Divine Right of Kings

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The English Historical Review

No. CCCCXXV - October 1992
The Divine Right of Kings
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CVII/CCCCXXV/837/521648 by guest on 02 May 2024

Reconsidered
'T H E State of MONARCHIisEthe supremest thing upon earth: For
Kings are not onely GODSLieutenants upon earth, and sit upon
GODSthrone, but even by Goo himselfe they are called Gods.'!
James I delivered these famous words to his Lords and Commons at
Whitehall on 2I March I609/ro, and they have been the subject of
debate ever since. In recent times that debate has been amongst
historians, once rather shocked by James's uri-English words, but
more recently inclined to probe with increased subtlety the mental
world that underlay them. Even those more recent attempts, however,
have told us more about the ancestry of James's ideas, and rather less
about their place in the general structure of early Stuart political
discourse. It is to the latter subject that this essay is addressed, in
the belief that a history of the origins and sources of a set of ideas is
never by itself able to provide a complete account of the uses to which
those ideas can be put.
Since John Neville Figgis's pioneering study of The Divine Right of
Kings was first published in I896, historians have found a variety of new
perspectives from which to view the subject. It seems, however, that
the best recent work has, in a number of respects, reinforced Figgis's
own judgements.' Figgis rejected the view that the divine right of kings
was a 'collection of purely ridiculous propositions perversely preached
by a servile church'.3 Instead, he perceived the deep medieval roots
of the theory, and saw how it was developed to cope with real political
problems posed in the aftermath of the Reformation. Initially the divine
right theory was valuable for its defence of the rights of monarchy
against the political claims of the Papacy; later it was equally useful
against the similar claims of Presbyterians.' But perhaps the most
significant of the interpretative claims made by Figgis was that the
divine right of
I. James I, 'A Speech to the Lord. and Commons of the Parliament at White-H2.l1, on W<dn=lay
the XXI. of March. Anno 1609 [1610:r, in The WorM of the Most HIgh lind MIghue Prince; J=
'"
King of Greu Briiane; FWI«and Ireland (London, 16(6), p.
529.
2. Note the broadly favourable assessment of Figgis by G. R. Elton, "The Divine Right of Kings',
in his s-JUs m Tudor end St-rt Poliucs lind Gooemment (1 vols., Cambridge, (974), ii. 193-
14.
J. J. N. Figgis, The Divine RIght of Kmgs (znd edn., Cambridg e, (921), p. 156. The attitude which
Figgis decried may not yet be dead, 'CIurI es was unaware that it was not enough that b. sincerely
believed in the divine right absolutism of monarchy or that h. appointed a second-rate CT<W of divin es
to provide a choral accompaniment to his VI<WS': David S. Berkowitz, 'Reason of Stat. in England and
the Petition of Right, 160J- 1619', in SliUtSr.iwn: StwUm XIIT Gt:schichu = poliruchm Begriffi,
<d. Roman Schnur (Berlin, (971), p.lSe.
+ E.g. Figgis, Dioine Right of Kings, pp. '57, 159-63, lJ7-8, 186ff.
EHR Oct. 92
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF ~INGS RECONSIDERED October
kings had an essential place in the development of Western political
theory: it enabled the establishment of a proper theory of sovereignty.
It was 'necessary as a transition stage between medieval and modern
politics' because it served as 'the popular form of expression for the
theory of sovereignty'.' The divine right of kings made the theory
of sovereignty concrete, thus facilitating its growth.
Subsequent work has on the whole expanded upon, perhaps qualified,

these perspectives, rather than moving beyond them. We now know
much more detailabour the medieval sources for the theory of divine
right/ and about the impact of the Reformation on theories of kingship
in England and on the European Continent.3 On what will be the
central issue addressed in this essay, the place of the theory of the divine
right of kings in the history of political thought, there has been less
unanimity. The consequence of Figgis's identification of divine right with
the theory of sovereignty is that it must also be a theory of royal absolut
ism. Figgis defined sovereignty - and here he was simply following John
Austin - as the doctrine 'that there must be in it [the state] some ultimate
authority, which because it can make laws is above law'.~ When that
ultimate authority is placed in the monarchy, then it must follow that
the monarch will be an absolute sovereign. Figgis stated this conclusion
clearly enough:
Monarchy is pure, the sovereignty being entirely vested in the king, whose
power is incapable of legal limitation. All law is a mere concession of his
will, and all constitutional forms and assemblies exist entirely at his pleasure.
... A mixed or limited monarchy is a contradiction in terms.'
Not all historians have accepted this argument.

For some there has been a need to qualify Figgis and to step back
from the starkness of his interpretation. Margaret Judson, for example,
has argued that only two clerical divine-right theorists achieved a proper
theory of sovereignty," and Francis Oakley has stressed the ambivalence
1. Ibid., pp.
25&,237·
2. See W. H. Greenleaf, "The Thornasian Tradition and tho Theory of Absolute Monarchy', ante,
lxxix (1964), 7-47-ro; and id., 'J= I and tho Divme Right of Kmgs', Poluicd S~, V (1957), J6-+B.
Cf. also id., Order, Empiricism end Poluics: Two Trsduums of Engluh Poluual n-gh~lfOO-1?OO(W<St
port, Conn., (980), esp. chs, I-,l;Francis Oakley, 'jacobean Political Theology: The Absolute and Ordinary
Pow= of tho King' ,foumtd 0/ the History o/Ideas, xxiI (1968),J2J--46; id , "The "Hidden" and "Revealed"
WilIJ of james I: MOT< Political Tbeology', Stud", Gr.u..na, xli (1972), }65-75; and id., Omrupotence;
CotAma~ and Order. An Excursum in the History of Ideas from Abelerd UJ Lnimzz (Ithaca, NY, (94).
J- A selective list of recent work might include A. Fox and J. Guy, Reassessing the HmTUWI A~
HU11Jamsm, Poliucs snd Rtforrn, I~IffO (Oxford, (986); P<'I<r Lake Ang/iums and P"ritansf PrtsbyterU.
nism end Engluh Omf0771llSt 71x>MfPt from Wbilgift UJ Hooker (London, 19B8); and Quentin Skinner,
The Foundstums 0/ Modn-n Poiiucd Thought (2 vols., Cambridge, (978),ii.
-4. Figgis, Divine RIght 0/ Kings, p. IJ-
5. Ibid., pp. 5-6·
6. Margaret Judson, The Crisu of the Consutuuon: An Essey in Consuuaumd and Poltucal Tbougbz
In &tg/And, 160J-Itlff (New York, (976), pp. 201., 21Jif. (the two were Roger Manwanng and William
Dickinson).
EHR Oct. 92
1992 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED
of the theory. It was not solely absolutist, but could also imply some
sort of limitation on royal authority.' Two scholars, however, have
gone furtherr' James Daly and - rather earlier - J. W. Allen. Daly
has argued that the world-view underlying divine-right theories, far from
making kings absolute, was actually hostile to the idea that kings had
any substantial latitude for the discretionary exercise of sovereign will.
It embedded them in a divinely created hierarchy, and this position

required them to obey the norms and serve the purposes that God had
laid down.' Daly was possibly unwise to lay so much stress on the
belief that the concept of 'cosmic harmony' was inherently inimical to
absolutist thinking," but his general perception that Royalist thinking
in the early seventeenth century was in some ways as constitutionalist
as it was absolutist remains valuable. It is compatible, too, with the
verdict reached in the neglected few pages that J. W. Allen wrote on the
political thinking of the early Stuart divines. Allen was of the opinion
that only ignorance and misapprehension were responsible for the
belief that the Jacobean and Caroline divines were absolutists. On the
contrary, 'belief in the King's divine right implied no particular belief
as to the extent of a King's rights in England or elsewhere.' They
'were certainly not concerned with actual powers, legal or extra-legal,
in anyone State', and so it follows that 'there are but very few traces
in English writings before 1642 of any theory of royal absolutism by
divine right'.5 The crucial difference between Figgis and Allen is that
the latter did not see divine-right theory as a phase in the history of the
concept of sovereignty; rather it was a theory of obligation, concerned
primarily with the need to demonstrate to both rulers and subjects their
duties before God.6
Eventually this essay will provide reasons for thinking that Allen was
in large part correct. But it needs first to be established why that is
a task worth undertaking. In recent years there has been a powerful
reassertion of perspectives on the divine right of kings that are basically
Figgisian (i.e. they see it as a theory of absolute royal sovereignty). The
I. Oakley, Omnipotence; Covm.cn4 end Order, ch +0 esp. pp. rnff.

1. There are also suggestive remarks in Robert Eccleshall, Order end Reeson In Politics: Tbeones
of Absobtu end LlT1"eM M07U.rchy In urly Modern Eng/llnd (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1-6 and passim, also
p. 76 for a rejection of the view that divine-right theories constituted a theory of sovereignty.
Nevertheless, Eccleshall remans Figgisian in that he conflates the divine right of kings with absolutism.
3- See esp. James Daly, 'Cosmic Harmony and Political Thinking in Early Stuart England', Trenssc
tums of tbe Amozun PIn/owphu4l Society, !xix, pt. 7 (1979), esp. 11-31; also id., 'The Idea of Absolute
Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century England', Historical Jowrwl, xxi (1978), u7-So. But note that even
Daly has remarked that 'It is clear that the divines' use of the term [absolute] comes much closer
than the lawyers' to a general concept of absolutism': ibid. 1}4, n.)).
-4. See the telling remarks in Oakley, Omnipotence; Cooeruru. end Order, pp. 99-10).
S. J. W. Allen, EngliJh Poluied Tholtghr. 16o}-166o (1 voLs.planned, but only one appeared, London,
I9J8), i. 97, 101.
6. Ibid., pp. 99-101.
EHR Oct. 91
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED October
work of J. P. Sommerville has been central to this development,' and
has already had a substantial impact upon early seventeenth-century his
tonography.' Dissenting voices have been few - though they have,
admittedly, been powerful voices.' Sommerville has argued that 'the
contention that the king drew his authority from God alone was the
central plank upon which absolutist theory rested'. Further, 'the effect
of absolutist theory was to make the king sovereign in England.' As

did Figgis, Sommerville believes that the force behind the development
of such a theory was a polemical one: 'Absolutists magnified royal power.
They did this to protect the state against anarchy and to refute the ideas
of resistance theorists."
But did they? The crucial issue here is the consequences that divine-
right theorists drew from their own premises. Everyone, including
Allen, would accept the negative dynamic with which Sommerville
credits divine-right theory: it was an argument designed to rebut
Presbyterian and Catholic resistance theories. The question is whether
that negative dynamic was also linked to a positive one, that of
crediting the kings of England with full legal sovereignty, and thus
magnifying their auth ority. Conrad Russell has doubted that this was the
case, explicitly echoing the queries of]. W. Allen.' He argues instead
that divine-right theory
- even the view that kings derived their authority immediately from
God - was perfectly compatible with the view that kings were also limited
by the law. He warns us against deducing too much from the vague
words of divine-right theorists: unless they said explicitly that kings
could make, or ignore, laws at their pleasure, we should not assume
that this is what they meant." And generally speaking, they did not
say this. The picture that Russell's account conveys is one in which
before the Civil War, and certainly before 1625, the constitutional
thinking of nearly all Englishmen fitted into a narrow spectrum defined
at one end by' the absence of resistance theory and at the other by the
absence of the view that kings could, by themselves, make laws of a force
equivalent to statute
I. J. P. Sommerville, Poluics end Ideology in EngUmd, 16c!J-l~ (London. 1986). esp. ch. I; also id.,
'Ideology, Property and tho Constitution'. in Ccnflia in &.rly Stuert England: Studie: In Rt!ilgWn end
Poliucs; I60,J-I6.p. <d. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London. 1989), ch. 2; id., 'From Suarez to Filma:
A Reappraisal'. Hiaoncal jolt17llti, :nv (1982), 525-40; id., 'Richard Hooker, Hadrian Saravia, and tho
Advent of tho Divino Right of KIngs', Hisiory of Poluusl 7bo.tght. iv (1983), ~45; and id., 'History
and Theory: Tho Norman Conquest in Early Stuart Political Thought', Poluicd SII<lhes,miv (1986),
249-61.
1. See for example tho =ptancr of his interpretations in Lake, Angl= end P"nt4nS?, esp. p.s,
also pp. 64-5, 246. but d. pp. 204-5; Richard Cost, Tbe Forced Loom snd EngUsh Pduics, 1626-1~8
(Oxford, 1987). p . .J28; Thomas Cogswell, "The Politic> of Propaganda: Charles I and tho People in
tho 162OS·.jOlmJlll of Bruub Su.d.." nix (1990), 190; Ann Hughes, Tbe c._, of the EnglISh OvJ W.r
(London, 1991). pp. 81-3.
J. Kevin Sharpe, Poluics and lde.u In £rrly Su...rt EngLuuJ (London. 1989). pp. 285-8. Conrad
Russell, The c......" of the EnglISh Cioil W.r (Oxford, 1990), cb. 6. See also my own remarks in
'Revisionism, Politico and Political Ideas in Early Stuart England', Hisioriod [oumsl, miv (1991), f65-fi.
4. Sommerville, Politia and /<kolog;y. pp. 12, 38,35·
5. Russell, GtJ<Se of the English Civil War, p. t50.
6. Ibid., pp. LU-8.
EHR Oct. 92
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED
or common law.' It is, then, the fact that the differences between Figgis
and Allen are once more being fought over in the most recent work
on pre-Civil-War England that makes the subject of the divine right of
kings worth investigating again.
The divine right of kings and the theory of royal absolutism were not
the same thing.2 Both had long medieval pedigrees, but they were differ

ent pedigrees; both were given a new lease of life by the Reformation,
but it was not always the case that they went hand in hand in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries; most theories of royal absolutism may have
incorporated a divine-right element, but the reverse was not necessarily
true. The idea that there was something particularly divine about kingship
was one which went back at least to the earliest phases of medieval his
tory.' Even that supposed fountain of English constitutionalism, Brae
ton, could refer to the king as the 'vicar of God on earth'." There
was almost nothing new in early modern theories of divine-right kingship
(the possible exception is - as Figgis was aware - its connection with
indefeasible hereditary right"); indeed, if anything, early modern theories
were rather more modest in their claims than medieval ones, in that
they avoided notions of sacral kingship. In the early modern period the
main contention which divine-right theory served to underpin was that
the authority of kings was derived from God directly, and hence was
not derived from their people. This did not, even for some of the arch
exponents of the idea, rule out the possibility that kings might be elected
or chosen by their people." It did, however, rule out the possibility
that the people could resist or actively disobey their kings, whether they
I. Ibid, pp. 150ff.

2, I should make It clear that the exercise conducted here is very differenr from that attempted
in Daly, 'Idea of Absolute Monarchy', which examines the seventeenth-century political we> of the
term 'absolute'. The problem wub this is that Daly too readily moves from absolute 10 absolutism,
tbough this latter term was a later coinage, Wh.t I have termed 'absolurism' would not have been
so termed in the seventeenth century, bUI the concept itself was not lacking,
3· P. D, King in Tbe Gunlmd~ Hutory of Med=.i Politicd Tboegbt, C.)fo-c.l~fo, ed, J. H, Burns
(Cambridge, 1988).pp, 127"'9, 43-4; Walter Ullmann, Principles of Gooemmeru end Poluus In ~ MuJdie
Age (London. 1961), pt. ii, esp, cbs. 1 and 2, Also rnteresting, in spite of Its now antiquated perspectives,
is Fritz Kern, KmgsJnp end lAw In tbe Middle Ages (Oxford. 1939), pp. 1-68. Note especially Kern's
point (P,I) that the components of early modem theories of divine-nght kingship carne from separate
medieval sources,
-4, Ewart Lewis, Mediewl Poiiucd Ideas (2 vols, London. 195+). i. 282,
5, Set J. H, Burns, "The Idea of Absolutism', In Abso/uwm in Sn.omtel:nth Orw;ry Europe. ed, Jobn
Miller (London, 1990), pp.jo-r.
6, See James I, 'Speach of XXI, March 1609 [161OY,W"'*"s, pp. 5]0-1; Jobn Maxwell. s..7fC7lH47ICU
Reg><mMtpt= or, Tbe Sacred end Rcrytdi ~u'[)t of Cbnsuen King> (Oxford, 16.44). pp, 12-,). Maxwell.
10 an obvious allusion to the Great Tew Royalisu, even rteogIIiud that a theory of monarchy based
on consent and individual rights could be used to achieve his purpose (though it so happened tbat
he also believed sucb a theory to be in conflict with Scripture}. ibid., pp. 18-19. For the Great Tow
circle. sec Richard Tuck. Naturel Righu Theories: 7hrir Ongin .nd Deoelopmeru (Cambridge, 1979).
pp. 101-10; perez Zagorin, 'Clarendon and Hobbes'. joum.J of Motkrn History, lvir (1985),59~16; and
John Sanderson, '&a tbe People'«C~': Tbe Pbi/osopInad Bais of ~ Eng/uh Civil War (Manchester.
1989). ch.j,
£HR Oct. 92
had elected them or not. This was indeed the main function of the theory
in post-Reformation political thought.
In performing that function there was no need for divine-right theory
to go to the length of accepting the claims of absolutist theory. The
essential feature of absolutism was its claim that the king alone was super
ior to the positive law and not bound by it. In practical terms, this
guaranteed the right of an absolute sovereign to give people laws without
their consent.' In the words of the civil law maxims frequently used

to buttress that claim, princeps legibus solutus est, the prince is free of
the law (Digest, I, ii, 31); and quod principi placuit habet legis vigorem,
what has pleased the prince has the force of a law (Digest, I, iv. I). From
the central Middle Ages onwards, civil and canon lawyers developed
and applied these tags to the power of both the pope and the emperor."
It was perhaps the concept of the pope's plenitude potestatis (fullness
of power) which most prefigured the absolutism of the early modern
period, when the Reformation facilitated (though it did not initiate) the
transferral of that concept to secular rulers.' But in any case, such
absolutism is just one possible end-point of a theory of the divine right
of kings. The two theories derive from different sources, and it has always
been possible to have one without the other. Nevertheless it is true that
in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe the two traditions were
generally fused into a theory of divine-right absolutism.' The question
is whether or not England followed this pattern.
To qualify as a theorist of 'absolutism' an English thinker would need
to make the claim that the king could give laws to his subjects, without
consultation, which in practice amounts to the claim that proclamations
I. For [ean Bodrn 'the principall point of Soveraigne rnajestie, and absolute power ... [lies] In giving
laws unto the subjects In general], without their consent': Tbe SIX BooIet:s of" Commonueale, trans.
Richard Knolles, eel. Kenneth McRae (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), i. 8, p. 98.
1. For example, Penrungton In Cambridge History of Mtdirr.J Poluicd Thought, pp. 431-4; Brian
Tierney, '''The Prince is not Bound by the Laws": Accursius and the Ongins of the Modern State',
Comparaioe Su.d~ 1.11 So=ty.nd Hutory, v (1963), 37S-400; and Myron P. Gilmore, Argwnmts from
R01tUtn lAtv in Political Tho.tght, uOC>-I600 (Cambridge, Mass., 19~1).
3. For the concept of plenuudo poUStAW, see I. S. Robinson in Gunbndge Hutory of Mtdietwl Poliuce!
'JboMght, pp. iliff. Compare 'the pope IS not bound by laws because he makes the laws' (ibid., p.l8:7)
with Figgis's defininon of soveretgnty quoted above. Also Pennington, ibid., pp. ~JO-I, ~33-+ For
with Augurtmus Triumpbus end *

broader ISSUes, see M. j. WUks, Tbe Probkm of Sowret.gnry in tbe Laer M.adk Age: Tbe P4{JdlMonrrchy
I'IthlIClStS (Cambridge, 1963); and for new insight 11110 the early
modern Papacy, ill theory and practice, Paolo Prodi, 1M P"p.d Prince: One Body end TfJ)() Souls
- tbe Papal M01I4rchy In £triy Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987).
+ See Bums, 'Idea of Absolutism'; also Roland Mousnier, 'The Exponents and Critics of Absoluusm',
in Tbe N= Gunbndge Mcxkrn Hiszory,vol. iv, eel. j. P. Cooper (Cambridge, 1970), ch. 3, wluch places
less stress on divine right, but certainly lumps james I in with all the continental theorists. For the
distinctiveness of England, see J. p Cooper, 'Differences between English and Continental Government
ill the Early Seventeenth Century', in his Lend; Mm and &/t4s: St..tks in E..rlyMcxkrn
History(London,
1983},ch. 5
should have a force superior to that of statute or common law.' Such

an absolute monarch would not be a tyrant so long as he (or, more
rarely, she) respected the moral guidelines for the employment of absolute
authority contained in natural or divine law. The tyrant was distinguished
from the true king primarily in moral rather than constitutional terms.'
A theory of absolute monarchy of this sort did require the underpinnings
of something like a theory of sovereignty. It required that the king be

seen as someone with authority to make laws binding on all individuals
and groups within his realm, but who was himself not bound by positive
law. English divine-right theorists, it will be argued here, did not usually
espouse such a theory. This was not necessarily because they rejected
absolutism directly, but because they were working on a different plane.
Often they scarcely engaged with what we might identify as the problem
of absolutism at all. The questions they dealt with were not, generally,
questions that demanded any specific account of the extent and scope
of royal authority. Arguments demonstrating the iniquity of resistance
and the inviolability of the duty of allegiance, found in the writings
of James I and his more articulate subjects, did not amount to a theory
of absolutism because they entailed no commitment to any particular
view of the king's authority to make law, or of the ways in which such
an authority should be exercised. There was a world of difference
between claiming that a king possessed the right to give laws without
consent, and claiming that he did not possess such a right, but
nevertheless could not be resisted should he act upon the delusion of
possessing it.
Divine-right theory, partly because it was not a theory of royal absolu
tism, did have a number of uses in Reformation England, the most impor
tant of which were its role in combating theories of papal jurisdiction
over secular rulers, and its role in rejecting theories of resistance, both
I. The conventions governing proclamations were expressed in 1539 by the Act of Proclamations
(JI Henry vrn, c. 8), which was repealed in 15+7. It specifically declared that by proclamations no
'acts, common laws ... nor yet any lawful or laudable customs of this realm .... hall be infringed,
broken or subverted': G. It Elton, The Tudor Constusaum: Documents end umment4ry (Cambridge,
1972), p.lS; cf. Elton's comments, pp. 21-2. There was a contmuing discussion of proclamations
throughout the early S= period: cf. Esther S. Cope, 'Sir Edward Coke and Proclamations, 1610',
Ar=TIC4njournal
of UgoJ History, xv (1971), 215-21; and It W. Heinze, 'Proclamation and Parliamentary Proust, 1539-
1610', in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Esuys fOT C. R. Elton from Ins American Friends, ed. D. J. Guth
and J. W. McKenna (Cambndge, 198», pp. 237-59, which does suggest substantial consensus on the
consti tutional theory of proclamations. Contrast, however, the argument of It W. K. Hinton,
'Government and Liberry under James 1', Cambrid~ Historiod JOIm141, xi (1953), 48--4
2. See particularly Bodin's discussion of tyranny 10 SIX BooItes of 4 Commontoeale, 11. 4-5. Bodin
identified three types of monarchy: lawful (or royal), lordly, and tyrannical. Their essential features
were defined in the following pa.ssage(ibid., p. 200): 'Wherefore a lawfull or royall Monarchic is that
where the subjects obey the law> of a Monarque, and the Monarque the lawes of nature, the subjects
injoying their narurall libertie, and properne of their goods. The lordly Monarchic I.< that where the
prince is become lord of the goods and persons of his subjects, by law of arrnes and lawfull warre;
governing them as the master of a farrulie doth his slaves. The tyrannicall Monarchic, is where the
prince contemning the lawes of nature and nations, imperiously abuseth the perwns of his free borne
subjects, and their goods as his owne.' The tyrant was essenually a king who misused his authori ty
by ruling selfishly and contrary to the natural principles of morality. This line of thinking took as
authontarive the remark of Aristotle, 'the aim of a tyrant is his own pleasure: the aim of a king
is the Good' (Politics, IJlIa: Ernest Barker (ed.), The Polino of Aristotle [Oxford, 1956, 198>1p. 2J6).
EHR Oct. 92
Catholic and Calvinist. But, on the whole, political thought in this period
used divine-right theory without connecting it with absolutism. The clas
sic examples are men like John Aylmer, Thomas Bilson andJohn Bridges.
There may have been elements of Caesaropapalism in some Tudor -
especially Henrician - understandings of the Royal Supremacy and of
monarchy', but the dominant Elizabethan position seems to have com
bined the view that monarchical authority in both Church and State

was by divine right with the view that that authority should be exercised
through legal (and above all parliamentary) channels.' In Lamont's
words on Bilson, the general objective of the apologists for the Elizabethan
ecclesiastical and civil polities 'was to free the Crown from bondage to
St. Peter while binding it to Magna Carta." Bilson, Bridges and Aylmer
were all, in a sense, divine-right theorists: they all believed that the kings
of England were answerable only to God. However, they also believed
that the kings of England were not absolute, but were kept within legal
bounds by the nature of the English constitution,"
A position such as this had a number of ideological advantages. It vested
a divinely-ordained, irresistible authority in the English Crown, which
helped in rebutting the claims of the Papacy and of resistance theorists
(and of course, for obvious reasons, distancing themselves from Marian
resistance theory was a major intellectual preoccupation of the early
Eliza bethans"). But the ideological benefits of the position were not
exhausted
I. See the general discussion ill John Guy. Tudor EngLmd (Oxford, 1988).pp. J69-T8. Also J J.
Scansbnck, Henry Vlll (London. 1968).cbs. 9 and 12, esp. pp. mff; Walter Ullmann. '''This Realm
of England is an Empire .. ·.jounu/ of Ecdesiastical History, laX (1979).175-20J;Fox and Guy. R=zng
tbe Hennaan A~. cb 7; Claire Cross. 'Churchmen and the Royal Supremacy'. In Clntrrh lind Society
In Engl.md.· Henry Vlll to [arne: I. ed, F. Heal and R. O'Day (London. 1977). ch. I; and ead .• Tbe
Royal S"{JmTlItCY In tk El~ Church (London. 1969).esp. ch. I By the seventeenth century the
idea of imperial kingship was employed for general Erastian pllrJ'OSC'bSy writers whom none
would
consider Caesaropapalists: e.g. Sir Edward Coke. 'Of the Kings Ecclesiastical Law'. Fifth Part 0/ tbe
R~ of Sir Edward Cok» (160s).repro ill Coke. R~ (London. 1776).iii. pp. vii-ix, xl; and Nathaniel
Fiennes in the Long Parliament (8 Feb. 1141).in John Rushworth, Historical Collections (8 vols.•London.
1659-1721)i.v. 176.
2. See parucularly G. R. Elton. 'La Terrae Vumx: The Triumph of Parliamentary Law in the
Sixteenth Century'. in Tbe Par/UI= 0/E/iZAheth.n England, ed. D. M. Dean and N. L. Jones (Oxford.
1990). ch. I.
J. Willi:un Lamont. 'The Rise and Fall of BIShop Bilsori', joumsl oj Bnush StMdin. v (1966). -4.
See also Patrick Collinson, 'If Constantine, then also Theodosius: St Ambrose and the Integrity of
the Elizabethan Ecclesia Ang/ICIt1U·. in his Godly People: Essays on Eng/tsh Protestantism and Purusnism
(London. I98J).ch 4.
4. For Bilson and Bridges, see Lake. Anglicsns end Puruansi' pp. 132"5.For Aylmer. see John
Aylmer. An HsrborouJe for Fauhfull and Treee ~ [Strasburg [London], 1559).sigs. HJ'~ (the
English Constitution], and B2v·BJ,R2 (divine right). I am not persuaded by the attempt to explain away
Aylmer's constirutionahsm in Michael Mendle, Dan~ Posuions:Mixed ~mmt, tbe F.sttzus of
tbe R..Jm,
and tbe A nsuer to tk XIX Propositions (Alabama, 1985)p. p. 48-sJ. For general accounts, see Christopher
Morris, Poliucd 'Tbougbt In En~ Tyndale to Hooim- (Oxford, 1953).pp. 77"9. "7-21; and J. W.
Allen. A History of Poluicd Tbougbt In tbe Sixteend: CentJtry(London.I960). pp.I~J.
5. For recent work on the resistance theory with which so much of the Elizabethan clerical establish
ment was tainted, see Donald R. Kelley. 'Ideas of Resistance before Elizabeth', in Tbe Historical Renais
SIt1I«: N= Essays on Tudor end Stuart i..JuT1IlI= and Culu.... ed, Heather Dubrow and Richard Strier
(Chicago, 1988).pp. 4B-76; and Gerry Bowler. 'Marian Protestants and the Idea of Violent Resistance
to Tyranny'. in Proteuantism and tk Nsuonal CJnm:h In Sixteenth Ccuury Eng/tuui. ed, Peter Lake
and Maria Dowling (London. 1987)c. h. 5.
EHR Oct. 92
there: by refusing an absolutist reading of divine-right theory the Eliza

bethans took away not only the theoretical, but also the practical case
for resistance. It was wicked to resist an English monarch; fortunately,
it was also unnecessary. The English constitution ensured that its mon
archs ruled well. Furthermore, stress on the English constitution permit
ted the argument that in other, less fortunate polities, where tyranny
was a real possibility, resistance might be legitimate. This was especially

so in countries which were not hereditary monarchies, a position useful
in justifying English support for the Dutch revolt. Thus the ideological
character of 'mainstream' Elizabethan political thought was dependent
upon the simultaneous acceptance of the divine right of kings and avoid
ance of royal absolutism.'
It might not be contested that the apologists for the early Elizabethan
status quo were no absolutists, especially in view of our growing know
ledge of just how much of the thinking behind Marian resistance theory
persisted into the Elizabethan period, even amongst those trying to dis
tance themselves from it.2 But did things change from the 1570Sor
158os?Was there a 'growth of absolutism', or an attempt to give an absolu
tist thrust to the theory of the divine right of kings? Undoubtedly,
between the 1580sand the 16IOSthe pattern of English political
discourse underwent considerable transformation. This transformation
has been identified with a 'rise' of absolutism and divine-right
monarchy; but its real nature is more complex. On the whole, Jacobean
and even.Caroline divine-right theory was no more absolutist than its
Tudor antecedents.' Nor was it necessarily in any conflict with that deep
reverence for English constitutional and legal traditions characteristic
of 'the common law mind'.' Its claims were not aimed at
'constitutionalism'; it was not part of the .rnythical battle of
'constitutionalism' and 'absolutism' that some have discerned in pre-
Civil-War England.
What did transform the nature of political debate by the 1610swas
a combination of Presbyterian and Catholic threats to the established
I. The ideological dimensions of Elizabethan political thought are well brought out in Lake, Anglic.cns
IUId Puruensi, passim,
1. Gerald Bowler, '''An Axe or an Acre": The Parliament of 1571 and Resistance Theory in Early
Ehzabethan England', GmAd14nJownud of History, xix (I~), 349-59; and Patrick Collinson, 'The Monar
chical Republic of Queen Elizabeth 1', Bulletm of tbe John Rylands Umv=ity Librery, !xix (1986--7),
394-414. Cf. Sommerville, Poluia And I~, pp. IO-II, on the early Elizabethans, an account which
captures their constitutionalism, but not their adherence to divine-right theory.
J. I leave OUt of account here the view that there may have been the development of a different
sort of absolutism in early Stuart England, one based on civil-law concepts and reason of state theory,
advanced in such works .. George Mosse, Tbe Sm.ggk for ~ in Enp}..vu1.F· rom tbe R~gn of
EJ~ to tbe Peution of Right [East Lansing, (950), cia. 1 and 4> esp. material on Ralegh and
Bacon; Berkowitz, 'Reason of State In England'; Peter S. Donaldson, MlIChutvdli IUId Mystery of SI4U
(New York, (988), ch. J, esp, pp. I~-IO; and above all Brian P. Levack, 'Law and Ideology: The Civil
Law and Theone. of Absolutism In Elizabethan and Jacobean England', in Tbe H isumcal Renms..nce,
pp. 110-41. There is some comment on this thesis in Glenn Burgess, Tbe Politicsof tk Ancient Constiuaion
(London, fonhcoming 1991), part ii.
4. The phrase is, of course, from J. G. A. Pocock, Tbe Ancient Conaiuaion tmd tk Mtd.J
Uf1J:
A Su.dy of Englllh Historical n-ght in tbe &vmt«nth CmUtry (Cambridge, 1957, new edn. (987).
See also Burgess, Politics oftk Ancimt Constiuaion,esp. part i.
EHR Oct. 91
polity (culminating in the extensive intellectual energy poured into the
Oath of Allegiance controversy after r606), and the Jacobean Union of
England and Scotland.' The former produced an increase in the vigour
and single-mindedness with which resistance theory was pursued by Eng
lish controversialists, and a greater care in closing off possible paths to
the development of resistance theory. This task was increasingly carried
out before a European audience, and so took on a degree of abstraction
from the specifics of the ancient constitution of England that had not

previously characterized it.2 The question of Union could have a similar
effect. Because they raised legal and other questions that were not purely
English, debates on the Union could not be conducted in the idiom
of English common law. Even English lawyers were forced to move
on to the more abstract ground of natural and civil law.' Such debates
came closer than anything else to breaking down the insularity that
Pocock and others have found characteristic of English views of their
polity and its history.' But the resulting increase in abstraction and
attention to first principles should not be taken to imply a change in
ideological complexion. Close attention to the content - and the silences
- of early Stuart divine-right sermons and tracts reveals a care not to
insult English constitutional sensibilities. All exceptions to this generaliza
tion serve genuinely to prove the rule.
In r605 William Wilkes, Chaplain in Ordinary to James I, declared that

'the Lawe is the worke of the King, to whose regall dignitie it appertaines
to make Lawes'.s It is possible that Wilkes meant by this that the king
outside parliament could make laws superior to statute and common
law. Possible, but extremely unlikely. 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
I. Conrad Russell, 'English Parliaments, [593-[606: One Epoch or Two?', in Perlionents ofEllZAkthttn
Engloui, ch. 8, esp, pp. 1O;ff., is useful on the way the issue of union with Scotland affected the political
'atmosphere' of James's reign.
2. TIlls is panicularly true of the Oath of Allegiance controversy, on which see C. H Mcllwain's
introduction to h15 edition of Tbe Poluuxl Works of [eme: I (Cambridge, Mass., [9[8); Peter Milward,
ReligioItJ Controoersus of the jlUoJ-n Age: A Seroey of Pnnted SoMrces (London, [978), ch. J; and Sommer
ville, Politics end Ideology, pp. ['7-2[, [95-208. There are also useful perspecnves on the subject in
J. H. M. Salmon, 'Gallicanisrn and Anglicanism in the Age of the Counter-Reformation', in
hisRm.ussance and Reodt: £ss,rys In the lntellectuel end Socul History of &.rly Mrxkm Fra.na
(Cambndge, [~), cb.
7·
3 This is particularly evident in the arguments and decisions given by Bacon, Coke and Ellesmere
in Calvin's Case ([608): State Truls, ii, cols. 55~; and Louis A. Knafla, [.,.U! and Politics in jlUobun
Eng14nd: Tbe Tracts of Lord OJ.mce/lor Ellesmere (Cambndge, [977), pp. 202-B. For further material,
see Bruce R. Galloway and Brian P. Levack (ed.], Tbe jttCOb6m Unum: Six Trects of t/5o.f (Edinburgh,
[985), esp. tracts by Doddridge and Spelman.
4. Pocock,Anaenr Constiiutum, ch. iii; Donald R. Kelley, 'History, English Law and the Renaissance',
PIlSl md Present, l.xv ([97-4),2-4-51; also Burgess, Poliucs of the Anntnt Consutution, ch.
3.
5. WIlliam WIlkes, Obedience; or Ecclenestiod Union (London, I~), p. 56. (The work was reissued
in [608 under the title A &rond Mommto for Magim-aus.] Sommerville, Politics end Ideology. p. }6,
cites tbis as an example of the absolutist contention thai kings alone made law.
EHR Oa. 92
is not onlie royall, but pollitick." To interpret Wilkes's tract as a state

ment of any sort about the relationship of the king, 'our mortall God
upon Earth", and the law would be to miss its point. It was an instruction
in the duty of obedience - obedience to both the king and the law.'
At its heart was not so much the need to obey the commands of an
individual, as the need to follow 'publicke determination' rather than
'private ... resolutions?

The case of Wilkes is a warning against assuming that statements about
the king's law-making authority, or - to take another example - the
duty to pay taxes borne by his subjects, were claims to an absolute sover
eignty, or were designed to reject the view that English kings should
rule through the forms of the common law. In a sense Wilkes's position
was paradigmatic. The ideological point of divine-right theory was to
condemn disobedience, or more particularly rebellion, not to remove
the king from all need to observe his own laws. Much is often made
of the fact that those laws were claimed to be the king's laws; but this
was the merest legal commonplace. Once that is accepted it becomes
significant that divine-right theorists almost all looked for a way of retain
ing the king's duty to govern lawfully, even while freeing him from
other human authorities. Even Peter Heylyn, for example, could argue
that there was a sense in which 'the liberties, possessions, and estates
of the kings leige people, are, if you will, confirmed by the lawes of
the land; not the kings autboritie? The point of Heylyn's arguments
was not to question that the subject possessed liberties, but to show
that possession of those liberties was no evidence for an authority in
the kingdom independent of the king's. Laws were a guarantee of liberties,
even though those same laws 'were made by the Kings authority'. This
did not mean that liberties were insecure; it meant that 'in case the kings,
in some particulars, had not prescribed limits unto themselves, and bound
their owne hands, as it were, to enlarge the peoples, neither the people,
nor any lawes by them enacted, without the kings consent, could ever
have done it,.6 Like Wilkes, Heylyn was primarily a theorist of obe
dience to law, for by law the king declared his will.
In order both to free the king from all human authority and to preserve
the rule of law Heylyn introduced a distinction between the power of
kings 'in abstracto' and their power 'in concreto'. In the former sense
they 'are above the lawes'; in the latter, 'a just Prince will not breake
those lawes, which he hath promised to observe.' It was, indeed, wrong
I. Wilk<s, Obedience, p. 49 (bur d. p. s8 where room is made for the dispensing power).
1. Ibid, p. 6J.
J. Ibid, pp. 49 (law), 6Jff. (the king), 3S(both); and passtm.
-4- Ibid, p. 43.
S. Peter Heylyn, A Briefe lind Moderau AIU'!DtT, to the Seduious end Sc.nd.:Jol<J CJ,allmges of Henry
BJITUm (London, (637), p. 37.
6. Ibid, p. 33[stress added].
EHR Oct. 91
to question in the abstract what kings could and could not do - which
1
is not to say that in actual fact they could do whatever they liked.
These passages are very similar to statements made by King James
himself in 1610.2 He too distinguished between the abstract and concrete
powers of a king. Interestingly, the distinction was advanced as part of
the defence of a political sermon by one of his bishops.' James argued
that general statements of divine right should not be read as making

claims 'about specific royal powers in any particular kingdom:
And therefore that reverend Bishop here amongst you, though I heare that
by divers he was mistaken or not wei understood, yet did he preach both
learnedly and trewly annent this point concerning the power of a King: For
what he spake of a Kings power in Abstracto, is most trew in Divinitie [stress
added]: For to Emperors, or Kings that are Monarches, their Subjects bodies
& goods are due for their defence and maintenance. But if I had bene in
his place, I would only have added two words, which would have cleared
all: For after I had told as a Divine, what was due by the Subjects to their
Kings in general, I would then have concluded as an Englishman, shewing
this people, That as in general! all Subjects were bound to relieve their King;
So to exhort them, that as wee lived in a setled state of a Kingdome which
was governed by his owne fundamentall Lawes and Orders, that according
thereunto, they were now (being assembled for this purpose in Parliament)
to consider how to helpe such a King as now they had; And that according
to the ancient forme, and order established in this Kingdome: putting so,
a difference between the generall power of a King in Divinity, and the setled
and established State of this Crowne, and Kingdorne.'
Divinity and politics were different things. As one contemporary report

of the King's speech put it, 'all he [the bishop] said was true divinity
in a king generally but not in every particular king." James pointed
the lesson clearly enough: 'Every just King in a setled Kingdome is bound
to observe that paction made to his people by his Lawes." James, like
Heylyn, said also that even to debate the power of kings in the abstract
was wrong, the equivalent to debating what God could and could not
1 Ibid., pp. 3J,

179.
2. Those remark. wore also reiterated in James 's speech to tho Judges in 1616: 'A Speach In tho
Starre-Chamber, tho XX. of Jun e. Anno 1616',in Wcn*ts, <>p. pp. SSD-l,SS6-
7.
J. According to Archbishop Abbot, wnung In 1627, tho sermon was by Samuel Harsnett, Bishop
of Chichester: Rushworth, Histoncal Collecuons, i. w; also in Stae Tnels, ii, col. I.¢J. Cf. Martin's
speech of 14 November 1610, in E. R. Foster (ed.), f'roardjngs in Parliament; 1610 (2 vols., New Haven,
1966), ii, J28; and Somerville, Politics end IrUoiogy, p.
IJL
+ Jam es I, 'Speach of XXI. Marcb 1609 [1610Y, Wo'*n, pp. 529-
30.
5. Foster (ed.], PrrxtaJings in Perlsement; 1610, II. 60, n. 4; also ibid., i. 46, where james is reported
to bay. said that tho sermon was 'not saying what a king may do, but what good subjects ought
to do'.
6. J= I, 'Speach of XXI. March 1609 [1610T, Wo'*"',p. 531.
EHR Oct. 92
do.' Nevertheless, the concrete powers of kings were declared in their

laws, and like all good kings James promised to 'rule my actions
, 2
according to my Lawes .
This speech has sometimes been seen as a special attempt at compro
mise.' Politically, it may have been; but the position that James adum
brated was a standard one, and his advice on how to read divine-right
sermons can profitably be applied more widely. Divine-right sermons

were, sometimes explicitly, but more frequently implicitly, usually careful
not to ignore the constitutional sensibilities of the English political elite.
There were two crucial areas in which those constitutional sensibilities
were most heavily implicated: the principle of taxation by consent",
and the principle of the rule of law. To both of these we might apply
the distinction (that runs through the writings of Wilkes, Heylyn and
King James) between the claim upon the subject's obedience legitimately
made by a divine-right sovereign, and the duty of that sovereign to rule
lawfully (i.e. by and through known and declared laws). It remains true,
of course, that no divine-right theorist believed coercive sanction could
be provided for this duty. That would have been incompatible with the
rebuttal of arguments for resistance. But it needs to be pointed out that,
even while eliminating all earthly rivals to the king, divine-right theorists
were very careful to indicate that they did not intend this to free the
king from the need to govern lawfully. Unlike the theorist of absolutism,
the divine-right theorist could thus believe the king to be bound to
exercise his authority through defined constitutional channels. Such a
requirement went beyond that expected of the absolute monarch, who
was to rule well if he were to avoid the charge of tyranny. In some cases,
divine-right theory could even come close to serving as an avenue for
the criticism of monarchy. John Rawlinson, for example, declared that
'a king in his absolute and unlimited power is able to do more than a
good King will doe', and advised the King that he would do well 'to
impose upon your selfe a necessity of keeping the lawes'. It was the
tyrant, not the king, who refused to obey law (an argument which
could have come close to collapsing the distinction between an absolute
sovereign and a tyrant as drawn by Bodin). Certainly, Rawlinson ruled
out tyrannicide, or resis tance; but he warned, forcefully enough, that
the fate of Saul was 'a
I. Ibid.; Heylyn, Bn4t and Moderat» A nsuer, p. 179·

2. james I, loco CIt.
J. See "'P. Sommerville, Poliua end l~, pp. I}2-+
4. Whether the right to ux without COIl5<nt CU1 be said to be • basic claim of even absolutist
thought is, of course, a matter of some doubt, given that Bodin denied that any sovereign had this
power. Bodin, Ssx BooIr:s of. Commomoede, I, 8, p. '17. 5« further, Martin Wolfe, 'Jean Bodin on
Taxes:
The Sovereignty- Tax", Paradox', Poliucd Soma Q>ut7Urly, lxxxiii (1968),268-84. Nevertheless, the
issue WaJ crucial in English debates.
EHR Oct. 92
faire example and warning-piece for Princes, to teach them ... to be Kings
over themselves, lest God suffer them ... to be avenged of themselves'.'
On the subject of taxation and subsidies, Rawlinson stressed the King's
duty to moderate his demands.' Others were not so careful. It was
reported in the Commons in 1610 that a recent sermon by Samuel Hars
nett, Bishop of Chichester (probably the sermon on which James com
mented in March) had occasioned controversy by 'preaching upon this

text (Give unto Caesar etc.) that it was not to give but to render, and
made subsidies not gifts but duties'." In 1627 Archbishop Abbot recalled
this sermon and James's comments upon it. He had good reason to,
for at that time he was himself in deep trouble over his refusal to license
for publication a sermon preached in support of the forced loan, Robert
Sibthorpe's Apostolike Obedience.' The voices of Harsnett and Sibthorpe
were not isolated ones. In 1606 John Buckeridge, preaching before the
King at Hampton Court, had said (as exegesis of Romans, 13:6): 'You
pay tribute & custome, and Subsidies of duetie and J ustice; You give
them not of courtesie; and they are stipendium Regis, not praemiurn,
they are the Kings stipend or pay, not his reward." In a Gunpowder
Plot sermon delivered in 1622, Robert Willan told the judges that 'tribute
is Princes due, as markes of their power, sinewes of their maintenance,
recompenses of their labours'." In an assize sermon delivered in North
ampton, two more of the judges, Sir Richard Hutton and Sir George
Croke, were informed by Edward Reynolds that subjects had a duty
to princes 'to honour them in our services, and with our substance,
l. John Rawlinson, Vitoal Rex: A Sermon Prescbed 41 Pauls Cross on tbe Day of hIS Ma}estus Hsppie
ir14"gur41,on, MArch Lf. 1614 (Oxford, .6(9), pp. 6-8. Rawlinson also talked of kings as stewards
accountable for their stewardship (pp "1-(6), and as public servants (p. J.1). Those, like Rawlinson
perhaps, who wished to equate tyranny WIth refusal to obey positive law, seem to have left little
room for absolute monarchy at all: .ny monarch not bound by positive law would become. tyrant
ThIS line of thought was developed extensively by Parliamentarians in the I~OS (It is found, too, m
Locke). For good prop. ganda reasons the Parliamentarians found it useful to be able to label any theory
of irresistible monarchy
as • theory of arbitrary monarchy or tyranny. Henry Feme (in a passage quoted later] responded
to an effort of this SOrt made by Philrp Hunton, who claimed that the divines' arguments for Charles's
irresisribihry amounted to the view th at he was an absolute, or even an arbitrary, monarch- Hunton,
A Treatise of M0114rcbie (London, '~3), p. 33- From Feme's point of vie..., Hunton SImply
conflared two separate issues: resistance and the extent of royal authoriry, Reading early Stuart divine-
right theory as • theory of absolutism is to interpret it in accordance WIth later Parliamentarian
propaganda, which attempted to dissolve distinctions between divine-right irresistibdiry, absolute
monarchy, arbitrary monarchy and tyranny.
1. Rawlinson, Vi",,! Rex, pp. 4-16-
3- Foster (ed.) Proceedings in P~rliAmm4 .6.0, ii. J.1B.
4- Sec Abbot's reasons for hISrefusal to license Sibthorpe's sermon, in Rushworth, Hisumcd Collec
turns, i. 434-57, esp. p. 441; also pnnted in Stae Trials, ii, cols, Lf5J-
80.
5. John Buckeridge, A Sermon Preubed .t Hampton Court btf= tbe Kings M4jestu. on T~ tbe
13- of Septemier, Anno 1606{London, (606), sig.
A3-
6. Robert Wulan, C(}nspmlCl~against Kings, HeatJOTlSScome: A Sermon Preecbed at Westminsur-Abbry
btf= tbeJwdg<!$. "fJ07I tbe Fifth
of N~ 1612 (London, .&2), p_B_
EHR Oct. 92
1992 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF ICINGS RECONSIDERED 851
with cheerefull obedience, and with willing Tribute'.! The claim that
subjects had a duty to pay tribute willingly was a commonplace of divine
right sermons. Few who made it got into the trouble of William Beale,
who was charged in the Short Parliament with having preached in 1635
that 'taxes and subsedyes, tonnage and poundage ... are the Kings Absolu
tely ... as absolutely as his crowne and likewise or [sic] selves our goods
our servants, our children'.'

There is, however, nothing inherently controversial in all of this. On
the whole, to misappropriate a remark by Professor Collinson, these
sermons 'neither intended to provoke nor were in fact provocative."
As James I himself indicated, it was a general truth in divinity that
subjects had a duty to render unto Caesar; but it was also true that in
any settled nation there were particular channels through which this
duty was to be performed. In England the chief channel was Parliament.
Most state ments about this duty say very little: Buckeridge's, for
example, was a passing explication of the statement in Romans, IJ: 5-
6, that for con science' sake tribute was to be paid. Indeed, his remarks
were little more than a paraphrase of the text, and could be rephrased in
terms that carried very different connotations than those read into the
passage cited above:
'Kings are hired by tribute and custome by governing to serve their
servants and subjects." The remark quoted from Willan was an aside
in a discussion of King Jesus, and Edward Reynolds' comment a vague
and conventional expression of the duty to honour one's ruler. To say
that subjects had a duty to render tribute willingly did not imply that
the king had a right to extract it forcibly or wantonly. General statements
of the subjects' duty to pay tribute to their king did not amount to
an attack on the principle of taxation by consent, for they did not impair
l. Edward Reynolds, The Shzdtks of the Earth. A Sermon Preached befo", the R~ Judges, SIT R
ubard Huuon, snd SIT Georg< Crooke, it! the ASSlzt5 Holden ~l North-hampton: February '5, 16J.4 (London,
16;6), p.zo.
2. Esther S. Cope and Willson H. Coates (ed.), Proceedings of the Short Perliament of 1~0 (London,
Camden Soc., 4th Ser., vol. XIX, 1977), P 186; d. Judith D. Maltby (ed.), The Short Psriument (l~o}
Diary of SIT 7ho1Tl4S Anon (London, Camden Soc, +th Ser., vol. Xl<XV, 1988),p. Ill. The report of
the sermon was given by John Pyrn. There is, however, much more to the Beale case than this, and
he comes closer than most to fimng Into Sommerville'. categories. Conrad Russell has suggested hLS
unrypicaliry (The F,.// of the British Mon..rcIms, 16J7-1~ [Oxford, 1991), p. 116 and n. 14+). In The
Poluus of the Arnunt Consutuuon, ch. 7, I recount Beale's story at some length, arguIng that he was
used in I~O-I as a weapon in the attempt to lmk the Laudian Cburch with absolutist politics, and
pointing out how little other evidence there was to sustain such a
charge.
J. Patrick Collinson, The Reugion of Protestants: The Chwrch in Engluh Soony, 15~1615(Oxford,
198», p. 18. Collinson's remark refers to Jacobean statements on the relationship between monarchy
and episcopacy. My argument on divine-right politics is analogous to his (ibid. esp. pp. 10, 12-lJ): on
both subjects there has been a tendency to read general statements about the basis of authority as
if they were statements about the modes of operation of that authority, and a tendency to play down
the conventionality of Jacobean thought and Its links wuh the Elizabethan past.
4. Buckeridge, Sermon Pmtched it! Hampton Court. ... 1606, sig. AJV.
EHR Oct. 92
852 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED October
the principle (which James reiterated later in his 1610 speech") that it
was the law itself which defined what taxes, subsidies and tribute were.'
What needs particular stress is how uncontroversial most statements
of the king's divine right to receive tribute were. Provided that some
basic rules of usage were observed there was nothing objectionable in
such claims. This is apparent from an examination of the most contro
versial of all the sermons addressed to the issue of taxation, those

preached in 1627 to support the forced loan.' Two of these sermons
aroused considerable hostile comment; two more of them, however,
did not. It is interesting to note what distinguished the two groups: the
sermons by Matthew Wren and Isaac Bargrave were unremarkable and
uncontro versial; but those by Manwaring and Sibthorpe transgressed the
unwritten rules governing the use of divine-right theory. Wren's
sermon did not address the m~tter of finance at all. It was on the text
'Fear God, my son, and the King' [proverbs, 24:21], and confined itself
to an assertion of the need for complete obedience to kings.'
Similarly, Bargrave preached against rebellion and in favour of
'obedience the chiefest of the morall vertues', Again, there was no
explicit mention of tribute, and the sermon aimed many of its blows at
Catholicism, contrasting Catholic politics with the sound doctrines of
Calvin and Luther.' There was little to distinguish this sermon from
one Bargrave delivered three years earlier, which was also an attack on
the politics of Popery."
If these sermons were quite unremarkable, the same could not be said
for those of Robert Sibthorpe and Roger Manwaring." These men got
I. See particularly his comment that it would be absurd for kings to neglect the law since it defined
property rights, including their own right to inherit the crown: 'Speach of XXI. March 1609 [1610]',
p.5Jl.
2. See also the message that lames delivered to Parliament, vi. hi, Lord Treasurer, Salisbury, on
8 March 1610: "That the king m.y take subsidi es without the consent of his people, he condemns
the doctrines as absurd and him rhat maintains the posinon, The marriage between law and prerogative
is inseparable': Foster (ed.), Pro=dmgs in Parliament; 1610,ii. 50; also i. )1 (where subsidi es are also
said to 'proceed out of the love and affection of his people', the only claim that many other divine-right
theorists were actually making); and S.1t Gardiner (ed.), Perliementsry v.bau:s in 1610(London,
Camden
Soc., rst Ser., vol. lxrxi, 1852), p. >+
3- See Cust, Forced Lean, esp. pp. 62ff; also id., 'Charl es I, the Pnvy Council, and the Forced Loan',
[oumel 0/ Bruish SuuiIeS, niv (1985),208-)5.
4- Matthew Wren, A Sermon Preacbed btf= the Kzngs MAjt:slie on Sund.ry the SnJmumth 0/ ~ry
1As~ III wmu.H~ (Cambridge, 1627), passim, esp. 1'1'. 3Off.
5. Isaac Bargrave, A Sennon F'r<ached btf07Y! King Charles, Mn-ch '7' 1627-Eking the Anntvmary of
bis ~ l"""gI<raIUm (London, 1627), pp. 5-6,17,18-19.
6. Id., A Sermon Preabed 1407Y!the Honorable AssmJiy ... of the Louer House of Psriiameru: hbn...ry
the La: 162)b6"Lfl{London, 1624), esp. pp. 5-6,21-5, )4-5·
7. Probably the most accessiblematerial on the reaction to the sermons of Sibthorpe and Manwaring
is that In Stau Truls, ii, cols, '450-80; iii, cols, m-s8. This IS mostly reprinted from Rushworth. For
Charles', proclamation (~ June 1628) calling in Manwaring's work, see James F. Larkin (ed.), StN.rt
Royal ProcJ.malions. Vol. II: Rcryrd Prodsmstions of King Charks I, 1625-1646(Oxford, 198)),pp. 197-8.
There is further material in R. C. Johnson ~ ..I. (ed.), Ccmmoru Debate: 1618(4 vols., New Haven,
1977), ii. 86, 89, 92, 219; iii. 261-2, 404-16, 419, 429, 491, 512, 623-4, 633; iv. )6-7, )9, 45. 68, 90, 92,
101-), 210, 280-.., 307-28, 40J; M. F. Keeler et ..I. (ed), Lords Prrxeadmgs, 1618(New Haven, 198)), Pl'.
58>-5, 596, 6os-7, 612-'4, 621-2, 628, 6)5-7, 6.}2-.., 146-7, 6s4, 660-), 672, 678, ~-6. See also Harry
F. Snapp, 'The Impeachment of Roger Maynwaring', Hsntmgton 1...ibr4ryQlucrterly, XIX (191)6-7), 217-)1;
and Somerville, Poluia end Ideology, pp 127-)1.
EHR Oct. 92
into trouble not for espousing the doctrine of the divine right of kings,
but for misapplying it. Both of them addressed too specifically the ques
tion of taxation and deduced from the general principle of divine right
conclusions that were properly matters of law rather than of divinity.
It was the maintenance of this boundary that kept others out of trouble.
Sibthorpe, for example, was rather too explicit about the financial impli
cations of divine-right kingship, specifying the types of taxes to which

the Crown was entitled, and asserting that even 'an immoderate, yea
an unjust Taxe' was to be paid for conscience' sake. Even worse, Sibthorpe
implied there was no real difference between the power to tax possessed
1
by ordinary kings and that possessed by conquerors. Manwaring added
a further element that perhaps accounts for the greater vehemence in
the parliamentary pursuit of him in 1628. Like Sibthorpe, he said that
'to Kings therefore ... nothing can be denyed ... that may further the
supply of their Urgent Necessities'; but unlike Sibthorpe he went on
to question the role of Parliament in assenting to taxation. The king's
right to tax, he said, gained nothing from Parliament; its function was
to serve 'for the more equall Imposing, and more easie Exacting of that,
which, unto Kings doth appertaine, by Natural! and Originall Law, and
Justice'.2 To assert a vague duty to pay tribute to kings was one thing;
but the claims of Sibthorpe and Manwaring were categorically different
from the other statements cited above. The former pair used divine-right
theory not as a theory of obligation, an explanation for the duties owed
by subjects to their sovereigns; but as something like a theory of sover
eignty, deducing from divine-right assumptions statements about the
actual mode of operation of royal power that ought to have been left
to the law (as James I had stated so clearly). The most important thing
to note about Sibthorpe and Manwaring is their untypicality. They stand
out as controversial because they used divine-right theory directly to
attack constitutional assumptions. Most others did not. They are, then,
the exceptions that prove the rule.
A similar argument can be constructed with reference to the claims
made by divine-right theorists about the relationship between the king
and the law. The claim that all law was the king's law, and that it was
the king who made law, was in general terms quite unexceptionable.
It was, indeed, a commonplace of English legal thought. On the whole,
divine-right theorists were careful to avoid stepping across the line that
divided the acceptable generalization from the unacceptably specificclaim.
Witness, for example, William Dickinson, one of Margaret Judson's
sover eignty theorists.' It is true that Dickinson remarked, in
passing, that
I. Robert Sibchorpe, ApostoIJee Obedsence, Sb=tng the Duty of subJtct.s to PItY Tnbete snd T=
to their Princes; According to the WanI of God, in the U,f1I and the Gospell; lind the Ruks of Rdigion
.nd <At. of Conscience (London, 1627), pp. 4-18. The full title is wonh nOtlng, for it makes plain
Sibchrope's attempt to deduce kgaI conclusions from premisses of divinity.
1. Roger Manwaring, Rdigion lind AkgUna: In TfDOSermons Preabed btfort the King< MJ.pie (Lon
don, (627), i. 20, 26.
J. Judson, emu of the Consututxon,pp. 2JJ-1.4.
EHR Oct. 92
the power to judge is one 'which out of its owne absolutenes serteth
downe a Law', though the exact relation of this remark to the kings
of England was vague.' More interesting, however, is this:
So it is in the Republike, the King is not limited, his power is diffused through
the whole and every particular, and according to the instruments hee works
by, so is his power denominated. Inthe Chauncery hee is called Lord
Cbauncelor, in other counsJudge,Justice, and so of the rest.'

Dickinson's starting-point was an analogy between God and the king:
both were the first movers of all authority in their dominions. But clearly,
in practice, Dickinson saw that the king's authority was exercised through
a variety of legal channels. He was the first mover, but not the instrument.
The authority wielded by his instruments was always the king's, but
he was not usually the effective agency of his own authority.' The
point was not in any way to challenge the operation of England's ancient
constitution, but to ensure its compatibility with the principle that Eng
lish kings ruled by divine right. Dickinson's comments are quite compar
able to those made in a speech by Sir Edward Coke on 6 May 1628
which began by saying of the king that 'in him is all the confidence
we have under God. He is God's lieutenant. Trust him we must'; and
moved on to insist that the king's response to grievances must follow
proper legal forms.'
Some clerical statements of political theory illustrate even more clearly
the attempt to maintain a consensual position. An instructive example
is Calybute Downing. He was not only a clergyman, but a trained civil
lawyer, and so sits on the border that divides divine-right theory from
civil law 'absolutism'. Downing can easily be made to sound like an
absolutist", but his writings were much more subtle than that. 'All
supreame Dominion in a Monarchie is attained by conquest or
succession, or obtained by election', Downing wrote. For
Sommerville, Downing opted firmly for the English king as possessor of
the rights of an absolute conqueror. In fact, what he wrote was that
the English king has 'all these rights conjoyned'. Sommerville quotes
Downing's statement that
'our present gratious Soveraigne hath it by lineall succession from an
absolute Conquerour'; but not its continuation, ' ... and all was made
sure unto him by the elective assent of the supreame Nobility." The
l. Wtllwn Dickinson, The Kmg> Rigbt; Bnqdy Sa Doume In " Sermon Preecbed be/ort the Reverend
judges at the A= hdd '" Reading ... j~ 28. 1619(London, [6[9), Slg.BJ.
2. Ibid., sigs. 4v·D[
J. Cf. James I, 'Speach in the Starre-Chamber', W",*,>, p. 150='In ill well setl-d Monarchies
... Judgement ISdeferred from the King to his subordinate Magistrates.'
4. Johnson et.d. (ed.), o,mmvnJ Debrtus, 1628, iii 271-2.
I· Sommerville, Politics and ldtoiogy, pp. J7, 68; d. pp. 74, So, on Downing's espousal of resistance
theory in [~.
6. Calybure Downing, A Discourse of the State Ecclesiasuod of tbis Kingdo-=, in Relaum to the Cnnll
(Oxford, [6]2), p. ~. Contrast james I's own verdict, in hIS letter rejecung the proposed Canons of
[606, that 'the crown is mine by ill rights but that of conquest': John Overall, The Q,nvocacwn Book
of MIXVl, Commonly Celled Bishop Ooerell's Q,nvocatum Book (Oxford, [~), p. 7. Further, on the
complicated pattern of uses of conquest theory, see Sommerville, 'History and Theory'
EHR Oct. 92
work is replete with statements which mitigate whatever practical effect

Downing's remarks on conquerors might have had. He did say that 'the
power of an absolute Prince is above all Lawes', but this was with
specific reference to their power to grant privileges. Elsewhere, Downing
sounded a rather different note. King John, he said, 'could not grant
anything in prejudice of the whole state, without the consent Regni
universitatis, (as Mathew Paris tearmeth the Parliament)'; episcopacy
he defended as

'received with an universalI consent and desire of all, and hath its right
according to the laws'; England, he wrote, was 'a free Monarchie, erected
and protected by free consent, and of long continuance, not imposed
but confirmed and reformed to the first freedome by a happy conquest'.
The echoes in this of the common-law mind were even clearer in Down
ing's aside about the laws of England 'which by reason of their long
use, are as it were naturalized, into the manners and disposition of our
nation".' It seems that Downing was simultaneously a theorist of divine
right monarchy, of government by consent, and of the ancient constitu
tion.
The lesson which might be drawn is that there is need for considerable
care in interpreting the political claims actually being advanced by divine
right theory. Their practical implications were usually unclear, perhaps
deliberately so: as in the case of Robert Willan who said that kings were
above law, only to add immediately that nevertheless 'their humilitie
respects it', and to comment with some opacity that with regard to 'estates
and livelihoods ... the power over it is in the King, the property in
his Subjects, the tuition in his Lawes, the fruition their owne'r' But
in fact, as Margaret Judson has noted, most divine-right sermons and
tracts said little about the king and the law at all. This she finds surprising.'
Even the examples she does produce amount to little: they are
mostly conventional statements of the king's immunity from other coer
cive human authority (which no one would have questioned), or state
ments of his general powers as a law-giver," It was only when divine-right
theory was brought to address specificlegal issues, as it was with
Sibthorpe and Manwaring, that it ever proved controversial.
Manwaring's legal theory, at least, did go beyond the norm, asserting
with a dangerous specificity the binding force of sovereign will and of
commands contrary to positive law." He, and possibly Sibthorpe too,
are good examples of men who can plausibly be seen (in Sommerville's
I. Dowmng, DtK(}I<~ 0/ the Sut» Ecdesiastic.d, pp. 91, 57, 29, J, ~.

2. Willm, Conspirecie"grunst Kings, HeI.VmJ Scome, pp. 26-7
J. Judson, Crisis of the Constiuaion, pp. 195-6·
4- Ibid., pp. 1!16-202; see also Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, pp. 34-9, a list that also includes
its fau share of the plautudinous.
5. Manwaring,Religion ..ndAlegi.ma, i. 17-20.
EHR Oct. 92
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF lUNGS RECONSIDERED October
terms) as theorists of absolutism by divine right. For this reason, Sommer
ville's account of them may indeed be superior to Allen's;' yet both
accounts seem to miss the untypicality of the pair, commented on above.
There are very few divine-right theorists whose ideas were at all close
to those of Manwaring and Sibthorpe - William Beale may be one, but
others are difficult to find.2 Consequently, the interesting question to
ask about Manwaring and Sibthorpe is whether their sermons marked
a general change in the tone of early Stuart political thinking, the rise

of an Arminian political theory.' The question is too big a one to
answer here, but a number of points should be noted. Firstly, there
is no evidence that Sibthorpe and Manwaring were Arrninian.' Secondly,
there is very little sign before the Civil War, in sermons or tracts, of
the use of divine-right theory for purposes different from those in the
Jacobean period, except in the caseof Sibthorpe and Manwaring. Thirdly,
however, there is some sign of change in the polemical focus of divine
right theory, from aJacobean situation where it was primarily anti-Catho
lic or at best even-handed in its condemnation of Roman and Genevan
politics," to a situation in which it became implicated in an attempt
to tar Puritanism with imputations of political disloyalty. If we compare
the sequence of sermons to Parliament by James Ussher (1621), Isaac Bar
grave (1624), and William Laud (1626 and 1628), we see continuities,
especially a stress on the importance of unity. But whereas the two earlier
sermons aimed their barbs at Catholicism almost entirely, Laud pulled
back on the anti-Catholicism and heightened the anti-Puritanism." If
there was change, then, one might suggest that it was not in doctrine,
but in polemical focus." The actual political beliefs of Caroline church-
I. Compare Sommerville, Poluus end Ideology, pp. 127-31,with Allen, English Poltucal Thought,
PP·176-80·
2. On Beale, see above p. 851, n. 2. He was reponed to hove argued 'that the King might constitute
Lawes what, whe re, when, and og[amst)t whom hee would .. .', Cope and Coates, Proceedings of
tbe Short Pariument, p. 185.
J. Cf. J. S. MorriU, &umumth Century Britain; 160]-1714 (Folkestone, 1980), pp. 57-8.
-4 Nichol as Tyacke, Arui-Cdomtsts: The Rue of Engluh Anrnn",rnsm, c. 15!J<rI~0 (Oxford, 1987),
P·159·
5. See the neat formulauon of David Owen, Herod lind Pilate Reconciled: Or, The Concord of Pspu:
and Puritan ... for the Coercion, Deposiuon; and Killing of Kings (Cambridge, 1610),sig. "2; also id.,
Arui-Paraus; or, A T~ in tht D.fonce of tht Royr<llRight of Kings \'iork, 1142), sigs. BI-B3v.
6. lames Ussher, 'A Sermon preached before the Commons House of Parliament ... the 18th of
February, 1620 [1621]',in The Wbok Worb ... of Jmu:s Ussber, ed. C. R. Elrington and 1. H. Todd
(17 vols., Dublin, 1!47~), ir, -415-V,Bargrave, Sermon Pretzch«J btfort tbe H01lOJIrahk A;smzbly; The
Worb of the Most R~ Faber In God, WJlittm lAud D. D., ed. W. Scott and J. Bliss (7 vols ,
Oxford, 1147-60),i. 91-117,4?-8l.
7. This would seem to fit weU the picture being drown of the artirudes to puritan conspiracy found
amongst some of Chari",', advisers from the lore 16zos in such works OS L J. Reeve, O>.rrks I and
the Road to Personal RNk (Cambridge, 19B9).and Richard Cust, 'Charles I and a Draft
Declaration for the 1618Parliament', Historical Rt5NrCh,lriii (1990),143-61.
EHR Oct. 91
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF K.INGS RECONSIDERED
men seem little different from those of their Jacobean predecessors,

Calvi
nist and non-Calvinist alike.'
To conclude this discussion it is necessary to attempt to specify

something of the rules governing the uncontroversial use of the theory of
the divine right of kings in early Stuart England, and its relations with
other forms of political discourse found in the period.' The divine

right of kings was an uncontroversial theory, and was not seen as
threatening to custom ary constitutional practice, provided that it was
used within certain tacitly recognized boundaries and restricted to a place
on the edge of civil politics. The theory of divine right had a range of
accepted uses. The first was to demonstrate, as a conclusion of
divinity, the duty that subjects had to obey their rulers. John
Buckeridge summed up the claim:
For the King is first among men, and next, or second to God; neither Pope
nor people stand berweene God and the King: For he is Gods Minister, not
mans. He is superiour and above all men, and inferiour, and under God onely.
Hee hath no equall in earth, and no superiour, but in Heaven; greater than
all men, and solo Deo minor, lesser then God onely, from whom he
immediately receives his power over all men, and all sorts of men, Priest
and people, in all causes Civill and Spiriruall.'
At this level of generality the assertion contained no implications threaten
ing to the common-law mind, and aroused no hostility. It received classic
expression in the homilies on obedience and rebellion, and formed one
of the main lines of attack on the sin of rebellion.' Here obedience
was a moral duty; more overtly political was the use of divine-right
theory against claims for resistance, its main political use in the seven-
I. There is, though, a need for a dew led srudy of the political thought of WilIWn Laud. Arguably,
the best account remains W. H. Hutton, WillIAm LAud (jrd edn., London, 1905), ch. 4- Lick of detailed
guidance on the subject can lead even the best astray. One recent historian, for example, has cited
as Laud's a remark found in his famous table of English Parliaments and their doings ([public Record
Office] SP I6I96IJI - some insight into the point behind this compilation rrught be had from the
document produced at about the same time in which Laud listed the arguments for and ag:unst calling
a Parliament, ibid. 1619+,88), which say, of Magna Carta that it 'had an obscure birth from usurpation:
IlLwas fostered and shewed to the World by Rebellion': Malcolm Smuts, Court eutun-. and tbe Origlns
of a Royalist Tradition in &:rly Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 273. The remark, like many
of the annotations from this document, is in fact a quotation from Sir Walter Ralegh, 'The Prerogative
of Parliaments in England' (1628), in his Work>, ed, Willwn Oldy, and Thomas Birch (8 vols., Oxford,
1829), viii. 16I.
2. This concluding section draws upon perspectives developed at grealer length in my Politics of
the A ncient Consutuuon, esp, part
II.
3 John Buckeridge, A Sermon Preabed btf= His ~ at Whiuh.ll, M..rrh 21. 1617 (London,
1618), p. <4. Examples of the use of divine-right theory to express a general obligation of obedience
can ~ multiplied endlessly: e.g. Humphry Sydenham, Mose and Aaron: or, The A/ftnme of QvJ1 and
EcdesWstidee PO'!«r (London, 1626), p. 5; Buckeridge, A Sermon Preabed at Hampton Cm..-t, sigs. AJ,
Clv: Henry Valentine, God s.w tbe King. A Sermon Preecbed in 51 Pa.Js Cbwrch tk 17th of MArch.
16)9 (London, 1639),pp. 3-8, 28; Willan, Conspirecie AgtUnst Kings, Ht!I.'!JmJScome, p.
z+
4. M. E. Rickey and T. B. Stroup (ed.), Certane Sermons or Homilies ... A Faavnik Reproducuon
of the Eduion of 162) (Gainesville, Fl., 1968), i. 6ty-n; ii. 275-)ll. For further material, see Richard
L. Greaves, 'Concepts of Political Obedience in LIte Tudor England', joll77lll1 of Briusb Studies, xxii
(1982), 2J-J4; and Gordon J. Schocher, 'Patriarchalisrn, Politics and Mass Attitudes in Stuart England',
Historical joumal, xii (191'9), 412-41.
EHR Oct. 92
teenth century as it had been under the Tudors. Throughout the early
Stuart period preachers attacked doctrines of resistance, but the works
in which they did so seldom strayed across the boundary that divided
expression of the duty to obey from expression of absolute sovereignty.
There were, of course, particular times when the issue of resistance
became a pressing one, most noticeably after the Scottish rebellion.
Thomas Mor ton, a veteran of Jacobean anti-Catholicism, preached on the
text Romans IJ:I at Durham on 5 May 1639.' But just as in 1605, in

the midst of his learned attack on Catholic resistance theory, Morton
could assert that 'the King is established in his Throne by common
consent of the kingdome", so in 1639 he maintained that the kings of
England ruled by consent but with divine authority.' Others at this time
were possibly more virulent in their condemnation of resistance, but
just as careful to confine their criticism to that doctrine alone,
though condemning it in both its Catholic and Calvinist forms (the latter
symbolized especially by Buchanan).' Constitutional royalism, as it
has been called, has its deep roots precisely in early Stuart divine-right
theory; and the precision of Henry Ferne in 1643 would have been
applauded by James I:
It was never my intent ... to plead for absoluteness of power in the King,
if by absoluteness of power be meant (as it should be) a power of arbitrary
command, but if by absoluteness of power this Author means (as he doth
sometimes) a power not to be resisted or constrained by force of arms raised
by subjects, such a power we plead for.'
Much more interesting, however, than these commonplaces was an
additional area in which divine-right theory seems to have had an accept
able place: ecclesiology. Many of the most debated expressions of the
divine right of kings were in fact asides in works devoted to issues of
episcopal jurisdiction and church government." In this context divine
right kingship could serve a number of purposes. One was to support
I. Thomas Morton, A Sermon Preabed bq= tbe Kmgs most Excellent M.JfSlU, In the CAthedral!
CJnmh of Durbam: Upon S"ndsy, Eking the Fifth Day of Miry 1639 (London, [639). Before pubhcanon,
Morton's sermon W:lS tampered with by Laud, in order to remove statements too ~ne.rous to Presbyterian
ecclesiology and citations of Calvin's poliucal teaching: SP [6/437/56; q.JmdAr of] S{lAU}
p{a/1=}D{om. esuc]; 1639-40, pp. 212-[3.
1. Thomas Morton, An fuel Dtscooene of Romub Doctrine In the Ccse of Conspirsae and Rebellion
(London, [605), p. [5·
} Morton, Sermon Prescbed bq~ the Kmgs most Erct/Iml~, esp. pp. 9-[1. He W:lS also careful
to drstinguish the rebel, condemned by scripture, from 'he that obeyeth not' (pp. [3-[+).
+. For example Valenune, God .s;."" the King, pp. 1C>-II,16-7; and Henry King, A &rmon Preecbed
at St P..Js March 27. 16.j.o. &mg ~ Amut!I.'7"Sa1)Iof Hu M4jest<es HII/lPY lnawgwr= to his Crown<
(London, [640), pp
5~.
5. Henry Ferne.vt Rqiy"ntoSeveral T~(Oxford, [643), p. u.
6. Of the works cited above, the following are primarily ecclesiological: Coke on Caudrey's Case;
Fiennes ([Ii+t); Wilkes ([60s); Heylyn ([637); Buckeridge ([606); Downmg ([6}l); Sydenlum ([616). Many
of the remainder we", general statements of the subjects' duty of obedience, There are num<IQUSother
examples of the use of divine-right theory as an adjunct to ecclesiological debate: e.g. George
Carleton, [urisdicuon R~ Episcopell; papt<ll (London, [6[0), esp. pp. 3'-1, more generally chs. 3 and ~
Richard
Field, Of the Cburcb (London, [606-[0); and Thomas Jackson, 'A Treatise of Christian Obedience'
(first pub!. [67), but written perhaps Co [630), in The W",*, of 7borrw.s}.ckm. D.o. ([1 vols., Oxford,
[!44), xii, [85-14}
EHR Oct. 91
the argument, against some varieties of puritan opinion, that bishops

rightly possessed powers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, conveyed to them
by the king. With a monarchy clearly committed to the institution of
episcopacy, the divine right of kings could be shared in by the Church,
even in its temporal aspect. More important than this, as a special adjunct
to the attack on resistance theory, was the use of divine-right monarchism
to buttress the claim that kings had coercive jurisdiction over priests (and

more particularly that priests did not have coercive authority over kings),
used for anti-Catholic purposes by Buckeridge in 1606 or Carleton in
1610, and for anti-Presbyterian purposes by Heylyn in 1637 or Morton
in 1639.1But the point of this ecclesiological argument was not to mag
nify royal authority or to assert a royal power to govern without law.
It was simply to keep royal authority superior to all other human auth
ority. The purpose of the theory remained primarily what it had been
for Richard Bancroft, when, in 1593, he had signalled the new rigour
with which all theoretical avenues to resistance would be closed OfI.2
There was, however, another face to the view that the clergy, like the
laity, were at least temporally subservient to a divine-right monarch.
The controversial Canons of 1640, which contained a strong expression
of the divine right of kings, attracted criticism more for their perceived
undermining of royal authority than for elevating it.' Divine-right
theory had another implication, reflected in Fiennes' invocation of imper
ial monarchy in 1641: it might be used to argue for the mutability of
church government. Hence critics of the 1640 Canons argued that the
et cetera oath would bind them to resist changes to ecclesiastical order
1. Buckendge, &mum Preached i!t Hampton Court, sigs. CI, CIV-C2, C3V If.; Heylyn, Brief« and
ModerdU Ans!«T, pp. 61f., ch. 5; Carleton, [unsdutum, chs. 3, +- Carleton, of course, was very
careful to delineate the boundary between the authonry of the king and that of the bishop, and to
preserve a spiritual authority in the bishops that could be used agamst the king (ibid., pp 4-4--6); but
this should not be seen out of perspective. The book's central object is to rule out any clericisr
resistance theory, and its final chapter is a lengthy refutation of the claim that the Church possesses
coercive jurisdiction over pnnces. For discussion of Carleton, see WtllIarn Lamont, Godly Rule Poliua
and RelIgion, 16o}-60
(London, 1969), pp . .J6-4[; Colhruon, RdlguJTJ of Protestants, pp. 3-4. CZ-lC; and [d. 'If Constantine,
then also Theodosius', pp. [}l-3; but d. J. P. Sommerville, 'The Royal Supremacy and Episcopacy
"Jure DIVIno"', [ournsl of Ecdesusuod HIStory, uxiv ([983), j4S-j8; also, more broadly, id., Poluics
end Ideology, ch. 6.
2. Richard Bancroft, lJdng=>us Posuions snd Proceeding; Publzskd end Prectised smthin tins Ilend
of Brytaine (London, [59). The essential object of Bancroft's criticism was the Genevan view that 'if
Kinges and Princes refused to refourrne Religion, the inferior magistrates or P"DP'e, by direction of
the ministene, might lawfullie, & ought (u need required) even by force & arrnes, to reform it
themselves' (p. 9). He then spent great effort demonstrating that this doctrine infected the British
Isles, thanks largely to the Scots and their English followers.
3 The Canons are reprinted In Works of .. Wzl/!4m Uud, v. 607-)3; see esp, Canon I, pp. 6[3-[5·
For criticism of the Canons as derogatory to the royal prerogative, see Rushworth, Historical Co/lemons,
iii. [209. t207, 1205,[354;IV.35%CSPD, 1/£fo, p. 616;and note that Joseph Hall's defence of the Canons
shows no inclination to defend their divine-righr polnical doctrine: 'A Speech in Parliament in Defence
of the Canons made in Convocation', in Philip Wynter (ed.), Tbe Worb of the RightR~ Joseph
Hsll; D.D. (new edn .•Oxford, 186). viii. 2;r8-8I.More generally, I remain persuaded of the perspectives
advanced in William Lamont, Ricberd Baxter end the Mtllmmum: Protestent Impenalism end the English
Reoolsuon (London, (979), ch. 1, ....hich reveals some of the ways in which the Civil War was not
an anti-authoritarian srruggle, but a battle in defence of true authority.
£HR Oct. 92
860 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED October
that the king could legitimately make (and which some, no doubt, hoped
he would make).
Most important in the end, though, is understanding not what divine
right theory could be used to do without controversy, but what it could
not do. It was not a language appropriate for addressing specific legal
questions involving prerogatives and liberties; and when it was used as
such (or even, as with Harsnett, when there was an appearance of its

being so used) controversy was likely to result. It is, of course, impossible
to demonstrate what a theory does not do, but a sense of the limited
field within which the theory of the divine right of kings operated may
be gleaned from the nearest thing we have to an 'official' statement of
it. This was Richard Mocket's Deus & Rex (1615), translated into English
as God and the King in the same year, and commended by James to
his subjects on 8 November 1615 as suitable for instructing youths in
the duty of allegiance.' Mocker's work was devoted to demon
strating the two points that the king had no superior but God, and
that the bond of allegiance with his subjects could never be dissolved.
It was primarily aimed at the political claims of Roman Catholicism,
and a defence of the Oath of Allegiance. There is almost nothing in
it to worry the common-law constitutionalisti; its arguments were on
another plane entirely. Primarily, it was a work of controversial theology.
This is not an exhaustive catalogue of uses (and non-uses) of divine-
right theory; but it is adequate to suggest a number of conclusions.
Firstly, that the theory of the divine right of kings was a consensual
position and was uncontroversial provided a number of conditions
were met. One of these was crucial: the theory could not be used to
justify specific royal powers in civil matters. That was a matter of law,
and it was for infringing this condition that Sibthorpe and Manwaring
were attacked. It is quite remarkable how few others did so before the
Civil War. A close examination of most of the statements of the divine
right of kings shows that they were in fact statements of a general
duty to obey, or to render duty willingly, and avoided specific
indication of what that might entail. There is also evidence, as we
have seen, that advocacy of the divine right of kings did not preclude
belief in the view that kings should rule through the common law.
Secondly, the language of divine right had two perfectly legitimate
uses. It could be used to justify the duty of obedience, and more
specifically to condemn resistance theory. And secondly, it could be
used in ecclesiological argument, both to con demn the idea of an
independent secular authority resident in the Church and not derived
from the king (and this was but another facet of the
I. lames F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (ed.), Suart. Royal Prodemsuons. Vol. 1: Royal Prodsmaions
o{KingJ= I, rooJ-r62f(Oxford, 197J), pp. 355-6·
2. The nearest we get to an exception is the ~ rummarizing Romans IJ:6 that talks of rendering
*
obedience to the prince 'by paytng tribute unto him for his Regall support': Richard Mocker, God
ami King(London, (615), p. J4 - but like so many similar remarks, it IS the bland statement of
a moral duty, not a legal argument.
EHR Oct. 92
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS RECONSIDERED 861
condemnation of resistance theory), and to suggest more loosely the
dependence of the Church on the secular power, whether this was a
technique (as with Heylyn) for accusing critics of the Church of sedition,
or (in the early 1640S) for arguing that the form of church government
could lawfully be altered. By that time there were attempts to appropriate
the divine-right authority of kings over their churches for use (even con
trary to the king's personal wishes) against the divine right of bishops.'
We should always remember, however, that the performance of none

of these tasks required a theory of absolute sovereignty by divine right,
and that there is little evidence of divine-right theorists' concern to pro
duce such a theory.'
There are senses in which the realms of law and theology were concep
tually distinct in early Stuart discourse', and it is only by taking theologi
cal statements of the duty to obey as if they were statements designed
to answer legal questions that one can make a case for the existence
of absolutism by divine right in the political thought of the period. The
evidence suggests that we should not do this. The divine right of kings
was a theory that most properly formed one branch of controversial
theology, and it should not be interpreted as something else. Instead,
historians might take more notice of James I's instructions to his Parlia
ment in 16IO about how to read Bishop Harsnerr's sermon, and apply
them more widely. If there was a 'consensus' in early Stuart political
and constitutional discourse, it lay here: not in the existence of only
one political language, but in the maintenance of defined roles for, and
boundaries between, a variety of such languages. The language of divine
right was not inherently 'opposed' to the language of common law or
the language of consent, because each had its own sphere within which
it could be used uncontroversially.
University of Canterbury, NZ GLENN BURGESS
l. There nuy be a sense, then, in which some of Charles I' enemies were as indebted !O tho divino
right of king> as Ius friends, for that theory had been crucial In establishing tho subjection of tho
Church and its clergy to temporal authoriry. See also tho suggestive remarks in Edmund S. Morgan,
Inventing the People The Rise of Populsr Sowreignty In Eng/4nd end A17U7UlI (Now York, ,988),
ch. I,on tho ways in which divine-right theory could be US«! to limit royal activiey.
2. Since this mid. was written there has appeared a discussion of tho divine-right theori es of larnos
U', reign which in places parallels the argument here: sec Mark Goldie, 'The Political Thought of
the Anglican Revolution', in The R~tl.01U of 168lt The Andre» Browning i1ctsrm, I!J$8, ed, Raben
Beddard (Oxford, 1991), ch. 2., e.g. remarks on pp. til-fl. I would like to thank Cohn Davis for
bringing these similarities to my attention,
J. See funhcr Burgess,Poluia of the A ncient Consiuuuon,part ii.
EHR Oct. 92

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E.

rtgIuh Hisumod R<Vi=

The English Historical Review

The Divine Right of Kings

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Not all historians have accepted this argument.

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I. Oakley, Omnipotence; Covm.cn4 end Order, ch +0 esp. pp. rnff.

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I. Ibid, pp. 150ff.

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with Augurtmus Triumpbus end *

should have a force superior to that of statute or common law.' Such

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there: by refusing an absolutist reading of divine-right theory the Eliza

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In r605 William Wilkes, Chaplain in Ordinary to James I, declared that

is not onlie royall, but pollitick." To interpret Wilkes's tract as a state

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Divinity and politics were different things. As one contemporary report

1 Ibid., pp. 3J,

do.' Nevertheless, the concrete powers of kings were declared in their

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I. Ibid.; Heylyn, Bn4t and Moderat» A nsuer, p. 179·

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work is replete with statements which mitigate whatever practical effect

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I. Dowmng, DtK(}I<~ 0/ the Sut» Ecdesiastic.d, pp. 91, 57, 29, J, ~.

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men seem little different from those of their Jacobean predecessors,

To conclude this discussion it is necessary to attempt to specify

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the argument, against some varieties of puritan opinion, that bishops

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