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English and European Political Ideas in the Early Seventeenth Century: Revisionism and the Case of Absolutism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Johann P. Sommerville
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Extract

The central argument of this article is that English political thinking in the early seventeenth century was not distinctively English. More particularly, we shall see that a number of English writers put forward political doctrines that were precisely the same as those of Continental theorists who are usually described as absolutists. If the Continental thinkers were absolutists, then so were the English writers. The theory of absolutism vested sovereign power in the ruler alone and forbade disobedience to the sovereign's commands unless they contradicted the injunctions of God Himself. It is with the theory of absolutism and not with its practice that this article is concerned.

To claim that English and Continental ideas closely resembled each other, and that absolutism flourished on both sides of the Channel, is to challenge not only the old Whig interpretation of English history but also the newer views of so-called revisionists. True, the revisionists often say that they reject Whig ideas. But in fact they adopt some of the central contentions of the Whigs. In order to set what follows into a broad historiographical context, it may be worthwhile to elaborate a little on this theme.

Whig historians of the nineteenth century were keen to emphasize the distinctiveness of England's political development. The Anglo-Saxons, they argued, brought free and democratic institutions into England from their Teutonic forests. Elsewhere in Europe, liberty succumbed to the authoritarianism of popes, kings, and Roman lawyers, but the sea kept foreigners and their unpleasant ways out of England, and there freedom lived on. When the Conqueror came, the old English liberties were for a while in jeopardy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 2: Revisionisms , April 1996 , pp. 168 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1996

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References

1 Useful guides to political thinking on both sides of the Channel in the early modern period include Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; and Burns, J. H. and Goldie, Mark, eds., The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A highly original and imaginative treatment of the period 1572–1651 is in Tuck, Richard, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unless otherwise stated, books referred to in the notes below were published at London. Where appropriate, dates in both text and notes are Old Style, but the year is taken to begin on January 1. In bibliographical references, the year is that given on the title page or elsewhere in the book.

2 See, e.g., Campbell, James, ed., The Anglo-Saxons (Harmondsworth, 1991), pp. 168–69, 221, 236, 243–44Google Scholar; Clanchy, M. T., England and Its Rulers, 1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity (1983), esp. pp. 30–35Google Scholar.

3 Russell, Conrad, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), pp. 131–60Google Scholar (chap. 6: “The Rule of Law: Whose Slogan?”). A recent critique of Russell's suggestion that consensus on matters of political principle prevailed in England during the early 1640s is Sanderson, John, “Conrad Russell's Ideas,” in History of Political Thought 14 (1993): 85–102Google Scholar.

4 Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 53–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Sharpe, Kevin, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England: Essays and Studies (1989), pp. 67–68Google Scholar.

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8 See, e.g., Friedrich, Carl Joachim, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective (Chicago, 1963), pp. 77–83Google Scholar; McIlwain, Charles Howard, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (New Haven, Conn., 1910), pp. 347–48Google Scholar.

9 This view is put forward in some of the best of recent revisionist writings: Burgess, Glenn, “Common Law and Political Theory in Early Stuart England,” Political Science 40 (1988): 4–17, esp. 13–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642 (1992), esp. pp. 152–56Google Scholar; Christianson, Paul, “Royal and Parliamentary Voices on the Ancient Constitution, c. 1604–1621,” in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Peck, Linda Levy (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 71–95, esp. 76–77Google Scholar. According to Christianson (p. 77), James did adopt an elevated theory of royal power in his early political writings (such as Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies), but his speech delivered to Parliament on March 21, 1610, “proclaimed that James had abandoned … natural law absolutism.” Christianson's argument is open to the objection that although the king did indeed declare his respect for the common law in this speech, it is difficult to show that the theory he there propounded differs in any important respect from his earlier ideas. If his thinking did change from “natural law absolutism” (p. 77) to “a constitutional position” (p. 78) in 1610, it is perhaps odd that he included his earlier writings in the English collected edition of his works of 1616 and again in the Latin edition of 1619 and that in neither edition did he add any material to warn the reader that he had now abandoned the theory of Basilikon Doron and the Trew Law. It is also remarkable that we have no evidence that any contemporary was aware of the revolution in the king's thinking and that it escaped the notice of historians until 1988. Christianson (p. 76) detects what he terms “common law discourse” in James's speech of March 21, 1610, but does not tell us which of the concepts or phrases employed by the king were characteristic of common lawyers. In fact, it is difficult to find any references in the speech to ideas that were peculiar to common lawyers. The king did, indeed, assert his intention of abiding by the common law; but as we shall see below, the notion that kings should profess that they are bound by the laws of their realms was commonplace among absolutists, and they frequently drew on the Civil Law to confirm it. Burgess, Glen, “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” English Historical Review 425 (1992): 837–61, at 849Google Scholar, affirms that James I and other English divine right theorists stressed the duty of the sovereign “to rule lawfully” and draws a strong contrast between the absolutist ideas of Bodin and what he takes to be the typically English notion that it “was the tyrant, not the king, who refused to obey law.” This argument is open to the objection that Bodin himself distinguished “betwixt a king and a tyrant” on the grounds that the king “measureth his manners, according vnto his lawes,” while the tyrant “measureth his lawes according to his owne disposition and pleasure” (Bodin, Jean, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. Knolles, Richard (1606), edited by McRae, Kenneth Douglas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 212 (bk. 2, chap. 4)Google Scholar. Burgess notes that “James promised to ‘rule my actions according to my Lawes’” and concludes that the king was not a “theorist of absolutism” but a constitutionalist. But James and Bodin expressed the same view in virtually the same words on this question; if the king's words make him a constitutionalist, then Bodin and other Continental absolutists were also constitutionalists.

10 Hobbes, Thomas, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, ed. Tönnies, Ferdinand (1640; 2d ed. [with an introduction by Goldsmith, M. M.], 1969), pp. xviGoogle Scholar (Hobbes's epistle dedicatory, dated May 9, 1640), 172 (pt. 2, chap. 8, sec. 7; reference to Bodin), and “De Cive”: The Latin Version, ed. Warrender, Howard (Oxford, 1983), 76Google Scholar (Hobbes's manuscript dedication is dated November 1, 1641).

11 Filmer's Patriarcha was almost certainly completed by 1632: SirFilmer, Robert, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. Sommerville, Johann P. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. viii, xxxii–ivCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Bodin, Jean, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from “The Six Books of the Commonwealth,” ed. and trans. Franklin, Julian H. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 23 (bk. 1, chap. 8)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 115 (bk. 2, chap. 5).

13 Barclay, William, De regno et regali potestate (Paris, 1600), pp. 292–93, 310Google Scholar. A recent discussion of the thought of Barclay, Blackwood, and other opponents of George Buchanan is Burns, J. H., “George Buchanan and the Anti-monarchomachs,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Phillipson, Nicholas and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Blackwood, Adam, Adversus Georgii Buchanani dialogum (1581), in Opera Omnia (Paris, 1644), p. 196Google Scholar: “Huius instituti sectatores Angliae Scotiaeque reges, quamquam imperio mero, quamquam legibus soluta liberaque potestate rerum summa fruuntur, nihil nisi consilio decernunt, eoque demittunt imperij maiestatem, ut si maioris negotij quid offeratur, id non tantum in senatu, aut in aulicorum procerum conclaui, sed in quadrigesimum diem indictis populi comitiis (quod, vt diximus, verbo Gallico parlamentum vocant) definiatur.”

15 Gerhard, Johannes Andreas, Discursus exoterici de supremis curiis seu parlamentis Galliae et Angliae (Jena, 1664), sig. F2a–bGoogle Scholar: “Non exinde sequitur, Reges Angliae non habere potestatem absolutam.” He mentions visiting England in 1661 (sig. E2b).

16 Ziegler, Caspar, Caspari Ziegleri Lipsiensis Circa Regicidium Anglorum Exercitationes (Leiden, 1653), p. 51 (“jure Belli”), also p. 96Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 98: “Ut enim Paterfamilias eo ipso, quod praescribat Leges Familiae ex Uxoris consilio, eamque participem faciat gubernationis, & cum Filiis operetur in commune bonum, se non spoliat sua auctoritate; Sic quoque Princeps, quamvis communicatio consilio Procerum omnia agat, non tamen propterea se exuit suprema sua potestate, aut majestatem cum illis communicet.”

18 Besold, Christoph, Christophori Besoldi JC. Discursus Politici (Strassburg, 1623), p. 23Google Scholar (England), also pp. 229–30, 232–34 (preference for mixed forms). A recent discussion of Besold's ideas is in Franklin, Julian, “Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution: Bodin and His Critics,” in Burns, and Goldie, , eds. (n. 1 above), pp. 298–328, at pp. 323–28Google Scholar. Some remarks on the influence of Besold's theory on the ideas of two of the most important mid-seventeenth-century English theorists of mixed monarchy—George Lawson and Philip Hunton—are in Franklin, Julian, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty: Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 66–68Google Scholar. Franklin says that “to the best of my knowledge Lawson is the only English writer to mention Besold by name” (p. 66n.). Others who refer to Besold by name include Goodwin, John (Innocency and Truth triumphing together [1646], p. 87)Google Scholar; and Nedham, Marchamont (The Case of the Commonwealth Stated), ed. Knachel, Philip A. (Charlottesville, Va., 1969), pp. 9Google Scholar (n. 18), 22 (n. 26), 24 (n. 33), 26 (n. 43), 39 (n. 15), 62 (n. 18), 67 (n. 45), 98 (n. 3), 100, 118 (n. 17).

19 Mariana, Juan, Ioannis Marianae Hispani, e Soc. Iesu, De Rege et regis institutione libri III. Ad Philippum III. Hispaniae Regem (Toledo, 1599), pp. 72–73Google Scholar.

20 [Rainolds, William], De Ivsta Reipub. Christianae in Reges Impios et Haereticos Authoritate (Antwerp, 1592), pp. 12, 24Google Scholar, “24” = 42, 85–86.

21 Koenig, Reinhard, “Disputatio politica gemina: prior, de statu imperii Romani: altera de origine Electorum; habita a M. Reinhardo Koenig in Academia Giessena, A.D. 1608,” in D. O. M. Politica Imperialia, ed. Goldast, Melchior (Frankfurt, 1614), pp. 645–52, at pp. 647–48Google Scholar.

22 “Quaestio politica an pontiflcis sedisque Romanae magis quam Hispaniae aut alius cuiusque in orbe Christiano Dominatoris, ad Monarchiam universalem propositum extimescendum sit,” in Goldast, , ed., pp. 1186–92, at p. 1187Google Scholar.

23 Contzen, Adam, Politicorum Libri Decem (Mainz [1621]), pp. 29Google Scholar (“Nunc hoc statuimus, tres illas Reipublicae species ita fere hoc tempore temperatas esse, vt nusquam vel Monarchia pura, vel Aristocratia, vel Politia reperiatur … Itaque omne pene regna Christianorum sunt Monarchiae Aristocraticae, & politicae”), 478 (privy councils and estates), “459” = 495 (parliaments and the nobility). A brief recent discussion of Contzen is in Tuck (n. 1 above), pp. 143–46; a fuller treatment is Seils, Ernst-Albert, Die Staatslehre des Jesuiten Adam Contzen, Beichvater Kurfürst Maximilian I. von Bayern (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1968)Google Scholar.

24 Contzen, pp. 335–36 (“nouellus parasitaster”); Barret, William, Ivs Regis, siue de absoluto & independenti secularium principum dominio (1612), pp. 21–25Google Scholar.

25 See, e.g., Contzen, p. 336; Joly, Claude, Receuil de Maximes Véritables et Importantes pour l'Instruction du Roy (Paris, 1653), pp. 20–25Google Scholar; Wendelin, Marcus Friedrich, M. Frid. Wendelini Institutionum Politicarum. Lib. III (Amsterdam, 1645), p. 101Google Scholar (“Legitimorum Regum & Principum non esse absolutam & plane exlegem in subditos potestatem, ita ut liceat quicquid libet. Quod de jure Regis dicitur 1. Sam. 8. v. 9. & seqq. non accipiendum de jure dato vel a Deo, vel a populo: sed a Regis libidine usurpato”); Besold, , Christophori Besoldi, JC. Et Antecessoris Tübingensis, Dissertatio Politico-Juridica, De Majestate (Strassburg, 1625), pp. 78–79Google Scholar (but cf. p. 82); du Plessis-Mornay, Philippe/Languet, Hubert, Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (N.p. 1589), pp. 153–54Google Scholar (cf. Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza, and Mornay, trans, and ed. Franklin, Julian H. [New York, 1969], pp. 179–80)Google Scholar; [Rainolds], pp. 101–2.

26 Bodin, , On sovereignty (n. 12 above), pp. 46–47Google Scholar (bk. 1, chap. 10).

27 Ibid., pp. 21 (bk. 1, chap. 8), 116–18 (bk. 2, chap. 5), and The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (n. 9 above), pp. 661, 663 (bk. 6, chap. 2).

28 Irvine, Alexander, De Iure Regni Diaescepsis (Leiden, 1627), pp. 42–44Google Scholar: “Impossibile est ergo Regem legibus suis teneri” (p. 44). Much the same position is adopted in de Saumaise, Claude, Defensio regia, pro Carolo I (1649), p. 61 (chap. 2)Google Scholar.

29 Arnisaeus, Henningus, Henningi Arnisaei Halberstadiensis. De Jure Majestatis Libri Tres (Frankfurt, 1610), pp. 214–23Google Scholar (216: “Sed voluit Samuel … populum admonere majoris licentiae, quam sibi vendicare possent reges, si quando plenitudine potestatis uti vellent, atque ita apparet, nomen juris signiflcare hie potestatem jure concessam, populo tamen pernitiosam”; cf. p. 65); p. 68 (sovereign not bound by own laws but by laws of God). The main point on which Arnisaeus parted company with Bodin concerned the indivisibility of sovereignty. Bodin maintained that sovereign power had to be held by a single person or group of people: Bodin, , On sovereignty, pp. 103–4Google Scholar (bk. 2, chap. 1). Arnisaeus agreed with Bodin in arguing that a sovereign cannot grant to his subjects any of the fundamental rights of sovereignty: Arnisaeus, , De Jure Majestatis, p. 233Google Scholar. But unlike Bodin he claimed that sovereignty could be divided, since different sovereign rights could be held by different magistrates, who together constituted the sovereign (Arnisaeus, , De Jure Majestatis, pp. 209–11Google Scholar, and Doctrina politico (Frankfurt, 1606), pp. 164–65Google Scholar, trans. Franklin, “Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution,” pp. 298–328, at p. 326Google Scholar. Franklin suggests that Arnisaeus was the first “who at least in this respect had broken cleanly with Bodin.” However, Bodin had already been attacked on precisely this point by the Italian Albergati, Fabio, Dei discorsi politici di Fabio Albergati libri cinque (Venice, 1603), pp. 251–75, 285–91, 304Google Scholar. Arnisaeus was well aware of Albergati's work and defended Bodin against the Italian on other questions: Arnisaeus, , De Jure Majestatis, pp. 12–13, 223Google Scholar.

30 Bochart, Samuel, Lettre de Monsieur Bochart, A Monsieur Morley (Paris, 1650), p. 63Google Scholar: ”Il dit que cela est du droit du Roy, non que devant Dieu se soient choses justes.”

31 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, trans, and ed. Riley, Patrick (Cambridge, 1990), p. 83Google Scholar (bk. 4, art. 1, proposition 3).

32 Barclay (n. 13 above), p. 141: “Nihil aliud continetur, nisi suprema haec dominatio, & impunitas tributa Regibus.”

33 Blackwood, , Adversus Georgii Buchanani dialogum, in Opera (n. 14 above), pp. 141–42Google Scholar (p. 141: “Nec tamen id iuris passim ac sine discrimine regibus vsurpandum esse censeo, sed usu duntaxat rerum exigente, difficillimis reipub. temporibus”; p. 142: “Verum vbi res ita tulerit, vbi maiores sumptus publica necessitas exegerit, quam quas fiscus, quos regium patrimonium suppeditare queat, iure suo, ac regni lege priuatorum facultatibus vtetur vt suis”).

34 James, King VI and I, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, in Political Writings, ed. Sommerville, Johann P. (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 68Google Scholar (unjust and inequitable), 67 (quotation).

35 Gentili, Alberico, Alberici Gentilis J. C. Professoris Regii, Regales Disputationes tres (1605), pp. 18–19Google Scholar: “[D]e potestate hac regis absoluta in priuatorum res.” Gentili here makes clear that he was aware that James I, whom he calls “doctus princeps,” was the author of The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, though it was not until 1617 that the king publicly acknowledged the book by including it in his Workes (dated 1616 on the title page and published in February 1616/17). Wormald, Jenny, “James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies: The Scottish Context and the English translation,” in Peck, , ed. (n. 9 above), pp. 36–54, at p. 51Google Scholar, states that “in two of the three printings” of 1603 “the king's name did appear.” There were in fact at least four printings in that year (see Yamada, Akihiro, “The Printing of King James I's The True Lawe of Free Monarchies with Special Reference to the 1603 Editions,” Poetica 23 [1986]: 74–80)Google Scholar; the king's name did not appear in any of them. I am very grateful to Peter Blayney for expert assistance with these bibliographical points.

36 SirFilmer, Robert, Patriarcha, chap. 3, sec. 2, in Patriarcha and other writings (n. 11 above), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

37 Barret (n. 24 above), pp. 21 (“Ius autem Regis expresse, & dedita opera a Samuele ponitur 1. reg. 8. vbi ipsum regnum instituitur, & auspicatur. Neque tyrannum aut regem iniquum instruit vir Dei”), 25 (“si vltra necessitatem non prorogetur”; this refers specifically to taxation).

38 Hobbes, , “De Cive”: The Latin Version (n. 10 above), p. 184Google Scholar (chap. 11, sec. 6: “Nonne est potentia huiusmodi absoluta?”), cf. Leviathan, ed. Tuck, Richard (Cambridge, 1991), p. 143Google Scholar (chap. 20: “This is absolute power”).

39 Bodin, , On sovereignty (n. 12 above), p. 31Google Scholar (bk. 1, chap. 8). The Civil Law maxim (quoted at 31n., from Codex I, 14, de legibus et constitutionibus principum) is: “‘Digna vox maiestate, regnantis legibus alligatum principem se profiteri (It is an expression worthy of a ruler's majesty for the prince to profess that he is bound by the laws).’”

40 Blackwood, , Adversus Georgii Buchanani dialogum, in Opera, p. 50Google Scholar.

41 Barclay, fol. 3b, sig. 2D1a; Bossuet, , Politics drawn from the very words of Holy Scripture, pp. 83–86Google Scholar (bk. 4, art. 1, proposition 3–4).

42 Arnisaeus, , De Jure Majestatis (n. 29 above), pp. 50–51Google Scholar (directive-coercive and ordinary-absolute distinctions), 615 (taxation: “In iis enim quae in singulorum detrimentum tendunt, & odiosa sunt, in quorum numero censet Bartolus vectigalia … princeps nihil facile statuere debet, nisi de communi consensu eorum, quorum interest … quanquam, si illi sine justa causa rogationibus principis obstiterint, plenitudine potestatis uti queat, nisi ex conventione aliud exceptum fuerit. Frustra enim ipsi datum esset munus videndi, ne quid detrimenti caperet Resp. si instrumentis iis, in quibus consistit nervus Reip…. pro tempore & necessitate uti prohiberetur),” 60 (“eo dignum esse dicunt, ut se alligatum profiteatur”); Bossuet, , Politics drawn from the very words of Holy Scripture, p. 85Google Scholar (bk. 4, art. 1, proposition 4).

43 Filmer, pp. 40 (Patriarcha chap. 3, sec. 4), 80 (The free-holders grand inquest).

44 SirEgerton, Thomas, Ellesmere, Baron, The speech of the Lord Chancellor of England, in the Eschequer Chamber, touching the Post-Nati (1609), p. 106Google Scholar; Rawlinson, John, Vivat Rex (Oxford, 1619), p. 7Google Scholar; Dunster, John, Caesars penny (Oxford, 1610)Google Scholar, sig. A2b–A3a; Owen, David, Anti-Paraeus (Cambridge, 1622), p. 41Google Scholar; Goodwin, William, A sermon preached before the Kings most excellent Maiestie at Woodstocke (Oxford, 1614), p. 20Google Scholar.

45 Donne, John, Essays in Divinity, ed. Simpson, E. M. (Oxford, 1952), p. 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cf. Baithanatos (1646), pp. 48–49Google Scholar; Patterson, Annabel, “John Donne, Kingsman?” in Peck, , ed. (n. 9 above), pp. 251–72Google Scholar, plausibly suggests that the latter passage should not be taken “at face value,” arguing that Donne was using “monarchist, absolutist” language but that his intentions were ironical and subversive (pp. 256–57) and that in some important respects he rejected the outlook of James I and shared the very different views of “the opposition group in the Commons” (p. 259).

46 SirDavies, John, The question concerning impositions (1656), pp. 30–31, 97–98, 131–32Google Scholar. A highly important set of revisionist arguments on Davies is set out with exceptional force and clarity in work by Burgess, Glenn. In The politics of the ancient constitution (n. 9 above), pp. 145–47Google Scholar, Burgess says that (1) Davies granted the king the right to operate “outside, but not above or against, the common law” only “in a few things” (p. 146); (2) it was only in these “few things” that the king held an “absolute” as opposed to “ordinary” prerogative (p. 146, and more generally, pp. 140–48); (3) when Davies and others spoke of the “absolute” prerogative they were referring to a few specific and limited powers and did not attribute Bodinian sovereignty to the king (pp. 142, 146); (4) the limited circumstances (or “few things”) in which the king could exercise his “absolute prerogative” did not include any matters which affected the property of the subject, for “Everyone agreed that the common law protected property, within England at least, and that the king could not infringe upon property rights without his subjects' consent” (p. 142, cf. 147). These claims are open to the following objections: (1) Davies stated that the king in England had reserved to himself “in many points that absolute & unlimited power which was given unto him by the Law of Nations” (Davies, p. 30; italics mine) and specified that this absolute and unlimited power applied in all matters relating to the good government of the country, stressing (as we have seen) that “a Prerogative in point of Government … cannot be restrained or bound by Act of Parliament” (p. 131); (2) Davies said that “the King of England is as absolute a Monarch, as any Emperor or King in the world, and hath as many Prerogatives incident to his Crown” (p. 161) and spelled out that the king could “by his absolute power alone, impose any Tax upon Lands or Capita hominum [the heads of men], or Capita animalium [the heads of animals], or upon other things innumerable” (p. 148). Davies noted that the king was in fact far more moderate in the exercise of his absolute power to tax without consent than many other sovereigns (pp. 148–61), arguing that this resulted from the great landed wealth of the English crown (which meant that monarchs had no need to levy taxes; p. 162) and from “the bounty and noble nature of our Kings, that they would never descend to those poor and sordid Exactions which other Princes & States do take of their Subjects” (p. 163), but not from any legal limitations to their powers. Evidently, the absolute power with which Davies vested the king of England is no more limited than the power of Bodinian sovereigns, and Bodin is in fact one of the most frequently and favorably cited authors in Davies's book. Indeed, Bodin was rather more moderate than Davies on the question of the sovereign's powers to tax without consent. A useful discussion of the distinction between absolute and ordinary powers is Oakley, Francis, “Jacobean Political Theology: The Absolute and Ordinary Powers of the King,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968): 323–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Gentili (n. 35 above), pp. 10 (“princeps noster. quem legibus solutus audimus. quod est potestatis solutae vel (ut loquimur) absolutae. Atque absoluta potestas est plenitudo potestatis. Est arbitrii plenitudo, nulli vel necessitati, vel iuris publici regulis subiecta. quod ex Baldo acceptum dicunt alii, est potestas extraordinaria, & libera. est ilia, quam in Anglia significamus nomine (vt ego quidem existimo) regiae Praerogativae. Atque sic interpretes iuris communiter scribunt, esse in principe potestatem duplicem, ordinariam adstrictam legibus, & alteram extraordinariam, legibus absolutam”), 11 (“de plenitudine potestatis non licet disputare”).

48 King James VI and I, speech of March 21, 1609/10, in Political Writings (n. 34 above), p. 184. A different approach to James's thinking may be found in Burgess, “Common Law and Political Theory in Early Stuart England” (n. 9 above), p. 14. Discussing the speech of March 21, Burgess argues that James did not mean that subjects were forbidden to discuss the actual powers which the king possessed, but only that they should not debate his “mystical powers”: “James actually says that lawyers and others ought not to talk of his mystical absolute powers.” Burgess then addresses the question of what the king may have meant in using the term “mystical powers,” concluding that James thought these powers “are not meaningful entities outside their own realm of theological discourse.” In other words, James wanted to discourage people from entering into theological discussions on kingship and believed that the mystical royal powers about which theologians spoke were in any case irrelevant to actual royal rights. These claims are open to the objections that (1) James quite frequently said that subjects ought not to dispute what kings can actually do. In the speech of March 21 he asserted that “I wil not be content that my power be disputed vpon” (Political Writings, p. 184). In a speech to Parliament on May 21, he told the two houses that “I would not have you judge in general of my prerogative” and informed them that they were to discuss particular royal rights only with his permission. “You ought not to question what the king may do,” he said (Foster, Elizabeth Read, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2 vols. [New Haven, Conn., 1966], 2:104)Google Scholar. In 1616 he commanded the judges to give him “no more right in my priuate Prerogatiue, then you giue to any Subiect” but asserted that “As for the absolute Prerogatiue of the Crowne, that is no Subiect for the tongue of a Lawyer, nor is lawfull to be disputed” (Political Writings, p. 214); in other words, he wished his private rights as an individual to be subjected to law, but held that his public powers as a king were not to be discussed. These passages show that James did not want his powers debated but say nothing about his views on whether laymen should steer clear of theology—a matter on which he seems to have been largely silent. (2) Remarkably, James does not appear to have spoken of the king's “mystical powers” or “mystical absolute powers” either in the speech of March 21 or anywhere else.

49 Goodman, Godfrey, The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature (1616), p. 180Google Scholar; Downing, Calybute, A Discourse of the State Ecclesiastically 2d ed. (Oxford, 1634), pp. 3–4Google Scholar. Burgess, , “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered” (n. 9 above), pp. 854–55Google Scholar, argues that Downing was no absolutist, for although he stated that “our present gratious Soveraigne” holds the crown “by lineall descent from an absolute Conquerour,” he went on to mitigate the practical effects of this assertion by adding that the king also ruled with popular consent. This argument is open to the objection that Downing very specifically asserted that (1) a king who held the throne by all three possible titles (conquest, succession, and election) had more power than a monarch who possessed it by just one title: “[S]urely hee that hath it by all these rights conjoyned, hath more power than any hath that is intituled to it but by one, especially by election” (Downing, p. 51); (2) “Kings that come to it by the right of conquest, may have as much power as they will take; they make their owne Charters,” while rulers who attain the throne “by naturall succession, have as much power as their ancestours” (p. 50); and (3) Charles I possesses the crown by all three possible means (p. 51). It follows from these three propositions that Charles I holds more power than an absolute conqueror and especially than someone who rules only by popular consent. Downing also made plain his trenchant absolutism in stating that “our present Prince hath most unresistible power, and so most unrestrained right to favor, and freely bestow immunities, priviledges, and revenues upon any single society, or single persons within his Dominions” (p. 55) and in declaring that Charles had “an unwritten, unrestrained right of Dominion, whereby he hath plenarie power, not onely to make legall propositions of validitie, or voyde in their first institution, or to interpret them,” but also to dispense with them; Charles, said Downing, was “a most absolute Monarch” (p. 104). Downing did, however, impose one limitation on the king's power (as Burgess has most valuably pointed out in “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” p. 855), arguing that the monarch could not alienate the realm without the people's consent. The point of this claim was to show that King John's grant of the kingdom to the pope had been invalid (Downing, p. 57). Barclay (n. 13 above), sig. 2E1a, argued that a king who attempts to alienate his kingdom forfeits power over it; Arnisaeus, , De Jure Majestatis, pp. 480–81Google Scholar, claimed that a ruler could not alienate all or part of his realm without the consent of the inhabitants and noted that the English therefore regarded as invalid John's grant of the kingdom to the pope. Like the other absolutists Arnisaeus and Barclay, then, Downing denied kings the right to alienate their kingdoms without consent. This does not, of course, serve to demonstrate that he was an opponent of absolutism.

50 Gentili, p. 27 (“illud dare possumus … principem nee de plenitudine potestatis posse priuare subditos dominio rerum suarum sine causa iusta”), cf. p. 10 (“Atque absolutam definiunt, secundum quam potest ille tollere ius alienum, etiam magnum, etiam sine caussa”); Fleming in Kenyon, J. P., ed., The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1966), p. 62Google Scholar.

51 James, King VI and I, Political Writings, p. 183Google Scholar.

52 Laud, Burgess, “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” pp. 849Google Scholar (ruling lawfully), 847 (Heylin). The Commons in the Long Parliament took a rather different stance on Heylin; one of their charges against Laud was that he had commanded Heylin to write his “book against Burton; out of which it was charged, that an unlimited power was pressed very far”: William, , Works, ed. Scott, W. and Bliss, J., 7 vols. (Oxford, 1847–1860), 4:84–85Google Scholar. Burgess, “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” contends that not only Heylin but also William Wilkes and Calybute Downing were moderates, though they have sometimes been seen as absolutists. Burgess's interpretation of Downing is surveyed in n. 49 above. Wilkes was a chaplain of James I and the author of an antipuritan treatise which stated that “the Lawe is the worke of the King, to whose regall dignitie it appertaines to make Lawes” (Wilkes, William, A second memento for magistrates [1608], p. 56Google Scholar; this book was first published in 1605). According to Burgess, it is very unlikely that Wilkes thought the king could make laws outside Parliament, since “A few pages earlier he had cited Fortescue as authority for the claim ‘that the King cannot alter and change the lawes of this Realm at his pleasure, because the rule of his government is not onlie royall, but pollitick’” (Burgess, , “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” pp. 846–47Google Scholar). Burgess's argument is open to the objection that Wilkes did not approve Fortescue's thesis. Addressing puritans (and especially puritan lawyers), he told them that “Your Fathers at the Lawe, measuring the Lawes equitie by publicke vtilitie, doe condemne them for guiltie, which attempt to doe any thing contrary to the Lawe, yea though it were to doe good: And with graue resolution assure, that the King cannot alter and change the lawes of this Realme at his pleasure, because the rule of his gouerment [sic] is not onlie royall, but pollitick”; he cited Fortescue as an example of someone who held this view. Having noted that according to the puritans' allies among the lawyers even the king was bound to obey the law, Wilkes went on to argue that if this was so it surely followed that subjects had a duty to obey it and therefore that puritans should abide by laws requiring conformity to the established church. The implication of the words “Your Fathers at the Lawe,” and of the ironical tone of the whole passage, is that Wilkes did not endorse the opinion of the lawyers.

53 See n. 9 above.

54 Heylin, Peter, A briefe and moderate answer, to the seditious and scandalous challenges of Henry Burton (1637), pp. 179Google Scholar (Burton on obedience), 156 (absolute obedience), 31–32 (the case of necessary causes), 33 (1 Sam. 8 and just kings).

55 James, King VI and I, Political Writings, p. 621Google Scholar (A Meditation upon the 27. 28. 29. Verses of the XXVII. Chapter of Saint Matthew).

56 Heylin, p. 33; Russell, Conrad, “Divine Rights in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer, ed. Morrill, John, Slack, Paul, and Wolfe, Daniel (Oxford, 1993), pp. 101–20, at p. 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Heylin, pp. 32–33, 156.

58 Russell, , “Divine Rights,” pp. 104, 105Google Scholar.

59 Selden, John, Table Talk of John Selden, ed. SirPollock, Frederick (1927), p. 61Google Scholar.

60 This is not to imply that we need to abandon talk about “ascending” and “descending” theories altogether. For instance, Sanderson, John in “But the People's Creatures”: The Philosophical Basis of the English Civil War (Manchester, 1989), pp. 2, 15, 51Google Scholar, and passim, uses these terms precisely and unobjectionably as convenient ways of referring briefly to the views that kings get their power directly from God (the descending theory) or that they obtain it directly from the people and only indirectly from God (the ascending theory). Confusion arises only if we use “the descending theory” or “the divine right of kings” to betoken any theory that derives power ultimately from God. By using the terms in this very loose way, we can easily be misled into thinking that we have shown that all or most people endorsed a single substantive political philosophy (“the divine right of kings”) and that sweet consensus reigned in early Stuart politics, when all we have in fact demonstrated is that they believed (or said they believed) that there is an omnipotent God.

61 Russell, , Causes of the English Civil War (n. 3 above), p. 146Google Scholar.

62 Hunt, William, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 278, 292–93, 299–300Google Scholar.

63 Charles, I, His Majesties declaration: to all his loving Subjects, Of the causes which moved him to dissolve the last Parliament (1640), pp. 1–2Google Scholar; Schallerus, Arnisaeus, De Jure Majestatis (n. 29 above), pp. 23, 43, 174–75Google Scholar; Barclay (n. 13 above), pp. 113–14; Blackwood, , Adversus Georgii Buchanani dialogum, in Opera omnia (n. 14 above), pp. 47–48, 119Google Scholar; Irvine (n. 28 above), pp. 29–31, 39–40; Ziegler (n. 16 above), pp. 43–46; Jacobus, , Jacobi Schalleri SS. Theolog. Doct. & Philos. Praet. Professoris dissertatio ad quaedam loca Miltoni, in Ziegler, , pp. 179, 183, 184–85Google Scholar.

64 Shanley, Arnisaeus, De Jure Majestatis, pp. 174–75Google Scholar; Ziegler, pp. 45–46, 53; other examples are discussed in Mary, Lyndon, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” in Western Political Quarterly 32 (1979): 79–91Google Scholar; Sommerville, J. P., Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (1986), p. 25Google Scholar, and “Absolutism and Royalism,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. Burns, J. H. (Cambridge, 1991), p. 355CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Russell, , Causes of the English Civil War, p. 145Google Scholar.

66 Gentili (n. 35 above), pp. 10, 27.

67 Henshall, Nicholas, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (1992), p. 131Google Scholar. Henshall argues that Bossuet was not an absolutist (as that term is usually understood) since he distinguished between absolute and arbitrary (or despotical) power; but this distinction was utterly conventional in absolutist thinking. A nuanced discussion of Bossuet, which places him squarely in the tradition of absolutist theorizing, is Burns, J. H., Absolutism: The History of an Idea (1986), pp. 21–22Google Scholar.

68 The claim that much talk about the divine origins of royal power was directed against Catholics is made by Russell, with particular reference to the ideas of Bagshaw, Edward the elder, in Causes of the English Civil War, p. 150Google Scholar: “The purpose of many such ideas, including Bagshaw's, was to exclude the Pope.” It is true that such notions were sometimes targeted at Catholics, though the example of Bagshaw is perhaps not well chosen. The relevant work of Bagshaw's, Edward is The rights of the crown of England, as it is established by law (1660)Google Scholar (cf. Daly, Russell, Causes of the English Civil War, p. 150, n. 62Google Scholar; Sommerville, , Politics and Ideology, pp. 45–46Google Scholar; James, , Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought [Toronto, 1979], 178–9)Google Scholar; this book was written while Bagshaw was a prisoner of the parliamentarians in the later 1640s and was aimed against what he saw as the seditious views of parliamentarian lawyers and clerics who argued that the king is “singutis major [greater than each individual], but universis minor [inferior to the whole community]”: Bagshaw, sig. A3a–5a, p. 12. It was often alleged in England that antiabsolutist ideas were typical of Catholics. Sometimes those who made this claim were primarily concerned to refute Catholicism, but on other occasions they intended to cast opprobrium on the ideas by branding them as papist. Similarly, French Catholics frequently portrayed antiabsolutist notions as Protestant—e.g., Baricave, Jean, La défence de la monarchie françoise, et autres monarchies, contre les détestables et exécrables maximes d'estat des ministres Calvinistes (Toulouse, 1614)Google Scholar; Bossuet, , Cinquième avertissement aux protestants (Paris, 1690)Google Scholar.

69 Russell, , Causes of the English Civil War, p. 152Google Scholar.

70 Russell, , “Divine Rights” (n. 56 above), p. 107Google Scholar.

71 Elton, , “The Rule of Law in Sixteenth-Century England” (n. 5 above), pp. 268–69Google Scholar.

72 Fleming, in Kenyon, ed. (n. 50 above), pp. 62–63. Tuck (n. 1 above), pp. 106–7, 209, 222–23, and elsewhere, locates claims that the law could be breached in the name of salus populi, or in a case of necessity, within a European-wide Tacitist tradition. Such claims were, however, very commonly made by people who did not cite Tacitus, and it is perhaps worth noting that it was Cicero who declared that the safety of the people should be the highest law (“salus populi suprema lex esto”: Mendle, Cicero, De legibus III.iii.8Google Scholar). Michael, , in an excellent article on “Parliamentary Sovereignty: A Very English Absolutism,” in Phillipson, and Skinner, , eds. (n. 14 above), pp. 97–119Google Scholar, has argued that English absolutists laid special emphasis on arguments from necessity, while Tuck (p. 224) affirms that such arguments were common not only in England but also on the Continent and especially in Germany.

73 Berkeley, in Kenyon, ed., p. 113.

74 Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642, 10 vols. (1883–1884), 8:275–80Google Scholar; Mendle, pp. 97–119, at p. 108.

75 Davies, (n. 46 above), pp. 148 (King of England empowered to levy any taxes), 152–53 (urine, chimneys, and glass), 163 (“bounty and noble nature”). See also n. 46 above.

76 Rushworth, John, ed., Historical Collections, 7 vols. (1659–1701), 1:444Google Scholar. Sibthorp's Apostolike obedience was published in London in 1627. It is difficult to reconcile Selden's comments with the revisionist notion that ideological consensus prevailed in these years. The same goes for material in the anonymous manuscript treatise Folger MS V.a.24. It is datable on internal evidence to 1623–24 and argues that “the Romanists labore to make a division of the land into regians & Republicans” by encouraging the former “to stand obstinately upon it, that to please the King, is the chiefe thing to be regarded in state; and his absolute will the principall rule of all proceedings & obedience in the Commonwelth,” while “the latter they move pertenaciously to hold, that the peoples good is the chiefe end of all civil proceedings, and the rule of all such proceedings to be only the lawe of the land” (pp. 27–28). This passage plainly does not accord with the notions that harmony on questions of political principle prevailed before 1625 and that there were no absolutists in England. Similar examples are discussed in Sommerville, , Politics and Ideology (n. 64 above), pp. 118–21Google Scholar.

77 Cusacke quoted in Peck, Linda Levy, “Kingship, Counsel, and Law in Early Stuart Britain,” in The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800, ed. Pocock, J. G. A., Schochet, Gordon J., and Schwoerer, Lois G. (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 80–115, at p. 113Google Scholar. Cusacke's writings include Bodleian, Bankes MS 48/13 (from which the quotation is taken), and Folger MS G.a.10. I am very grateful to Dr. Peck for drawing these documents to my attention and for discussing them with me. Kynaston's “True presentation of forepast parliaments” is in the British Library, Lansdowne MSS 213, fols. 146a–176b.

78 Hobbes, , The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (n. 10 above), pp. xv—xviGoogle Scholar (epistle dedicatory), 170–75 (seditious opinions; pt. 2, chap. 8, secs. 4–10).

79 Russell, Causes of the English Civil War (n. 3 above), passim, and The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, passim; Sharpe, Kevin, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, Conn., 1992), passimGoogle Scholar.

80 Discussions of Hobbes's connections with royalists are in Metzger, Hans-Dieter, Thomas Hobbes und die Englische Revolution, 1640–1660 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1991), esp. pp. 13–130Google Scholar; Sommerville, Johann P., “Lofty Science and Local Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Sorell, Tom (Cambridge, in press)Google Scholar.