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The Royal Supremacy and Episcopacy ‘Jure Divino’, 1603–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

J. P. Sommerville
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Extract

Laudian divines cried up the king's prerogative. But they also affirmed that episcopacy was by divine, not human right. Was jure divino episcopacy, which many clerics asserted in the decades after Bancroft's famous sermon of 1589, in fact incompatible with the traditional English theory of the Royal Supremacy? Catholics and extreme puritans answered this question in the affirmative, and many recent commentators have accepted their judgement. The purpose of the present study is to question this interpretation, and to suggest that the first two Stuarts endorsed the theory of jure divino episcopacy not because they were misled by the rhetoric of such men as Bancroft, Barlow and Laud, but because they correctly perceived that these divines were vigorous supporters of the king's Supremacy in ecclesiasticals.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 548 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 By 1559 the question of whether the Prince possessed the spiritual powers of ministers had been resolved in the negative: Head, R. E., Royal Supremacy and the Trials of Bishops, 1538–1725, London 1962, 4Google Scholar; Davies, E. T., Episcopacy and the Royal Supremacy in the Church of England in the XVI Century, Oxford 1950, 63, 73, 137Google Scholar.

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13 Mason, Consecration, 113.

14 Laud, William, A Speech delivered in the Starre-Chamber, on Wednesday, the XIVth of June, London 1637, 7Google Scholar.

15 Dow, Christopher, Innovations unjustly charged upon the present Church and State, London 1637, 175Google Scholar, 177. It was the opponents and not the advocates of jure divino episcopacy who struck at the Royal Supremacy by denying that the king could control the exercise of the clergy's spiritual powers. According to one anonymous critic of Laud, possibly John Canne, ‘it cannot be shewen … that Officers appointed by God, for teaching his Church the true way of his worship, are forbidden to exercise their office without a power from Christian Kings to doe it': Divine and Politike Observations…Upon some lines in the speech of the Arch. B. of Canterbury, pronounced in the Starre-Chamber upon 14. June, 1637 (Amsterdam) 1638, 20Google Scholar.

16 Sykes, N., The Church of England and Non-Episcopal Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 2nd edn, London 1949Google Scholar, passim, demonstrates that the proponents of jure divino episcopacy were willing to allow that non-episcopal ordination was valid in cases of necessity. Nevertheless, as the moderate puritan, Andrew Willet, pointed out, jure divino episcopacy could not be maintained ‘without prejudice of many reformed Churches… which have no Bishops’. It was uncharitable to suggest that only necessity legitimated the forms ofgovernments employed in these Churches. Willet therefore denied that episcopacy was jure divino, though conceding that it was ‘very profitable’. He nowhere claimed that jure divino episcopacy was incompatible with the Royal Supremacy: Synopsis Papismi, that is, A Generall View of Papistrie, London 1614, 272–81, especially at p. 276Google Scholar.

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19 Loades, D. M., Politics and the Nation 1450–1660, London 1974, 365Google Scholar. In fact, James affirmed in his Premonition of 1609, ‘That Bishops ought to be in the Church, I ever maintained it, as an Apostolike institution, and so the ordinance of God; contrary to the Puritanes, and likewise to Bellarmine; who denies that Bishops have their Jurisdiction immediately from God (But it is no wonder he takes the Puritanes part, since Jesuites are nothing but Puritan-Papists)’: An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance … Together with a Premonition, London 1609, 44Google Scholar. There is no evidence that James ever regarded jure divino episcopacy as incompatible with his Supremacy.

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26 Ibid., 28–9, 41–2. Lamont's account relies heavily upon Curtis, M. H., ‘The Hampton Court conference and its aftermath’, in History, xliv (1961), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many of Curtis's conclusions have been undermined by Frederick Shriver in his important recent article ‘Hampton Court re-visited: James 1 and the Puritans’, this Journal, xxxiii (1982), 48–71Google Scholar.

27 Lamont, Godly Rule, 42.

28 Ibid., 45–9.

29 Ibid., 52.

30 Ibid., 36–7,61.

31 Ibid., 40.

32 Ibid., 36–7. Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, 3 vols., London 1641, i. 10; cf. George Townsend's edition of the same work, 8 vols., London 1843–1849Google Scholar, i. 26.

33 Cf. note 19 above.

34 Lamont, Godly Rule, 41, citing the epistle dedicatory to Barlow's Answer. Several privy councillors held that the king's ventures into theological controversy were politically inexpedient: Boderie, A. le Fevre de la, Ambassades en Angleterre, 5 vols., Paris 1750, iii. 163–4Google Scholar; Loomie, A. J. (ed.), Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, 2 vols., London 1973–8, i. 108Google Scholar.

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36 Lamont, Godly Rule, 47.

37 Ibid., 46.

38 William Bradshaw, English Puritanisme, Amsterdam? 1605, 12–13. This work was printed by William Jones the elder, but its place of publication has not been established: Curtis, Mark H., ‘William Jones: puritan printer and propagandist’, in The Library, 5th ser., xix (1964), 38–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially at pp. 47, 58.

39 Lamont, Godly Rule, 46. The work in question is The New Man or A Supplication from an unknowne Person, a Romane Catholike unto James, the Monarch of Great Brittaine, and from him to the Emperor, London 1622Google Scholar. The emperor in question is the Holy Roman Emperor, and not Lamont's ‘Christian Emperor’. The translator, William Crashaw, suggests that the work is by Marta at sig. bib. The book attacks the pope because ‘he defends not the Ecclesiasticall power and Jurisdiction of the Church, and the right thereof, which were maintained by his predecessors', holding that he did not proceed vigorously enough against Venice at the time of the Interdict: pp. 34–5. Clearly, this work tells us nothing whatever about the views of puritans.

40 Lamont, Godly Rule, 46, 49.

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43 Lamont, Godly Rule, 45, 39. Sherwood, Answere to a Sermon, ii. 13, 90, 59–60, 4.

44 Lamont, Godly Rule, 45.

45 Paul Baynes, The Diocesans Tryall, Amsterdam 1621, 8, 10, passim.

46 Laud, A Speech delivered in the Starre-Chamber, 8–9.

47 Examples of the use of this allegation by Catholics are Thomas Fitzherbert, An Adioynder to the Supplement of Father Robert Persons his Discussion, St Omer 1613, 459, 476–7, 482; Richard Broughton, Protestants Demonstrationsfor Catholike Recusance, Douai 1615, 45–6, 81–2, 88–9. Puritans used the allegation that the Royal Supremacy was incompatible with jure divino episcopacy not only to tar the bishops with the brush of sedition, but also to exculpate themselves from the charge that in attacking the bishops they were indirectly attacking the king: e.g. Burton, Henry, For God, and the Kinge, 1636, 72–5Google Scholar.

48 Many also denied that clergymen could exercise the purely spiritual power of excommunication against the king: Thomas Jackson, Works, xii. 237–9; De Dominis, De Republica Ecclesiaslica, ii. 741–2; Owen, David, Anti-Paraeus, Cambridge 1622, 12–14Google Scholar; Harris, English Concord, 218; Burhill, Robert, De Potestate Regia, Oxford 1613, 285–6Google Scholar. Jackson, Owen, Harris and Burhill did not regard Ambrose's action against Theodosius as a case of judicial excommunication. An illuminating discussion of the uses to which the example of Ambrose and Theodosius were put in Elizabeth's reign is Collinson, Patrick, ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius: St Ambrose and the integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana’, this Journal, XXX (1979), 205–29Google Scholar.

49 Lamont, Godly Rule, 40.

50 Barlow, William, A Brand, Titio Erepta, London 1607Google Scholar, sig. Fia.

51 Lamont, Godly Rule, 37.

52 Prynne, William, The Church of Englands Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme, London 1629Google Scholar, sig 2π4a–b. At this period Prynne was clearly far more concerned with doctrinal innovations than with the theoretical question of the origins of episcopacy. It was not his devotion to the Royal Supremacy but his conviction that liturgical and doctrinal abuses could be eradicated only if episcopacy were abolished or radically reformed which was to lead him to attack jure divino episcopacy.

53 Barlow, William, The first of the foure sermons preached before the Kings Maiestie, at Hampton Court, London 1607Google Scholar, sig. A2a.

54 Paul Baynes, Diocesans Tiyall, 83, 88. Few puritans before 1640 explicitly permitted active resistance to the king. But, looking to parliament to reform the Church, they insisted that the king's powers were limited by common law and by statute, and that he could only exercise his ecclesiastical Supremacy in parliament: Prynne, , The Church of England Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme, London 1629Google Scholar, dedication, sig. A2b; Burton, For God, and the Kinge, 39–42; Bastwick, John, An Answer oflohn Bastwick, Doctor of Phisicke, To the exceptions made against his Letany, 1637, 26Google Scholar. Their opponents, who looked to the king to protect the Church against puritans and parliament, claimed that the king's Supremacy was personal and not limited by human laws: Heylin, Peter, A Briefe and Moderate Answer, to the seditious and scandalous Challenges of Henry Burton, London 1637, 26–33Google Scholar, 156; Christopher Dow, Innovations, 65, 176.

55 Prynne, William, A Briefe Survay and Censure of Mr Cozens his Couzening Devotions, London 1628, 98–9Google Scholar.

56 The condemnation of Paraeus's book is discussed in Judson, M. A., The Crisis of the Constitution, New Brunswick 1949, 204–5Google Scholar, 312–13.