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The Idea of Absolute Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

James Daly
James Daly
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Abstract

And first, it is necessary that we should agree what we mean by an absolute Monarch, which is indeed a point rather controverted, than clearly decided by any Author, that I have yet met withal. [Thomas Goddard, Plato's Demon, 1684.]

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 227 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

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26 See, for example, the ‘Commons Apology’ of 1604, and James Whitelocke's speech in 1610. Tanner, , Documents, pp. 226, 262.Google Scholar

27 A complete collection of state trials, ed. Howell, T. B. (London, 1816), III, 1146, 1156, 1162Google Scholar, where Justice Croke, in giving judgement for Hampden, covers virtually the whole spectrum of meaning.

28 State trials, III, 37 (Attorney-General Heath), 151 (Sergeant Ashley), 1016–23 (repeatedly, Attorney-General Bankes), 1114 (Justice Berkeley), etc.

29 Chief Justice Finch, in State trials, III, 1226, 1231 (and Holborne, for Hampden, had used the same meanings, pp. 176–9). Digges quoted in Judson, , Crisis, p. 18.Google Scholar

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33 Judson, , CrisisGoogle Scholar, ch. v. It is clear that the divines' use of the term comes much closer than the lawyers' to a general concept of absolutism. See also Allen, , English politicai thought, pp. 161–96.Google Scholar

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74 Bibliotheca politica (1692, etc.), pp. 124–5.

75 Both Anchitell Grey's and William Cobbett's records of the parliamentary debates are remarkably sparse in their mentions of the term. Perhaps the best source for an understanding of the prevalent whig theory is Furley, O. W., ‘The whig Exclusionists: pamphlet literature in the Exclusion campaign, 1679–81’, Cambridge Historical Journal, XIII (1959). 19–36.Google Scholar

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87 Sir Ralph Hopton had called his royalist comrade Godolphin, Sidney ‘as perfect, and as absolute a piece of virtue as ever our country bred’.Google Scholar A half-century later Godolphin would probably have been ‘as absolutely perfect a piece of virtue…’. SirHopton, Ralph, Bellum civile: Hopton's narrative of his campaign in the west (1642–44) and other papers, ed. Healey, C. E. H. C., Somerset Record Society, XVIII (1902), 33.Google Scholar

88 Good examples of such work are: Franklin, Julian H., Jean Bodin and the rise of absolutist theory (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; G. R. Elton, introduction to the Harper Torchbook edition of Figgis, J. N., The divine right of kings (New York, etc., 1965), pp. vii–xxxviiiGoogle Scholar; Cooper, J. P., ‘Differences between English and continental governments in the early 17th century’, in Bromley, J. S. and Kossman, E. H. (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands (London, 1964), pp. 62–90.Google Scholar

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93 Willson, D. H., King James VI and I, p. 51.Google Scholar

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