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Kingship by Descent or Kingship by Election? The Contested Title of James VI and I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2013

Rei Kanemura
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Abstract

Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, a steady stream of tracts appeared in English print to vindicate the succession of the most prominent contenders, Mary and James Stuart of Scotland. This article offers a comprehensive account of the polemical battle between the supporters and opponents of the Stuarts, and further identifies various theories of English kingship, most notably the theory of corporate kingship, developed by the Stuart polemicists to defend the Scottish succession. James's accession to the English throne in March 1603 marked the protracted end of the debate over the succession. The article concludes by suggesting that, while powerfully renouncing the opposition to his succession, over the course of his attempt to unify his two kingdoms, James and his supporters ultimately departed from the polemic of corporate kingship, for a more assertive language of kingship by natural and divine law.

Keywords

the Elizabethan succession debatetheories of kingshiphereditary monarchysovereigntythe Anglo-Scottish unionJames VI and IEdmund Plowdenthe king's two bodies
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 317 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2013 

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27 The English questioned Lesley's involvement in the Rudolfi Plot. See Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. Hartley, T. E., 3 vols. (Leicester, 1981) 1:271, 272, 320–23, 346–48Google Scholar.

28 There is a manuscript treatise titled “A discors upon certen pointes touching the Enheritaunce of the Crowne: Conceaued by Sir Anthonie Browne Iustice, and aunswered by Sir Nicholas Bacon L: Chancellor of Englande,” MS Harley 537, ART 4 (Harley 555), British Library, reported to be written by Nicholas Bacon. Levine pointed out that the tract was wrongly attributed to Bacon by Booth, Nathanial, The Right of Succession (London, 1723)Google Scholar, and a comparison of the two texts reveals that the tract attributed to Bacon is the second book of Lesley's Defence of Mary and that attributed to Browne is Hales's Declaration. See Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession, 220.

29 Lesley, A defence of the Honor of … Marie, Queen of Scotland (hereafter Defence of Mary) (1566), sig. 61v.

30 Lesley, Defence of Mary, sigs. 68v–69r.

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32 Lesley, Treatise, sigs. D3r, D4v.

33 Lesley, Treatise, sigs. E2r–E3r.

34 The term “corporate sole” was increasingly used to refer to parsons in their inheritance of glebes, but church was not described as a “corporation.” See Maitland, F. W., The Collected Papers of F. W. Maitland, ed. Fisher, H. A. L., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1911), 3:244–70Google Scholar; Maitland, F. W., State, Trust and Corporation, ed. Runciman, David and Ryan, Magnus (Cambridge, 2003), 11–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41 The theory of the king's two bodies was originally advanced by Plowden as part of a legal dispute involving the Duchy of Lancaster in 1561. Marie Axton has most extensively analyzed Plowden's treatise. She argued that Plowden's theory of the two bodies was “popularised,” seeing greater dissemination in theatrical and literary productions as “analogues” for a Stuart succession (Axton, Queen's Two Bodies, 36).

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56 Ibid., ff. 39v–40r.

57 The Parliaments of 1571, 1572, and 1586/87 made many attempts to take matters in hand, and most notably, Lord Burghley William Cecil was prepared to erect a republican council and appoint the heir in case Elizabeth died without children. Many modern studies highlight the incentives of Parliament for their intervention in the succession. See Collinson, Patrick, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994): 51–93Google Scholar; Alford, Elizabethan Polity, 110–15. Alford suggests that Cecil was involved in drafting the proposal as early as 1563.

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67 1 February 1601, ibid., 682.

68 1 February 1603, ibid., 719–23. Also contributing to the course correction was the infanta's husband, Archduke Albert of Austria, who was much more interested in maintaining the Spanish Netherlands than the British Isles.

69 Ibid., 726–27. Recent studies have argued that by appropriating Protestant rhetoric of lawful resistance theories of election, the Conference failed to earn papal support. On 9 December 1596, Thomas Phelips reported to Essex that Persons's book infuriated a papal nuncio, who stated that Persons had ruined himself. It was also said that the “Pope would detest his behaviour, and that he could never have done anything more disgustable to the Pope” (Calendar of Cecil Papers, 6:512–13). For the continental reception of the Conference, also see Tutino, “Parsons's Conference,” 51–56; Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England, 87–88.

70 Peter Wentworth's first tract managed to win Burghley's favor. Neale thought that Wentworth, who had earlier hoped for the Suffolk succession, had been “converted” at least by 1594 to supporting James following Mary's death. See Neale, “Peter Wentworth,” 186–87, 195–98. Collinson further suggested that from extremely “Puritan” motives, Wentworth had decided on James after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. See Collinson, “The Religious Factor,” 243–73. Doran has successfully demonstrated that Wentworth's works, commissioned by the royal printer Robert Waldegrave, were part of James's campaign against Parsons. See Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 99. Also see Hartley, T. E., Elizabethan Parliaments: Queen, Lords and Commons, 1559–1601 (Manchester, 1992), chap. 7Google Scholar. Hartley stresses that as he became “patently” concerned for the succession toward the end of his career, the speech of 27 February 1587 on Parliament's freedom of speech was “undoubtedly a speech for the succession” (137). But Hartley hardly discusses the religious agitation in Parliament that contributed to Wentworth's support for James VI.

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75 Irenicus Philodikaios, A treatise declaring, and confirming the just title and righte of Iames the sixt (1599), sigs. 3r–4v. A manuscript draft survives in Cambridge University Library (MS Ii. IV. 33). The tract was given the first scholarly light by Susan Doran, who dates the work to be between 1598 and 1600. See Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 106–11.

76 Philodikaios, Treatise, sigs. B1.

77 MS Ii. IV. 33, f. 51v, Cambridge University Library.

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89 Cecil to James, Correspondence, 7, 19.

90 Cecil to James, Correspondence, 23.

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97 18 April 1604, Journals of the House of Commons (hereafter CJ), 1:176. All citations from CJ are from the first volume, unless otherwise indicated.

98 CJ, 1:318. All references from the Commons Journal are from this volume.

99 1 Jac. 1 c. 1.

100 James, “Speech, 1607,” Political Writings, 161.

101 See Galloway, Union, 145–47.

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103 For Bacon, the naturalization of Scots was to serve as the springboard for union of laws. See Bacon, Works, 10:314. James's involvement is also testified by Ellesmere in his letter to the king. See Galloway, Union, 149.

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110 ST, cols. 691–92. Louis Knafla has demonstrated Ellesmere's later elaboration of the one body theory. See Knafla, Louis, Law and Politics in Jacobean England: Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (San Marino, 1977), 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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112 ST, col. 629.

113 The thrust of this argument is best exemplified by the civil lawyer John Cowell in his legal dictionary, The Interpreter (1607), which caused uproar in the parliament of 1607. For Cowell and his Interpreter, see Crimes, S. B., “The Constitutional Ideas of Dr. John Cowell,” English Historical Review 64 (1949): 461–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coquillette, D. R., The Civilian Writers of Doctors Commons, London: Three Centuries of Juristic Innovation in Comparative, Commercial and International Law (Berlin, 1988), 79–90Google Scholar.

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115 Collinson, “Monarchical Republic,” 44–50. Burghley and other ministers, against the queen's will, proposed either the continuance of the sitting Parliament or the calling of a new one, which would adjudge claims to the throne together with a ruling council. A bill planning for an interregnum was produced in Parliament in January 1585. These proposals failed to earn approval from the queen or Parliament, but they evince the degree of the readiness of the chief ministers to depart from the standard procedures of hereditary monarchy and accept an elective one. See Collinson, “Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis”; Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 116–18; Alford, Burghley, 124–25, 256, 280–88.

116 Guy, “The 1590s,” 7–9; Peter Lake, “‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited,” in Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, 144–45.

117 McLaren, James's articulation of kingship, 166–70.

118 Pauline Croft, “‘The state of the world is marvellously changed’: England, Spain and Europe 1558–1604,” in Tudor England and Its Neighbours, 139–77.

119 Alan Haynes suggested that James had rather been an “Essexite” than “Cecilian,” whereas Cecil was thought to support the Suffolk candidate Edward Seymour. It was not until the meeting of Cecil and the king's Scottish representatives in 1601 that the secretary made clear his unswerving support for the king. See Robert Cecil: Earl of Salisbury, 1563–1612, the Servant of Two Sovereigns (London, 1989), 88–89. For the specific role of William Cecil, who was convinced that Mary was the greatest threat to Elizabeth's throne, played for her execution, see Alford, Burghley, chap. 18. For Wentworth and his letter to Cecil, see Neale, “Peter Wentworth,” 185. For the puritan motive for the Stuart claim, see Collinson, “Religious Factor.”

120 Jansson, Proceedings 1614, 311.