-awed by magisterial authority.87
The political and religious vicissitudes briefly outlined in this chap-
ter serve to provide some historical background to the thought that
will be explored in the subsequent chapters of this study. Furthermore,
I wish to show how the confrontation between numerous forces such
as politics with religion, the new Reformed theology with lingering
medieval ideas, and the Reformation emphasis on the supremacy of
conscience with the need of ecclesiastical uniformity contributed to
the ambiguity of English political thought. If much of the political
thought of the Continental Reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, and
Calvin was an attempt to come to grips with the apparent political
implications of the new Protestant theology, so the English scene from
15471603 generated political theories that tried to make sense of the
political and intellectual changes taking place, all the while attempting
to remain faithful to God over any man.
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
Order and Will in Tudor Thought
Introduction
The worldview of the Tudor Protestants was, for the most part, ambig-
uous. There was tension between a traditional fixed view of the cosmic
order and the new emphasis on divine providence. Charles Taylor
speaks of the shift from a hierarchical order, which had divine endorse-
ment to an alternative model where mobilization rather than fix-
ity became the core value.1 Michael Walzer pointed out that the
seventeenth-century Puritan movement had completely cast off any
talk of universal hierarchy that had characterized social thought only a
century previously. The medieval universe was pluralist with Angels
and stars in the celestial spheres, popes and kings on earth occupying
places fixed in nature and linked in an harmonious fashion with the
rest of the cosmic order. Walzer identifies an epoch in intellectual his-
tory when this medieval cosmology was replaced by an emphasis on
dynamic, personal, and divine will. How did shift this come to pass?
Walzer provides the clue speaking of 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
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
through all things. Walzers generalization may apply to seventeenth-

century Puritanism, but to speak of sixteenth-century English
Protestants as having cast off order and hierarchy altogether would be
mistaken. Indeed, speculation on order, degree, and rank was quite
characteristic of political theory in Tudor England.3 Both G.R. Elton
and E.M.W Tillyard marveled at the readiness of even the Tudor
Puritans to retain the concept of universal order and rank.4 Yet the
nature of order was changing. The sixteenth-century was a transitional
period in English thought, when the idea of order still lingered, but was
being invoked alongside a distinctly Reformed emphasis on Gods
dynamic will as an explanation for order, rank, and events. If their sev-
enteenth-century disciples had let go of the medieval worldview the
loosening grip is evident in the thought of their spiritual fathers of the
previous century. The whole intricate edifice was eventually to be cast
off in the following century by Hobbes and Locke, who, like Protestants,
placed the heaviest emphasis on will; not the will of God but the will of
the sovereign and the people. This chapter will survey the transition
from strong views on fixed cosmic and social order to an ambivalent
accommodation of traditional fixity with a strong emphasis on Gods
will as the determining principle behind all order. It is in the writings
of the Protestant divines that we witness a shift in paradigms from cos-
mic necessity to world as will.
By studying the worldview of any age or re-entering an alien mental
world5 we may find it easier to understand why so many ideas not
given the slightest bit of scientific or philosophic credence today, may
have been considered perfectly rational and even a tenant of rationality
hundreds of years ago. The second half of the sixteenth-century was a
period of conceptual transition in Tudor England. Political theorists
were torn between a traditional conception of impersonal fixed hierar-
chy and a newer emphasisbrought about by political crisis and nour-
ished by Continental Reformed thoughton Gods dynamic will
working in nature and society. If one hopes to understand the Tudor
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
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
in European Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 43.
order and will in tudor thought 41
Englishmans views concerning the state and the citizens relationship

to it, then an understanding of the more general views of the Tudor
Englishman is essential because propositions concerning the state and
the citizen flowed from general propositions concerning God and his
creation. Unlike in modern political philosophy, where society is
viewed as a confusion of competing wills, which have to be either har-
monized or managed by the state, the medieval and early-modern
vision of society was of a terrestrial sphere that needed to be harmo-
nised with an eternal and heavenly ideal. If there was any medieval
tradition to which Protestant providentialism approximated, it was the
nominalist tradition. As Antony Black writes, in contradistinction to
the tradition of fixed and impersonal order, nominalism emphasised
the essential arbitrariness of God, holding that regularities of natural
and human phenomena are the result of contingent circumstance
rather than innate tendencies.6 In the case of the English Protestants,
what seems to have happened is that the idea of universal fixed imper-
sonal ordermetaphysicsbecame mostly subsumed under the idea
of providencetheology. This was perpetuated by a Reformed and, as
will be shown, Calvinistic theology. Order was still invoked, but it
became less cosmic and impersonal and took on a more divine-fiat
quality. Rather than speaking of politics in fixed cosmological terms it
became a divine revelation, or, in Peter Martyr Vermiglis terms,
Kingdoms and Commonwealths can thus be called workshops of the
divine will.7
This is not to say that there was a unified movement among all
English political thought to do away with the medieval notion of fixed
impersonal hierarchy. Indeed, J.P. Sommerville maintains that even in
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
early seventeenth-century thought, The universe was often viewed as

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

and apprehended by reason and observation. J.G.A. Pocock wonder-
fully paints the medieval vision in which the individual employed rea-
son, which disclosed to him the eternal hierarchies of unchanging
nature and enjoined him to maintain the cosmic order by maintaining
his place in that social and spiritual category to which his individual
nature assigned him.10 It seems to have had its first expression in
classical thought. Plato envisioned a world of perfect reality, of which
this temporal world was a mere reflection. This led to a hierarchy within
reality: the more an idea resembled the eternal forms in its immutabil-
ity and clarity, the more perfect it was. Thus mathematics was a more
perfect science than biology, which was the study of mere fluctuating
appearances.11 Nevertheless, it accommodated itself quite well to
theChristian philosophy of the middle ages, being translated into that
8
J.P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 16031640, (London and New
York: Longman, 1986), p. 48.
9
10
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.
tradition by St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius.12 In his influential

treatise, De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine affirmed a natural grada-
tion of permanence and impermanence; sentience and insentience;
rationality and non-rationality:
Then, when they [humankind] go on to look into the nature of life itself,
if they find it mere vegetative life, without sense, such as that of plants,
they consider it inferior to sentient life, such as that of cattle; and above
this, again, they place intelligent life, such as that of men. And, perceiving
that even this is subject to change, they are compelled to place above it,
again, that unchangeable life, which is not at one time foolish, at another
time wise, but on the contrary is wisdom itself.13
Sheldon S. Wolin describes Augustines conception of the political
order as possessing a rooted stability, a sustenance drawn from the
nature of creation itself . For Augustine the political order was fixed, for
it participated in the perfection written into the very essence of things.14
Speaking of the medieval tradition Charles Taylor says, any attempt
to deviate from it turned reality against itself. Society would be dena-
tured in the attempt for the medieval order was not simply contin-
gent.15 In the bull Unam Sanctam (1302), probably the most significant
ecclesiastical document on medieval church/state relations, Pseudo-
Dionysius was used to illustrate ecclesiastical supremacy from the
notion of universal hierarchy and the principle of intermediation.
Something whose authority is given through an intermediary is
dependent on that intermediary; if one thing is dependent on another
then it is inferior, for it must look to that other thing for the fulfillment
of its being or authority.16 But all power on earth is possessed by the
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
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
pope, vicarius Dei, who distributes it to the secular powers.17 Therefore,

because the secular powers depend on the spiritual powers for their
authority, the former are inferior to the latter. About a decade later
Dante built a system of hierarchy based on the attributes of God and
those things in creation that share them. Humans are the highest within
the hierarchy because they have reason, which is also possessed by
God. The purpose of society is to develop this most high faculty.18 John
Scotus Erigena attempted to elaborate the idea of natural hierarchy in
his great work De Divisione Naturae. He pointed out that inferiority is
determined by the extent to which an object is derived from something
else. That which is most directly derived from God himself, like a per-
son or an angel, is higher in the created hierarchy.19 Jean Gerson, draw-
ing heavily on Dionysius, saw all power relationsecclesiastical or
politicalas a reflection of the heavenly hierarchy of trinity, angels,
and virtues; practically immutable.20 The idea was resident in mature
scholasticism with Thomas Aquinas continuing Augustines theory.21
This order was largely impersonal in nature, more a reflection of Gods
nature than an expression of his will. Indeed, its legitimation and its
organizing categories were alike timeless, and change could exist in it
only as degeneration or recovery.22
With the coming of the Reformation scholastic philosophy took a
blow, though not by all Protestant theologians. For some, Luther and
Calvin in particular, scholasticism and Aristotelianism represented
attempts to prove absurd doctrines or an arrogant curiosity which con-
structed Babylonian towers with the intention of trying to penetrate
heaven to catch a glimpse of God. Not surprisingly, given Luthers doc-
trine of the priesthood of all believers, the Reformer had little to say
about social gradations derived from cosmic order, and his doctrine
ofuniversal priesthood could often sound like a rejection of hierarchy
in toto:
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.
there neither can, nor ought to be any superiors amongst Christians.

Rather, each is equally subject to all the rest.Among Christians there is
no superior except Christ alone. And how can there be superiority [or
inferiority] when all are equal, and all have the same right, power, goods
and honour? No one desires to be anothers superior, for everyone wants
to be the inferior of the rest.23
Despite the apparent wink at social equality, overall Luther was mainly
concerned with ecclesiastical and spiritual equality, not equality in the
kingdom. Luther could derive social rank from the notion of vocation,
or the dynamic will of God as an explanation for ones current social
status. Indeed, for Luther and Calvin, any order in the universe and in
society was not be deduced from first principles concerning the nature
or quiddity of God, but to be explained by way of appealing to the will
of God made visible in nature and society. As W.D.J. Cargill Thompson
writes concerning Luthers theology, He [God] is continually active in
His creation, upholding and sustaining the universe and replenishing
His creations. If he did not sustain it, it would collapse.24 The spirit of
Luthers religious parity never broke out into social parity in his own
thought. This happened with the Anabaptists and their cognate sects
such as the Family of Love, and over the next hundred years with the
Separatist congregations and the Levellers.25 Even the scholastic
Protestant Vermigli did not seriously engage the medieval arguments
for hierarchy. After reflecting on papal use of Dionysian theology to
justify hierarchy he merely commented, Has he not built his tyranny
beautifully?26
Order and Providence in Tudor England
Elton considers the concept of universal hierarchyan eternally fixed

scheme of things or settled lawsas the basic worldview of Tudor
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
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.
society is contained in Thomas Elyots The Boke Named the Gouernour

(1531). Within the early part of this book is a justification for social
stratification on the grounds of a rational order in nature. Elyot moved
from cosmic order to social order; those of one rank should not med-
dle with the affairs of another rank. An economic trope is used to illus-
trate the point:
And that have we in daily experience; for the pans and pots garnish well
the kitchen, and yet should they be to the chamber none ornament. Also
the beds, testars, and pillows beseemeth not the hall, no more than the
carpets and cushions becometh the stable. Semblably the potter and
tinker, only perfect in their craft, shall little do in the ministration of
justice. A ploughman or carter shall make but a feeble answer to an
ambassador. Also a weever or fuller should be an unmeet captain of an
army, or in any other office of a governor.34
The great Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus said the same thing fif-
teen years earlier but used a different metaphor; namely that as a per-
formance of song and dance is grotesque without proper order and
harmony, so is a state where different ranks and stations do not know
how to act accordingly.35
Thomas Starkeys Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (c.152932)
places the same emphasis on order, proportion, and cooperation, using
the organic metaphor to make his point. The commyn wele consists in
people living together in civil life according to the excellent dignity of
the nature of man every part of this body agreeing to other, doing his
office and duty appointed thereto, there I say you may be sure is <set> a
very and true commonwealth, there it flourisheth as much as the nature
of man will suffer.36 Although Starkey was not as cosmic in his vision
as Elyot, he continued the notion of an objective and universal order as
being the essence of a proper society. Unlike later Protestant discourses
on order, Starkey had little to say about God. The order that Starkey
spoke of, which finds its expression in social ranks, is an order neces-
sitated, not by Gods will, but by human nature. Starkeys thought is
Aristotelian in that he offered a naturalistic justification for the type of
Thomas Elyot, The Gouernour, (London: Everyman, 1907), p. 6.

34
Desiderus Erasmus, Institution Principi Christiani (1516), Collected Works of

35
Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings, vol. 5, A.H.T. Levi (ed.), (Toronto: Toronto
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
society he was defending. Starkey also soaked up the lessons of

Machiavelli and was happy to state that part of a commonwealths flour-
ishing or regression hang something of fortune and chance.37
Fortune was not merely a word used to describe Gods mysterious
ways. It is a force quite apart from God. Lupset is alarmed by Poles
emphasis on such a force. Nevertheless, Pole vaguely assures him that
God will take the trials of fortune into account in the final judgment.38
The earliest Tudor Protestant discourse on rank and order was theo-
logical, not metaphysical. The idea of social order was present in
William Tyndales Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which was a
doctrinal and pragmatic apology for Protestantism. Claiming that his
intention was simply to teach Gods law or what obedience God
requireth of us unto father and mother/master/lord/king and all supe-
riors,39 Tyndale tried to show not only that Protestant theology was
true, but that Protestantism enjoined a strict observance of social rank
and obedience to the prince.40 But Tyndale expressed his views on hier-
archy by way of appeal to Gods will, not by way of cosmic hierarchy or
impersonal order. Similarly, in the Governance of Virtue (c.1546), dedi-
cated to Henry VIIIs third wife, Jane Seymour, Thomas Becon pre-
scribed the way the godly must behave at every moment of the day.
Under the rubric What is to be Done after Dinner, and sounding much
like later Puritans, Becon recommended to return unto thy labour, and
virtuously exercise thyself, according to thy vocation and calling.41
Recognising that the deviltroubler of all good orderswill place
seditious thoughts into the head of a willing soul, Becon encouraged
his reader to content thyself with thy vocation, labour diligently and
quietly for thy living, study to maintain peace, pray for the high pow-
ersand defend thyself against Satan, and all his crafty suggestions.42
Becon, though concerned with social rank and order, did not appeal to
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:
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.
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.
Order and Providence in Edwardian Thought
Edwardian England retained the concept of social rank and station. Yet
the concept was expressed less by way of cosmic hierarchy than by a
vocabulary of divine will. One of the few examples of cosmic language
in describing social rank comes from the 1547 Edwardian Homily on
Obedience. The Homily makes use of all words associated with immuta-
ble station, and is best quoted at length:
Almighty God hath created and appointed all things in heaven, earth and
waters in a most excellent and perfect order. In heaven he hath appointed
distinct orders and states of archangels and angels. In the earth he has
assigned kings, princes, with other governors under them, all in good and
necessary order.Every degree of people, in their vocation, calling and
office, has appointed to them their duty and order. Some are in high
degree, some in low; some kings and princes, some inferiors and sub-
jects, priests and laymen, masters and servants, fathers and children, hus-
bands and wives, rich and poor.43
This contains the medieval concept of hierarchy. However, talk of cau-
sality, rationality, or likeness to the divine substance is completely
eschewed. Necessity is invoked but within the midst of numerous
references to 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
government in 1547 banned free preaching and commissioned author-

ised prayers and homilies. The above homily would have been heard by
hundreds of captive congregations all around England.44 Writing in
1549 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer saw in the Bible a complete guide
to hierarchical living. Discarding the vocabulary of cosmic order, he
affirmed that a guide for conduct in all ranks could be found within the
pages of scripture. Though Cranmer was indifferent to the Great Chain
of Being, he saw society as a collection of ranks, each of which required
a correct mode of conduct:
Here may princes learn how to govern their subjects: Subjects obedience,
love and dread to their princes. Husbands, how they should behave
thenunto their wives: how to educate their children and servants. And
contrary the wives, children, and servants may know their duty to their
husbands, parents and masters. Here may all manner of personslearn
all things what they ought to believe, what they ought to do, & what they
should not do.45
A naturalistic justification for hierarchy was offered by the humanist
scholar, Sir John Cheke. Rank is natural because some people have
been given greater gifts by nature.46 Such justifications were rare
amongst English Protestants. The concept of immutable rank and order
passed into the worldview of the English Reformers with ease. If there
is one thing that is noticeable, it is simply that the English Protestants
spoke of it more in theological terms than in cosmic terms. Franklin Le
Van Baumer in his study of this period attributes all talk of Gods will
to the anxiety that Tudor theorists had about rebellion.47 No doubt this
was partly true, but the reception of strong predestinarian views from
the Continent during the reign of Edward VI explains the permanence
of this shift in thought.
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.
John Calvins Influence in England
If it is true that one of the great ideas that transformed the medieval
into the modern world was new emphasis on providence, then the
influence of Reformed theology, Calvinism in particular, must be of
interest to the historian of political ideas and institutions.48 Walzer
points out that the seventeenth-century Puritans did not see their polit-
ical campaigns in terms of rights but in terms of a divine commission.49
If, as Walzer has argued, this feeling of calling had any impact on the
modern political world, its origins and expression in the previous cen-
tury are worth studying. Since the early twentieth-century it has become
a commonplace in historiography and political thought to identify
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
Taylor, Secular Age, p. 176.

48
Walzer, Revolution of the Saints, p. 107.

49
50
Troeltschs comments are typical. Social Teaching, vol. 2, pp. 581587.
51
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons (tr.),
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1976), passim.
52
Bruce Gordon, Introduction: Architect of Reformation, Bruce Gordon and
Emidio Campi, Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger
15041575, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 25.
53
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 245.
52 chapter two
against Protestant ministers, one of their doctrines that he singled out

as particularly noxious was their bias against free will.54 The
Protestant mind did not abandon the notion of natural order and hier-
archy, but these commonplaces of political rhetoric were less important
than direct appeals to the Bible and interpreting Gods providence in
society. Some historians have identified the general rejection of fortune
in Tudor political thought as a possible reason for the hostility directed
towards Machiavelli.55 Certainly Reformed Protestantism rejected for-
tune as an explanation of anything.56 Calvin allowed some talk of for-
tune, but only if it was borne in mind that the word was really referring
to Gods mysterious will: in whatever way things are ordained by the
dispensation of God, they are to us fortuitous.57 Reformed theology
espoused a radical theological determinism that was repulsive to most
Catholics and humanists. With the Protestants of Edwardian England
there was a mindsetprobably largely Calvinisticthat nature and
society were simply the revelation of Gods will. Consequently, events
were divined for their theological meaning. Political doctrines were
not put forward simply as pragmatic advances, or as being in accord-
ance with teleology and reason, but as ways of averting the wrath of a
historically engaged God.
There is good evidence showing that it was Calvins writings on
providence and predestination that had an impact on the English
Protestants.58 In fact, it seems that many English Protestants under
Edward VI were quite determined in their Calvinism and in their
opposition to the more libertarian perspectives of Melanchthon and
Bullinger. When one reads the correspondence from English Protestants
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.
to Bullinger during the Edwardian and Marian reign, it becomes evi-

dent that Bullinger had the status as a doctor of considerable authority.
Actually, he was rarely taken to task for any of his views. Nevertheless,
in a letter written to Heinrich Bullinger in 1552, Protestant stu-
dent,Bartholomew Traheron, told Bullinger that he had heard that he
entertained the same views as Melanchthon regarding the providence
and predestination of God, namely that there is a synergy between the
efforts of man and God in the process of salvation. Traheron said this
with some caution, as though he wanted to distance himself from any
such jaccuse. He then told Bullinger that John Calvins De Aeterna Dei
Praedestinatione had been well received in England: But the greater
number among us, of whom I own myself to be one, embrace the opin-
ion of John Calvin as being perspicuous, and most agreeable to holy
scripture.59 When Traheron received Bullingers non-Calvinistic
response, he wrote back to inform him of his displeasure and took the
opportunity to summarise the English view of Gods providence:
We say that God permits many things, when he does not renew men by
his Spirit, but gives them up to the dominion of their own lusts. And
though God does not himself create in us evil desires, which are born
with us; we maintain nevertheless, that he determines the place, the time,
and mode [of bringing them to action], so that nothing can happen oth-
erwise than as he has before determined that it should happen. For, as
Augustine has it, he ordains even darkness. To be brief, we ascribe all
actions to God.60
Traheron then reproved Bullinger for deviating from Calvins formula-
tion. Finally when Traheron wrote to Calvin he was careful to state in
his introduction, whatever men have proposed or determined, never-
theless every event is dependent upon the will of God.61 For the most
part free-willers were outcasts in Edwards reign.62
Traheron to Bullinger (Sept. 10, 1552), Original Letters relative to the English
59
Reformation, 2 vols., Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846),

vol. 1, p. 325. Traheron would have meant by among us his associates at Oxford
University. See Jane E.A. Dawson, The Early Career of Christopher Goodman and his
Place in the Development of English Protestant Thought, (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Durham, 1978), p. 72. Calvins Institutio was being read in England by
1552. Dawson, Early Career of Christopher Goodman, p. 16.
60
Traheron to Bullinger (June 3, 1553), Original Letters, vol. 1, p. 326.
61
Traheron to Calvin (n.d), ibid., p. 328.
62
MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 428.
54 chapter two
Protestant preacher, John Bradford, wrote his A Treatise of Election

and Free Will, which was published posthumously in 1562. In the brief
treatise there is a discussion of the Stoic doctrine of necessity, lifted
straight from Calvins Institutio.63
The Stoics opinion is to be condemned as concerning fatal necessity.
For they did imagine a perpetual connexion and knitting together of
causes by a perpetual order which is contained in nature: whereas we
should certainly know that it is God which is the ruler and arbiter of all
things, which of his wisdom hath foreseen and determined all things,
that he will do, and now of his power doth in his time put the same in
execution, according as he hath decreed with himself.64
If the predestinarian theology of the English Reformers went some way
in shaping their political thought, then there is a good case to be made
for the influence of Calvin on English Protestant political thought, as
least with respect to the preoccupation with Gods will that so charac-
terised it. Calvins Institutio was a popular divinity textbook at
Cambridge during the second half of Edwards reign; as Porter describes
the English situation: a group of English theologians swallowed it
whole.65 Archbishop Parker was warned of a group of Puritan
preachers who would denounce anyone failing to preach Gods
predestination.66 Regardless of whether it was Calvins writings directly
that sparked the English preoccupation and development of the
doctrine of predestination, its impact was lasting.67 Furthermore, the
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:
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
preoccupation with Gods providence seems to have survived well

intothe Elizabethan regime and beyond; Collinson records the mur-
murs of an English rector, who with some bitterness spoke of the
constant prating about Gods predestination by the surrounding
clergy.68 In 1626 and 1628 Charles I issued proclamations to close con-
troversial preaching and writing on predestination, given the heat
being generated overthe issue.69 Protestant providentialism would cre-
ate tension in Elizabethan political thought between divine will and
impersonal order.
John Hooper and the Edwardian Divines
Bishop of London, John Hoopers interest in cosmic order was periph-

eral in comparison to his interest in Gods politic will in history.
Hierarchy and order were not terms that Hooper employed when
making his exhortation to kings and subjects to act according to their
station. Hooper did not need to prove that such stations actually exist
any more than he needed to prove the existence of a reality outside
of the mind. The concern with order survived well into the radical
and iconoclastic period of Edwardian reform, and beyond into the
Elizabethan period. However, it was expressed not only in Aristotelian
terms or by way of nature, but also in terms of divine will. Unlike the
Aristotelian universe, the Protestant universe was intensely personal.
Hooper used divinely ordained social rank to admonish Catholics not
to rebel against the Edwardian Reformation. In his Declaration of the
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
Ten Holy Commandments of Almighty God (1550) he affirmed early on

that the Commandments were instituted to show how all are to behave
in their divinely appointed stations. The stations referred to are typi-
cal of such discourse: God-man; commonwealth-private; superior-
inferior; husband-wife; father-son; citizen-landsman. All stations
require a divinely ordained mode of conduct.70 Hooper informed his
readers that God ordains such ranks as a matter of social preservation.
Rank, if crucial to self-preservation, was, therefore, natural. Here he
added master-slave; disciple-teacher; and younger-elder to the list of
stations.71 The reality of Gods will was crucial. In an attempt to muster
up some sense of responsibility among the nobility of England to aid
the progress of the Reformation and to put down discontents, Hooper
reminded them that kingdoms be altered and changed because of
sin. Furthermore, God removed likewise princes from their digni-
ties by reason of sin.72 The following year Hooper wrote to Heinrich
Bullinger informing him of the sweating sickness that had taken
England and described it as a remarkable token of divine vengeance.73
Two years later he wrote a whole homily on plague and punishment,
specifically with reference to the sweating sickness that took England
previously.74 The theme was one of divine quid pro quo; God rewards
for faithful service, but also punishes for perfidy. Typical of Hooper, the
homily is quite remarkable in its expression and all encompassing
vision. He was interested in looking at two causes of plague: the natural
and the supernatural. Actually, he was interested in the natural only to
brush it aside for a meditation on the supernatural:
And whereas reason hath many good and probable arguments in this
matter touching the cause of pestilencethese causes are to be consid-
ered as natural and consonant to reason; yet there be reasons and causes
of pestilence of more weight, and more worthy of deep and advised con-
siderations and advertisements than these be: and more, because they lie
within man, and be marked but of very few, and hide themselves secretly,
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.
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
and communitarian anarchists among the radical Protestant fringes.

Hooper derived all obedience from the fifth commandment to obey
parents, parents understood as all those with authority: parents, teach-
ers, and rulers. The latter hath the defence of the country and the peo-
ple of the same committed unto his charge.79 Hooper provided a
succinct statement of what the Christians attitude to political govern-
ment should be:
The sum and conclusion of this fifth precept, and all that I have spoken in
it is: that such as the Lord hath appointed in the earth over us to rule,
those we must reverence, honour, and obey with all fear and love; and
that we derogate nothing of their dignity with contempt, contumacy, or
unkindness. For seeing God would his ordinance that he hath instituted
to be inviolated, it is our office to observe the degrees and order of pre-
eminence as he hath instituted.80
Later Hooper became more insistent on the divine imperative to obedi-
ence. Though Hooper cautioned Christians never to obey humankind
over God, he made it clear that there was never any call for violent
resistance to magistrates:
If they be according to the word of God, of necessity and bondage, upon
pain of damnation they must be obeyed. If they be repugnant to the word
of God, they should not be obeyed. Yet rather should a man suffer death
than to defend himself by force and violent resisting of the superior pow-
ers, as Christ, his apostles, and the prophets did.81
Hooper advocated the most radical type of obedience possible for a
Christian, obedience to tyrants and non-resistance even when impious
and blasphemous legislation is forced upon unwilling subjects. Such
obedience can only be justified by reminding the subject that God has
placed the prince in his station. Hooper again emphasised the necessity
of obedience from providential appointment: But let the king and
magistrate be as wicked as can be devised and thought, yet is his office
and place the ordinance and appointment of God, and therefore to be
obeyed.82 He went on to give pragmatic reasons for obedience: it is bet-
ter not to provoke Gods wrath upon oneself. Even when giving prag-
matic justifications for obedience Hooper was totally theocentric in his
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.
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
foundation was replaced with a new emphasis on Gods direct will as a

sufficient justification for social institutions.
The Great Chain of Being and Natural Portents in John Ponets

Shorte Treatise
When in 1553 Edward VI died and was replaced by Mary, many English
Protestants, who could afford passage, fled to the Continent to practise
their religion until God again made England good ground for the gos-
pel. The marriage between medieval metaphysics and the new empha-
sis on 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.
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
Ponets understanding of nature was essentially theological in that he

rejected Aristotelian deism for the dynamic will of God, who reveals
himself in nature. God determines the day to day politics of England.
The events of court were just as revelatory of Gods disposition as was a
deformed child. Ponet saw tyrants, Mary in particular, as manifesta-
tions of Gods wrath. He was confident to admit that God sendeth and
suffreth evil governors (and will send worse) to plague the people for
their iniquity.93 Neither did Ponet shirk from prophesying calamities
on England by comparing its behaviour to the behaviour of Old
Testament nations that were plagued by political upheaval and oppres-
sion.94 Ponets initial affirmation of the medieval Great Chain of Being
was not merely tokenistic or merely asserted for rhetorical appeal.
Nevertheless, it was vestigial. It was a medieval idea that, given his
emphasis on divine will, played no important role in any of his argu-
ments. Its significance is that it, along with his use of the body meta-
phor, shows a lingering medievalism, which was not quite at home with
his providentialism. Its presence was sincere but redundant.
Genevan exile, Christopher Goodman had little to say about fixed
order or natural superiority. He did, however, take care to affirm that
God not only created the universe in the first place, but also that by his
wonderful providence are all things preserved and governed.95
Goodman was more interested in appealing to Gods will. He affirmed
that the history of Englands woes is due to Gods indignation towards
her idolatry. As God drowned all mankind for sin and destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone, so England should
repent lest she fall in to the hands of this mighty revenger.96 Also,
Goodman affirmed throughout his book that Marys tyranny was an
express sign of Gods wrath, and [a] notable plague for the sins of the
people.97 Going beyond Ponets prediction of political woe as signified
by the comet, Goodman stated that England will experience the
Spanish plaguereferring to a persecution to be inflicted upon the
English people by Spanish Catholics.98 Goodmans thought, unlike
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.
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.
Cosmic Contradictions: Fixed Order and Providence in John Knox,

John Aylmer, and Laurence Humphrey
The concept of immutable order found it difficult to come to grips with

the fact of social and political change. Collins called this an ambiva-
lence between concept and fact. In Knoxs thought the historian of
political ideas is confronted with conceptual problems symptomatic of
an age of ambiguity. But Knoxs ambiguity is between two concepts:
order and divine will. If, as Troeltsch argued, there was a contradiction
in the thought of Calvin, who held at once to the rationalism of the lex
naturae, yet extolled the irrational divine will, a similar contradiction
can be seen in the political thought of Knox.99 The Scotsman tried to
build his case for the overthrow of Mary of England and Mary of Scots
upon the medieval metaphysic of fixed order and degree. However, he
emphasised Gods dynamic will just as strongly as he did the medieval
concepts. The problem is that the notion of fixed order renders Gods
will somewhat redundant and an emphasis on Gods free irresistible
will makes discourse on fixed order meaningless. Knox was by far the
most apocalyptic of the English Reformers. He, more than any other
Protestant, affords the historian of political thought the most sustained
Troeltsch, Social Teaching, vol. 2, p. 897, fn.349.

99
64 chapter two
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.
In what is his most systematic political statement, The First Blast of

the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), Knox,
on the authority of Augustine, appealed to an immutable order in the
universe. Using patristic authorities he defined order as that thing by
which God hath appointed and ordained all things. He quoted The City
of God in defining order as a disposition, giving their own proper
places to things that be unequal.105 Knox never went on to elaborate
much, but he seemed to mean that there is a gradation in creation, a
hierarchy from higher to lower. Not all things are equal; the inferior
cannot occupy the place of the superior. God has arranged all things in
their respective places, according to their excellence and nature. That
same year, Knox was to affirm that God has ordained distinction and
difference betwixt the King and subjects, betwixt the Rulers and the
commune people. Such order was temporal and destined to with the
world.106
Knox showed some embarrassment in appealing to Augustine and
the notion of order as a proof against gynaecocracy. He immediately
assured his readers that such appeals are redundant in light of Gods
revelation in scripture:
If any list to reject the definition of Augustine, as either not proper to this
purpose, or else as insufficient to prove mine intent, let the same man
understand, that in so doing he hath infirmed mine argument nothing.
For as I depend not upon the determinations of men, so think I my
causeno weaker, albeit their authority be denied unto me; provided that
God by his will revealed, and manifest Word, stand plain and evident on
my side.107
Knoxs haste to assure his readers that he did not consider the authority
of Augustine as sufficient in absence of the Bible was a sign of the times.
For the Protestant, metaphysics could be illuminating, but it was not
sufficient to establish any truth. Indeed, it was not even necessary. It is
interesting to note that even among Protestants, who were quick to
point out sins corruption of the intellect and the sufficiency of the Bible
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
apart from philosophy, there was a vital appreciation for philosophy

and the works of Aristotle. It seems, though, that such an interest in the
traditional medieval body of learning was having a diminished impact
on their method of political thought.
There was an incoherence in Knoxs thought brought about by his
dual allegiance to the medieval fixed universe and a radical emphasis
on Gods will. If God is free, why can he not give a woman the gifts of a
ruler? Knoxs discourse on fixed hierarchy and order was made irrele-
vant by his continued stress on Gods irresistible will in society. If God
can produce a deformed child to teach a nation a lesson, why not a
capable female ruler? The fact that Gods will removes any notion of
immutability in nature and society, and the fact that Knox emphasised
both this and the notion of immutability made his political thought
radically incoherent. Indeed, John Aylmer, Bishop of London, pointed
out this very incoherence in his brilliant response to Knoxs blast An
Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes. Both Aylmer and Laurence
Humphrey, who in 1561 would become President of Magdalen, Oxford,
responded to the Marian exiles. Aylmer wanted to refute Knox,
Humphrey wanted to clarify Goodman and Ponet, though he had read
Knox.108 Aylmer pointed out that no matter what order in the universe
or in nature Knox declared to exist, Gods dynamic will renders every-
thing contingent, anything possible:
If nature hath given them by birth: how we repine at that which is Gods
will and order: are we wiser then he in bestowing it[?][B]y him reign
they and not by us. It is his appointment and not oursTherefore it is
more agreeable to duty, and a great deal less jeopardy, to honour his
choice, rather then to prefer our own.109
For Aylmer, if nature and order are, as Knox admitted, simply the
visible manifestation of Gods will, then any aberration from the orderly
is equally by his will. Therefore, even though one may recognise
regularities in both the natural and social realms, irregularities do not
necessarily become harmful, for they are equally ordained by God.110
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.
Therefore Knoxs belief in immutable rank and orderman above

womanis immediately contradicted by his other belief in Gods full
control over all things. For if it happens that in a commonwealth with
hereditary succession a female is born in line to inherit the crown, this
is Gods will. By nature Elizabeth is Queen, she has Tudor blood, no
human determines nature, only God, therefore she is divinely ordained.
Who can reject Gods preference? Aylmer pointed out that providence
looses everything and leaves nothing fixed. The medieval world picture
was erased in the apology for Elizabeths rule.
Knoxs thought exemplifies conceptual difficulties. The difficulties
arise because Knox tried to mix two worldviews in a single system of
thought. Eventually one had to give way to the other. Knoxs contempo-
rary, Laurence Humphrey, simply reinterpreted the idea of fixed order
as whatever God should will:
There is a fixed order, both a state of things and an ordering of kingdoms.
Nor are states constituted first of all without laws, without leader, rashly
and by chance; neither are kings or those who are in charge for them,
thus constituted. But as once the kings of Judah, so now ours, are anointed
by the command and will of God, whether they are good or bad or men
or women. For there is no power but of God.111
Humphrey then went on to affirm the legitimacy of gynococracy in
spite of the customs of the nations. Indeed, the custom and example of
the rule of women is not often found and rarely does a woman enter
upon the service of the state. Nevertheless it is not always unnatural
and monstrous, if God calls and wishes a woman to hold the power.
By dismissing the legitimacy of ius gentium or the customs of nations
Humphrey was dismissing a concept ubiquitous throughout political
thought. His reason for completely ignoring the prescriptions of the
nations was simple, God can override any tradition:
Since, therefore, God turns the reigns of things as it seems good to Him
and chooses those he wishes and since He raises up a magistrate to relieve
calamities and restrain violence, whoever illegitimately overthrows that
authority which He has established, seems to attack the minister of God,
the anointed one and Christ.112
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
By focusing on Gods will rather than immutable principles of politics,

Humphrey could easily answer objections against Elizabeths legiti-
macy. His thought in this respect did not suffer from the incoherence
of Knoxs, simply because Humphrey completely replaced arguments
from cosmic order and ius gentium with the divine will, thus no matter
how counter intuitive a political state of affairs seemed to be, it could
not be anything other than legitimate. Perhaps it was the same incoher-
ence that led Richard Hooker at the end of the century to place no
emphasis on Gods will and to go to the other extreme of using the
scholastic method and affirming the medieval metaphysic to its utmost
capacity.
Knoxs exhortations and letters of consolation drew heavily on the
Old Testament emphasis on Gods imminence in catastrophe. There
were also allusions to the book of Revelation in his descriptions of
Englands political situation. Certainly, for Knox, there was no wheel of
fortune in society. All that occurs is either a direct sign of Gods wrath
for perfidy or of Gods refining of the elect. Whenever Knox made the
plea for a godly England, he added that it was the only sure way to
avoid Gods punishment with political tyranny. In his Godly Letter Sent
to the Faithful in London (1554) he reminded his readers that even as
you purpose and intend to avoid Gods vengeance, both in this life and
in the life to comeavoid and fly, as well in body as in spirit, all fellow-
ship and society with Idolaters in their idolatry.113 In 1558, at the height
of Knoxs radicalism, he republished his Letter to the Queen Regent of
Scotland with additions. He cautioned the Queen not to mistake the
death of her two sons and the violent death of her husband as mere
misfortune, but, instead, to acknowledge the judgements of God, who
hath begun already to declare himself angry with you, with your seed
and posterity, yea, with the whole realm, above which it should have
ruled.114 This was quite a remarkable statement. Knox accused the
Queen of causing her own sons death by her conduct. Again, in order
to understand how this was possible for Knox to assert, one must
remember that his belief in his calling by a judging God made him a
prophet, with the watchmans duty to preach his message of repent-
ance. It was this sense of divine commission as it survived into the
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.
following century which led Walzer to speak of a revolutionary army of

God-fearers, who would go on to found the modern world.
As an introduction to Knoxs Faithful Admonition (1554), the anony-
mous writer of The Epistle of a Banyshed Manne out of Leycester Shire
began his short work with what could be called a typical Protestant
view of history:
There hath been no time, since the first fashioning of man, which hath
not had her manifold miseries and great troubles, by which God chas-
tened and punished all men for their evil life and unthankfullness to him,
continually refusing his calling and warning; whereof the righteous and
just had their parts, although it was for their commodity and profit, (but
to the utter destruction of the wicked and ungodly) for judgement begin-
neth at the faithful, which are called the Houshold of God in the Scripture;
and the punishment whereby God chasteneth them cometh always to
them for the best, either to the bringing of patience, or the acknowledg-
ing of their sins, or for the avoiding of the eternal condemnation. And
their fashion is, when they perceive the hand of the Lord to be upon
them, or upon others, by any manner of trouble, as poverty, sickness,
banishment, falling away of faithful friends, increasing of foes, or any
other like trouble, immediately they turn to God, are heartily sorry for
their sins and unthankfullness, confesseth them selves guilty, and calleth
earnestly for mercy, which God for and in Jesus Christ granteth unto
them, of his great goodness according to his promise.115
In other words, God sends all sorts of personal and economic woes suf-
fered by the elect on earth for their ultimate benefit. Furthermore,
Gods activity determines political events. In fact, the writer sees Gods
control over political tumult as the same as his control over the very
elements of nature. It is God who sends bloody war, sudden death,
great untruth, open perjury, division, strange consuming fires, change
of great estates and commonwealths, overflowing of great cities and
lands by water, hunger and poverty without pity. in the same way
that God causeth the very elements to fight against the world.116
Outside of the Protestant political mind, whole systems of politics
were built up almost a priori on the notion of order. Or, at least, think-
ers made it clear that what they were advocating was in some way vali-
dated by the instruction of nature or the dictates of common experience.
Certainly this was true of the most intellectually vigorous movement of
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
the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries: the Society of Jesus. Jesuit

political thought made heavy use of social and political order as deriv-
able from nature and natural hierarchy.117 The Society as a whole was in
many ways the triumph of the Thomist metaphysic. Ponet and Knox
did not completely abandon metaphysics in their conception of univer-
sal order as Gods providence. The difference was that, whereas previ-
ous and later theorists would use order to exhort obedience, Ponet and
Knox used such doctrines to encourage sedition. This being said, the
Great Chain of Being and order permeated the radical theories of Ponet
and Knox. Still, for both men, Knox in particular, order was really just
a veiled way of describing Gods will and providence. It was never
impersonal. Hierarchy and order were only ever the visible function of
an invisible, irresistible, divine will. However, as exemplified in Knoxs
thought, the presence of both traditions in the one system was a house
divided, which could never stand. And collapse it did. Radical political
thought the following century completely eschewed talk of cosmic
order and appealed either to natural law, covenant or providence.
As far as Milton was concerned, if a revolution succeeded it was by
Gods will, and therefore the new order was perfectly legitimate. For If
God alone gave a kingdom to Charles, he also took it away from
Charles.118
Order and Providence in Elizabethan Thought
In his classic study, The Elizabethan World Picture, E.M.W. Tillyard

affirmed that Elizabethan England was far from the modern age that
historians had occasionally portrayed it as being. Essentially, Elizabethan
England was totally steeped in religion, and to suggest it was secular or
modern was inaccurate. For Tillyard it was not a break from medieval-
ism that characterised sixteenth-century England, but an embracing of
it almost to the end.119 Yet Tillyard overlooked the shift in emphasis
from metaphysical order to divine will, which Carr identified but
made little of. He noted the ambivalence of the Puritans toward ancient
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.
and medieval cosmologies. Nevertheless, he contended that the previ-

ous cosmology and metaphysic of the schoolmen was generally
accepted by Churchmen and Puritans, scholars, poets, and dramatists.
He also pointed out that none of these sects gave birth to theories relat-
ing to the order of things that departed in any important point from the
accepted forms of thought.120 This last comment needs to be qualified.
Even if the new emphasis on Gods will by most Tudor churchmen
does not count as a new concept, its stress, with the Great Chain of
Beings fall into desuetude, qualifies as a turning point in the history
of English thought. The Separatists attempted to break down spirit-
ualhierarchies between clerics and laypeople, and also the hierarchy
among clerics themselves. Furthermore, although there was much talk
by Elizabethan churchmen about order and hierarchy, it was of a divine
will-vocabulary. As J.G.A. Pocock points out, The sphere in which they
operated was that of the inscrutable providence of God, and success in
that sphere seemed providential; it argued they were divinely commis-
sioned to exercise power.121 The metaphysics used by scholastic theolo-
gians and the decorated language employed by Henrician humanists
was largely eschewed for divine will. It is best to speak of a period of
ambiguity between medievalism and emerging modes of thinking.
With the death of Queen Mary and Elizabeths accession in 1558,
English Protestants again found themselves in a sympathetic common-
wealth. Providentialism justified the regime from the very beginning.
Writing to Elizabeth from Zurich Vermigli identified England as an
elect nation.122 This English exceptionalism would last well into the fol-
lowing century and be appropriated by English settlers in the New
World.123 The immediate task of political theorists was to justify
Elizabeths right to rule as a woman. The long-term task of Elizabethan
theorists was to justify obedience to a prince considered a heretic and,
eventually, an excommunicate by thousands of English Catholics.
Elizabethan Protestantism lost the homogeneity of the Edwardian
Protestant movement. It was partly the concept of rank and order that
Carr, Phases of Thought, p. 191.

120
121

1975), p. 28.
122
Kirby, Zurich Connection, p. 181.
123
Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States 16071876,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
72 chapter two
set the hotter Protestants on the road to Separatism. Elizabeth had

decreed that ministers be distinguished from laypeople by certain
ecclesiastical garb a distinction that was declared by critics to connote
Rome and foreign to the earliest Christian tradition. Stating the rea-
sons why some ministers renounced their preaching posts, Percival
Wilburn pointed out to Bullinger that The different orders of the clergy
are still retained.124 Those who were happy with the garb made no
attempt to deny the charge of stratification between clergy and laypeo-
ple and among the clergy itself. Bishop Grindal, later Archbishop of
Canterbury, and Robert Horn wrote to Bullinger and Rudolph Gualter
affirming that the majority of churchmen hold that the ministers of
the Church of England may adopt without impiety the distinction
of habits now prescribed by public authority.125 In 1573 Bishop
RichardCox accused the Presbyterians of rejecting the current order as
being of little use. Indeed he saw it as their mission that such order
may be altogether abolished. It was the equality of rank that most
unsettled opponents of Presbyterianism and Puritanism.126 Disregard
for order reached a peak with Thomas Bilsons pronouncement that
kings and commonwealths at the preaching of one man, have submit-
ted themselves to the faith of Christ[though] twenty thousand
Bishops, should take exception to the Gospel of truth, which is nothing
else but to war against God, by pretence of human reason and order.127
Order had now become a scandal to the progress of religion. With the
influence of precisionist biblicism and an aversion to anything remotely
connoting Roman Catholicism, Elizabeths via media proved too great
a burden on many churchmen, leading them either to remain in the
English church as perpetual criticsThomas Cartwright and the
Presbyteriansor leave the church and form Separatist congrega-
tionsBarrowists and Brownists.
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.
Early Tensions: The Geneva Bible and Laurence Humphreys

The Nobles
The theorising of Elizabethan churchmen shows the same dualism

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

Humphrey. Humphrey had stayed at Calvins Geneva during the Marian
period, where he wrote his Optimates in 1559.134 The work was pub-
lished in English in 1563 as The Nobles or of Nobilitye. It was an appel-
lation to the English nobility to make itself an exemplar of godliness
and right living, and to guard the realm so that it would become fully
reformed in religion. The nobility could be justified if one saw society
like a human body. A body is made up of numerous parts, some more
excellent and important than others. To remove the greater members
would destroy the whole body altogether.135 Though Humphrey
affirmed that rank was in accordance with the three laws: the law of
God, the law of nature, and the law of nations, much of his discourse on
rank was concerned with it as a fiat of God.136 There is a clear hierarchy
in societykings over nobles, wealthy over poor, males over females
which was not justified in terms of harmony but in terms of Gods will.
When Humphrey spoke of those who would do away with rank alto-
gether, or who would try to rise above their station, he did not threaten
disharmony or disorder, but gave what seems to be a threat of divine
judgement.137 To kill a nobleman or even to take his property is to undo
what God has done; for all power, rule, dignity, paternity, Nobility,
Novity, ancientness,138 descendeth from that author and giver of all
heavenly and earthly gifts.139 Humphrey was not even prepared to speak
of natural rank or natural gradation; divine will was a sufficient
explanation:
For it [nobility] is not given to all men, nor bought by Princes favour,
neither commeth by the benefit of nature, norhappens by chance and
casualty: but even given from above, by the providence, and dispensation
of god. Who plungeth low the lofty from their seat: and lifteth up the
lowly. Who, with his rightwise eye regardeth mans life, and with his
mighty arm and heavenly beck, guideth and governeth it.140
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.
While Humphrey was medieval enough to draw the analogy between a

commonwealth and a body, thus showing the necessity of rank, his
argument really came down to brute fact. If God controls the whole of
his created order, then existing social stratifications are meant to be.
Though Humphrey had previously said that rank was in accordance
with nature, he denied the possibility of any natural explanation of why
this or that person should be higher than another. The order of society,
like the order of the cosmos, is simply a manifestation of Gods will.
Seeking to overturn or change it is not merely disorderly, it is to ask of
the Creator, What hast thou wrought?
In 1569, there was an attempt by Northern Englishmen to depose
Elizabeth from the throne and install Mary Queen of Scots. The Scottish
Queen entered England with the hope that Elizabeth would aid her in
regaining her lost power in Scotland. Her presence in England inspired
Northerners to try to place her on the English throne. The Northern
Rebellion was a failure and the leaders were publicly executed, but it
proved that Elizabeth had strong enemies in the Northern region of
Englanda bastion of Catholicism. English Parliamentarian and trans-
lator of Calvins Institutio, Thomas Norton, wrote tracts highlighting
the danger of recusant Catholics. Norton couched his justification for
obedience entirely in terms of divine will. He began by pointing out to
the Northern rebels that their actions could occasion their state of
damnation, appealing to fear of destruction of the soul over the body.141
After this, Norton expounded the cause of rebellion as ambition and
poverty, but a poverty caused by foolishness and mismanagement.142
Norton considered rebellion an impulse to resist the ordinance of
almighty GOD, [and] to reject his most inestimable benefit.143 He
went on to recommend Chekes The Hurt of Sedition to address the con-
temporary problems of state.144 In his other tract, A Warning agaynst
the Dangerous Practises of Papistes, published the same year, he set out
to show how Catholicism was perforce seditious, for the pope had
declared Elizabeth a heretic. This particular tract was far better than
the latter, for it was true. Norton correctly pointed out that throughout
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
European history the papacy had frequently encouraged disobedience

and sedition.145 Nortons observation proved prophetic, for the follow-
ing year pope Pius V declared Elizabeth excommunicate and released
all Catholic subjects from obedience to her.
With the 1570 papal bull, Regnans in excelsisan unmistakable dec-
laration of warthe papacy formally declared Elizabeth excommuni-
cate and, therefore, illegitimate; a usurped ruler. The bull was published
in England in May.146 The Roman See absolved all English Catholics
from obedience to Elizabeth. Traditionally these sorts of bulls not only
absolved subjects from obedience, but also placed a curse on those that
obeyed or aided an excommunicated ruler.147 Disobedience was a
Catholic duty. This was understood by Protestants to make all consci-
entious Catholics traitors.148 Although the bull did not explicitly call for
regicide, in 1580 the papal secretary of state, writing from Spain,
declared that it would be a meritorious deed if someone should remove
Elizabeth from this life.149 The English Catholic was placed under
immense burden of conscience.
Threats to security, internal and external, gave occasion for exhorta-
tions to obedience couched in traditional and providential terms.
Elizabethan liturgies show the historian of ideas that the Great Chain
of Being was still presupposed in much reflection of humankinds place
in the order of things:
thou hast created and made us of nothing, not dumb beasts void of
reason, not vile vermins creeping upon the earth; but the noblest and
most honourable of all thy worldly creatures, little inferior to thy heav-
enly Angels, endued with understanding, adorned with all excellent gifts,
both of body and of mind, exalted to the dominion over all other thy
earthly creatures, yea, the sun and the moon with other heavenly lights
appointed to our service, enriched with the possession of all things, either
necessary for our use, or delectable for our comfort.150
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.
Similar language was employed for the Elizabethan Homilie against

Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1570). As Edward VI had done,
Elizabeth largely banned unauthorised preaching and prophesyings
for official prayers and homilies.151 Thousands of English parishioners
would have eventually heard this homily. A cosmic hierarchy is out-
lined from God to angels to humans to animals: rank and obedience
become the lesson of creation. But an impersonal hierarchy or meta-
physical gradation is nowhere to be found. The divine will is just as
strong as the concept of order. Indeed, the latter is just the former in
another vocabulary:
As God the creator and Lord of all things appointed his Angels and heav-
enly creatures in all obedience to serve and honour his majesty: so was it
his will that man, his chief creature upon the earth, should live under
the obedience of his Creator and lordand as God would have man to be
his obedient subject, so did he make all earthly creatures subject unto
man.152
There is no talk of rationality or relatedness to the nature of God as
determining rank and order. For the Protestants, as opposed to the
Jesuit literature, order was largely arbitrary.153 Furthermore, after the
rebellion in Eden God appointed a similar order to be maintained in
society. Just as God appoints humans to reign over beasts so he appoints
magistrates to reign over the rest. There is no distinction between Gods
providence over nature and his providence over society:
God forthwith by laws given unto mankind, repaired again the rule
and order of obedience thus by rebellion overthrown, and besides the
obedience due unto his Majesty, he not only ordained that in families and
households, the wife should be obedient unto her husband, the children
unto their parents, the servants unto their masters: but also, when man-
kind increased, and spread itself more largely over the world, he by his
holy word did constitute and ordain in Cities and countries several and
Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 443444.

151
Homilie against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1570), Certaine Sermons

152
or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth I

(15471571), (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968), p. 275.
Italics added.
153
Bellarmine was less concerned with divine decree than he was with right order.
He appealed to the Dionysian hierarchy as a model for the temporal: Even among the
angels there is super- and subordination; why then not among human beings in the
state of innocence? Cited by Hopfl, Jesuit Political Thought, p. 209.
78 chapter two
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:
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.
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
Homilie against Disobedience, p. 280.

160
Ibid., p. 280. Italics added.

161
162
Alexander Nowell, Catechism (1570), Parker Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge
80 chapter two
Concerning the Justice of God in which he blamed the plague on the

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

in natural history. Those who ascribed the earthquake to purely natural
causes deface the apparent working of God. It was quickly concluded
that the earthquake proceeded not of the course of any natural causes,
but of Gods only determinate purposeto show the greatness of his
glorious power in uttering his heavy displeasure against sin.171 The sin
was elaborated upon a bit further on in the liturgy as being the diminu-
tion of right order in the English commonwealth. The liturgy describes
a typical sixteenth-century conception of social order under threat: the
youth seemed to have been appropriating a looseness and untimely
liberty;172 rank seems to be dissolving as servants are become master-
like. Furthermore, genders are becoming confused as men are accused
of effeminacy as they have taken up garish attire, and nice behaviour of
women. Finally, Women, transformed from their own kind, have
gotten up the apparel and stomachs of men.173 Its a wonder why the
earthquake ever stopped!
There was also the same emphasis by the writers of the Elizabethan
liturgies as there was in the works of the radical Marian Protestants on
Gods determinative will in political affairs. In the opening doxologies
of no fewer than nine liturgical prayers from 1590 to 1600, there were
direct references to Gods deterministic control in politics. God is the
protector of the lives and estates of Christian kings, whose wellbeing is
protected by his providence;174 it is by him that all kings and princes
have their charge;175 Englands survival as a relatively ordered common-
wealth is attributed wholly to Gods providence.176 This was not just a
matter for religious liturgies. Gods providence as a sufficient explana-
tion for the empires survival was present in Elizabethan acts of parlia-
ment. That certain plots against Elizabeth had been foiled could only
be attributed to Gods merciful providence.177 The same year saw
the publication of Edwin Sandys sermons; these sermons give the
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.
historian considerable insight into the Elizabethan view of politics.

Sandys explanation for the survival of any monarch invoked providen-
tialism. But, as was common with Protestant political thought, the
providential explanation for Elizabeths, and all estates, authority con-
tained a threat. If any ruler or noble should abandon their first love
pure religionGod will lay them low.178
The concept of providence was sufficiently flexible to justify both
absolutist conceptions of power and to make threats to princes whose
wills exceeded their office. This had considerable implications for Tudor
political polemic. For example, the martyrologist John Foxes emphasis
on Gods providence in the accession of Elizabeth increased propor-
tionately with his displeasure at the queens escalating animosity to
Puritanism during her reign. By emphasising Gods involvement in
Elizabeths inheritance of the crown, Foxe was reminding Elizabeth
that she was accountable to God for her religious policy. Providence
implied covenant. God gave Elizabeth power on the condition that she
would restore the English church to its Edwardian purity. The polemic
became fierce when Foxe and numerous others reminded even the
Queen of her own mortality.179 This is a far cry from the Machiavellian
power of fortune espoused by Starkey in the 1530s. It would be a mis-
take to think that providentialism only ever functioned to secure the
power of rulers and higher stations. Providentialism was a double-
edged sword. Gods laws applied universally: to utter them against
another was also to utter them against oneself. Preachers from Edward
VI until the end of the Tudor reign could quite comfortably threaten
the people with divine vengeance for disobedience and in the same
breath threaten the ruler with the same for injustice or godlessness. As
Hobbes understood, providentialism has no partiality.
Fixed Order in Desuetude: Puritanism and Separatism
Walzer argues that Puritanism, by appealing to the dynamic will of

God as a sufficient explanation for things, destroyed the Great Chain of
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
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.
was pushed regardless of which traditions had to be overturned or

hierarchies brought down. This was recognised in a 1573 royal procla-
mation, which described the Puritan movement as unquietly disposed,
desirous to change, and therefore ready to find fault with all well estab-
lished orders. Indeed, Puritans make division and dissention in the
opinions of men andbreed talks and disputes against common
order.185 Bishop Sandys thought the Puritans to have pronounced
themselves against the whole state.186 It is true that the Puritan and
Separatist movements did not stress anything like a universal hierarchy
finding its expression in nature and society. Indeed, one of the most
radical Separatists, Robert Browne, had a perfect opportunity to draw
the connection between natural and social harmony, but ignored the
link altogether. In his most systematic writing, A Book which Sheweth
the Life and Manners of All True Christians (1581), Browne spoke of
universal order in nature as sustained directly by God, who keepeth all
his creatures, in their state of excellence and difference of kind.187 At
this point any conscientious Protestant or Catholic would have drawn
the analogy between nature and society, but Browne did no such thing.
His silence on any such nexus would come to be typical of political
thought in the following century and beyond. No Puritan or Separatist
offered an explicit refutation of the Great Chain of Being or of medieval
discourse on fixed impersonal order. They ignored it. By the time of the
Puritan Army Debates of 16479, the whole purpose of discussion was
declared to be that we may seek God together.188 For this was the
foundation of all legitimate actions, according to Oliver Cromwell, to
do that which is the will of God.189
Responding to the perceived egalitarian element of Presbyterianism
too close to democracy for somesome explicitly denied that social
rank was abrogated by Christs injunction to humility. Christ, accord-
ing to Archbishop John Whitgift, far from denying the legitimacy of
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
social superiors, exhorts all men and women to humility. It is therefore

the affection of the mind that Christ condemneth, not superiority, not
titles of honour and dignity.190 Bishop Sandys thought order and
rank significant enough to devote some traditional metaphors towards
them. In a passage that is an exposition of St. Pauls organic analogy but
which reads like John of Salisburys Policraticus,191 Sandys illuminates
social rank in terms of the human anatomy and Aristotelian
naturalism:
and civil society, there must be diversity, as of members, so of func-
tions. The prince is as the head.The ministers of the word are as eyes to
watchand as the mouth to speakThe judges are as ears.The nobil-
ity are as the shoulders and arms to bear the burden of the common-
wealth, to hold up the head, and defend the body.Men of lower degrees
are set as inferior parts in the bodyfor the necessary sustentation of both
themselves and others. All these members are so necessary, that none can
want without the ruin of the whole. For every one hath need of other, and
by the help of the other is maintained.192
The classic formulation of social ranks was restated by Sandys in
another sermon: prince over subject; master over servant; father over
child; husband over wife.193 One wonders whether even God can inter-
vene in society and raise up common folk and bring down rulers if,
indeed, society is as fragile as an organism. Sandys sermons give equal
emphasis to medieval notions of fixed rank and hierarchy and to Gods
free and irresistible will operating in society evidencing at the time.
The ambiguity that characterised the Protestant worldview during
the later years of the Tudor reign was absent from the greatest Tudor
Protestant theorist, Richard Hooker. Hookers thought represented a
golden mean between the medieval impersonal view of universal order
spoken of by historians and the providentialist understanding of order
espoused by so many Protestants. Hookers dialogue with Puritanism
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.
may well be described as a sustained argument for reason, as opposed

to will, as the governing principle of the universe.194 The English divine
explicitly drew upon Dionysius angelic hierarchy in discussing spirit-
ual and temporal order. Hookers order was not the voluntarist expres-
sion of an active God but an order which is nothing less than the divine
self-identity.195 Even God, for Richard Hooker, does not simply will
things out of simple pleasure; indeed, They err therefore who think
that the will of God to do this or that, there is no reason besides
his will.196
Conclusion
Although the Reformation removed much of the certainty of the medi-

eval mind and society, we must not err by thinking the sixteenth-
century broke entirely from notions of rank and order, as though the
Reformation neatly separates the medieval from the modern world. On
the contrary, the English Protestant view of society retained much that
was traditional and medieval. The political and theological treatises,
liturgies, sermons, prayers, and homilies of Tudor England reveal that,
for Protestants, politics was the product of the medieval mingling of
heaven with earth, the participation of temporal society in the eternal
heavenly hierarchy. However, although the conclusions look identical
to what went before, the arguments used underwent a shift. Sixteenth-
century English Protestantism had, by and large, replaced any mean-
ingful discourse about fixed order with Gods irresistible will. The
Protestants envisioned a radically personal universe, obviating the need
for intricate speculation on order and hierarchy. If Gods will is irresist-
ible, then the current political and social climate must be an expression
of such a will. This methodological shift is partly attributable to the
influence of Continental Reformed thoughtCalvins in particularin
English theological speculation.
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
198
Ibid, pp. 73, 153.
Chapter Three
Reason, Nature, and Natural Law
Introduction
Providentialism proved a powerful competitor to the impersonal

necessity that philosophers and theologians had entertained in much
social thought up until the sixteenth-century. This providentialist
challenge to concepts of natural order could not but also touch upon
traditional notions of natural law. For if nature is simply repeated
instances of Gods will in creation, with no being of its own, as Augustine
argued, then what is considered natural is simply what God happens
to will, and God can change his will. Thus, providentialism could also
challenge robust theories of natural law. As witnessed, this was evident
in the Knox/Aylmer debate over the naturalness of Elizabeths reign.
Aylmer pointed out that Elizabeths reign could not be considered
unnatural if nature is defined as simply that which God wills, for obvi-
ously God willed Elizabeth to ascend to the throne, for what could
overpower him? But it was not so much the enthusiasm for providen-
tialism that took its toll on natural law theories in the sixteenth-century
as it was Protestantism in general. The task of the historian of natural
law in Protestant England is to explain why there was no sustained
sophisticated tradition of natural law in ecclesiastical political thought
before Richard Hooker.
In his classic study of natural law in the thought of the Protestant
Reformers J.T. McNeill said that there was no real discontinuity between
the natural law taught by the scholastic tradition and that espoused by
the Reformers.1 Indeed, Luther is said to have been more reliant on the
natural law tradition than previously thought.2 The scholastic division
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
of law into natural, divine, and human was retained by Reformers,

though Calvin broke with the medieval tradition by declaring con-
science, as opposed to reason, the diviner of natural law.3 J.W. Allen
was quite correct when he said that natural law was always gener-
ally accepted in England: Sceptics apart, if anyone in Elizabethan
England denied it, it was the Puritans.4 It may not even be the case
that Puritans were too concerned with explicitly denying natural law;
they generally ignored it. Baumer shows that natural law was the domi-
nant vocabulary during the early stages of the Henrician Reformation
in the 1530s.5 For some historians Protestantism would not even have
been able to construct social theories independently of natural law
ideas:
even Protestantismthe new form of the Christian idea which arose
out of the religious crisis of the sixteenth centurywas only able to estab-
lish a doctrine of society by reshaping and continuing this Catholic social
philosophy. The social philosophy of Protestantism is also based upon
the idea of Natural Law.6
It has been commonplace for historians of political thought to iden-
tifysixteenth-century Protestant political literature as being hostile to
natural law ideas, or, at least, not particularly comfortable with them.
Morris provides a good example: The appeal to a higher law, particu-
larly to the Law of Nature, was easier for the Catholic than for the
Protestant. It was the divine Will, far more than the divine Law, which
operated in the Protestants universe.7 DEntreves goes further:
it is undoubtedly true that among the first effects of the Reformation
upon political theory was the forsaking of the rational arguments of nat-
ural law, and of any systematic treatment of the highest problems of law
and politics. Thus the law of the Bible and the law of the state were left as
the main if not the only ground of controversy.8
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:
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
Walzer, speaking of seventeenth-century Puritans, attributed the rejec-

tion of the idea of natural law to their voluntarist universe.9 Yet the idea
of a complete rejection of natural law in Protestant thought is scarcely
less than a caricature of Protestant ethics.10 Sommerville shows that
this was not the case with all seventeenth-century Protestants and it
remained central to much of the political thinking of the period.11
Nonetheless, in terms of the Puritan tradition, there is much truth in
Walzers analysis, though Euan Camerons contention that the natural
law tradition was merely diluted at the hands of many Protestant theo-
rists owing to the greater emphasis on sin and intellectual corruption
is probably closer to the mark.12 Furthermore, the tactic of Martin
Luther in responding to his detractors probably set the method by
which future advocates of reform would defend their position. The
issue of authority had to arise if Luther was going to attack the teach-
ings of the church. Luther went above the authority of the pope and
mostly ignored the scholastic tradition of natural law and appealed
straight to scripture.13 For the most part Luther was uninterested in the
natural law tradition and refused to interact with it.
However, it was not only the Protestant view of Gods will that led to
the decline of natural law discourse but also the Protestant emphasis on
sola scriptura. The truth is not so much that natural law flourished nor
that it was rejected. Natural law was present in much Protestant politi-
cal thought throughout the sixteenth-century, but in a rudimentary
way. In fact, for the most part, the English Protestant tradition, until
Richard Hooker, greatly resembles what Ernst Troeltsch called the sect
tradition of natural law. The sect tradition, in Troeltschs words,
adopted an entirely different attitude towards Natural Law. They did
not base their arguments upon learned patristic or Aristotelian
researches into the Law of God, but upon the plain Law of Christ, or
the Sermon on the Mount.14 Though it will be shown that there was
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
92 chapter three
neither a total rejection of Aristotle nor of the church Fathers, the

simplicity described by Troeltsch of the sect understanding of natural
law typifies most of the Protestant natural law discourse in England
from 15471593. W.D.J. Cargill Thompsons comments are the most
judicious on the issue of natural law and the Reformation:
There is no evidence to support the idea that there was a break in the
natural law tradition between the end of the middle ages and the end of
the sixteenth/beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was revived
in protestantism by Hooker in England and Grotius in the Netherlands.
On the contrary, natural law continued to play an importantif perhaps
more limitedpart in the thinking of all the major reformers and it is
only among the extreme sects that it was attenuated almost out of
existence.15
The remainder of this chapter seeks to explain why, in Thompsons
words, natural law played a more limited role in English political
thought during the second half of the sixteenth-century.
It is not easy to identify why natural law went undeveloped during
this period, for Protestant theorists rarely attacked the idea. It seems
that the tradition was entering a somewhat decadent and detached
phase by the sixteenth-century. As Brian Tierney shows, most discourse
on natural law and natural rights was firmly attached to current ques-
tions regarding poverty. However, during the sixteenth-century there
was a change in attitudes towards poverty brought about by the human-
ist movement, which offered the poor less sympathy than the scholastic
tradition previously. Consequently natural law and natural rights dis-
course became detached from the issue of poverty and remained a free-
floating debate without any immediate application to the real world.
This led the humanists to deride the natural law and natural rights
tradition as irrelevant scholastic excess.16 Certainly both Morris and
Walzer are right in identifying a discomfort among English Protestants
with natural law, but it should not be concluded that natural law was
abandoned altogether. As will be shown, natural law was kept as an
idea but its analysis and use was stifled by the Protestant doctrines of
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.
the sufficiency of scripture and the emphasis on the corruption of the

intellect by sin. In the area of natural law theory, English Protestant
political thought displays a tension between theory and method. If
natural law is, by its very nature medieval,17 then medieval political
thought remained, but the new simplified non-scholastic method of
discourse was unsuitable for its expression. The crudity of the Protestant
use of natural law in England was owing to an uneasy relationship
between traditional ideas and new Protestant theology.
The Christian Natural Law Tradition
Though its presence ebbed and flowed, natural law theory had always
been a part of English intellectual history. It was inseparable from
orthodox Roman Catholic thought. The judgment of August Lang
stands: Ius naturalis with all its political consequences must accord-
ingly, so far as one may speak here at all of religious and ecclesiastical
determination, be regarded, despite its beginnings in antiquity, as a
thoroughly Catholic product.18 There is some current debate as to
whether natural law ever detached itself from its medieval tradition;
could natural law be considered anything other than medieval?19
Whatever the case, the whole natural law tradition saw itself as a ration-
alist enterprise; rationalist in the sense of autonomous: not relying
on any revealed authority for its conclusions to hold. Indeed, the tradi-
tion saw itself as in some ways independent from the authority of the
church, even a measuring rod against which the church could be
assessed.20 Yet Stephen Grabill is correct to point out that their was no
single, unified tradition of natural law, ancient or medieval. Approaches
were various and, often, incompatible.21
The ancient world was immersed in ideas of natural law, which usu-
ally referred to the divining of proper principles of conduct by observ-
ing that which tends to human happiness and that which does not.
Baumer, Early Tudor Theory, pp. 159160.

17
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).
codified in the Decalogue and Christs moral teachings.27 Marsilius of

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

discerned by right reason.34
Reason during the Reformation
There were no elaborate treatises on natural law by any English

Protestant until Richard Hookers Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593).
It cannot be argued that this was because of an open disdain for phi-
losophy, the traditional scholastic curriculum, or even the philosophy
of Aristotle, for a keen appreciation for all of these was kept by most
learned English Protestants. Though there was a general appreciation
for Aristotelian thought, the Protestant method of discourse was, by
and large, scriptural. It was not that Aristotle was rejected, but that the
emphasis on sola scriptura made complex philosophical argument
redundant. Thus, a method of inquiry that drew conclusions from a
complex web of arguments based on first principlesscholasticism
was rare among English Protestant theorists. For this reason, there was
no complex discussion of natural law by English churchmen until
Richard Hooker, who eschewed the scriptural proof-text method when
dealing with general issues of law and society. The Protestant view of
the sufficiency of scripture did not create general disdain for complex
philosophical exploration or for the philosophers themselves. It merely
made it difficult to use such methods of inquiry. Therefore, concepts
which would normally have been developed in detail by way of philo-
sophical distinctionssuch as natural lawwere either ignored or
expressed in their most crude form relying on standard scriptural proof
texts. This characterised the concept of natural law among the Protestant
churchmen in England.
The schoolmen held that revelation was needed owing to limitations
of the mind. Reformers held that it was needed owing to the almost
worthlessness of human reason in matters spiritual and ethical because
of original sin. Luther was the most radical in his suspicion of reason as
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.
a reliable navigator. It should be kept in mind that Luthers critique of

reason was really a critique of speculation about God and salvation
detached from the Bible. For Luther reason and scholastic excess were
synonymous.35 Indeed, reason interprets the scriptures of God by its
own inferences and syllogisms. Furthermore, it talks nothing but fol-
lies and absurdities, especially when it displays its wisdom on sacred
subjects.36 Calvin concurred:
And thus their foolish mind, being enveloped in darkness, was not able
to understand anything properly, but was hurled down in every way into
errors and fictions. This was their unrighteousness, that they immedi-
ately choked the seed of proper knowledge before it grew to maturity.37
It was for this reason that Luther and Calvin had to try to base all their
doctrines on scripture, thus largely eschewing the scholastic method of
assertion, critique, and response. If scripture lays bare many teachings
on social organisation they are true by virtue of being scriptural. The
English Lutheran, William Tyndale, ornamented The Obedience of a
Christian Man (1528) with attacks on scholastic philosophy as idola-
trous, foolish, and heretical. Tyndale was sure that We are all out of the
right way, every man his ways: One judgeth this best, another that to be
best. Now is worldly wit nothing but craft and subtlety to obtain that
which we judge falsely to be best.38 Tyndale then turned his scorn
directly on Plato, Aristotle, and the scholastics, whose pride he com-
pared to the sin of whorish ostentation.39
Christian humanism made something of natural law by relying
primarily on the pagan philosophers. Only the most rudimentary
principles of natural law had been set forth by the pagan authorities.
Consequently the achievement of the humanists in developing natural
law theory was scarcely able to approach the mighty and authoritative
Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, p. 81. See also W.D.J. Cargill
35
Thompson, The Philosopher of the Politic Society: Richard Hooker as a Political

Thinker, W. Speed Hill (ed.), Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an
Edition of His Works, (Cleveland and London: Case Western University Press, 1972),
p. 30.
36
Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, D. Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 18, (Weimar:
Harmann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1908), p. 184.
37
John Calvin, Commentarius in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (1539), 1:21,
Corpus Reformatorum, vol. LXXVII, William Baum, Edward Cunitz, Edward Reuss
(eds.), (Brunswig: C.A. Schwetschke and Son, 1892), p. 25.
38
William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, (1528), (Yorkshire: Scolar
Press, 1970), fol. xxxv.
39
Ibid., fol. xxxvi.
98 chapter three
systems of the Roman Catholic schoolmen. Erasmus praised animals,

but only to turn the hierarchy of animals on its head as a critique of
royalty and the nobility. He spurned the eagle and the lion while elevat-
ing the dog and the beetle.40 During the Reformation, there was never
a great system of natural law put forth. Furthermore, when natural law
did begin to be revived by early seventeenth-century Protestants, they
ignored their spiritual fathersLuther, Calvin, and Bullingerand
restated medieval principles drawing on the scholastic tradition.41
For the Magisterial Reformers, reason was considered a faulty and
dangerous instrument.42 This fact led one Victorian historian of
thought to opine that the Reformers desired not so much rational lib-
erty but spiritual salvation.43 The Reformers suspicion of autonomous
reason came from the Pauline epistles. Concerning the human race, the
Apostle proclaimed, their foolish heart was full of darkness. When
they professed themselves to be wise, they became fools.44 Tyndales
anti-rationalism did not take hold at Oxford in the Edwardian period,
as Plato and Aristotle were still studied for their ethical and political
insights. The spirit of humanism that was sweeping England fed a
demand for training in the philosophers. Protestant preacher, Hugh
Latimer, praised the study of logic and philosophy as the key to a
flourishing commonwealth:
Therefore for the love of God appoint teachers and schoolmasters,
you that have charge of youth; and give the teachers stipends worthy
of their pains, that they may bring them up in grammar, in logic, in rhet-
oric, in philosophy, in the civil law, and in that which I cannot leave
unspoken of, the word of Godthat we shall another day have a flourish-
ing commonwealth.45
Even though the Reformation spoke of the corruption of the mind, it
did not stop many Reformers from recommending a retreat to pagan
philosophy for illumination. Paradoxically, the Reformers stress on
40
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.
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,
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
(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.
of the necessity for theological disputation; this scholastic exercise in

theology was considered necessary for an effective clergy.62 Actually,
the case seems to be that the Continental and English antipathy to
rationalism was not so much directed towards the ancients and phi-
losophy per se, but more towards scholastic excessso-called triviali-
ties, which seemed superfluous given the religious anxiety of the
times. Italian Reformer and one-time Oxford theologian Peter Martyr
Vermigli praised philosophy, affirmed the categories of Aristotle as
useful tools of analysis, and yet castigated scholastics.63 King Edward
VI delighted in reading Cicero and Aristotle; concurrently there were
swipes from Oxford against Thomists and Scotists.64 This goes to show
that although Reformation theology carried circumspection towards
autonomous reason, philosophy and the scholastic tradition, these
were never extinguished from England. There was always a place for
the rational Englishman, but never the rational papist. The general view
of scriptures sufficiency, noetic corruption, and an appreciation for
Aristotelian philosophy resulted in most Protestant natural law being
half-baked and platitudinous. There was an obvious need for the Bible
to have the highest place in Protestant political theory, but often a need
was also felt for rational proofs. Such proofs, however, could not be
developed in any intricate way, for that would have been to usurp the
place of scripture and to deny noetic corruption. Consequently, the
intellectual nourishment traditionally given to natural law theory was
diverted to humanistic biblical scholarship preventing natural law the-
ory from growing beyond a mere shoot.
Natural Law among Edwardian Churchmen
The notion of natural law was more assumed than explored in Tudor
ecclesiastical political thought. Given that examples of unnatural
behavior usually involved intuitively suspect conduct like filial impiety,
or downright horrid conduct like the common example of a starving
mother devouring her child, unnatural probably denoted a feeling of
moral unacceptability. Probably Morris explanation of naturalis as
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
simply meaning self-evident most captures the meaning of the term in

Tudor literature.65 Part, if not all, of the problem with this tradition of
natural law was its subjective nature: what seemed self-evident for some
might not have been so self-evident for others.66 What many theorists
wanted to do was to show how their injunctions were somehow condu-
cive to the natural order, or in principle derivative from nature. It would
have been a powerful proof if it could be done; why else would Elizabeths
response to the Papal Bull Regnans in excelsis (1570)which absolved
all Catholics from obeying the pretended English Queendescribe
sedition as unnatural and obedience natural if people thought that
nature had nothing to recommend?67 Bishop Thomas Becon affirmed
that duty to parents and country was natural. It was clear to him that
there is no man so far estranged from civil humanity, which knoweth
not how much every one of us is indebted to his native country. For
the duty that we owe to our parents, kinsfolk, friends, &c., be great even
by the very law and instinct of nature.68 Precisely what he meant is
unclear; still, it is clear that Becon was trying to associate reverence and
duty with something above and beyond individual will or preference:
such affiliation is natural.
Miles Coverdale, shortly before the succession of Edward to the
throne wrote The Christen Rule or State of All the Worlde (1547), in
which he tried to set forth how all people in all stations should behave.
High on the agenda was obedience, something universally applicable.
One of the strongest exhortations to obedience from divine will to
appear in the sixteenth-century was offered in 1547 by Miles Coverdale.
The Christen Rule or State of all the Worlde was written and published
while he was in exile in Strasbourg for preaching against confession
and images. It is amazing that such a strong statement of royal legiti-
macy could come from one exiled by his own prince. It raises the ques-
tion of whether such exhortations really were devoid of conviction and
merely devices of political strategy. Still, it could be plausibly argued
that Coverdales tract was a Machiavellian attempt to ingratiate himself
with Henry VIII. Coverdales efforts reflect the Reformation tradition
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.
of making the new religion appeal to princes who were concerned,

above all, with the loyalty of their subjects. It was from the Bible that
Coverdale drew all of his arguments for obedience. Although he did
allow for the practical benefit of obedience, pointing out that dis
obedience can occasion even greater tyranny, his political thought was
expressed with prophetic counsel. Coverdale began his treatise by quot-
ing Romans 13. From there he could deduce that any resistance to
Gods vice-regent was akin to resistance to God himself. Furthermore
they that resisteth shall receive their damnation.69 Coming close to a
ius gentium argument, Coverdale reminded his readers that if God
requires even the pagan nations to observe the distinctions between
ranks, a fortiori the English!70 Not only is rebellion against a ruler rebel-
lion against God, but to seek to implement justice against a ruler is to
usurp Gods role as judge of princes.71 Referring again to Pauls teaching
in Romans 13, Coverdale discerned three different types of subjects.
The most reprehensible are all together beastly, which in no wise
receive the law in their hearts, but rise against princes and rulers.72
The second group is not so beastly; its members look on the pleasure,
profit, and promotion that followeth the keep of the law, and in respect
of the reward keep they the law outwardly with works, but not in the
heart.73 The third group is made up of the ideal Christian subject, the
person who obeys out of duty to Gods lawwritten in their hearts
and love towards the prince. As the apostle Paul described those gen-
tiles who knew nothing of Moses Decalogue yet knew Gods law and
obeyed it, Coverdale described good Christian subjects as a law unto
themselves: These [good subjects] need neither of king nor officers to
drive them, neither that any man proffer them any reward for to keep
the law, for they do it naturally.74
Coverdales next lengthy proof for obedience was by way of a medici-
nal metaphor. As a patient would be foolish to resist the painful knife
of a physician, so is a nation who resists Gods refining fire in the form
of a tyrant:
Now if the sick resist the razor, the searching irondoth he not resist
his own health and is cause of his own death. So likewise is it of us,
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.
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.
in his massive tome A Plaine Refutation (15901591) was to describe

his conformist persecutors in a similar way; he did not need the Bible
to tell him that the treatment of Separatists was contrary to all sense,
equity, and conscience.88 About two years later another Separatist
pleaded from prison that his accusers not punish him against law
equity and conscience.89
John Hoopers Natural Law
Bishop Hooper had more than most to say about natural law. In 1550
he published his Declaration of the Ten Commandments, a book with
much speculative insight into law in general, and occasional references
to natural law. Though Hooper was regarded as one of the most able of
the Edwardian Reformers, his thought on law and politics is completely
derivative. His treatise begins with a discussion of the very concept of
law itself. In this discussion Hooper nowhere went into any detailed
discussion of natural law; he remained completely theological. The first
detailed glimpse into 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
Hooper also considered self-preservation to be a perspicuous teaching

of nature; for there is nothing more dear to man than his body and life,
as the law of nature teacheth.91 Hooper was equating instinct with
nature. As all people instinctively strive to preserve their own bodies,
this desire for self-preservation passes from the descriptive to the pre-
scriptive: a law of nature. Hoopers next identification of natural law is
not so perspicuous: matrimony.92 Matrimony as natural law stretches
right back to Justinians Institutes and was taught by the greatest doctor
of natural law, Thomas Aquinas.93 At the end of his treatise Hooper
aligned natural law with the simple testimony of conscience.94 In his
later writings he affirmed that natural law rendered all laws to the
contrary void. Hooper specifically had in mind a commonplace of
unnatural behavior: infanticide.95 Again, exactly how infanticide is a
transgression of natural law was not explained by Hooper, it was just
assumed.
Though Cremeans identifies Hooper as a confirmed Zwinglian, if
one were to insist upon some Continental influence on his natural law
theory the best candidate would be Bullinger, probably the most
respected of that time in England.96 By perusing the letters of the
English Reformers, one finds that Hoopers greatest theological debts
lay with Bullinger. Hooper had little praise for Calvin, but occasional
criticism.97 Bullingers natural law theory corresponded to the other
Continental Reformers; indeed there is nothing unique about it.98
Bullinger simply lifted his definition of law from that provided by
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.
Cicero in De Legibus.99 Not quite so affected by the doctrine of noetic

corruption, Bullinger affirmed that natural law has its origins with God
but is brought to light by man.100 While the prince has sway over the
body, natural law has dominion over the conscience. It is the role of the
law of nature to teach; it is an instruction of the conscience, and, as it
were, a certain direction placed by God himself in the minds and hearts
of men, to teach them what they have to do and what to eschew.101
All Reformers, including Calvin, taught this. Furthermore, Bullinger
saw the law of nature as grace triumphing over nature; that is, God
gives, or better, inscribes the law on the hearts of humans to overcome
their natural proclivity to lawlessness:
Wherefore the law of nature is not called the law of nature, because in the
nature and disposition of man there is of or by itself that reason of light
exhorting to the best things, and that holy working; but for because God
hath imprinted or engraven in our minds some knowledge, and certain
general principles of religion, justice, and goodness, which, because they
be grafted in us and born together with us, do therefore seem to be natu-
rally in us.102
The imagery used is purely Pauline; engrafted in our minds and
imprinted are to be found in Pauls epistle to the Romans.103 By 1546
Hooper had read Bullingers commentaries upon Pauls epistles.104
Furthermore, Hooper received Bullingers work on Kings during April
1550.105 If Hooper had read Bullingers First Decade by the time he came
to write his Declaration of the Ten Commandments, then we could with
more certainty affirm a Bullingerian influence on Hoopers natural law
teachings. Although it is almost certain that Hooper was quite familiar
with Bullingers thought on natural law, still, Hoopers natural law
teachings are purely medieval. There is no evidence of an explicitly
Bullingerian influence on Hoopers natural law. Though the historian
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:
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
can see similarities between Hoopers thought and that of certain

Continental Reformers, and can be fairly sure that Hooper had read the
relevant books in which their natural law ideas were expressed, influ-
ence cannot be confidently affirmed. This is simply because the ideas
of the Continental Reformers were, by and large, not unique or distinct
enough from traditional medieval explorations into natural law to
distinguish between a possible medieval influence or a Reformed
influence.
Much the same can be said for the natural law references to be found
in Miles Coverdales thought. In his 1552 tract A Christen Exhortation
unto Customable Swearers he made some off-the-cuff references to
nature. Like Hooper and the whole Protestant tradition at the time,
Coverdales natural law is general enough to make it impossible to
pinpoint his sources. The Golden Rule is the restatement of natural
law:
And to the performance of that his pleasure added he this natural law,
that they should consider within themselves what they would have done
to their own bodies, children, goods, or cattle, and upon that ground to
conceive a rule how to use all other particular persons.106
The natural law was the way of life for certain godly men including
Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The story of the pro-
gressive sinfulness of the human race was considered by Coverdale to
be the story of the gradual casting off of natural law.107
It is not so much that theories of divine will, noetic corruption, and
scriptural sufficiency led Edwardian Protestants to reject natural law or
even simply to abandon its use. Rather, such doctrines caused an
ambivalence between commitment to principles of Reformed theology
and methodnoetic corruption and scriptural supremacyand a gen-
uine belief in the natural law. The coexistence of divine will, belief in
radical intellectual corruption, and veneration of philosophy and phi-
losophers created a hesitant and immature natural law tradition, which
remained until the work of Hooker.108 Basic expressions of natural
lawi.e. animal behavior, the Golden Rule, and consciencewere well
represented among Edwardian political theologians, but nothing was
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.
developed. Edwardian Protestants seemed obviously uncomfortable

with such a theoretical device, and therefore wielded it in an often inef-
fective and clumsy manner.
Two Traditions in One: The Natural Law Theories

of the Marian Exiles
Protestant polemic during the Marian reign retained the pessimistic

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

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

natural law resumed. Natural law in the exile literature marked a brief
departure from Tudor practice.
The project of the radical Marian political theorists was to present
the most general case for resistance possible. In this they were appeal-
ing not only to passionate Protestants but also to the more indifferent
sort, who, though religious, drew much of their wisdom from the
ancients and the philosophers. If Walzer is correct in seeing the evolu-
tion of Protestantparticularly Puritanpolitical thought in terms of
a transition from natural law and order to divine will, then the natural
law doctrines in the works of John Ponet and John Knox show two
types of political thought in their purity cohabitating in single systems.
In other words there was an ambivalence between the natural law and
divine will, that is, the equal stress of two political vocabularies within
the one treatise: political Aristotelianism and godly and prophetic
counsel. According to Walzer, the latter was eventually to triumph over
the former.
John Ponets Shorte Treatise shows so strong a reliance on natural
law that it is unique in the history of English political thought before
Hooker.121 His natural law was the most coherent and the most radi-
calduring the 1550s. Certainly if Halifaxs contention is correct, that
natural law was a nail everybody would use to fix that which is
good for them,122 then Ponets thought is the best exemplification of
such polemical opportunism in Tudor England, perhaps along with
Knox. He built his radical political thought on the natural law of
self-preservation. By likening the commonwealth to a body, he was
ablethough tenuouslyto argue for the necessity of regicide. Much
of what he said could have been said by a Roman Catholic, and his
openness to natural law sets him apart from the scriptural purity
of many Reformed Englishmen. Indeed Morris judgment reflects a
close reading of the Shorte Treatise: Strictly speaking, Ponets ideas
were not new. He belongs, in a sense, to the mediaeval school of
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
natural law.123 There is frequently the temptation to see Ponets political

theories as secular;124 this is quite justified, but only to an extent. It can
be considered secular only if its biblical references are ignored; refer-
ences thought to be intrinsically authoritative.125
Nevertheless, Ponet was uninterested in doctrine, and to an extent,
one need not even be committed to the Bible to be swayed by his ideas.
Ponet carried forth the Pauline teaching that natural law is innate or
written on the heart. He taught this alongside his doctrine of the radi-
cal corruption of the intellect. Ponet also spoke of the Decalogue as the
codification of the natural law. God revealed the Decalogue to shine
through noetic darkness and reveal the natural law in its clarity, which
was later simplified by Christ.126 The law of nature, or the Golden Rule,
cannot be breached by any human and is prior to all political (positive)
legislation.
To a lesser extent, Goodman appealed to natural law in his How
Superior Powers Oght to be Obeyd (1558). As with Knox, there is noth-
ing remotely original or particularly interesting about Goodmans use
of natural law in his political polemic. Out of the three radicalsPonet,
Goodman, and KnoxPonets use of natural law is the most sophisti-
cated and least ad hoc. Knoxs more resembles Ponets than Goodmans
in that Knox seems to be more comfortable with the concept.127 Like
Ponet, Goodman affirmed that natural law runs in conjunction with
Gods revealed law. Appealing to the ante-Mosaic period of world his-
tory, Goodman considered the traditions received by generations as
corroborated by natural law. It is telling that it is at the beginning of
Goodmans treatise that the antediluvians had correct laws ingrafted
naturally in their hearts.128 The eagerness of these theorists to affirm
some natural law at the beginning of their polemics was simply to
give an air of universality to their ideas. This goes to indicate just how
seriously natural law was still taken in sixteenth-century England.
Nevertheless, despite Goodmans sporadic reminders of the weakness
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
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.
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,
116 chapter three
Knox was encouraged in his conviction that gynaecocracy was contra

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

to nature, turns out to be quite simple. Generally women are not capa-
ble of ruling, therefore their incapability passes from mere accidental
attribute to essential attribute or attribute ex natura. Though it was
not a rare form of natural law, it was, in a way that will be shown, crude
and vulnerable within the transitional period in which Knox was
writing.
Knox also had a more simple argument from nature, one that was
often repeated in sixteenth-century political literature. He noticed
that among the animals, there is not once species ruled by the female.
At least not one species Knox cared to mention. After mentioning the
intrinsic order that God placed in all living things, Knox noted, for
nature hath in all beasts printed a certain mark of dominion in the
male, and a certain subjection in the female, which they keep inviolate.
For no man ever saw the lion make obedience, and stoop before the
lioness.136 Knox concluded that the English and Scottish nobility
were inferior to brute beasts, for that they do to women which no male
amongst the common sort of beasts can be proved to do to their female,
that is, they reverence them, and quake at their presence.137 With
Knox, and the sixteenth-century mind in general, common observa-
tion and ancient opinion passed from the mere realm of observation
and was elevated to prescriptive politics. By looking at nature enough,
its political principles became perspicuous.
Knoxs arguments should not appear too outlandish. As was pre
viously pointed out, the greatest academic of the sixteenth-century,
Desiderius Erasmus, put forward an argument showing that no prince
should love any nation more than his own. In support he offered an
interesting analogy from bees and ants. Bees and ants never fly too far
from their hives and nests, thus a prince should reserve his greatest
attention for his own people.138 Four years earlier Catholic polemicist,
John Christopherson, offered a beautiful exhortation:
And we should herein follow the example of the simple bees, which so
tender their king and governor, that if he have missed his way, they will
diligently seek for him, smell him out, and follow him to such time, as
they have found him. And when he wareth old, and is not able to fly,
theybear him upon their backs, and if he die, then depart they all from
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.
The Exiles Use of the Body Metaphor
One of the more creative arguments used by the exiles was the tradi-
tional body metaphor. Its advantage was its basis in natural law, thus
giving it a prima facie universalism: it could appeal to Protestants and
Catholics of numerous varieties, as well as the religiously indifferent.
The exiles use of the traditional body metaphor is unique. An ambiva-
lence similar to that explored with regard to natural law led the Marian
Protestants to use the body metaphor in a conceptually absurd man-
ner.143 The failure of Protestants to produce any substantial discourse
on natural law was a result of a double commitment to the good of
philosophy and the new theology. The ineffective use of the body meta-
phor was caused by a commitment to godly resistance theories and an
equal commitment to traditional political commonplaces. The political
situation in England during the Marian reign led exiled Protestants to
formulate resistance theories, yet the need to convince readers led
resistance theorists to use the body metaphor in formulating their
seditious ideas. Out of this confrontation between radical politics and
traditional commonplaces emerged a unique use of the metaphor in
the history of political thought. The new use of the metaphor was at the
cost of conceptual coherence, for the body was required to survive
without a head. A marriage between the old ideas and the new led to a
doomed attempt to use the traditional metaphor of the body for novel
political ends.
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
of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England, (New York and Oxford:
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]).
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
that an incorrigible head should be deprived of his authority, so that

others may be deterred and moved to behave well.152 The same rhetori-
cal shrewdness was later evident in the anonymous 1582 Dutch tract,
Political Education. On removing a tyrant, the tract eschewed any talk
of removing a head and, quoting Cicero, spoke only of amputating
some rotten limb.153 Ponets body metaphor is one of the few instances
when an explicit call is made to amputate the head.
What makes Ponets use of the metaphor so interesting is that, rather
than using it to buttress the legitimacy of the established order, Ponet
used it to encourage Englishmen to kill Queen Mary. Ponets use of the
body metaphor was largely opportunistic. When it suited him he would
stick closely to the traditional use of the metaphor, which demanded
that the commonwealth was as organic and fragile as the human body,
and its parts just as symbiotic. Earlier in his Shorte Treatise he asked,
How can that head live and continue, where the body is consumed and
dissolved.where the sinews (the laws) are broken, and justice
utterly wasted and decayed?154 Ponet was quick to point out that no
head could survive if the sinews connecting it to the body were severed.
But does not the same intuition apply to the fate of the headless
Commonwealth? When the metaphor became a scandal to his cause he
just as easily abandoned its careful use and suggested that a body may
change heads. As Jane E.A. Dawson notices, Ponet got entangled in his
metaphor.155 In his Shorte Treatise he stated:
Next unto God men ought to love their country, and the whole common
wealth before any member of it: as kings and princes (be they never so
great) are but members: and common wealths may stand well enough
and flourish, albeit there be no kings, but contrary wise without a com-
mon wealth there can be no king. Common wealths and realms may live,
when the head is cut off, and may put on a new head, that is, make them a
new governor, when they see their old head seek to much his own will
and not the wealth of the whole body, for the which he was only ordained.
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:
155
Dawson, Christopher Goodman, p. 229. See her brief but excellent discussion of
Ponets body metaphor. Idem, pp. 228229.
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
Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 61. Italics added.

156
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
Christopher Goodman went into hiding upon returning to England in

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

mon objection to insurgency against a prince, namely, that if the head
itself is under attack, what is guiding the attackers? Surely not reason
and judgment, for these are a function of the head, the very member
whose authority is under siege. Writing later, the English political theo-
rist, Charles Merbury, stated the objection most clearly:
Inconvenience is that when Sede vacante, after the Prince is dead, and
before a new can be chosen, the whole state remaineth in a very Anarchy,
without king, or any kind of government, like a ship without a Pilot in
hazard to be cast away with every wind.166
The purpetuity of the head objection was medieval, with Ernst
Kantorowicz identifying it as a major obstacle to theories of election of
and ecclesiastical autonomy from the pope. The heads perpetuity was
considered necessary in organic terms because the head was the rational
part of the body. The conciliarists solved the problem by positing Christ
as direct interrex between deposition and election.167 The principle of
continuity, so necessary during the Middle Ages, led ecclesiologists to
theorise a fiction.168 Something like the concept of Christ as interrex
was used by sixteenth-century conciliarists to lend cogency to their
cause.169 When Goodman worked up the courage to say what he wanted
to all along, that the subjects may independently and violently lay low
a tyrant, he anticipated the objection with the conciliar solution:
And though it appear at the first sight a great disorder, that the people
should take unto them the punishment of transgression, yet, when the
Magistrates and other officers cease to do their duty, they are as it were,
without officers, yea, worse then if they had none at all, and then God
giveth the sword in to the peoples hand, and he himself is become imme-
diately their head.170
This is the most explicit call to popular rebellion of any sixteenth-
century resistance literature. Contained in this pericope is also an
166
Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discourse of Royall Monarchie (London, 1581),
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),
126 chapter three
answer to a typical objection, namely, how is unity maintained in the

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

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

his radical tendencies.176
David George Hale pointed out the conceptual absurdity of Ponets
use of the body metaphor yet overlooked John Knoxs similar use of the
metaphor in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women (1558), which attempted to avoid the more obvi-
ous absurdities in Ponets deployment of the analogy.177 Knox stated
that a body needs a head, and England, as a body, had no legitimate
head. His emphasis on the necessity of a head for a body to remain
animate was one commonly used during conciliar controversies up
until the sixteenth-century. Cajetan had stated repeatedly that the
power possessed by the church flows down from the head (pope).178
He even went as far as accusing those who would hold that a body
may exist in a perfect state without a head as perpetuating a Hussite
heresy.179 Writing in this tradition Knox derived a radical conclusion
from the idea that power and life descend from the head. He deserves
to be quoted at length:
he [God] hath set before our eyes two other Mirrors and glasses,
in which he will that we should behold the order which he hath appointed
and established in nature: The one is the natural body of man; the other
is the politic or civil body of that common wealth, in which God by
his own Word hath appointed an order. In the natural body of man,
God hath appointed an order that the head shall occupy the uppermost
place; and the head hath he joined with the body, that from it doth
life and motion flow to the rest of the members.For who would not
judge that body to be a monster, where there was no head eminent above
the rest? Men, I say, should not only pronounce this body to be a
monster, but assuredly they might conclude that such a body could not
long endure.180
For Knox, the animation of the body and the order of the common-
wealth come from the head. Here is the beginning of Knoxs argument
for regicide from order and body. Queen Mary, being a woman, cannot
W. Stanford Reid, Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox, (Baker: Grand

176
Rapids, 1974), p. 150.

177
Hale, Body Politic, p. 81.
178
Cajetan, Comparison, pp. 3, 7, 1011.
179
Ibid., pp. 2324.
180
John Knox, The First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558),
Works of John Knox, 6 vols., Peter Laing (ed.), (New York: AMS Press, 1966 [1855]),
vol. 4, pp. 390391. Italics added.
128 chapter three
possibly function as the head of England. Therefore, England is, in a

sense, decapitated:
And no less monstrous is the body of that Commonwealth where a
Woman beareth empire; for either doth it lack a lawful heador else
there is an idol exalted in the place of the true head.for in despite of
Godmay a realm, I confess, exalt up a woman to that monstiferous
honor, to be esteemed as a head. But impossible it is to man and angel to
give unto her the properties and perfect offices of a lawful head; for
Godhath denied to woman power to command man, and hath taken
away wisdom to consider and providence to foresee, the things that be
profitable to the commonwealth; yea, finally, he hath denied to her in any
case to be head to man, but plainly hath pronounced that Man is head to
woman, even as Christ is head to all man.181
Knoxs argument was slightly different from Ponets and Goodmans.
He never said that a body could remove its own head. He simply said
that Mary is not the head of England, therefore cutting her off would
not be detrimental to the body politic. Jane Dawson has noted that
The intellectual content of Knoxs arguments was neither particularly
original nor startling, but his method of using and applying those
assertions shocked his contemporaries deeply.182 Though she does not
specifically mention Knoxs use of the body metaphor, her observation
describes it perfectly. Knox, in accordance with settled political opin-
ion, stressed the need for a body with a head.183 The implication of
Knoxs body metaphor was that the mere image of the headMary
needed to be replaced by a genuine one. In this way Knox argued
for the replacement of Mary without having to talk about amputating
a head or switching heads. Still, Knox had to assert that England was
currently decapitated. But if it was decapitated, how had it managed
to survive for the period of five years between Marys inheritance of
the throne and Knoxs First Blast? Knox would reply that the country
was in the process of dying, but unless it was common to see a man
die five years after his beheading, Knoxs body metaphor was, at best,
tenuous.
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,
Perhaps later radical Protestant political theorists consciously

avoided the rhetorical traps that their predecessors fell prey to. Laurence
Humphrey was a fellow English exile who wrote The Preservation of
Religion and its True Reformation (1559), which was generally ignored
in his own time.184 Humphrey was shrewder than Ponet, Goodman,
and Knox and avoided making any references to surgery or decapita-
tion in his resistance theory:
For the body and the whole is greater than the head itself or the parts. But
neither is the body without its head and breast. It is ancient usage that he
who proposes a law can repeal it and those who jointly proclaim some-
one a magistrate, by the same consent, if he is unfit or betrays his country,
they can depose him.185
Humphrey, like, Ponet, began by using the body metaphoreven men-
tioning the head. Yet by the time he got to advocating deposition he
had abandoned the metaphor altogether and spoke only of deposing a
magistrate. Knoxs Scottish contemporary George Buchanan was able
to speak of deposing tyrants, but he had to soften the body analogy to
a doctor analogy. The tyrant was no longer part of the body but a
malevolent physician. Just as anybody would dismiss and punish a mad
physician, so may a commonwealth remove and punish a tyrant.186
Buchanan could easily justify regicide with this metaphor, but the
medieval emphasis on the intimate and mutually dependent relation-
ship of a ruler with the good of his realm was sacrificed for what was,
effectively, a hired helper of the commonwealth.
The realisation of the body metaphors inability to carry radical poli-
tics necessitated the search for alternatives, which led to the covenant
and contract theories of the seventeenth-century. The wellbeing of one
member of a contract need not be affected one whit by the destruc-
tionof the other member. The benefits gained by both were by agree-
ment and consent, not by symbiosis. By 1598 the whole idea of
resistancepremised upon the body metaphor could be scoffingly dis-
missed as obviously absurd, for what state the body can be in, if the
head, for any infirmity that can fall to it, be cut off, I leave it to the
Kemp, Laurence Humphrey, p. 125.

184
Humphrey, Preservation, pp. 215216.

185
186
George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots: A Critical
Edition and Translation of George Buchanans De Iure Regni apud Scotos Dialogus
(1579), R.A. Mason and M.S. Smith (eds.), St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History,
(Hampshire, 2004) p. 129.
130 chapter three
readers judgement.187 The contorted uses of the body metaphor in

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

broadly called Reformed. The notion of noetic corruption was charac-
teristic of Elizabethan theology up until Hooker. Charles Cremeans
cites an interesting admission of noetic corruption from a textbook of
rhetoric:
Man (in whom is poured the breath of life) was made at his first being an
ever living Creature, unto the likeness of God, endued with reason, and
appointed Lord over all other things living. But after the fall of our first
father, Sin so crept in, that our knowledge was much darkened, and by
corruption of this our flesh, mans reason and entendment were both
overwhelmed.188
Cremeans also cites a sermon by the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys,
who had no problem preaching that corruption is bred and settled
within our bones; that we are both born and begotten in it; that with it
all powers and faculties of our nature are infected; that still it cleaveth
fast unto our souls.189 Sandys was a refugee in Strasbourg, where he
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.
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:
192
Laurence Humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye, (London, 1563), fols. Y iiiiv.
193
Ibid., fol. Y vi.
132 chapter three
from the scholastic curriculum.194 Of all the authoritative theologians

of the age, only one is singled out with explicit approval: John Calvin,
the chief of our age. His Institutes, Catechism, and commentaries were
recommended for the study of divinity.195
The sinful proclivities of the human mind were not lost on the
Elizabethans. The potential both for wickedness and excellence were
affirmed at the same time. Thus, in an exhortation to English bishops to
exercise tolerance towards the Puritans, one Elizabethan pointed out
certain doctrines that murder our souls with a corrupt and poisoned
water, drawn out of a stinking puddle of the filthy dunghill of mens
brains.196 Later the same year the writer of the Second Admonition to
Parliament criticised lack of learning among the English clergy. The
writer did not reproach them for trying to find wisdom in the pagans,
but because their actual learning did not match their claims, for it was
obvious that they had simply perused florilegia!197 Greater study of the
pagans, not less, would have impressed the second admonitioner.
One of the few exceptions in Elizabethan England to the general
appreciation for philosophical and classical discourse was the Proph
esying Movement. This movement took place in numerous churches
around England and encouraged church leaders and lay people to
speak openly on what they thought a particular passage from scripture
was communicating. The point of the exercise was to foster biblical
literacy amongst the English clergy and laity.198 In 1575 one of the
English prophesying congregations composed a book of rules to guide
the congregation in the activity. One of the stipulations was that those
who expound scripture should ensure that their prophesyings are
devoid of annoying allegations of profane histories, or ecclesiastical
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.
writers, applications of commonplaces and divisions not aptly growing

out of the text. Not that such things were intrinsically objectionable,
but the movement was more concerned with the sense of the Holy
Spirit rather than with classical wisdom and scholastic distinctions.199
As Anthony Gilby was to remark in 1581: We must seek first of all
the true wisdom, Which resteth not in mans brain, but in Gods
breastto seek counsel at Gods Word, and to suspect our wits of fool-
ishness.200 The anti-intellectualism would pass into the Separatist
movement, which was always considered unrefined for its total reliance
on the Bible.201
The Elizabethan Crisis of Nature: the Knox-Aylmer Exchange
John Knoxs natural law arguments against Queen Mary provoked

response, but from defenders of another Queen, Elizabeth. With the
end of the Marian regime and the return of English Protestants to an
accommodating and peaceful England, Protestant political theology
had the opportunity to be freed from polemic and explore more specu-
lative subjects. Despite this opportunity, there still was no great explo-
ration or statement of natural law until the end of the Elizabethan reign.
The first ecclesiastical political manifesto of the Elizabethan period,
written by the Bishop of London, made natural law an issue in the fight
against sedition. Furthermore, its critique of John Knoxs use of natural
law was one of the few examples in Tudor political pamphlets where
the concept was actually the object of analysis. John Ponet and John
Knoxs use of natural law provoked a unique exploration of the con-
ceptat the beginning of the Elizabethan period. Unique because it was
the first time in English Protestant political thought that the concept
itself was explored. Because natural law was used for wholly seditious
ends by the exiles the whole theory had to be scrutinised and refined in
such a way to make future radical use more difficult, thus saving the
natural law.
199
The Order of the Prophecy at Norwich in Anno 1575, Begun Sede Vacante
(1575), Leonard J. Trinterud (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism, (New York: Oxford
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
John Aylmers An Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes (1559)

was a brilliant response to Knoxs First Blast. Seeing that Knox employed
natural law so heavily, Aylmer responded in kind. Aylmer, Bishop of
London, understood Knox to be arguing that if something was against
nature then it was contrary to the good of the commonwealth; but
gynaecocracy is against nature; therefore it must be detrimental to the
commonwealth.202 But what does it mean to be against nature? Why
should the unnatural be a threat to the commonwealth? Aylmer
attempted to set forth a rather vague definition of nature as a general
disposition ingrafted of God in all creatures, for the preservation of the
whole, and of every kind. Invoking the authority of Seneca, Aylmer
affirmed that God himself resides in nature, in that Nature is nothing
else but God himself, or a divine order spread throughout the whole
world, and ingrafted in every part of it.203 The vagueness of this defi-
nition of the natural was not important. More important for Aylmer
was what natural does not mean: it cannot simply be deduced from
calculating many events or phenomena of the same type. This is exactly
how Aylmer interpreted Knox. He pointed out that if one defines nature
as simply that which one is accustomed to experiencing, then suddenly
numerous anomalies become dangerous to the commonwealth. Indeed,
the old mans black hairs and the womans two twins become contra
naturam and detrimental to the commonwealth! The logic of Knoxs
argument resulted in absurdity. Gynacocracy was vindicated.204
When discussing political lessons implicit in the created order, theo-
rists generally defined natural and unnatural along the lines of that
which is common or uncommon. What Knox did was to use such
observations as a means to persuade his readers to regicide. It was for
this reason and this reason alone that that sort of natural law argument
came under scrutiny in England. The Knox/Aylmer exchange repre-
sents a crisis in the concept of nature in English political thought. The
traditional school of thought represented by Knox saw nature as a book
of practical politics, that is, statements concerning society and govern-
ment may be derived from observation of nature. Aylmer, responding
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.
to Knoxs use of a traditional concept, turned this tradition on its head.

Aylmer offered an alternative definition of nature along pragmatic
lines. If something does not tend to ruin, or has been shown not to
destroy a commonwealth, then it is natural. The argument was obvious:
Wherefore, I reason against him thus: whatsoever preserveth com-
monwealths, and destroyeth them not: is not against nature, but the
rule of women hath preserved common wealths, ergo, it is not against
nature.205 No longer could political lessons be derived from observ-
ing nature, on the contrary, by observing what works in society, the
theorist learns what is and is not natural. Nature had become meaning-
less, devoid of any explanatory power for the political theorist. What
may seem unnatural could only be judged so in light of whether it
could sustain a commonwealth. Speculation, instead of beginning with
nature and then moving to the commonwealth, now began with the
commonwealth. Eventually, for some theorists during the follow-
ing century, it would begin and end with the commonwealth. John
Milton would eventually reflect upon political arguments drawn from
natural philosophy and conclude that such tactics really belong to
themuses.206
Laurence Humphrey in his The Nobles attempted to answer the ius
gentium argument for rebellion.207 It is quite likely that he was respond-
ing to the ius naturale and ius gentium arguments of John Ponet and
John Knox, for both radical theorists expressed much of their sedition
through the opinions of the ancients and from general consensus. With
those two exiles in mind Humphrey acknowledged that some both of
our time and also of the ancient Ethnic sages, are of the opinion, a
tyrant may justly be slain, and taken from amidst the quick. Humphrey
countered this appeal ad mores by showing numerous instances of
ancient authorities denouncing tyrannicide, including Divine Plato.208
There is surely an assumption in Humphreys confidence in the ancients
that they recognised an objective ius naturale, which led them to decry
tyrannicide. What Humphrey did not address was the problem he had
Aylmer, Harborovve, fol. D2.

205
John Milton, A Defence of the people of England (1658), in Political Writings,

206

207
For a detailed examination of Laurence Humphreys early Elizabethan apologies
see A.N. McLaren, Political Culture, pp. 120131. See also Janet Kemp, Laurence
Humphrey, Elizabethan Puritan: His Life and Political Theories, (Unpublished PhD.
thesis, West Virginia University, 1978).
208
Humphrey, Nobles, fol. Di. Cf. Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 108.
136 chapter three
just created. If the ancients could be appealed to in support of con-

traryconclusions, in what sense is there a ius gentium? If there was no
coherent ancient testimony regarding rebellion, then rebellion could
not be considered by appeal to ius gentium. Humphreys attempt to
prove the necessity of obedience by a counter appeal to ius gentium
actually rendered such arguments problematic. It is little wonder that
when later Protestants such as Samuel Rutherford took up natural
law they completely ignored their Tudor fathers and went straight to
the most sophisticated and thoughtful expositors, Roman Catholic
scholastics.209
Elizabethan Ambiguity: Natural Law from 1560 to Richard Hooker
During the second half of the sixteenth-century there arose scepticism

towards the idea of divine revelation, which led to an increased empha-
sis on natural law among some thinkers.210 Concurrently there were the
Puritan and Separatist movements, which, at their most narrow, seemed
sceptical about the possibility of truth outside of revelation! The year
following Elizabeths inheritance of the throne, the Geneva Bible dealt a
blow to natural law. In the preface to the first edition of the Geneva
Bible (1650) there was an attack upon the tradition, with a denial of any
knowledge of moral norms outside of the verbal revelation of the Bible.
This was indeed a very rare andgiven the fact that the Geneva Bible
itself contained Pauls teaching to the contraryodd suggestion.
Nevertheless, the writer of the preface made himself clear: without
this word we cannot discern between justice and injury, protection and
oppression, wisdom and foolishness, knowledge and ignorance, good
and evil.211 It was this sort of myopia that would eventually feed the
almost complete rejection of natural law by the radical Separatists later
in the century, leading Richard Hooker to see Puritanism and reason as
mutually incompatible.212 No Magisterial Reformer would have agreed
with such a statement. Indeed, Calvin himself never had had such a
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
211
Epistle, Geneva Bible (1560), (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969),
fol.iii.
212
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 40.
narrow view of moral knowledge. This example represents the extreme

in ethical agnosticism in English thought. One would be doing well to
find another example.
In Laurence Humphreys The Nobles natural law received only the
barest of mention, which was entirely derivative and unimportant to
his overall argument. The strangest argument from nature in The Nobles
is undoubtedly his proof against an idle class of citizens. The notion
that the nobles should not have to work was popular in England. It was
thought that culture could only flourish if there was a class free from
manual labour with time for speculation. Humphrey drew an a fortiori
argument against idleness from the fact that the two greatest parts
of Gods inanimate creationthe sun and the moonnever rest.
Therefore, how much more should a person avoid idleness!
But, are not all worldly creaturesenwrapped in restless labour? Nothing
more honourable than the heavenly army, the sun, the Moon, the stars,
nothing in the whole world more beautiful or excellent. Yet leapeth the
Sun forth as a Giant to run his course. The moon taketh charge of the
night, and serveth men, plants, living creatures. The Stars rise and set.
To conclude, every creature labours and travails.213
Though Humphrey never stated it, such an argument could only be
suggested if there was already a belief in a divine governor of nature. In
actual fact, Humphreys understanding of nature was fairly typical
among Tudor political writers. John Bradford, writing in the 1550s,
stated the basic theology that allowed nature to be used politically.
Indeed nature is created by a good God and is continually guided by his
providence:
For to the end thou might declare thy riches, beauty, power, wisdom,
goodness, &c., thou hast not only made, but still dost conserve all crea-
tures to be, as David says of the heavens, declarers and setters-forth of thy
glory, and as a book to teach us to know thee.214
Because churchmen considered God Governor of all things, whose
power no creature is able to resist,215 nature and the way it operated
must be good. Thus political lessons may be derived from observing
Humphrey, Nobles, fol. L iii.

213
John Bradford, A Meditation of Gods Power, Beauty, Goodness, &c (published

214
1562), Sermons, Wrtings, Meditations, p. 194.

215
Bradford, A General Supplication: Being a Confession of Sins and Prayer for
the Mitigation of Gods Wrath and Punishment for the Same (published 1562), ibid,
p. 200.
138 chapter three
what generally obtains in the natural realm. Wisely, Humphrey fol-

lowed this up with a Bible reference enjoining all to work.
Humphrey was also concerned to discourage Catholic nobles from
harming their new Protestant queen. Writing to nobles who may have
been tempted to do to Elizabeth what Humphrey had tried to convince
them to do to Mary, he reminded them that, To slay your own coun-
tryman nature and reason gainsay. In apposition he wrote again: To
violate the magistrate, all laws both of God and man forbid.216 So the
laws of nature seem to be the laws of God. Exactly what is contrary to
nature about regicide is not clear. Perhaps Humphrey had in mind the
commandment not to dishonour ones parents, interpreted with the
standard definition of parents as including civil magistrates. Later in
the same treatise Humphrey affirmed that all men are enforced by nat-
ural inclination to love their country.217 This is more understandable.
The common feelings of affection people have for their homelands are
elevated to being natural. Just prior to Humphreys treatise Bartholomew
Traheron bafflingly called the English rejection of Protestantism
unnatural behavior.218 Eleven years later at the height of Catholic agi-
tation the Reformed Parliamentarian and translator of Calvins 1559
Institutio, Thomas Norton, described the actions of the Catholics
involved in the Northern rebellion as unnatural doings.219 In 1583
Norton defended the Elizabethan regime from the Catholic accusation
of unnatural tyranny.220 The adjective seems to have become so popu-
lar in polemic that is was rendered almost meaningless.
A significant, albeit brief, exposition of natural law was carried out
by Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Pauls. His Catechism (1570) eventu-
ally became the semi-official catechism for English clergy.221 Nowells
writing on natural law is significant because it is a microcosm of the
whole natural law tradition in England from 15471603. Nowell,
admitting the existence of natural law, saw no need to explore it in any
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.
meaningful way because of his belief in intellectual corruption and the

necessity of scripture to illuminate humankinds otherwise darkened
mind. Though more careful than most of the merely discursive treat-
ments of other Tudor churchmen, Nowells account was still very short.
His exposition was distinctly Reformed in that he laid some emphasis
on sins corruption of the human intellect. He began by reiterating
Pauls teaching that Gods law has been engrafted in all. He spoke of this
law as being the highest reason which was by God grafted into the
nature of man, while mans nature was yet sound and uncorrupted,
being created after the image of God; and so this law is indeed, and is
called, the law of nature. At this point a medieval theologian would
have stopped and either begun to expound the law, or counsel the
reader to look inward to divine its principles. Nowell, however, added
that sin had rendered the innate law unclear and nebulous. It was
from the Fall that the nature of man became stained with sin.
Nowells discussion of natural law ended as soon as it started, owing to
his belief in the sufficiency of scripture and the corruption of human
reason. Though Nowell admitted the brilliance of the pagan philoso-
phers efforts to codify it on their own, ultimately they had to fail. He
pointed out that although the minds of wise men have been in some
sort lightened with the brightness of the natural light, yet in the most
part of men this light is so put out, that scarce any sparkles thereof are
to be seen. For Nowell, this intellectual dullness explains the exist-
ence of wicked actions. Nowells account sounds almost like Platos
account of sin: sin is caused by ignorance. But whereas Plato located
the cause of such ignorance in the shock of the soul being ensnared in
the body, Nowell saw the cause of ignorance in terms of sin and corrup-
tion: by original sin and by evil custom, so darkened, and natural
judgment so corrupted, that man doth not sufficiently understand what
difference is between honest and dishonest, right and wrong.222 Nowells
thought contains the ambivalence that goes to characterise sixteenth-
century English Protestant natural law discourse in general. Orthodox
theology and political ideas led him sincerely to affirm the existence
of natural law, but the Reformed emphasis on intellectual depravity
drew him away from it towards the propositional moral teachings of
the Bible.
222
140 chapter three
It made perfect sense for Nowell to truncate his discussion of natural

law after admitting human intellectual inability. For how could he have
then gone on to consider a law that he had just claimed was inaccessi-
ble without special revelation? Nowells exposition of natural law ended
when he finished expounding each of the Ten Commandments of God
in his Catechism. Throughout the Catechism there are flashes of tradi-
tionalism. Nowell, with tenuous biblical proof texts, insisted that nature
teaches one to love both friends and their children.223 This was never
elaborated upon; Nowell did not go into exactly how it is that nature
teaches the love of friends and their children. Probably Nowell was
using naturelike the other theologians surveyedin the sense of
pointing out a natural proclivity to love friends (trivially true) and their
children. There is more of a clue later on when Nowell spoke of the
Christian Golden Rule as simply being the natural proclivity of self-
love directed outward to others. For Nowell, natural law is simply exter-
nalising our own natural self-love.224 It appears that J.P. Sommerville is
right not to presume that the Protestant emphasis on the corruption of
human nature would have led to a rejection of natural law. Certainly
natural law continued to be used by Protestant theorists well into the
seventeenth-century.225 Sixteenth-century Protestant political thought
supports Sommervilles observation, but it is also evident that, although
Protestant theology did not remove belief in natural law, it made it, by
and large, insignificant in political polemic and hindered its develop-
ment. Though Nowell affirmed the existence of the law of nature, its
principles were discernible only by biblical revelation. If Nowells spec-
ulation on natural law was truncated, it was not owing to any firm
emphasis on divine will or divine law, but arose more from his belief in
the radical corruption of the human intellect brought about by sin.
Natural law went completely undeveloped within the Presbyterian
and Separatist polemical literature. This is not to say that Puritans and
Separatists explicitly rejected natural law, merely that it was not part of
their polemical method and was by and large ignored. Peter Munz has
said that the Puritan rejection of natural law was owing to belief in
noetic corruption and sufficiency of scripture.226 Indeed, Cartwright
found it impossible that we could persuade and assure ourselves that
223
Ibid., p. 125.
224
Ibid., p. 137.
225
Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 16.
226
Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 114.
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
Cited in Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, p. 150.

227
Ibid, p. 152.
228
229
of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England, (London and New York:
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
Here Harrison appealed to the ancient spark metaphor, usually syn-

onymous with instinct or conscience. The metaphor was part of a
crudernon-scholastictradition of natural law, which was popular
throughout the English Renaissance. This tradition was adopted by
English Protestants, who believed in some natural knowledge of right
but, because of their emphasis on noetic corruption, limited it to a
spark.233 A little later the radical Separatist, Henry Barrow, tried to
shame his fellow Englishmen via a ius gentium appeal. Complaining
of the lack of zeal for law among Elizabethan churchmen, Barrow
asked, Do not the heathen so without the law? A fortiori God fearing
Englishmen!234
Owing to a preference for the biblical exegetical method, the Puritan
use of natural law was usually crude and unrefined. Generally Puritans
and Separatists had little time for distinctions in the scholastic way.
Consequently, natural law went virtually undeveloped in the debates
between conformists, Puritans, and Separatists. The general attitude to
natural law was cautiously positive among Elizabethan churchmen,
more cautious than among statesmen or more secular theorists. The
great parliamentarian, William Cecil, took natural law arguments seri-
ously when considering whether Elizabethan anti-usury laws should
be relaxed. Deciding along Aristotelian and Thomist lines that usury
is against nature, and therefore against Gods law, Cecil concluded that
the existing laws were apt.235 Still, until Richard Hooker reinvigorated
the concept at the end of the century, there was little of the unre-
strainedenthusiasm towards natural law that one would find in, say,
the contemporary Scottish humanist George Buchanans political writ-
ing, who declared that the voice of God and of nature is the same.236
Puritans and Levellers the following century would reduce the law
of nature to conscience, and espouse not an intellectualist doctrine of
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.
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
an internal conviction of what is right.240 This seems to be what Dering

meant when he claimed that parliamentary consideration for right reli-
gion is a law of nature. Such piety flows naturally from the fact that we
are aware of our Creator and of our dependence on him. Because the
principle was found directly in the Bible, Dering saw no need to dem-
onstrate it rationally. Like natural law theorists before him Dering
thought it sufficient to state the existence of the law, but considered it
unnecessary to work it out.
Archbishop Edwin Sandys occasionally referred to nature and law in
his sermons, though nothing is spelled out in detail and the application
is pure medievalism. Sandys was particularly opposed to usury, which
he considered to be one of the main causes of poverty surrounding him
in Elizabethan England. In a sermon preached at York and published
in1585 he described usury as the canker of the commonwealth; going
on to say that all reason and the very law of nature is against it. Here
is the association with reason and nature, exactly what this means may
be revealed by Sandys apposite statement: all nations at all times
have condemned.241 Sandys here associated natural law with ius gen-
tium, that is, the law of nations: a medieval commonplace.242 This was
drawn from the apostle Pauls brief discussion of the law that is known
by non-Jews without access to special revelation. Furthermore it was
codified in Justinians Institutes as one of the three types of law.243 Two
years prior to the publication of Sandys sermons Thomas Norton justi-
fied mild torture for lesser offences by appealing to the more general
laws of nations.244 If general practice could be discerned, then this was
sufficient to constitute the practice a law. Description passes to pre-
scription. Sandys did likewise. He simply noted that most nations
rejected the legitimacy of usury; thus he categorised it under the rubric
of natural law. His concept of natural law also contained the traditional
notion of the necessity of self-preservation. Again, this is something
that Sandys claimed to perceive in all people; thus, again, natural law is
linked to behaviour and custom. Sandys went on to give a Gratianist
interpretation of self-preservation based on the Golden Rule. Nature,
240
Romans 1:1821
241
Edwin Sandys, Sermons of Edwin Sandys, Parker Society, (Cambridge, Cambridge
242
Romans 2:1415.
243
Justinian, Institutes, 1.2.
244
Norton, Declaration, fol. A a iiii
as well as enjoining self-preservation, teaches with equal force the

necessity of observing the wellbeing of ones neighbour:
No man hateth his own flesh: no man is envious of his own commodity
or preferment. Nature breedeth a self-love in every man. And as this law
of nature doth work in us a very fervent and careful desire, both to pro-
cure unto ourselves whatsoever we are persuaded is good, and to avoid
whatsoever seemeth hurtful or noisome; so the law of charity requireth at
our hands like readiness and cheerfulness to benefit others.245
This debt of love is something that Sandys was particularly insistent
on. Showing his genuine concern for the poor, Sandys invoked natural
law vocabulary to inspire charity.
Like numerous other moralists, Sandys invoked nature as a guide to
right living; actually, nature was used in a type of a fortiori argument,
almost to shame his listeners into Christian charity:
In those very creatures which God hath left empty and void of under-
standing, there is a kind of love: a consent we see there is in the stars, in
the elements, in times and seasons, amongst the beasts of the field, the
fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, the fruits of the earth: every beast
doth love his like, to our shame and reproach, if, having so many school-
masters to teach us one thing, we learn it not; especially being so neces-
sary as it is.246
However, one must bear in mind that Sandys had more to say about
revealed commandments than innate principles of conduct. Given his
high view of scriptural sufficiency he was clear in his affirmation that
basically natural law is unnecessary for the Christian, scripture being
sufficient quite apart from the law written on the heart. In the end
natural law is undeveloped and quite peripheral to Sandys moral
thought.
In 1588 Laurence Humphrey was compelled to write a polemical
treatise against radical Catholic recusancy in England. Published as
AView of the Romish Hydra and Monster, it was squarely aimed at a
Catholic readership. Whereas previously in The Nobles Humphrey had
drawn his proofs from classical philosophers and historians, his new
work drew almost exclusively on ecclesiastical authors, who were
considered authoritative by the Roman church, as well as some scho-
lastic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. Because Humphrey was
Sandys, Sermons, p. 205.

245
Ibid., p. 98.
246
146 chapter three
trying to use Catholic arguments to counteract radical English

Catholicism, he relied heavily on natural law arguments, or at least
many references to nature as a guide to living. His use of natural law is
devoid of abstract speculation and focuses entirely upon the example
set by animals and inanimate natural bodies. Beginning his discourse
on the obedience of animals as a shame to disobedient Catholics, he
introduced the law of nature: The Law of nature might instruct natural
citizens, and countrymen to love, honour and obey their natural
Sovereign. Shall I begin to our shame with the kindness of unreasona-
ble beasts towards their masters and feeders?247 Humphrey then went
on to list numerous testimonies from early Christian writers such as
Chrysostom, Basil, and Ambrose of the fidelity of animals, particularly
dogs, to their masters.
After his discussion of bestial obedience he affirmed the perspicuity
of the moral teachings of nature:
Here we may see as in a glass the working of nature in brute beasts, in
natural men and others before the Law of Moses, and in very Pagans, and
Turks, how they hated, and plagued this horrible sin of treachery against
them.Treason is evil: evil to the Prince, evil to the country, evil to the
workers themselves.248
The proof for the moral authority of nature is quite simple and
Humphrey briefly hinted at it. Dumb and reasonless nature is not capa-
ble of planning and guiding itself to an orderly end. Yet, it is obvious
that nature is ordered, animals behave in a predictable way and inani-
mate creation displays regularity. This must be caused by some external
agent powerful enough to direct all of creation. The Christian God,
now being the explanation for natural order, would make things work
towards a good order. As Bradford had written over thirty years earlier,
if nature is the expression of Gods good will, then the behavior of
nature is good and may be a guide to goodness for those who study it:
To return now to our particulars, I have declared the law of nature, how
this common law is verified by creatures void of reason, and by men void
of religion: which law of nature is established by the wisdom of God him-
self, who hath created and directed all things in wisdom.249
247
Laurence Humphrey, A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster (Oxford 1588),
p. 40.
248
Ibid., pp. 5556.
249
Ibid., p. 58.
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
scripture.255 As Thompson points out, there was no substantial differ-

ence between the natural law of Hooker and that of Continental
Magisterial Reformers before him. The difference was one of degree.
Hooker was able to explore the implications of natural law far more
effectively because of his higher regard for the potential of human rea-
son.256 Hooker outlined the law of God, the law of nature, and the laws
of men in a detail rivaling the Roman Catholic scholastic tradition.
Nonetheless, Hooker, theologically, was squarely in the Reformed tra-
dition and his Lawes were essentially an attempt to square the Royal
Supremacy with Reformed principles.257 His conception of the different
types of laws was far more refined than other contemporary Christian
philosophers, who still thought of the law of nature as being exhausted
by providence, instinct, and habit, with less emphasis on reason.258 It is
important to note that Hooker did not break from the substance of the
scholastic, or for that matter, the English tradition. Hooker justified
nature as a liber politicus on the grounds that the obvious teleology in
nature must be imposed from without. Furthermore, since all things in
nature strive for goodness, the force behind its motion must be good.
But if nature and its guide are good, then imitation of nature is imita-
tion of the good. Hence nature becomes a guide for the polity.259 Hooker
also approved of Gratians less speculative definition of natural law as
the Mosaic law and the gospel.260 Hookers natural law purity was in
absence of any detailed scriptural exegesis. Unlike the Protestants
before him, Hooker did not try to satisfy the demands of two distinct
methods: philosophy and scripture. Consequently, Hooker was able to
give all his attention to a philosophical exploration of natural law in a
way that English Protestants had not yet done. It was this refusal to be
torn between scriptural and scholastic methods which made Hooker
the last great representative of the medieval natural-law school.261
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.
Conclusion
The uneasy marriage between Reformed theology and traditional

political thought led to a tradition of natural law that was, for the most
part, superficial and trite. The need to repond to Marian persecution
led political theorists to draw untenable conclusions from political
commonplaces. The Protestant attitude to natural law was, indeed,
ambiguous, for its presence was evident enough to assure historians
that it had not been completely abandoned, yet the weakness of its use
and its general unimportance in arguments gives the impression that it
was held in some contempt. Natural law was neither ignored by six-
teenth-century Protestants nor enthusiastically embraced. It was admit-
ted, but few theorists until Hooker really knew what to do with it. With
exception to his body metaphor it was ably handled by John Ponet.
John Knox placed heavy emphasis on the law of nature in arguing for
the overthrow of the two Marian governments in England and Scotland.
The radical use of natural law was generated by the crisis of the time.
Consequently it disappeared as soon as Protestantism was restored to
England. It was this radical use of natural law that called Aylmer to
scrutinize the traditional concept. In the process of trying to refine the
concept to make it less amenable to radical political thought, Aylmer
emptied it of both its explanatory power and its conceptual usefulness.
Kirby seems to be correct in saying that there is a genuine dialectical
difficulty in reconciling the authority of the natural law with the core
assumptions of the Reformation soteriology and scriptural herme-
neutics.262 The Protestant emphasis on scriptural proof-texts rendered
complex natural law discourse unnecessary. Furthermore, the Protestant
emphasis on human corruption, though not extinguishing natural law,
and, indeed, being compatible with it, made lengthy discourse and
expostulation on it seem at best suspect. Certainly this was most obvi-
ously the case with the thought of Nowell. The Protestant tradition of
natural law in England, for the most part, shows a strong pull in one
direction by the new method and doctrines of Reformed Protestantism,
and a counter pull by the political heritage of natural law discourse.
Perhaps such a tension was inevitable when the new religion encoun-
tered old political commonplaces. As DEntreves says, The small part
which was left to the law of nature would be hardly worth mentioning
Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, p. 61.

262
150 chapter three
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.
DEntreves, Medieval Contributions, p. 101.

263
Part III
Emerging Traditions of Political Thought
Chapter Four
English Reformation Origins of Absolutism
Introduction
Both the rise of providentialism and the decline of the Great Chain of
Being owe their fortunes to shifts and revolutions in thought and poli-
tics, European and English. The emphasis on providentialism was a
two edged sword, now defending the higher powers, now attacking
their pretensions. In this way the rise of providentialism enabled robust
movements that could stress the legitimacy of the Royal Supremacy yet
also movements that could undermine it. The divergent traditions
would continue to widen and intensify into the following century with
revolutionary saints seeking to overthrow a system whose claim to
authority was just as rooted in the divine will as that of the forces seek-
ing to destroy it.
In 1651 Thomas Hobbes offered a vision of the state that bordered
on idolatry. After describing how a commonwealth is generated he
described the offspring as that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak
more reverently)that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the
Immortal God, our peace and defence.1 Hobbes then went on to
describe the nature of this terrestrial deity: And in him consisteth the
Essence of the Commonwealth; which (to define it,) is One Person, of
whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another,
have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the
strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their
Peace and Common Defence.2 Hobbes political thought was unique in
that it brought together two historically opposed visions of the state:
the absolutist view of the state as a reflection of God, analogously hav-
ing no dependence on its subjects for its rule, and the consensual view
finding the 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:
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.
Absolutism in Henrician England
For the most part, Tudor political thought was at odds with absolut-
ism.3 Nonetheless, there were moments when zeal for reform moved
Protestants to write write absolutist doxologies to kings. Take Tyndale
for example:
God hath made the king in every realm judge over all, and over him there
is no judge. He that judgeth the king judgeth God and he that layeth hand
on the king layeth hand on God, and he that resisteth the king resisteth
God and damneth 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
John Proctor, The Historie of Wyates Rebellion, (London, 1554), p. 54.

8
The Netherlands could be described in Fortescuian terms as a regnum politicum et

9
regale. See Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 15551590,
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
boundaries beyond its will.15 Joan Lockwood ODonovan speaks of the

Marsilian project as having been most fully exemplified in Henrician
England, that is, that the potestas would now direct the auctoritas.16
There seems to be good evidence that Marsilius did have some influ-
ence on English political thought during and immediately after the
Henrician Reformation. His Defensor Pacis, first printed in 1522, was
Englished by William Marshall in 1535, though his manuscript version
was ready by Spring 1533.17 Baumer sees the English emphasis on
councils as symptomatic of Marsilius influence, and nods at the pos-
sibility that Cranmer may have been influenced by him, although Jasper
Ridley suggests it was more politics than political philosophy that
motivated him.18 A.G. Dickens saw Marsilius influence in the church
policy of Thomas Cromwell.19 To suit the new absolutist climate,
Marshall omitted the passages on the popular origins of political
authority, and interpreted Marsilius citizen legislative body as mean-
ing the English parliament.20 From the 1550s onwards parliamentary
power was being increasingly acknowledged by political commenta-
tors.21 The movement away from the prince was particularly obvious
during Edwards reign. In 1548 Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian
Reformer residing in England, could write to Martin Bucer in Stras
bourg informing him that the English Parliament was the supreme
power of this kingdom. He affirmed the same again in 1552 in a let-
ter to Bullinger.22 A similar shift in emphasis would also take place in
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.
France from the 1560s onwards, owing to an orthodox Catholic parlia-

ment keeping the king from introducing laws permitting the liberty of
public worship, which it deemed unconstitutional.23 Harrington the
following century described the monarchy from 15581642 as a
worryingly weak one, not being able to prevent ideological and, even-
tually, popular polarization.24 Though there may have been a shift away
from the prince as the embodiment of power in practical affairs, the
prince was still the most significant field of force in English politics.25
The dialectic between the authority of parliament, custom, laws, the
prince, and God was probably symptomatic of a genuine absence of
any concept of sovereigntyin the Bodinian sense of undivided
powerin Tudor England.26 Even in the seventeenth-century parlia-
ment could be described as an event as much as an institution, princes
calling them arbitrarily and not being bound by their proposals.27
Certainly the word sovereignty was used, but with no precise mean-
ing. Nonetheless, English government for the Tudor Protestant was
embodied in the prince.
All theorists derived the god-king from the Old Testament,28 conse-
quently English Protestant divines adopted the idea of the god-king or
Gods earthly vicar. This conception of secular power was most condu-
cive to Magisterial Protestantism, which appealed to the secular magis-
trates to reform and defend religion. William Tyndale in his political
apology for Lutheranism made it clear that earthly rulers are a manifes-
tation of Gods power. In a wink at monarchy Tyndale asserted that one
23
See Janine Garrisson, A History of Sixteenth-Century France, 14831598, Richard
Rex (tr.), (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 279318.
24
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
king/one law/is Gods ordinance.29 In the earliest Protestant expos-

tulations on government a prince has no legitimacy outside some theo-
logical framework. Indeed, God therefore hath given laws unto all
nations and in all lands hath put kings/governors and rulers in his own
stead/ to rule the world through them.30 It must be kept in mind that
Tyndales treatise was an attempt to bring Magisterial Protestantism to
the favour of Henry VIII, thus it would be surprising to see anything
other than an explicit affirmation of near absolute monarchy.
Miles Coverdales Chisten Rule (1547) and the Prince

as Gods Politic Will Incarnate
Miles Coverdales political thought represents the strongest affirmation

of royal authority to be found in the writing of any Tudor Protestant. In
his zeal to defend Henrys acts against Rome, Coverdale described him
as a terrestrial deity and subject to no earthly institution. Coverdale,
who had become one of the most important English Protestants of the
era through his translation of the entire Bible into English (1535),
declared government to be both fatherly and quasi-divine. Just as no
father would let children take matters of justice in to their own hands,
so the government takes it upon itself to arbitrate between citizens:
As a father over his children is both Lord and judge, forbidding that one
brother avenge himself on another, butwill have it brought unto him-
self or his assigns, to be judged and corrected, so God forbiddeth all men
to avenge themselves, and taketh the authority and office of avenging
unto himself.
Coverdale saw rulers as Gods politic will incarnate; vassals through
whom God rules. God in all lands hath put kings governors and rulers
in his own stead, to rule the world through them. Invoking the Old
Testament, Coverdale affirmed a quasi-divinity in kings: the judges
are called gods in the scriptures because they are in Gods place [rowme]
and execute the commandments of God.31 Coverdale also provided the
contemporary historian of political ideas with some of the most abso-
lutist affirmations of royal prerogative to be found in all Tudor literature.
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.
The king is solutus legibus. Furthermore, if he abuses this privilege then

subjects should search themselves for sin. For God would only move a
kings heart to wickedness as a means to punish a wayward nation.
Pondering why David never slew Saul, despite all his wickedness,
Coverdale saw a political lesson in Davids restraint:
For God hath made the king in every realm judge over all, and over him
is there no judge. He that judgeth the king judgeth God, and he that
layeth hands on the king, layeth hand on God, and he that resisteth the
king, resisteth God, and dampeth Gods law and ordinances. If the sub-
jects sin, they must be brought to the kings judgement. If the king sin, he
must be reserved unto the judgement, wrath and vengeance of God.32
Later in the treatise Coverdale affirmed the same lesson, making it clear
that no seeming iniquity could ever make a king illegitimate, for he is
an incarnation of Gods will:
Heads and governors are ordained of God, and are even the gift of God,
whether they be good or bad. And whatsoever is done unto us by them,
that doth God, be it good or bad. If they be evil, why are they evil? Verily
for our wickedness sake are they evil. Because that when they were good
we would not receive that goodness of the hand of God and be thankful,
submitting ourselves unto his laws and ordinances, but abuse the good-
ness of God unto our sensual and beastly lusts. Therefore doth God make
his scourge of them, and turn them into wild beasts, contrary to the
nature of their names and offices, even into lions, bears, foxes, and
unclean swine, to avenge himself of our unnaturally blind unkindness,
and of our rebellious disobedience.33
Coverdales theological justification of government and his belief in
God revealing himself through the ruler led him to assert a most
extreme form of absolutism.34 The spirit of Coverdales thought sur-
vived into the later thought of James I, who frequently likened the king
to the Divine power.35 But such an absolutist understanding of power
grew out of Henrys struggles with Rome and the eventual break. Henry
merely took the power given to the pope as vicarius Christi and applied
it to himself. The 1549 Catholic riots under Edward VI occasioned an
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
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
emphasis on royallegitimacy. The king was not to be held accountable

to any earthly institution. Cranmer wrote an exhortation to obedience,
but it was devoid of elaborate political theology.36 It was the humanist
scholar and tutor, John Cheke, who offered a political theology of the
state in his The Hurt of Sedition (1549). Echoing Coverdale, Cheke
assured English subjects that the magistrate is the ordinance of God,
appointed by him.[that which] is done by the magistrate, is done by
God, whom the scripture often times doth call God, because he hath
the execution of Gods office.37 The identity between God and magis-
trate was again affirmed when Cheke reminded the rebels that that
which is done to Gods officer, God accounteth it done to him.38 By
and large the anti-resistance literature spoke of the origins of kingly
legitimacy only to show the impiety of rebellion. 1549 polemical reac-
tion to social unrest was solely concerned with justifications of the state
as a means to conciliating rebels.
With Henrys death and Edward VIs ascension, talk of the kings
authority in the same breath as Gods remained prevalent. During his
coronation ceremony Edward was described as Supreme Head, imme-
diately under God, on earth.39 It was the Protestant understanding of
authority that prevented theologians from allowing any earthly institu-
tion to have any sort of authority over the prince. During the middle-
ages it was held that the authority of the prince was from God though
dispensed by the church, much as grace was from God though dispensed
by the church through the seven sacraments. Coronation ceremonies
symbolised this mediation of power through the church in having a
bishop hand the sword to the ruler being anointed. On the other hand,
Reformers rejected the efficacy of such ceremonies, asserting that
nothing mediates between God and man. Coronation ceremonies
donothing. They are merely visible symbols of invisible orders. No
human ceremony can ever effect authority, it can only testify to it.
Witness the words of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer during Edward
VIs coronation:
36
Thomas Cranmer, Answer to the Fifteen Articles of the Rebels (1549),
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Parker Society, (Cambridge:
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.
[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
The Divines Defence of the Higher Powers: The Political Theology of

Bishop John Hooper and John Bradford
In 1550 Bishop Hooper affirmed the quasi-divinity of the prince on

several occasions. Discussing the commandments and acknowledging
that Gods sovereignty can seem distant, Hooper counseled his readers
that if thou wilt have a very true image to express God Omnipotent,
thy sole God and Maker, unto thy reason and external senses, set those
superior powers before thine eye.44 Further on Hooper explicitly
stated that the legitimacy of the royal powers is to be found in the fact
that they are placed there by God; in such as the Lord hath appointed
in the earth over us to rule, those we must reverence, honour, and obey,
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,
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
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.
Prayers and Tears: the Spirit of the Political Literature

of the Marian Exiles
If the emphasis of the Edwardian period was the prince as Gods

anointed, the emphasis during the Marian period was the prince
asGods scourge; at best to be tolerated, at worst to be killed. John Bales
Sovereaigne Cordial for a Christian Conscience (1554) told English Prot
estants to hold tight under the Marian regime. Persecution confirms
51
Bradford, A letter sent with a supplication to Queen Mary, her council, and the
whole parliament (1554), Writings, p. 26.
52
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:
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,
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
Ponet, Shorte Treatise, p. 3. Cf. Romans 1.

59
Ibid., p. 4.
60
61
Ibid., p. 6. For Ponets views on the origin and purpose of government, see
(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
166 chapter four
Swapping Augustine for Aristotle, Ponet considered various types of

constitutions. He offered a Christian approach to optimal and corrupt
constitutions: there is no better nor happier common wealth nor no
greater blessing of God, than where one ruleth, if he be a good, just and
godly man. Conversely there is none worse nor none more misera-
ble, nor greater plague of God, than where one ruleth, that is evil, unjust
and ungodly.64 Regarding the actual type of state, Ponet was pragmatic.
He pointed out that there are really no necessary reasons for preferring
any type of constitution over another. Ponet demonstrated a biblicism
here that would later characterise English Separatism. Also, like the
biblicism of Separatism, Ponets would lead him to advocate republican
principles. Because of the absence of biblical guidance on the issue, the
people may determine their own constitution.65 This being said, there
is a humanist preference in Ponets thought for the mixed state which
men by long continuance have judged to be the best sort of all.66 Ponets
theory of government drew upon both theological and Aristotelian tra-
ditions of political thought. Far from advocating a government without
any earthly rival, Ponet eventually declared a godly nation to be the
governments superior. This proved too alarming even for Puritans and
Separatists, who at their most radical settled for the discipline of the
local congregationexcommunicationas the greatest force against
princely pretensions. Ponets real impact was in the seventeenth-century
when his Shorte Treatise was reprinted in 1639 and 1642 to bolster sup-
port for the revolutionary Puritans.67
Neither Christopher Goodman nor John Knox stressed royal legiti-
macy in their political works. Such stress would have been counterpro-
ductive to their whole project of inspiring the English to overthrow
Queen Mary. Ponet influenced neither Knox nor Goodmans political
vocabularies in the slightest. W. Stanford Reid considers it unlikely that
Knox had read Ponets Shorte Treatise. Knox and Goodman, however,
were prominent members of the same church while in exile in Calvins
Geneva. It is impossible that the two wouldnt have discussed the situ-
ation in England.68 Both Christopher Goodman and John Knox were
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.
indifferent to any discourse regarding the types of constitutions as con-

ceived by Aristotle. Like Machiavelli before him Goodman cautioned
against two extremes of government. The first is that Magistrates per-
mit not to their subjects overmuch liberty. The consequences for
such licence are devastating to order. It will lead to the magistrates
falling into the contempt and subjection of their people, which brings
for the most part, all kind of dissoluteness, and carnal liberty, subver-
sion of all good Laws and orders, alteration of commonwealths and
policies, contempt of God and man: and to be short, all things turned
to disorder and confusion.69 The second excess to avoid is when all
power and liberty be taken from the people. This leads to people being
treated not as reasonable creatures, but brute beasts: as though they
had no portion or right at all. This results in mindless subjects equat-
ing right law with the magistrates will.70 This being the case, there is
still no appraisal of any particular type of regime in Goodmans polemic.
That he preferred a mixed state is probable. Nevertheless, he never
made it explicit. As Richard L. Greaves says about Calvins and Knoxs
attitudes to political theorising, both had a great deal to say about poli-
tics, but not about the ideal form of government.71 Goodman may be
included here. There is no account of Aristotles three types of constitu-
tion and their corrupt equivalents. Certainly there is no hint of the
humanist disdain for monarchy in the works of either Knox or
Goodman. Although they share Calvins suspicion of monarchs the
actual office is never attacked. Knox eventually considered Elizabeth I
as legitimate because he considered her authority to have been bestowed
by God, as opposed to his critic, John Aylmer who saw her authority as
conditional on her submission to counsel.72 Knoxs strong predestinari-
anism excluded anything other than a divine source of legitimacy. If
God is sovereign then it is neither birth, influence of stars, election of
people, force of arms, nor finally whatsoever can be comprehended
under the power of nature, that maketh the distinction betwixt the
69
Christopher Goodman, How Superior Powers Oghd to be Obeyd (Geneva, 1558),
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.
The Elizabethan Period: Sectarian Dialectic and Noisy Vestiges of Rome
When Elizabeth ascended to the throne she described herself as

the minister of His heavenly will.75 The emphasis was less on
princely legitimacy from God than on princely accountability to
God.As Elizabeth was reported to have said the following year,
power from God demands responsibility to God: princes be set
in their seat by Gods appointing and therefore they must first and
chiefly tender the glory of him from whom their glory issueth.76
Peter Martry Vermigli in his panegyric to Elizabeth upon her accession
reminded her that she was appointed solely by divine gift.77 Also, he
spoke of a duo of godly Elizabeths. As human Elizabeth was to practise
humble piety, yet as queen she was to establish piety.78 Indeed, for
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.
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
John Aylmers Defence of Elizabeth
Upon the ascension of Elizabeth to the throne English Protestant

churchmen set to work defending her legitimacy. Allen may have been
right when he suggested that no great defence of royal legitimacy
occurred until the end of Elizabeths reign, but there were some capable
attempts along the way.86 The best apology for government in the early
Elizabethan reign came from Bishop John Alymer. His thoughtful
response to Knoxs blast not only affirmed the legitimacy of gynaecoc-
racy, but also discussed the legitimacy of government in general. An
Harborovve for Faithful and Trevve Subiectes contained a proof for
kingly legitimacy from both nature and theology, with a little pragma-
tism thrown in for good measure. Alymer simply declared that Elizabeth
had been brought into the line of royal succession by God and warned
that it is safer to keep the current prince than to seek a new one (a great
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.
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
hiscalling.90 Here, Aylmer was able to exhort Englishmen to lay down

their property and lives for their prince, with no reference to their self-
interest. This was possible because Aylmers view of government was
not so much rooted in individual consent but in divine will.
Ironically, in his enthusiasm to silence Elizabeths opponents, Aylmer
softened her political significance to an almost unparalleled degree. He
declared that it is not she that ruleth but the laws, the executors
whereof be her judges, appointed by her, her justices of peace and such
other officers.91 Aylmer declared the real sphere of influence in
England to be the laws as understood and executed by the parliament
and nobility. In his haste to answer John Knoxs critique of gynaecoc-
racy, Aylmer diluted Elizabeths power to such an extent that she resem-
bled more the royalty of England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688
than of the sixteenth-century.
Concurrently with the Puritan minimisation of royal jurisdiction
there was also a movement to extol royal authority. Defenders of the
Elizabethan government against Catholic critics, like Edwardian theo-
rists before, tended to emphasise the Queens calling and authority. In
1569 the Calvinist parliamentarian, Thomas Norton, described the
Queens power as invincible and used the medieval metaphor of prince
as Mother and nurse of all her good subjects and Husband of the
common weale.92 The same year in another piece of polemic Norton
identified the life and soul of the prince with the life and soul of the
realm.93 There was no separating the nation from the person of the
Queen. After the appearance in 1570 of Pius Vs Regnans in excelsis,
which called upon all English Catholics to disobey the excommunicate
Elizabeth, the duty of defending the Queens authority became urgent.
There were practically no critiques of monarchical government during
the Elizabethan period. This is hardly surprising given that Elizabeths
regime gradually became more and more preoccupied with smoking
out seditious literature and punishing authors and printers as traitors.
Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, strove to make printed and
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.
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
the kingdom of heaven is resembled unto a man, a king: and as the

name of the king, is very often attributed and given to unto God in the
holy Scriptures. Furthermore, God himself in the same Scriptures
sometime vouchsafe to communicate his name with earthly Princes,
terming them gods: doubtless for that similitude of government which
they have or should have, not unlike unto God their King.97
The same year Nowells, Catechism or First Instruction and Learning
of Christian Religion was published, which reaffirmed the kings right to
rule from The holy decree of the laws of God, by which they are become
worshipful and honourable. Furthermore, For from thence they all,
whether they be parents, princes, magistrates, or other superiors, what-
soever they be, have all their power and authority; because by these it
has pleased God to rule and govern the world.98 There is no speculation
here on rank, order, or similitude. Rulers are legitimate simply because
it has pleased God to establish them. There is not even any suggestion
that government might be natural. It was against such visions of royal
authority that the Puritan movement seems so seditious by compari-
son. If, as the Homilie declared, the kings dominion is similar to Gods,
then how can the king be said to be limited? The Puritan movement
represented an assault on the idea of the prince resembling God, for the
prince was said to be accountable to an earthly institutionthe
churchwhich was both blasphemous and seditious.
Royalist Apologies and Anti-Catholic Polemic
Up there with the most substantial pre-Hookerian defences of the

Elizabethan church of Jewell and Whitgift was the Warden of
Winchester, Thomas Bilsons, The Trve Difference betvveen Christian
Subiection and Vnchristian Rebellion (1585). This was one of the largest
tomes published during the Elizabethan reign and, surprisingly, one of
the more lucid reads. Bilsons Trve Difference is significant because it
attempted to accommodate both the Hildebrandine and Erastian model
into a single system. The result was nothing but tension giving way to
Ibid., p. 278.
97

98
University Press, 1853), p. 17. Italics added.

absolutism.99 By affirming the Act of Supremacy and yet admitting a

type of ecclesiastical moral authority over the prince, Bilson effectively
made ecclesiastical authority meaningless. The royal supremacy and
the claims of the church could not coexist in any coherent way.
Bilsons Trve Difference was a systematic dialogue rebutting Jesuit
criticism of the Elizabethan regime and also an expos of the seditious
doctrines taught by that society. The treatise also gives the historian of
political thought a glimpse at the difficulties Tudor theorists encoun-
tered when trying simultaneously to preserve the Royal Supremacy
and the autonomy and authority of the church. Bilsons thought turns
out to be stretched in opposite directions. On the one hand he asserted
royal supremacy over the English church and on the other he affirmed
that the ruler is subject to ecclesiastical discipline and to the words of
preachers. Although Bilson set out to defend the Elizabethan policy, he
wound up describing her powers in terms similar to those being
espoused by Separatists. Furthermore, his concern to elevate the will of
God as revealed in the scriptures to the highest point of priority for the
commonwealth caused him eventually to minimise the importance of
those English institutionscourts, judges, and lawyersthat would,
by their existence, limit the power of the sovereign.
In essence Bilsons thought differs little from the Zurich theology of
obedience preceding it. In fact, it carries all the ambiguities, tensions,
and dangers that characterized the political ideas of Bullinger and
Vermigli:
In sum, there is no great king or emperor who is exempt from the power
of the divine word, which is preached by the ministers. Similarly, there is
no bishop who, having offended, should not be reproved by the civil
magistrate.100
Bilson was concerned to refute the Jesuit charge against England that
Elizabeth embodied all the iniquities that English Reformers had
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
reviously ascribed to the papal office. Contrary to Catholic critiques

p
Elizabeth, unlike the pope, is able to err; her will is not synonymous
with justice.101 Bilson affirmed the princes coercive power over both
ecclesiastical and secular spheres, that is, a prince may punish a subject
in the name of religion as well as in the name of justice.102 He likened a
ruler of a commonwealth to the father of a household. If a father should
take pains to ensure the spiritual progress of his household, a fortiori a
prince with regard to the commonwealth!103 Bilson defended princely
autonomy from the Roman See so strongly that he actually described a
prince who answered only to God. Sounding remarkably like Coverdale,
he expounded the meaning of the Royal Supremacy:
This very claim [papal supremacy] was the cause why the word supreme
was added to the oath: for that the Bishop of Rome taketh upon him to
command and depose Princes as their lawful and superiour judge. To
exclude this wicked presumption, we teach that princes be supreme rul-
ers, we mean subject to no superiour judge to give a reason of their doings
but only to God.104
By subject only to God Bilson seems to have meant that the prince
ought to ponder the counsel of divines; but this turned out to be not
much of a limit on princely power, for We are not bound to their fan-
cies or pleasures, but only to the word of truth proceeding from their
mouths. Also, obedience here required is no corporal subjection to
their persons, but an inward liking and embracing of their doctrine.105
In other words, that class of preachers who have the most authority
over the prince have no power at all. What emerged was a prince who,
in reality, was subject to nothing other than his own conscience:
As princes are bound to hear preachers directing them unto truth because
the words of God are in their mouths, and he that despiseth those things
despiseth not man but God: so likewise are preachers bound to obey
Princes commanding for truth.And the Princes obedience to be not
due to Preachers persons or pleasures, but their message delivered them
by God the Lord and Ruler of Princes.106
Bilson recognised the absolutist implications of what he was saying,
implications whose refutation was the raison detre of his treatise!
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.
Consequently he laboured the necessity of counsel to the prince, assur-

ing that We be not loathe they be directed, but rather exhort all Princes
to take great care, and spare no pains to come by faithful and true direc-
tion in those things that pertain to God. Admitting that Princes often
summon councils to guide their decisions, Bilson offered an a fortiori
argument for the same concern for counsel in matters ecclesiastical.
Immediately fearing that his words might be misconstrued as placing
some earthly authority above the prince, Bilson ambiguously told read-
ers that neither Prince, nor people stand bound to the persons of men,
but unto the truth of God, and unto their teachers so long as they
swerve not from truth.107 Bilsons stress on counsel was not quite in
keeping with Elizabeths increasing independence. In 1582 during a
conflict with her counselors Elizabeth asserted that she, not her coun-
selors, was absolute; counsel was not even necessary.108 It is evident
throughout Bilsons Trve Difference that he was torn between his duty
to extol the powers of the English monarch and at the same time to
place some holy limit on royal will. The result was repeated affirma-
tions of the princes obligation to the preached word, only to be fol-
lowed by assurance that the prince is subject to no person.109 Bilsons
thought on princely authority was sufficiently ambiguous and protean
to lend support to views both of limited royal authority and the most
absolutist doctrines which were to emerge the following century.
At the same time, Bilson urged that a ruler was just as subject to
ecclesiastical discipline as any other person. Indeed, there is that radi-
cal sense of equality throughout Bilsons thought that was equally char-
acteristic of the Separatist movement in general. He took pains to point
out that both prince and subject are equally accountable to Gods word,
for there is [sic] no distinctions of persons with God.110 Furthermore,
despite having declared the prince to be subject to no other person on
earth, Bilson emphasised that the prince is not solutus legibus, that is,
the ruler is not allowed to break the laws of God, land, or reason.111
Despite this pious affirmation, Bilson never really explained how this
was to be interpreted in light of his frequent affirmations that the prince
is subject to no earthly person. If Bilson simply meant that a prince is
subject to no person qua that person, but to laws, he need not have
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
bothered; no one in the history of Christian political thought had

asserted anything contrary to that. Bilsons ultimate aim was never to
subordinate all things to Elizabeth; on the contrary, the purpose of his
polemic was to show how all things must be made subordinate to Gods
will as revealed in the laws recorded in the Bible. Yet Bilson had a con-
flict of duties. On the one hand he had to defend an increasingly abso-
lutist regime and on the other he had to preserve fidelity with the
Christian tradition of accountability and also the English traditionin
theory, at leastof limited royalty, or what Fortescue called a regnum
regale et politicum.112 The result was an unresolved tug of war between
his duty to defend the royal supremacy and his own commitment to
religionultimately leading to an ambiguous political theory. Surely if
a ruler is convinced of Gods will, let all earthly authorities perish!
When God commandeth, all human bars and laws do cease. If they
join with God, they may be used: if they impugn the truth, they must
be despised. Bilson anticipated his Catholic opponents objection: if a
king need only worry about doing Gods will, wherefore the right of
courts, judges, and laws? Bilsons reply admitted defeat: This is childish
wrangling.113 The king, effectively, was accountable only to conscience.
Laws and religion could only exhort, never force. Bilsons effort to sub-
ordinate the ruler to God ended up with a ruler subordinate only to
God. Bilsons political thought is significant because it exemplifies the
tensions emerging in Elizabethan England between the Medieval and
Erastian systems. If Protestantism had become a house divided by the
incompatible demands of both systems, Bilsons attempt to accommo-
date both produced a system that was microcosmic of English Protestant
political thought in general. His views on princely accountability to the
church resembled the Presbyterians both contemporary and of the fol-
lowing century. Yet his frequent assertion that the prince is accountable
to God alone equally resembled the absolutist political theory of
JamesVI and I, who could speak for folios on the subject of princely
legitimacy without even mentioning the people.114
If there was one factor that led English churchmen to labour the
legitimacy of Elizabeths reign it was claims to the contrary by Catholic
112
John Fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England, Shelly Lockwood (ed.),
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.
propagandists. Laurence Humphrey was led to write another substan-

tial political treatise after his The Nobles or of Nobilitye. Humphreys
attacks on Jesuits were not of a theological nature; Jesuits were traitors
rather than heretics.115 In his View of the Romish Hydra and Monster
(1588) he presented numerous evidences of the Queens legitimacy as
demonstrated by sources throughout the history of Christendom;
authorities that Catholics could not dismiss. Humphrey affords the his-
torian of political thought one of the few evidences of John of Salisburys
influence in Elizabethan England. Throughout his View Humphrey
invoked the medieval philologists argument that the prince bears two
distinct images of God: the image of God in his humanity, and the
image of God in his authority. Salisburys theory of the quasi-God-king
was used by Humphrey to express Elizabeths legitimacy in a theologi-
cal vocabulary: A Prince is a public power, and in earth a certain image
of the divine power. The prince is a God himself . Humphrey also
reminded dissident Catholics that the scriptures informed all princes
that Ye are Gods.116 Furthermore Humphrey declared to dissidents
that the double nature of a prince generated a double duty in all. As a
man who bears Gods image the prince demands safety from harm; as
a ruler bearing resemblance to Gods rule over creation he demands
awe and obedience.117 Rulers are instituted to punish the guilty and
reward the good. Humphrey offered practical as well as theological rea-
sons for the legitimacy of government. Invoking the authority of
Chrysostom, and sounding a little like Machiavelli, Humphrey sug-
gested that without government fortune would turn society upside
down. Government is the politic wisdom of God.118 Again invoking
the authority of Chrysostom and Augustine, yet sounding remarkably
like Calvin, Humphrey allowed for practical reasons for government:
Even so if thou takes away Prince from cities, we shall lead a life more
unreasonable, than unreasonable wild beasts, biting and devouring one
another, the man of might him that is the poorer, the bolder him that is
the simpler.119 Coercive government was respectable theologically and
Kemp, Laurence Humphrey, p. 84.

115
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
necessary practically. If the Separatists were led to emphasise the limits

of royal authority by their critique of the English church, others, like
Humphrey, were led to emphasise royal authority in response to
Puritan, Separatist, and Catholic critiques of English government. To
some extent the two Protestant understandings of royal authority were
both reactions to and nourished by one another.
Conclusion
The political thought of conformist Protestantism was, by and large,

manipulated by Henrician and, later, Elizabethan politics. Although
the enthusiastic endorsement of absolutist kingship found in the late
Henrician thought of Coverdale was never repeated with quite the
same gusto, apologists for Elizabethan Protestantism often found them-
selves forced to affirm a practically unlimited kingship in response to
Catholic and Puritan attempts to subordinate kingly authority to the
church, whether it was in Rome or in England. Although occasionally
ecclesiastical political thought lent itself to the absolutism and Divine
Right of Kings famously advocated by James VI and I, it was usually led
down this path reluctantly. Owing to the Catholic and Puritan assaults
on Elizabeths authority any talk of a limited monarch became a shibbo-
leth; assurance that there still was such a thing as counsel, courtly or
ecclesiastical, was often little more than a shy whisper. During the
Elizabethan period dual visions of princely power emerged. One react-
ing to Catholicism, Puritanism, and Separatism emphasised the rights
of the prince over the subjects and institutions of the commonwealth,
the other, reacting against the Royal Supremacy, emphasised the duties
of the prince to God and the church as an institution. Both traditions
bore fruit in the following century as both made possible a robust
vocabulary and literature of absolutism and popular sovereignty
respectively. It is to this latter tradition that we now turn as we examine
the political thought and legacy of sixteenth-century Puritanism and
Separatism.
Chapter Five
Consent from Church to State
Introduction
While political thought was developing in the direction of royal abso-

lutism among defenders of the Church of England it was frequently
coming into conflict with the churchs critics who, in ecclesiastical and
sometimes secular polity, saw power as mediated from God down to
the people and back up to the rulers. Although, as Hobbes showed,
royal absolutism and consent are not necessarily incompatible, the
importation by Puritans of consent into ecclesiastical polity functioned
to permanently remove the princes authority from instituting bishops
and pastors over congregations. Because congregational consent was
seen as part of Christs plan laid down for churches, it was perennial
and could not be given up. In other words, consent permanently
limited the princes authority to meddle in the affairs of churches.
This freedom could not be given up in a Hobbesian bargain. It stood
eternally opposed to royal absolutism in matters ecclesiastical and,
in some instances, civil.
If the English Civil War of the seventeenth-century can be said to
have had theological dimensions, these dimensions have their origins
in the rise of Puritanism and Presbyterianism the previous century.1
Hobbes accused the Presbyterians of challenging the power of their
own kings no less than the Pope challengeth it universally.2 The phi-
losopher of Malmesbury was merely reaffirming the sentiments of the
late kings James VI and I and Charles I, whose hostility to Presbyterianism
1
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
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
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
the local congregations. Historian of Calvinism, Philip Benedict, says

that even the Edwardian church, when compared with the Reformed
churches in Switzerland, remained only partially transformed.8
During the Edwardian period great care went into converting West
minster into a Reformed-type city-state like those on the Continent,
with an emphasis on preaching and compulsory lectures for the clergy.9
Polish reformer John Lasco presided over the Stranger church in
London, exercising a church polity that characterized John Calvins
version of presbyterian polity at Geneva.10 The same was attempted at
Northampton by the Calvinist preacher Percival Wilburn in 1571;
though it did not survive beyond the following year.11 When scores of
Protestants fled England to settle on the Continent, about twenty five
percent of the eight hundred found their way to Geneva. At Marys
funeral John White, Bishop of Winchester, prophesied that the wolves
be coming out of Geneva, and other places of Germany, and have sent
their books before them, full of pestilent doctrines, blasphemy, and
heresy, to infect the people.12 The exiles had planned upon their return
to England to rid the nation of all vestiges of Catholicism.13 In 1562 The
Lavves and Statutes of Geneua was published in English and dedicated
to the powerful Lord Dudley. Notwithstanding English enthusiasm for
Geneva, by the mid-1560s it was known even on the Continent that
Elizabeth held Geneva and its religious tradition in low esteem.14
The shadow of Geneva was not distasteful to Catholics only, for
Englishconformists occasionally lamented the influence of that small
8
(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:
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.
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),
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:
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
the Presbyterian movement.22 By the 1580s London ministers had been

characterised as Genevians. The suspicion was such that former
Geneva exile Anthony Gilby wrote a dialogue to defend them from
accusations of sedition and innovation.23 John Penry admitted to hav-
ing been influenced by the Reformed cities on the Continent in formu-
lating his Separatist platform.24 In both 1584 and 1586 parliamentary
bills were proposed and rejected, calling for the replacement of the
Prayer Book with the Geneva liturgy.25 By the 1590s Calvin could be
referred to as the Lombard of Protestantism.26 Indeed, Calvins influ-
ence seemed so great that Hooker took the time to remind English
Puritans that God is to be trusted over the Geneva divine, and that he
was not infallible.27 In 1595 an anti-Calvinistic sermon caused an
uproar.28 Early in the seventeenth-century one anti-Puritan and
Separatist polemicist accused them of liking of nothing well but of that
which cometh from Geneua.29 By 1572, it was becoming clear that
Elizabeth had no intention of conforming the English church to the
Geneva exemplar. For the more radical Protestant, the stress on obedi-
ence as a consequence of Elizabeths divine appointment was getting
harder to make.30 It was also this year that Elizabeth decided to reintro-
duce the austere 1534 treason act of Henry, which had been temporar-
ily abrogated by Edward.31 Despite the fact that Presbyterians and
Separatists said nothing explicitly seditious, the reputation for disloyalty
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.
never left them. The upshot of the struggle was the ever-increasing
claims for the Royal Supremacy provoking stronger counter-claims for
ecclesiastical autonomy.32 The Puritan reform movement of the 1560s
predictably led to the breakaway Separatist movements of the 1580s.
The Separatist critique of English religion partly constitutes the origins
of early-modern English theories of consent. Puritan and Separatist
discourses on consent in the church and state normalised a vocabulary
that would be wielded powerfully the following century in England
and New England. Terms like consent, assent, freedom, liberty, and
covenant arose repeatedly throughout debates between defenders of
the Elizabethan Supremacy and the Puritan and Separatist movements.
Certainly the activism of Puritanism and Separatism must be counted
among the numerous strands of political culture contributing to the
dualism of monarchy and parliament. Perhaps there was a trichotomy
of tension between the monarch, the parliament, and restless clerics.
Indeed, when Puritans could see no way forward with the queen they
petitioned the parliament to continue reforming the church. It was ref-
ormation without tarrying for monarchy.
Presbyterianism, Separatism, and the Royal Supremacy, 15721581
It was never a platform of Edwardian Protestantism to seek total eccle-

siastical autonomy from the state. Nor did the most influential theolo-
gians advocate such a church-state separation. Both Heinrich Bullinger
and Peter Martyr Vermigli explicitly rejected ecclesiastical autonomy,
teaching the magistrates duty for the cura religionis.33 The 1559 Act of
Supremacy reintroduced the Henrician laws regarding royal and eccle-
siastical authority that had been abrogated by the Marian parliament. It
was reaffirmed that there would be no foreign authority over England.
Furthermore, all authority and initiative for reforming the English
church was given to the prince. Indeed all authority for reformation,
order and correction of the same and of all manner of errors, heresies,
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
schisms, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities, shall forever by

authority of this present Parliament be united and annexed to the impe-
rial crown of this realm.34 Also, all men with any ecclesiastical post, be
it preaching or presiding over a bishopric, had to swear an oath uphold-
ing the Queens authority over all spiritual or ecclesiastical things.35
These supremacist doctrines coupled with the Act of Uniformity (1559),
which reintroduced the Edwardian liturgy, were bound to create ten-
sion among those who would consider even the smallest compromise
as occasion to obey God over prince. Elizabeths ecclesiastical policy
was a via media between Henry VIII and Edward VI. She was, by and
large, happy with Protestant theology, but was also quite fond of the
Catholic aesthetic. For many Elizabethan clerics this via media was not
an affront to their conscience, but for others, the thought of re-institut-
ing liturgical procedures that connoted the old religion was too much
to bear. Immediately advice was sought from Zurich as to the right-
eousness of conforming to Elizabeths requirements. Of chief concern
was the dress required of bishops, which would distinguish them from
other clergy. Both Bullinger and Vermigli considered the contentious
issues to be matters of indifference and recommended conformity for
the sake of order and the progress of national reform.36 In 1560 the
bishops required their clergy to wear a cope during communion and
a surplice in other services. The hotter Protestants immediately
refused. In 1566 Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his
Advertisements declared certain vestments to be compulsory. This gen-
erated a literary skirmish between conformists and Puritans who
wanted ecclesiastical practice to be stripped to the bare essentials as
practised by the early church. The political problem was that to deny
the legitimacy of Elizabeths ecclesiastical policy was to assert that
Elizabeths authority did not extend over all temporal spheres. It was a
denial of both the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity. Puritan
protest implied that Elizabeth was beyond her proper calling or juris-
diction in legislating on matters ecclesiastical. Whatever Elizabeths
supremacy meant, Puritan protest was a direct assault on it.37 Indeed,
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
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
sovereign, without the assent and free concurrence of churchmen?40 In

a letter to several English ecclesiastics Bullinger encouraged conscien-
tious and willing conformity in matters indifferent. Ecclesiastics were
to realize the supreme importance of unity and freely conform to con-
tinue you in one consent and unity.41 Bullinger stressed that clerical
vestments were a matter of indifference, which meant that it was no sin
to conform to the queens demands. Throughout Bullingers letter the
stress is on willful submission. In matters indifferent consent is neither
cast off nor a license for contumacy. The individual must make a moral
judgment on the issue based on the circumstances and act freely.
Bullinger described those who conformed as wise and politicbecause
they think this will maintain concord.42 He then addressed the issue
Whether the prince may prescribe anything touching ceremonies,
without the will and free consent of the clergy? Faced with a standoff
between the prince and conscience Bullinger came down squarely in
the corner of the prince. Consent could often hinder progress and God-
forbid we should resubordinate the prince to the church as was the
dream of Rome then and in ages past.43 When matters of indifference
gave rise to a standoff between conscience and the prince the Zurich
theologians ranked consent lower than order. For most reformers con-
sent and liberty were precious, but were never meant to undo the fabric
of society. It was this subordination of conscience to princely preroga-
tive in matters of indifference that would eventually be too much
forsome Puritans to bear; some eventually taking their case directly
to parliament and others eventually taking off completely to the
Netherlands and a New World.
Puritan and Separatist polemic against the powers of the monarch
only led to the aggrandisement of royal power. As Professor Collinson
has said, what bothered the Queen the most was that in all the Puritan
talk regarding church assemblies and discipline not once was the
Queens consent even mentioned.44 It was the Marian exiles who
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
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.
resented the queen as an accountable public officer, and Elizabeth

p
would spend much of her reign in conflict with that persistent portrait
of royal power.45 There were frequent complaints about restrictions
imposed on rectors who ventured to criticise the Elizabethan church
policy before their congregations.46 Indeed, the first time Elizabeth
asserted the sufficiency of her own will apart from counsel was in 1576
when she dismissed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal,
for his sympathy with the prophesying movement.47
In 1572, seeing that they would get nowhere by trying to change the
English church by appealing to the conformist clergy and the queen,
English Puritans composed and submitted a manifesto to the English
parliament regarding episcopal government and the wearing of gowns.
Composed by Thomas Wilcox and John Fieldwho were imprisoned
the following yearthe Admonition to Parliament (1572) was in many
ways a document of the highest significance in English political his-
tory, running into three editions. Indeed, in terms of tracking civic
consciousness in England it must be considered one of the principal
manifestations of heavenly citizenship breaking forth into civic activ-
ism in the Tudor kingdom.48 It was a document calling for radical
changes without a hint of concern for royal consent. The Prayer Book
and episcopacy were attacked as unscriptural and without place in a
true church. In the place of bishops was to be a proper system of con-
sistorial discipline akin to that of Calvins Geneva, where the civil mag-
istrate has no authority over the affairs of the church, which is
administered by elected presbyters.49 Although its language was softer
than the language used by those who would later become Separatists,
the essence of the crisis of authority that characterised Separatist rela-
tions with the Elizabethan government was present in the Admonition.
The whole radical Puritan and Separatist approach to government
Alford, Kingship and Politics, p. 182.

45
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
1975), p. 336.
49
(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
authority was captured in the following words contained in the

Admonition: that nothing be done in this or any other thing, but,
that which you have the express warrant of Gods word for.50 This was
the crisis of authority brought about by the Protestant Reformation.
No one doubted that the word of God limited all earthly authority.
However, add to this the principle that anybody can conscientiously
read and understand the Bible and the Royal Supremacy becomes void.
Secular powers are not only limited by the word of God, but by the
lowest sort who has understood it to teach a non-episcopal and congre-
gational ecclesiastical polity. Hooker thought the Presbyterian herme-
neutic so subjective and dangerous that he saw little to distinguish it
from the excesses of the radical Anabaptists. St German had, decades
earlier, foreseen the same problems and prescribed the king-in-parlia-
ment as the hermeneutical principle that must bind the consciences of
English Christians.51 As one historian of the controversy has summed
up: A movement that began with a refusal to wear a surplice ended
with a denial of the royal supremacy.52 Thomas Hobbes the following
century would remember men such as Wilcox, Field, and the Separatists
as the enemies which arose against his Majesty from the private inter-
pretation of the Scripture.53
The writer of the 1572 Second Admonition to Parliament launched
into a doxology towards Elizabeth. However, Elizabeths glory was
inseparable from and entirely contingent upon her willingness fully to
reform the English church:
we heartily, plainly and faithfully profess, that the chief governors in
civil matters, have chief authority over all persons, in their dominions
and countries, and are the foster fathers, and nurses of Christs church.
And as Jehosaphat having chief authority, did by his authority set up, and
defend not only the civil government, but also the true reformation of the
church at that time, in his dominion and Cyrus in his, so we refer the
same authority to our sovereign, beseeching her Majesty, and the whole
state, to proceed in it. And this is most true, that her Majesty shall not
find better subjects in her land, than those that desire a right reformation,
whose goods, bodies, and lives, are most assured to her Majesty, and to
their Country, and which cease not to pour forth their hearty prayers
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.
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,
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
Cartwrights mixed constitutionalism as suspicious speech.60 Speaking

of church polity Whitgift maintained that there is no injunction in the
whole Bible that enforceth or proscribeth that kind of government as
necessary or convenient for all times.61 However, he soon qualified
this by criticising the mere suggestion of democracy, affirming the
optimality of monarchy:
For it is too absurd to say that popular estate is the best state; neither
would any affirm it but those that would be popular. You are never either
to show, either by divinity or philosophy, that there are more lawful
kinds of government than three; that is, democratical, aristocratical, and
monarchical; and of these both the scripture and philosophy alloweth of
the monarchy as simply the best.62
Thomas Rogers, fellow apologist for the Elizabethan church, wrote
similarly. He began by stating the relative nature of political constitu-
tions. However, by the time he had finished his brief discourse on the
three types of constitutions, he affirmed that monarchy is favoured in
the Bible:
Divers and sundry be the forms of commonweals and magistracy. For
some, where many, and they be of the inferior people, bear the sway, as in
a democracy; some, where a few, and that of choice, and the best men do
govern, as in an aristocracy; and some, where one man or woman hath
the preeminence, as in a monarchy: such is the government of this king-
dom. Notwithstanding whatsoever the government is, either democrati-
cal, or monarchical, Gods word doth teach us, that There is no power
but of God but of the monarchical government, special attention is
made in the writings of the prophets and apostles.63
This sort of talkthe affirmation of constitutional relativism followed
by an appraisal of monarchywas eventually enshrined in the stand-
ard Elizabethan treatise on the subject, Charles Merburys Briefe
Discourse of Royall Monarchie (1581).64 Cartwright was forced to take
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.
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
196 chapter five
arrest and committed him to prison for about a month on suspicion of

sedition and disloyalty.70 Cartwright effectively divided Protestant
political thought into two camps: the Erastian and the Hildebrandine.
Cartwright was just as determined to make the prince accountable to
the church as his opponents were to subordinate the church to the
prince. Eventually the division would cause strife in the attempt to
render to Caesar without robbing God. The whole Puritan political
vocabulary was one of conditions. The princes glory is conditional on
the progress of religion. Subjects may obey on the condition that their
obedience does not entail disobedience to God. It is not so much that
these ideas were new, but that they were being emphasised to an extent
unheard of since the seditious literature that came out of the Marian
persecutions. As Archbishop Grindal was to say to Elizabeth when she
demanded a stop to the prophesyings: In Gods matters, all princes
ought to bow their sceptersto serve God with fear and trembling.71
Although the Puritan tendency was to emphasise a limited sover-
eign, this was by no means the tendency of all or even most Protestant
churchmen. The common tendency was to repeat the analogy between
Elizabeths authority and that of God. To Puritans the queen as vicar of
God entailed obligations that the ruler was to fulfill. Puritans never lost
their reputation for being hostile to monarchy. In his 1605 defence of
Puritanism William Bradshaw assured suspicious readers that the
Puritans ecclesiastical reforms are no ways repugnant to any civil
State whatsoever, whether Monarchical, Aristocratical, or [interest-
ingly enough] Democratical. Rather exaggeratedly, he declared that
Puritans acknowledge monarchy to be the best kind of civil Government
for this Kingdome.72 Nonetheless, it was the Puritans emphasis on the
rulers obligation to God that led Milton the following century to con-
sider them the monitors of princes.73 Tudor Puritans and Separatists
never forgot the Queens authority, but held that it did not extend into
the ecclesiastical realm. This may have been a neat and innocuous dis-
tinction to some of them, but the fact remains that such a separation of
spheres flew in the face of the 1559 Act of Supremacy, which gave the
70
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,
Queen authority over ecclesiastical policy, including defining heresy,

abuses, and schisms. Indeed, the authority of the ecclesia was derived
from the imperial crown. Furthermore, it became necessary for any
person assuming some ecclesiastical office to swear to the Act of
Supremacy. Responding to the political doctrine contained in the Act
of Supremacy the Puritan divine and friend of Thomas Cartwright,
William Fulke, cautiously agreed to the Royal Supremacy:
Of the title of the princes supremacy, if it be truly understood, we move no
controversy; but [agree] that it doth properly appertain to the civil mag-
istrate to be the highest governor of all persons within his dominion, so
that the sovereign empire of God be kept whole.
But Fulke could not help but draw a silent analogy between the author-
ity of the Queen and the usurped authority of the pope over matters
ecclesiastical. He declared the popes authority as usurped tyranny,
blasphemy against Christ, and that ecclesiastical authority may not be
usurped by any civil magistrate. Fulke was then quick to reaffirm that
every prince in his own dominion ought to cast off the yoke of his sub-
jection and to bring all ecclesiastical persons unto his obedience and
jurisdiction. Nevertheless, not wanting to back-pedal, he immediately
declared that God forbiddeth princes to meddle with reformation of
ecclesiastical matters, or to make any laws pertaining to causes of reli-
gion. Essentially, Fulke was saying that there are two spheres of
authority: the temporal and the ecclesiastical. Temporal policy belongs
to the prince and parliament, ecclesiastical policy belongs to the
pastors.74
Although Fulke composed his alternative doctrine of church/state
relations in 1573, it was only published in 1584, probably in response
toArchbishop Whitgifts Eleven Articles of October 1583, which
reaffirmed the authority of the Queen over all ranks, civil and ecclesi-
astical.75 As Collinson points out, the Queens authority over all peo-
ple, including ecclesiastics, regarding temporal matters was not the
least bit contentious.76 The former Genevan exile, Anthony Gilby, was
happy to confess in 1581 that government is an Ordinance of God
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
most necessary.77 Nevertheless, Puritan and Separatist ministers

objected to the compulsory use the Prayer Book. Though neither the
Acts of Supremacy nor Uniformity were mentioned, Whitgifts Eleven
Articles were obviously an attempt to pull Puritans into line with them.
When one reads the Puritan assault on the Queens supreme authority,
it becomes clear why Whitgift thought it a doctrine worthy of empha-
sis. For Whitgift, Hooker, and Hobbes in the following century there
were no two societieschurch and commonwealthonly a single
society, which needed only one head.78
Robert Brownes congregational political thought
By the time Hobbes wrote his Leviathan the language of consent was
already common in English political theory and was also practiced to
some degree in local government.79 Hobbes contribution was not in
giving political science a new vocabulary of consent but in giving the
concept a secular, philosophical rigor it had not possessed previously.
His very definition of the commonwealth included the concept: One
Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one
with another, have made themselves every one the Author.80 From
this Institution of a Common-wealth are derived all the Rights, and
Facultyes of him, or them, on whom the Soveraigne Power is conferred
by the consent of the People assembled.81 Hobbes even found ample
biblical support for the concept, defining the Kingdom of God
along identical lines: the Kingdome of God, is properly meant a
Commonwealth, instituted (by the consent of those which were to be
subject thereto) for their Civill Government. He even said that 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.
individual consent becomes more apparent as we consider the Puritan

and Separatist critique of the state during the late Tudor period.
It is, as Charles Taylor has recently said, difficult to track the exact
relationshipconceptual and historicalbetween spiritual outlook
and economic and political performance. Yet this is no reason why his-
torians cannot make sensible judgments about the relationship of cer-
tain social forms and certain spiritual traditions.83 There is a connection
between the Reformation and modern democracy, namely, congrega-
tional models of ecclesiastical polity informed early-modern advocates
of political democracy.84 Graham Maddox has contended that when
the focus of political debate shifted largely to secular affairs, the politi-
cal legacy of Puritan congregationalism remained deeply embedded in
democratic thought and practice.85 Most recently John Witte Jr. in his
unrivalled study of the Calvinist contribution to modernWesterndemoc-
racy shows how at numerous points ecclesiastical democracy contrib-
uted to the development of political democracy, particularly in America.
Indeed, What Calvin adumbrated, his followers elaborated. In the
course of the next two centuries, European and AmericanCalvinists
wove Calvins core insights on the nature of corporate ruleinto a robust
constitutional theory of republican government, whichrested on the
pillars of rule of law, democratic process, and individual liberty.86
Interestingly Hobbes himself, when describing individuals gathered to
consent to their sovereign called them a Congregation.87 As M.M.
Goldsmith wrote in his study of Hobbes, it was the Presbyterians (and
Separatists) who developed the vocabulary of consent the century prior
to Hobbes Leviathan.88 This was partly an influence of Reformation
83
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
200 chapter five
theology and partly the original contribution of English Separatists.

Sheldon Wolin has spoken of the important political elements and
strong political overtones of Luthers theory of the church. Wolin sees
Luthers ecclesiology as basically a demand for ecclesiastical constitu-
tionalism, which owed not a little to conciliarist inspiration.89 For
Luther, because all are equally far from God no one is spiritually supe-
rior. Thus no one may impose or prescribe any rite or belief on another
without their consent. No one has a spiritual right to rule another.90 Yet
Luthers spiritual egalitarianism found no expression in his political
thought. The same is largely true for Calvin. Calvin was immersed in
the Swiss political climate of republican cantons, which, according to
Troeltsch, was reflected in the ecclesiology that emerged from the Swiss
Reformed tradition.91 In a classic article J.T. McNeill affirmed that
Calvin associates theocratic and democratic concepts and blends the
patterns of government for church and state.92 Later Harro Hopfl spoke
of a homology between Calvins reflections about ecclesiastical and
civil polity.93 Despite Calvins advocacy of an element of congregational
consent, he never fully trusted the people to act wisely. Nonetheless,
Calvin saw the benefit in electing officials in secular government. He
constantly encouraged magistrates to remain accountable to elected
officials.94 Yet Calvin himself never seems to have explicitly drawn a
connection between his somewhat congregational ecclesiology and
hisadvocacy of a system mixed with aristocracy and democracy.95 This
89
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
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
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.
connection was, on the other hand, made by the English Separatist,

Robert Browne.96 It was the Continental Reformed view of the ministry
that the radical Elizabethan churchmen seized upon.97 Historian of
Puritanism, Peter Lake, speaks of the separatists populist revolt against
any sort of ministerial elite.98 Stephen Brachlow sees a new elevation
of popular will in the Separatist movement, which had the unques-
tionable impact of elevating the status of the English laity to a new,
more prominent level in church affairs and discovering democratic
meanings in the scriptures.99 For this Robert Browne and fellow
Separatist John Penry were remembered by Divine Right theorists as
brain-sick and heady preachers, who showed contempt of the civil
magistrate100 and were impatient to suffer any superiority.101
Certainly there was a literature in England and on the Continent
advocating church and secular government by consent. The tradition
goes back at least to Fortescue, whose ideas found systematic expres-
sion in St Germans dialogues in the late 1520s and early 1530s. The
king rules by consent (assent) of all Christians through their repre-
sentatives in parliament.102 The Cambridge humanistsBishop John
Ponet, Thomas Smith, John Cheke, and Bishop John Aylmerfrom the
1540s to the 1560s spoke of laws and government by consent.103 Laws
were analogous to language, arising from the community and finding
their legitimacy through common usage.104 Often, however, govern-
ment by consent was accompanied by cautionary qualifications. For
example English Presbyterian, Walter Travers, argued for congrega-
tional consent in electing ecclesiastical officers. Yet after Travers admit-
ted that there were examples in Acts 6 and 14 of direct congregational
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,
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.
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
the year after Cartwrights Replye, Travers on many occasions pointed

out the need for consent in a church. Travers even went so far to say
that those not chosen to take their offices in a church may be ejected.122
For Travers the proper way to call a minister to preside over a congre-
gation is for a group of elders, who represent the whole church, to elect
a minister. That decision is then taken to the people, who may approve
or disapprove.123 Without troubling the reader with argument Travers
affirmed that election is necessary for the health and survival of a
church.124 He also pointed out that the power given to the elders is from
the church. The power to elect a minister should not be possessed by
any except with the consent of the whole church.125 In his desire to
show that he was not advocating the sort of oligarchy that Aristotle
described as a degeneration of aristocracy, Travers summed up his
whole teaching on election:
Neither do I bring in here any Oligarchy or tyrannous rule of a few and
retain still the same tyranny in the church, changing only the persons.
For I would not that the judgment of the rest of the church should be
contemned and neglected or that the counsel or elders of the church
whom they list against the churches will, but that the Elders going before,
the people also follow, and having heard and understood their sentence
and decree, may either by some outward token or else by their silence,
allow it if it be to the liked of, or gain say it if it be not just and upright:
And not only gain say it, but if just cause of their disliking may be brought
make it altogether void and of none effect, until at the last a mete one may
be chosen by the authority and voices of the Elders, and allowed of by the
consent and approbation of the rest of the church.126
As Cartwright had written the previous year, election prevents unwor-
thies from taking office, as well as facilitating the dismissal of unsuita-
ble officeholders.127
Travers was most clear on the source of his teaching on congrega-
tional consent. By and large he spoke of it as a revelation from God,
confirmed by the successful operation of contemporary Reformed
churches in Europe. Setting himself in opposition to the perceived
pragmatic approach to matters of church organisation adopted by the
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
Elizabethan bishops, Travers affirmed that ecclesiastical polity comes

from no other fountains but from the holy scriptures.128 Even though
Travers did admit that his doctrines could be confirmed by nature and
reason,129 he was clear that the rule of church government was left by
Christ himself and was both sufficient, necessary, and perpetual:
I affirm that Christ hath left us so perfect a rule and Discipline, I under-
stand it of that discipline which is common and general to all the church,
and perpetual for all times, and so necessary, that without it this whole
society and company and Christian common wealth cannot well be kept
under their Prince and king Jesus Christ.130
Travers preference for extolling revelation over experience, seeing the
former as more basic to knowledge than the senses, was so determined
that it led to a clash between himself and Richard Hooker, with whom
he was sharing a parish during 15856.131 Indeed, Hookers intuition
was always that the Presbyterian platform espoused by Cartwright in
the 1570s was seedbed from which Separatism grew in the 1580s.132
Born in Rutland, Robert Browne went to Cambridge where he came
under the influence of Thomas Cartwrights 1570 lectures on the book
of Acts.133 Graduating from Corpus Christi in 1572, Browne started to
develop his Puritan views in a Separatist direction. He began preaching
around Cambridgeshire, declaring that the authority of bishops was
usurped. After being arrested twice, he, his friend Robert Harrison,
and his English congregation in either late 1581 or early 1582 emigrated
to the Netherlands, meeting for services in Brownes house in
Middelburg.134 While abroad Browne published his most important
treatises, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying (1582) and his
Booke which Showeth the Life and Manners of all True Christians (1582).
Owing to theological and personal conflicts he returned to England in
1584, disillusioned with the Separatist experiment.135 He was arrested
in 1585 and saved from the gallows by his cordial relationship with
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.
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
Watts, Dissenters, p. 33.

136
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
Queen was not supreme at allGod was supreme. Nevertheless, it was

the Separatists whose consciences were most burdened by Elizabeths
ecclesiastical policy. Separatism was an affront to Elizabeths preten-
sions to authority over both civil and ecclesiastical realms. Regarding
Elizabeths banning of prophesying, that is, congregational discussion
of the text of the Bible, Browne simply dismissed her:
For if either Magistrate or other would take from us, we must not give
place by yielding unto them, no, not for an hour.Therefore the
Magistrates commandment, must not be a rule unto me of this and that
duty, but as I see it agree with the word of God.And this dispensation
did not the Magistrate give me, but God by consent and ratifying of the
church, and therefore as the Magistrate gave it not, so can he not take it
away.141
It was Brownes tendency to see the magistrates authority as limited
and derivative. Indeed he spoke more often of the rulers obligations to
God than the subjects obligations to the ruler.
In 1582 Browne published his most important political ideas in
A Booke which Sheweth the Life and Manners of all True Christians,
which contained a political theology remarkably dissonant with most
other ecclesiastical political speculation. Browne held that the neces-
sary conditions of a governors legitimacy were that he should be per-
sonally assured of his calling, that he should have a special command
or charge by God to rule, that other men agree that it is fitting for him
to rule, and that he have noble blood.142 These conditions were fairly
conventional. What was not conventional was that Browne offered a
model of magisterial legitimacy drawn from his belief in congrega-
tional sovereignty. When considering how the minister of a congrega-
tion is to be instituted, Browne said that there must be an agreement of
the church. Again he said that the due consent and agreement of the
church is necessary for another to preside over it. Considering the
legitimacy of the magistrate, Browne simply lifted the criterion from
his ecclesiology and applied it to civil authority: For civil Magistrates,
there must be an agreement of the people or Commonwealth. Repeating
himself on the next page, he expressed the following conditions: by
consent and agreement of the people and subjects; received by the
Ibid., p. 158. Italics added.

141
Browne, A booke which showeth the life and manners of all true Christians
142
(1582), ibid., p. 330

consent or choice of the people.; and Agreement of men. He also

discursively spoke of laws by public agreement.143 All the while,
Browne kept stating that rulers, both ecclesiastical and political, receive
their authority and office of God or that they are authorised of God.
Precisely what Browne meant by this is unclear, but he may have
intended his democratic conditions to stand in apposition to the divine
will condition, that is, God has ordained if the people have consented.
Election is a heuristic device for discerning Gods politic will. This is as
close as Tudor political thought got to vox populi vox Dei. It should be
pointed out that Separatists, Browne included, did not argue for the
direct election of ministers by the congregation. They proposed that
democratically elected presbyters should elect a minister, who would
then be brought before the congregation for approval. Separatists
wanted to avoid both tyranny from above and tyranny from below.144
Browne immediately repeated his claims for congregational election
saying that the congregation must receive them by choice. Browne did
not speak of consent apart from its application to the church polity. His
principles were derived from scripture, not political philosophy.
Immediately below this congregational recommendation Brown rec-
ommended that The agreement also for the calling of civil magistrates
should be like unto this.145 Here we have Browne directly drawing his
political thought from his congregational ecclesiology. Brownes politi-
cal thought is the perfect exemplification of the nexus between ecclesi-
astical and political conceptions of legitimate power.
Against his consensual model of government Browne determined all
other models incompatible with liberty. Referring to the Roman
Catholic church, he spoke of consent as opposed to naked force: They
undermine, and take away by craft the liberty of the church, and bring
them into bondage. They come upon them by power and force, and
yoke them by cruel laws and penalties. The like may be said of Tyrants
which usurp civil authority. The stress in Brownes political thought was
consent. Without consent a ruler could not rule properly, nor could a
commonwealth obey properly. Speaking of the church, Brown wrote:
Agreement of men is the willingness or glad consent both of the
Governorsto rule, and the people or inferiors to obey, for the assurance
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
they have in God, of welfare by each other.Receiving by choice, is an

agreement of partaking of conditions between Governors and inferiors,
that so long as the Governors have right use of the submission and serv-
ice of inferiors, and the inferiors also have the right use and welfare of
their authority and guiding, they shall hold that communion, or else
make a breach thereof, when once it shall tend to confusion and destruc-
tion. We give these definitions so general, that they may be applied also to
the civil state.146
This is probably the most radical advocacy of government by consent
offered by any Protestant churchman of the sixteenth-century.147
Laurence Humphrey had written over thirty years earlier that sedition
is an affront to the sovereignty of the people, but he never explained
precisely what he meant by this.148 Certainly in the Netherlands there
was later some talk of rulers being elected on the grounds of virtue
rather than succession149 and by the mid-seventeenth-century parlia-
mentary supremacy could be boldly asserted,150 but such talk was rare
in Elizabethan England. Indeed, the Tudor view of the people was of a
many-headed hydra. Witness a typical discussion:
I hope the gravity and the prudence of the Magistrate may worthily be
preferred before the rashness and rudeness of the many, that are often led
rather with affection than with discretion, and are carried with many
light respects and lewd means as with faction and flattery, favour and
fancy, corruption and bribery, and suchlike baits, from which Governors
are, if not altogether free, yet far freer than the intemperate and unruly
multitude.151
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).
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
Matthew Sutcliffe, A Treatise of Ecclesiasticall Discipline, (London, 1590), p. 201.

152
Typical is Bilson, Perpetval Governement of Christes Church, p. 356.

153
154
155
Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law,
and Church Law 11501625, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 [1997]), p. 182.
156
Browne, Answere to Master Cartwright (1583), ibid., p. 480.
212 chapter five
appointed to preside over a church without any congregational consent

was considered to be a totally illegitimate appointment. The English
church was not ruling for the good of its congregations but only for the
good of its hierarchy. Here Browne saw an analogy between the church
and the government:
they seek their own advantage, or glory, or mischievous purpose, than
the welfare and benefit of the church. Yea they all look to their own way
as sayeth the Prophet, Esa. 56. 11. everyone for his advantage and for his
own purpose. Who knoweth not also, that by due consent and agree-
ment, they are either Antichrists in the church or commonwealth.157
Here again Browne espoused a view of magisterial legitimacy perfectly
consistent with republican ideals. Leaders not appointed by a larger
constituency are not legitimate and may be considered no better than
usurpers. It is important to recognise that despite the fact that Browne
was one of the most determined advocates of government by consent
during the sixteenth-century, at no point did he ever advocate any for-
cible removal of usurpers. He was silent on that particular issue. Still,
with Brownes high emphasis on the accountability of the higher to the
lower and his frequent analogies between the constitution of the church
and the civil government, it is no wonder that one seventeenth-century
polemicist explained to his readers in his dialogue between an
Englishman and a German that though Our Puritans will make as sol-
emn protestations as any men can doBut I marvel they would attempt
to overthrow the Magistracy. To this the German responded, It is not
to be marvelled at, for they soughtto be free from all laws, and to doe
what they listed.158 Critics of Brownism invoked the typical Elizabethan
portrayal of the people as prone to fail either through lightness or by
evil practices, or tumult, who are ill conditioned and void of grav-
ity.159 Yet Brownes political thought was unique in that it was explicitly
drawn from his Reformed or Calvinist ecclesiology. No wonder that
Brownists were remembered even seventy years later as being anti-
absolutist.160 King James VI and I decried English Presbyterians (which
he considered Browne a member of) as those who fantasy to themselves
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.
a democratic form of government.161 Royalists into the 1640s contin-

ued to lump Brownists in with Anabaptists and Atheists who ende-
vour the destruction of Church and State.162
As an early theorist of consent Browne rejected the patriarchal meta-
phor that Robert Filmer would exploit for the royalist cause the follow-
ing century. If a king was like a father, then subjects may not violently
resist him any more than children may their own father.163 Browne, on
the other hand, made a distinction between the bonds of the household
and other hierarchical relationships. The former is a natural covenant
and the latter is a covenant by agreement and, consequently, can be dis-
solved by will, for its origins lie in the will, not in the nature of things.164
Thus the princes calling may be dissolved if he breaches the agreement
that led him to be appointed to his post in the first place.165
The idea of popular consent eventually became a commonplace the
following century, to the point when it was considered by some to be
almost self-evident.166 Hobbes enthusiastically banished natural domin-
ion even from the household and argued that a parent governs by the
Childs Consent, either express, or by other sufficient arguments
declared.167 If ODonovans assertion is true, that in the seventeenth-
century, Reformation ideas respectingdemocratic church polity
were refracted in the democratic and republican sentiments, then
Robert Browne must be of some interest to historians of early-modern
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
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
English political thought as the only theorist to explicitly draw such a

connection between ecclesiastical and secular debates on the legitimate
exercise of power.
Farewell to Royal Consent: The Thought of Robert Harrison

and Henry Barrow
Brownes radical Separatism makes it easy to appreciate the suspicion

that Elizabethan apologists had towards the Separatists. The Separatist
attitude to royal authority was reminiscent of the attitude of some
ancient Christians to Roman pomp. Though never denying the author-
ity of the emperor in toto, Tertullian warned believers not to address
him as dominus et deus.168 The charge that Separatists rejected princely
authority was commonly made. The Separatist, Robert Harrison,
accused conformists of confusing Elizabeths will with the will of God.
Full reformation was too important to wait and see what the L[ord]
sayeth to him by the mouth of ye magistrate.169 Certainly Harrison
did not consider Elizabeths consent as necessary for a total overhaul of
her ecclesiastical policy. As far as Harrison was concerned, when one
has a full appreciation of the gravity of the Christian life and the splen-
dor of God, the Queens will recedes into complete insignificance:
For certainly the great and noble Potentates of this world, if they do not
entertain the kingdom of Christ Jesus, though their name reach the
clouds: yet in truth their honour and renown is small, and scarcely to be
accounted an handful, which when it is spent, they die.Then is a living
dog better than they.170
With such disregard for the pomp of princes, what else could Separatists
expect but to be held in suspicion by bishops and defenders of
the national church? If Maddoxs understanding is true, that The
Reformation began as an attack on a particular authority, but slid head-
long into the dethronement of authority itself ,171 then English Separatism
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
was the ultimate expression of such a lapse. Critic of Separatism,

Thomas Cooper, correctly pointed out that to abolish this present min-
istry is to veto decisions confirmed by sundry parliaments, the result
being that all who speak against them and their proceedings, are ene-
mies unto, and speak against the peaceable estate of this land.172 When
Separatist preacher Henry Barrow told Archbishop Whitgift that it was
none of his business when he last attended an English church service,
the Archbishop responded: You are a schismatic, a recusant, a sedi-
tious person.173 Barrow was incapable of admitting Elizabeths
dominion without at the same time limiting it to that prescribed by the
teachings of the Bible:
I think the Queens Majesty supreme governor of the whole land, and
over the church also, bodies and goods; but I think that no Prince, nei-
ther the whole world, neither the church itself, may make any laws for the
church, other than Christ hath already left in his word.174
For the Separatists there was simply no concept of royal authority apart
from definite obligations to the congregation of the faithful, even to the
point of subordination to the church. In the Separatists haste for a
Reformed system of church government, they derogated from the maj-
esty of the ruler to an unheard of degree:
Quest. May this people and presbytery reform such things as be amiss,
without the prince?
Answ. They ought to practise Gods laws, and correct vice by the censure
of the word.
Quest. What if the prince forbid them?
Answ. They must do that, which god commandeth, nevertheless.
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
Quest. If the prince do offend, whether may the presbytery excommuni-

cate the prince, or no?
Answ. The whole church may excommunicate any member of that con-
gregation, if the party continue obstinate in open transgression.
Quest. Whether may the prince be excommunicate?
Answ. There is no exception of person; and I doubt not, but her majesty
would be ruled by the word; for it is not the men, but the word of God,
which bindeth and looseth sin.
Quest. Whither may the prince make laws in the government of the
church, or no?
Answ. The scripture hath set down sufficient laws for the worship of God,
and government of the church, to which no man may add, or diminish.
Quest. What say you to the princes supremacy? Is her majesty supreme
head of the church and over all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal?
Answ. A supreme magistrate over all persons, to punish the evil, and
defend the good.
Quest. Over all causes?
Answ. No; Christ is only head of his church, and his laws may no man
alter.175
Here was an explicit subordination of the prince to the discipline of the
congregation, considered the discipline of God himself. Who could
blame King James VI and I for his remarks to the English bishops: If
once were out, and they [the Presbyterians] in place, I know what would
become of my supremacy.176 For Barrow, an ungodly prince could be
excommunicated and banned from the sacraments. Apart from the
significant difference in that Barrow never authorised the congregation
to declare the magistrates authority voida papal prerogative, accord-
ing to the Jesuitsthere was little to distinguish this from the
Hildebrandine model that Henry VIII abolished. Richard Hooker was
not objecting to merely an alternative view of church/state relations, he
was objecting to the medieval model being reestablished in England by
fellow Protestants!177
The Separatist critique of the church could not be removed from
broader politics. Barrow could not have cared any less for conformist
objections, calling them politic and carnal. Opponent of Separatism,
George Gifford, accused Separatists of Anabaptism and disregard for
the Queens authority. Barrow was unmoved: [It is not] any injury to
the prince, when the faithful witness against and refrain anything that
175
Ibid., pp. 3031.
176
Cited in Hill, Century of Revolution, p. 80.
177
Munz, Place of Hooker, pp. 97, 131, 142.
is contrary to Gods word.178 Later, in the same reply, Barrow declared

the Queens assignment of titles and dignities to bishops illegitimate,
for Christ hath so expressly and often forbidden them.179 John Penry,
Separatist preacher and writer, spoke in similar terms:
And, as to the law of God, all kings and princes are bound thereby, to be
so far from thinking themselves tied by no bands unto their subjects, as
they are plainly forbidden even to be lifted up in mind above their breth-
ren (Deut. xvii. 20.)180 for so the word, in that place, calleth their subjects
and servants.181
Penry was suspected by Whitgift of being instrumental in the writing
of the Marprelate Tracts (15881589), a series of scurrilous satires of
the English church, which declared the bishops to be incompetent,
immoral, and usurped. Barrow and Penry were both arrested on the
accusation of writing seditious literature. The printers who were tried
for producing the tracts were scrutinised under the 1581 statute against
seditious words. To critique the church was to critique the state: schism
was sedition.182 When asked why he encouraged his followers to disre-
gard the English church, Penry responded in apocalyptic terms: I per-
suade all men unto the obedience of my prince, and her laws; only
Idissuade all the world from yielding obedience and submission unto
the ordinances of the kingdom of antichrist.183 Furthermore, Penry
envisioned a radical covenant theory, which goes back to the very
beginnings of Protestant theology. Both Zwingli and Bullinger stressed
the idea of a covenant or agreement between humankind and God.
Humankind agreed to obey and God agreed to save.184 The idea of a
covenant between humankind and God was imported to England
through the writings of Tyndale, the first English covenant theolo-
gian.185 Bullingers significant influence in Edwardian England would
Henry Barrow, A plain refutation of M.G. Giffardes reproachful booke (1591),

178
Writings of Henry Barrow, pp. 5051.

179
Ibid., p. 193.
180
and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the
right or to the left. Then he and his descendents will reign a long time over his kingdom
in Israel.
181
Examinations of Henry Barrow, &c., p. 37.
182
J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 15841601, (London: Jonathan Cape,
1957), pp. 220221.
183
184
Jens G. Moller, The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, XIV/1 (April 1963), p. 48.
185
Ibid., p. 50.
218 chapter five
also have been responsible for the popularisation of covenant theology

during that period.186 Goodman saw the Mosaic law in terms of a cov-
enant between humankind and God.187 Calvins emphasis on a covenant
between humankind and God began to have massive influence during
the Elizabethan period. Beza would continue the teaching in Geneva
after Calvins death.188 The word covenant was used far more in the
Geneva Bible (1560) than in any other previous English translation.189
Eventually the idea of a covenant was applied to ruler and to God. The
ruler was legitimate as long as he kept the covenant with God to bring
ecclesiastical reformation to fulfillment. John Foxe, the martyrologist,
constantly spoke of Elizabeths legitimacy as contingent upon her ful-
filling her duty of reformation.190 It was not long before the idea of a
covenant between God and his people was transformed by Separatists
into a covenant between ruler and subject: [I]t appeareth, Penry
declared, that it is not without great warrant of the word, that princes
should enter covenant with their subjects, and that subjects should
require promise and oath to be kept with them, otherwise, whereto
serveth the covenant?191
Thomas Bilsons Trve Difference betvveen Christian Svbiection and

Vnchristian Rebellion (1585)
Ecclesiastical defences of limited sovereignty did not always build upon

the idea of consent. By 1585 it was becoming acceptable to speak of
constitutional resistance to tyrants. It was inevitable that the issue
would be raised again, for it was a major preoccupation of Jesuit politi-
cal thought. Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Worcester, rejected absolute
non-resistance and suggested a right to resistance grounded on the
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
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
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
powers who wields the sword is a minister of Satan. Throughout most

of Bilsons discussion he was principally concerned with ecclesiastical
calls for deposition and rebellion.202
Though Bilson had advocated an absolutist conception of kingship
in his Trve Difference he also offered a constitutional resistance theory,
which he formulated shrewdly enough to be completely harmless to
Elizabeth. Bilson hinted at the usefulness of magisterial resistance after
over four hundred pages of polemic. Speaking of princes in the past,
Bilson admitted that many had been deposed, but not by the mob nor
by popes, but by their own states and realms, and that for their extreme
tyranny. If anyone should be authorised to depose a prince it is the
nobility, not the lower sorts or the priests. Indeed, if princes were to
choose their judges among men, they were far better refer themselves
to the general consent of their Nobles and commons at home, than
hold their scepters at the pleasures of disdainful and seditious
popes.203 Bilson later approved of a distinction between lawful depo-
sition by constituted authorities and popular rebellion.204
It was not until page 518 of his treatise that Bilson gave explicit
approval of constitutional rebellion against a tyrant. Again, he made it
clear that he was talking about deposition by the nobles, not the masses,
which he again described as Jesuitical. Referring the German princes
who were licensed by the Treatise of Magdeburg to overthrow a tyrant
emperor, Bilson cautioned:
They were magistrates and bear the sword in their own dominions: you
are private men, and want lawful authority to use the sword. Their states
be free and may resist any wrong by the laws of that Empire: you be sub-
jects and simply bound by the laws of your country to obey the prince, or
abide the pain, which the public state of this realm hath prefixed. The
German Emperor is elected, and his power abated by the liberties and
prerogatives of his princes.205
Immediately Bilson pointed out that such a model of resistance cannot
apply to England, for Elizabeths authority is not from her subjects,
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.
Ibid., pp. 520521. Italics added.

206
On the protean nature of Bilsons thought in general, see William M. Lamont,

207
The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson, Journal of British Studies, 5/2 (May 1966), p. 22.
Responding to the Puritan and Separatist attacks on Elizabethan

policy Richard Hooker offered a far more articulate statement of legiti-
macy by consent, but based his case on reason rather than revelation.
Because we are not naturally equipped to sustain ourselves as individu-
als without the aid of others we gather into communities. Over time
mutual grievances, injuries, and wrongs become so incommodious
that only by growing unto composition and agreement amongst them-
selves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding
themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority
to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquility, and happy estate of
the rest might be procured.208 Now because all people are naturally
equal without consent, there were no reason, that one man should take
upon him to be Lord or Judge over another. Furthermore, the cor-
ruption of our naturedoth now require of necessity some kind of
regiment, yet the kinds thereof being many, nature tieth not to any
one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrary.209 Given Hookers pop-
ularity the following century we would not argue that legitimacy by
consent became common solely owing to the sixteenth-century
Presbyterian and Separatist writings. But given the fact that many dem-
ocrats and republicans in the seventeenth-century were themselves
Presbyterians, Separatists, Independents, or, to speak broadly, Puritans,
it is surely reasonable to hold that the Presbyterian and Separatist
emphasis on ecclesiastical consent and limited monarchy helped fur-
nish democrats and republicans with a vocabulary and conceptual
framework within which to express their political ideas. Hobbes cer-
tainly thought so.
Hooker, Lawes, I.10.4.

208
Ibid, I.10.45. See W.D.J.C. Thompsons discussion of consentthe most impor-

209
tant principle of his theory of governmentin Hookers thought. While acknowledg-

ing Hookers doctrine of original popular sovereignty and consent, Thompson sanely
refutes ideas that Hookers thought bore any significant similarities with the later
thought of John Locke. The Philosopher of the Politic Society: Richard Hooker as a
Political Thinker, W. Speed Hill, Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an
Edition of His Works, (Cleveland and London: Case Western Reserve University Press,
1972), pp. 3450. For a more recent treatment see Arthur P. Monahan, Richard Hooker:
Counter-Reformation Political Thinker, in A.S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and
the Construction of Christian Community, (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance
Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 203217. Despite Hookers views on parliamentary repre-
sentation, he was still invoked by Robert Filmer the following century to support an
argument for absolutism! Filmer, Patriarcha, p. 57.
224 chapter five
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
214
McLaren, Political Culture, p. 48.
Separatism was beginning to be seen with the same disgust as Catholic

recusancy. As far as both criticised the English government and reli-
gion, both were seen as disloyal to the commonwealth. Indeed, Martin
Marprelate demanded the English bishops to stop portraying the
Separatists as enemies of the State.215 Brownes call for congregational
autonomy and consent would anathematize him until the end of the
following century. Barrows and Penrys emphasis on the rulers
obligations rather than her liberties proved to be a capital offence:
Barrow was hanged in 1590, Penry in 1593. It was the Presbyterian and
Separatist emphasis on limited power and consent that provoked abso-
lutist theories and inspired democratic theories the following century.
In the history of political thought the Elizabethan protestors must again
be placed at the centre as inspiring and providing a vocabulary for
much that would become foundational for modern politics.
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
to describe certain things as natural and unnatural? And what good is

there to try to discern the laws of morality by reason when the Bible
tells us all we need to know? To be sure, the Bible speaks of natural law,
but Christians are beyond that. They have the law written in the gospels
far more vividly than anything the pagans may have written on the
heart. Indeed, God has revealed a natural law to the world, but he has
revealed a far more perspicuous revelation in the Bible. The natural
law could never compete. The aims and theology of the Magisterial
Reformation also facilitated absolutism and republican traditions. One
of Magisterial Protestantisms great advantages for princes was its
rejection of the historic programme of the Roman Catholic Church to
subordinate all earthly scepters to the Roman See. Thus, part of the
appeal of Protestantism, one of its selling points, was that it would not
try to control the prince. Certainly princes were limited, but not by any
earthly institution. Yet, at the same time, Puritans and dissenting sects
began to challenge the authority of the prince over the church, even
saying that the church has authority over the prince in matters of reli-
gion. Furthermore, the Puritan and Separatist vision of ecclesiastical
equality often spilled over into political thought proper, idealizing a
polity not dominated by any single force, where the prince, parliament,
and people have a balance of rule. If it was good enough for the saints
it was good enough for the citizens.
During the following century the Reformation produced statist and
anti-statist movements. Caroline state-building in seventeenth-century
England may be considered a response to the radical elements of the
Reformation which challenged the supremacy of the state over the con-
science of individuals and religious communities. Yet the absolutist
claims of the prince were couched in a language of providentialism and
supported by an Established church whose autonomy and character
depended on the pleasure of the magistrate. The absolutist claims of
Stuart monarchs and the fervor of the New Model Army were fuelled
by Reformation ideas placing God at the centre of the universe. Nothing
could stand in opposition to Gods will, neither magistrates nor sub-
jects. Thus James VI could counsel subjects to arm themselves with
patience and humility, since he that hath the only power to make him
(the prince), hath the only power to unmake him.1 Yet a generation
1
James I and VI, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598), in Political Writings,
Johann P. Sommerville (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 68.
228 conclusion
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
absolutism 2, 14, 83, 95, Chapter Four, Basil 146

181, 212 Basle 31
Ab Ulmis, John 99 Baylor, George 45
Adams, Robert P. 173 Becon, Thomas 48, 102
adiaphora 32, 189190 Beer, Barrett L. 157
Admonition Controversy (see bees 94, 105, 117118
Puritanism) Bellarmine, Cardinal 77
Alford, Stephen 89, 28, 30, 163, 182, Benedict, Philip 29, 31, 51, 182, 186,
191 191, 204
Alison, Richard 133, 212 Bernard, G.W. 27, 189
Allen, J.W. 1, 90, 157, 165, 170, 189 Berry, Lloyd E. 73
ambiguity 1, 12, 39, 63, 86, 130, 136, Beza, Theodore 8, 80, 155,
139, 150 183184, 207
Ambrose 146 Bible 20, 65, 68, 144, 158, 194, 224
America xi, 35, 71, 190, 199, 224, 228 Bilson, Thomas 72, 161, 174178,
Anabaptism 2223, 45, 57, 80, 192, 213, 210211, 218
216 Black, Antony 41
Anderson, Marvin W. 55, 124 Bobbio, Norberto 3
anti-Catholicism (see also Bodin, Jean 157
Catholicism) 1, 13, 15, 26, 62, 72, body metaphor 14, 74, 86, 119130
7576, 80, 101102, 143, 145146, Boeke, Brandt B. 64, 116
155, 183, 189, 209 Boethius 99
Aquinas (see Thomas Aquinas) Bond of Association (1584) 119
Aristotle 3, 10, 21, 62, 78, 97, 100101, Bouwsma, William J. 19, 21
107, 112113, 116, 142, 148, 164, 166, Brachlow, Stephen 3435, 182,
172, 193, 205, 211 201, 209
Reformation and 44, 55, 9192, Bradford, John 30, 57, 99100, 106,
9697, 100 137, 146, 162163
auctoritas (see also potestas) 1112 Calvins influence on 54, 57
Augustine 21, 64, 89, 165166, 179 Bradshaw, William 196
Calvin and 24 Browne, Robert xiii, 15, 3435,
John Knox and 65 85, 133
Luther and 2021 theory of consent 15, 198214, 225
order 4344 Bucer, Martin 20, 27, 29, 55, 64, 101,
Peter Martyr Vermigli and 55 131, 156
Zwingli 64 Buchanan, George 80, 104, 129, 142
Aylmer, John xiii, 32, 149, 167, Bud, Guillaume 84
182, 195, 201 Bullinger, Heinerich 98, 131, 155, 168
debate with Knox (1559) 63, 6667, Calvin and 51
89, 133135, 170172 English Protestantism and 29, 32,
35, 51, 52, 5557, 99, 101, 108, 115,
Babbage, Stuart Barton 32 183184, 188190, 217218
Bale, John 30, 105106, 163164 Burgess, Glenn xiii, 194
Bancroft, Richard 185 Burns, J.H 41, 94, 123, 126
Barker, Ernest 93
Barnes, Robert 189 Cajetan, Cardinal 125126
Barrow, Henry 3435, 106, 142, 215, Calvin, John/Calvinism 23, 26,
217, 224225 7374, 79, 80, 84, 87, 97, 99100, 109,
246 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
Erasmus and 27 Kant, Immanuel xi, 20

Royal Supremacy 2628, 96, Kantorowicz, Ernst 9, 119, 125,
154158 161, 172
Hill, Christopher 170, 216 Keller, Jacob 80
historiography 78, 12 Kemp, Janet 33, 66, 74, 135, 179, 210,
Hobbes, Thomas xi, 34, 40, 83, 153, 213
181, 192, 198199, 213, 223 Kenny, Anthony 108
Homily against Disobedience (1570) 77, Kethe, William 73
173 Kingdon, Robert 8, 199, 224
Hooker, Richard (see also natural Kirby, Torrance xiii, 29, 32, 41, 45, 55,
law) xiiixiv, 14, 25, 104, 113, 130, 71, 87, 147149, 168, 175, 187188,
149, 174, 216 190191, 193, 206
consent 223 Knewstub, John 141
medievalism and 4647, 68, 8687 Knox, John xiii, 9, 14, 31, 63, 66,
natural law and 89, 9192, 9697, 69, 73, 80, 111, 118, 149,
110, 118, 136, 147148 164, 182, 219
providentialism and 46, 68 Aylmers response to 63, 89,
Puritanism and 34, 86, 124, 136, 133135, 170172
147148, 184, 186, 192, 206 Calvin and 64
Hooper, John 30, 52, 55, 100, 189 gynaecocracy and 64, 88, 115,
Calvin and 108 133135, 167, 172
Bullinger and 56, 108110 natural law 115118
doctrine of obedience 5759, order and 6370
161163 political authority 166168
natural law and 107110 providentialism of 6869,
providentialism of 57 167168
Hopfl, Harro 45, 70, 77, 80, 104, Knox, S.J. 148, 206
200, 220 Kretzmann, Norman 108
Horn, Robert 35, 72
Hudson, Winthrop S. 6061, 100, 114, Lake, Peter xiii, 2, 89, 34, 187,
120, 165 194195, 201
humanism 25, 27, 46, 52, 73, 84, 92, Lamont, William M. 175, 222
9798, 104, 118, 131, 155, 165 Lang, August 93, 98
Humphrey, Laurence 31, 32, 35, 6768, Lasco, John 27, 183
7375, 86, 119, 131, 137138, 145, Latimer, Hugh 30, 98, 104
169, 179, 210 Lessay, Franck 181
on Goodman, Ponet, and Knox 66, Levellers 45, 142, 185
129 liberalism xii
Hunt, William 34 Lilburn, John 213
Lim, Paul C.H 34, 55
Islam xi, 146 Linder, Robert D. 183, 199, 224
Izbicky, Thomas M. 123 Lindsay, A.D. 199
Loach, Jennifer 30
Jack, Sybil M. 157 Loades, David 4, 156157
James VI & I 11, 129130, 159, 170, 178, Locke, John 40, 143, 215
180181, 201, 212213, 216, 227 Lowers, James K. 76
Jesuits (see Society of Jesus) Lovejoy, Arthur O. 42
Jewell, John 81, 124, 126, 174 Luoma, John K. 204
John of Paris 2122, 120121, 161 Luscombe, D.E. 95, 108
John of Salisbury 86, 95, 123 Luther, Martin 82, 9698
John Scotus Erigena 44 equality 1920, 44, 224
Jones, Norman L. 5, 8, 142 individualism 1920
Jones, Whitney R.D. 27 medieval tradition 20, 91
Justinian 94, 108, 131, 144 political effects of 21, 25
index 249
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
medieval 42, 46 secular historiography of 56, 910

political thought and 69 seventeenth-century 5
providence and 3941, 49, 55, 61, 63, sixteenth-century 16, 8
71, 77, 89 Tudor xiixiii, 12, 10
Puritanism and 42, 83 vocabularies of 1011
Reformation view of 42, 44 Ponet, John 31, 63, 66, 70, 100, 115, 118,
Tudor England Chapter Two 119, 135, 182, 201, 219
Organic metaphor (see body metaphor) body metaphor 120123
Ormerod, Oliver 212 Conciliarism 120122
Overell, M.A. 29 Great Chain of Being 6061, 70
Overton, Robert 213 mixed constitution 166
Oxford University 29, 51, 9899, 101, natural law 111114
148, 211, 222 political authority 164166
Ozment, Steven 8, 2021 Wyatts Rebellion (1554) 60
Poor Law Reform (1536) 27
Padgen, Anthony 911 Porter, H. C. 54, 101
Paget, William 157 potestas 11
Palonen, Kari 7 Presbyterianism (see also Thomas
Parker, Matthew 54, 188 Cartwright, Puritanism,
parliament 156157, 167, 169, 172, 191 Separatism) 84, 147148, 181, 192,
Parsons, Robert 123 193197
Pascoe, Louis B. 44 natural law and 140141
patristics 9192, 146, 179, 214 political thought of 7, 212213
Paul 22, 55, 59, 84, 86, 98, 103, 109, 136, sermons of 9
139, 143, 165, 184 Royal Supremacy and 15, 72, 163,
Pearson, A.F. Scott 78, 35, 168, 186, 186187
193196, 204 predestination (see providentialism)
Peltonen, Markku 15, 52 Proctor, John 155
Penry, John 35, 107, 186, 217, 224225 Protestantism
Pettegree, Andrew 26, 31, 64 authority and 14
Philpot, John 99 reason and 14, 55, 65, Chapter Three
Pinborg, Jan 108 providentialism (see also order) 43
Plato 42, 97, 99100, 112, 131, 135, 139 Calvin and 3941, 5155
Plutarch 46 Homily on Obedience (1547) and 49
Pocock, J.G.A 810, 15, 42, 44, 46, 71, Tudor England Chapter Two
156, 191 Knox and 68
political thought medieval thought and 51, 60, 63
anti-Catholicism and 15 natural portents and 61, 78, 81
Calvinism and 9 obedience and 58, 7781
Christian 2 order and 45, 49, 77, 84
conceptual background to 41, 61 plague and 56, 80
conceptual transition in 45, 1011, predestination 50, 5253, 55
13, 16, 3940, 51, 59, 70 Puritanism and 51, 54, 83
language and 1011 political interpretations of 52
medieval 4, 93 seventeenth-century 55, 85, 153
modern 4 Pseudo-Dionysius 4345, 77, 87
Oakeshott on 3 Puritanism (see also Presbyterianism,
order 69 Separatism, Thomas Cartwright) xi, 2,
political theology xi, 2 6, 14, 23, 32, 48, 72, 124, 148, 163, 166
Protestant 1, 3, 57, 12 Admonition to Parliament
providentialism in 13, 24, 3940, (1572) 3233, 191193
5152, 54, 59, 75 challenge to authority 15, 35, 85, 147,
Reformation 1, 11, 16, 40 174, 180, 182, 199
religion and 89, 11, 14 consent 181
index 251
democracy and 15, 212, 223 secular historiography of 2

equality and 84 Separatism and 15
essence of 33 resistance theory 78, 13, 8081,
European influence on 36 119130, 138, 149, 218223
Fortress of Fathers (1566) 35 Ridley, Jasper 156
impact on seventeenth-century 33, Ridley, Nicholas 57
70, 85, 166, 185, 212, 223, 227 Rogers, Thomas 194
meaning of 3435 Royal Supremacy xiiixiv, 15, 182,
natural law and 9091, 113, 136, 187198
140143 Rutherford, Samuel 136
order and 40, 42, 71, 8384
providentialism of 51, 54, 83 sacerdotium 19
republicanism and 15, 223 Sampson, Thomas 73, 189190
Royal Supremacy and 15, 72, 180, Sandys, Edwin 3234, 8283, 8586,
187198 130, 144145
Swiss influence on 33, 72, scholasticism xiv, 71, 89, 91, 92, 9597,
184191 131132, 136
Schmitt, Carl xi
Raab, Felix 52 Scott, Jonathan xiii, 5, 14, 21, 40, 45, 88,
Reay, B. 33, 181 157, 181, 213, 228
rebellion 79 Scotus, Duns 101
Regnans in excelsis (1570) 76, 143, Seneca 134
172, 220 Separatism (see also Puritanism,
Reformation Presbyterianism, Robert Browne) xi,
church and state 12, 26 32, 72, 85, 106107, 166, 175, 185,
church and 19 186, 191
effects of 2021, 25 challenge to authority 15, 71, 163,
English 13, 2629 180, 182, 186198
English Revolution and 21 consent 198218
equality and 25 democracy and 15, 223
freedom and 20 equality 25, 45, 71, 84
ideas and 8 essence of 33, 35
individualism and 19 natural law and 136, 140142
medieval political thought and 21 Puritans and 3435
modern politics and xii, 20, 199201 republicanism and 15
order and 44 sermons of 9
political thought and 16, 21, 8990 Sewell, Keith 7
reason and Chapter Three Shagan, Ethan 29, 198
scholasticism and 44, 91, 99 Sharp, Andrew 185, 213
Switzerland and 13, 2829, 31, 175, Skinner, Quentin 45, 7, 9, 61,
187191, 219 105, 121, 156
transitional epoch 19 Slavin, A.J 4
Reid, W. Stanford 126127, 166, 183 Smith, Dwight C. 206
republicanism (see also monarchical Smith, M.S. 129, 142
republic) 156, 166167, 172, 182, 200, Smith, Thomas 201
201203, 222 Society of Jesus 32, 70, 77, 123,
anti-Catholicism and 15, 209 175176, 216, 219220
Calvin and 24 Socrates 99
classical 11, 15 sola scriptura 14, 30, 91, 93, 96, 99, 101,
Puritan and Nonconformist 2, 15, 138139, 149
194195 Sommerville, J.P. 4142, 91, 130, 140,
Protestant 2, 15, 209 159, 185, 201, 213, 227
religion and 1415 Springborg, Patricia 181
seventeenth-century 14 Sprunger, K.L. 206
252 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

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Tudor Protestant Political Thought 15471603

Studies in the History of

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Children are often very reticent to their parents.A strange feeling

This book began in 2001 under the supervision of Professor (now

Early-Modern Studies conference, 2005 where I presented parts of

he defines it as the only sphere where power is intrinsically legitimate.

political ideas. I am more interested in a history of concepts. This has

always a Reformed theologian who tried to demonstrate Reformed

What was the nature of sixteenth-century political thought? For the

the conciliar claims of parliament. In short, there were absolutist and

true for Protestantism. The ambivalence between older systems of

Hobbes from will and consent.9 Franklin Le van Baumers definition of

from a personal entity to an impersonal entity.15 The theme of transi-

Could the lack of interest stem from historians scepticism regard-

analysis, to discern that the motives which animated the Protestant

identifies sermons as some of the best sources on the Edwardian ideal

When the conventions, paradigms and directives of which a political lan-

fourth, science of politics.44 We must be careful not to assume that these

Padgen, Introduction, Padgen (ed.), Languages of Political Theory., p. 3.

Conal Condren, Political Theory and the Problem of Anachronism in Andrew

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

coreformers on the Continent were deeply interested in the progress of

medieval nor completely un-medieval. It was a worldview pulled in

century in religious controversy. The conformists, those who defended

Oakeshott offers the following warning to historians of ideas looking

The Reformation and its Ideas

The European Reformation

William J. Bouwsma in his study of early-modern Europe describes a

g overnment was a function of the natural proclivity to form societies.

French theologian John Calvin was enough of a realist to note that

It was difficult for the Reformation not to become a popular event. If

The Reformation in England

The Henrician emphasis on the king as vicarius Dei was retained

Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy, pp. 69.

Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 64.

Reformed churches in Switzerland.51 Upon Edwards coronation there

The Reformed emphasis on sola scriptura and on the inability of the

Protestant fugitives prophecies of Marys imminent judgment did not

Gods word for.67 This is the essence of Puritanism and Separatism.

month he perceived the aim of the Puritan movement to be railing not

who considered themselves to have little in common with Puritans

Todd, Christian Humanism, p. 14.

Stephen Brachlow, Communion of Saints, p. 9.

When justifying the compilation of the opinions of the most learned

Order and Will in Tudor Thought

through all things. Walzers generalization may apply to seventeenth-

Englishmans views concerning the state and the citizens relationship

early seventeenth-century thought, The universe was often viewed as

The medieval concept of order and hierarchy was largely impersonal

tradition by St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius.12 In his influential

pope, vicarius Dei, who distributes it to the secular powers.17 Therefore,

there neither can, nor ought to be any superiors amongst Christians.

Order and Providence in Tudor England

Elton considers the concept of universal hierarchyan eternally fixed

society is contained in Thomas Elyots The Boke Named the Gouernour

Thomas Elyot, The Gouernour, (London: Everyman, 1907), p. 6.

Desiderus Erasmus, Institution Principi Christiani (1516), Collected Works of

society he was defending. Starkey also soaked up the lessons of

Order and Providence in Edwardian Thought

government in 1547 banned free preaching and commissioned author-