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The “Political Thought” of the “Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I,” Discovered and Anatomized

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2015

Peter Lake
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Abstract

This paper uses two manuscript tracts to reconstruct the vision of the English polity underpinning Lord Burghley's interregnum proposals of 1584–85. These proposals famously prompted Patrick Collinson's work on “the monarchical republic of Elizabeth I,” which in turn became embroiled in subsequent attempts to recuperate distinctively “republican” strands of thought and feeling in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Written by two clients of central figures in the regime, the two texts are replies to a tract by John Leslie outlining Mary Stuart's claim to the English throne. This tract was republished in 1581 in Latin and then in 1584 in English as part of a Catholic propaganda offensive of the summer of 1584 to which, in turn, the Bond of Association and the interregnum scheme itself were responses. By comparing different versions of the two texts with one another and with Thomas Bilson's later printed tract, The true difference between Christian subjection and unchristian rebellion, something like the structuring assumptions, indeed the political thought, underlying the interregnum scheme can be recovered and analyzed and the republican nature of the monarchical republic assessed in detail for the first time.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 257 - 287
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2015 

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References

1 Collinson, Patrick, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” in his Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994), 31–57Google Scholar; Collinson, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 84 (Oxford, 1994), 51–92Google Scholar.

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5 On the dynamics of which see Mack, Peter, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 6, especially 189–202.

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7 Oxford, Bodleian Library Carte MS 105, fol. 16r. The title of the 1580 Latin edition was De titulo et iure serenissimae principis Mariae Scotorum Reginae quo regni Angliae successionem sibi iuste vendicat (Rheims, 1580).Google Scholar

8 Bodleian Library Carte MS 105, and Northamptonshire Record Office Ms. Fitzwilliam (Milton) Pol. 223.

9 Leslie, John, A defence of the honour of the right high, mighty and noble princess Marie, Queen of Scotland . . . (Rheims, 1569)Google Scholar, STC 15505.

10 British Library Stowe MS 273, fols. 2r–v; Bodleian Carte MS 105, fol. 16r. I cite from the Stowe MS 273 (while also giving folio numbers from the Carte manuscript), since this was the version intended to form part of what looks like a concerted reply to Leslie's tract of 1584. The differences between the two versions are largely minor, consisting mostly of contractions and redactions, and some rearrangement of text. There is, however, one major change, to the very considerable significance of which we shall return below.

11 Sir Anthony Brown was the author of a pro-Marian tract of the 1560s, the arguments of which Leslie closely followed. See Levine, Mortimer, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question 1558–1568 (Stanford, 1966), 94–95.Google Scholar

12 William Allen, A true, sincere, and modest defense of English Catholics . . . (Rouen, 1584); Leslie, John, A treatise touching the right, title and interest of the most excellent princess Mary, queen of Scotland and the most noble king James her grace's son . . . (Rouen, 1584)Google Scholar, STC 15507; The copy of a letter written by a Master of Art of Cambridge … (Rouen, 1584)Google Scholar; for a modern edition, see Peck, Dwight C., ed., Leicester's Commonwealth: The Copy of the Letter Written a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents (Athens, OH, 1985)Google Scholar. Allison and Roger attribute the Leslie tract [no. 503] to the press of George L'Oyselet in Rouen and the Allen [no. 14] to what they term “Father Parsons” press, also in Rouen. For Leicester's Commonwealth, see Peck, ed., Leicester’s Commonwealth, 6–7.

13 There is no satisfactory modern account of the association scheme. See Read, Conyers, Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar, 2:176–239, especially 188, 198–200, 227–29, 239, and 391–99. For two differently skeptical takes on the scheme by Walsingham and Burghley, dated respectively November and December 1584, see London, British Library Cotton MS Caligula CVIII, fols. 184r–194v and fols. 220r–221r.

14 Neale, J. E., Elizabeth and Her Parliaments, 1584–1601 (London, 1957)Google Scholar, chapters 2 and 3. This case will be made in extenso in the published version of the lectures forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

15 Cromartie, Alan, The Constitutional Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge, 2006), 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the earlier debate on the succession of the 1560s, see Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question; Axton, Marie, The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

16 There are complete or partial copies in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL) MS Mm. 6. 70; Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge MS O.1.16 and O.4.13; London, British Library Sloane MS 2716 (dated 1596); London, Inner Temple Petyt MS 538.55; London, Lambeth Palace Library 2083; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 91, Rawlinson A 495, Rawlinson C 85, Rawlinson D 1122; Norfolk, Holkham Hall Library, Holkham Hall MS 678 (Coke's copy); HMC (Historical Manuscripts Commission), Lee manuscript (dated 1594) is noted in H.M.V. 3rd report. CUL Additional MS 9212 appears to be the authorial copy. It has its difficulties, with many interlineations and crossings out and an eccentric pagination. I have checked my transcription against the Sloane manuscript, but where there are variations I have followed the Cambridge version.

17 See Nigel Ramsay, “Glover, Robert (1543/4–1588),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; published online 2008, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10833).

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20 Margaret Beckett, “The Political Works of John Leslie, Bishop of Ross (1527–96)” (PhD thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2002), 89. I owe my knowledge of the Northamptonshire and Carte manuscripts to Dr. Beckett's thesis.

21 Leslie, A treatise touching the right, fols. 44r, 32v, 29v.

22 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 8v–9r; Carte MS 105, fols. 21r–v.

23 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 39v.

24 Ibid., fol. 40r.

25 Ibid., fol. 39v.

26 Ibid., fol. 35v.

27 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 11v–12r; Carte MS 105, fols. 27r–v.

28 CUL Additional MS 9212, fols. 38v–39r.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., fol. 25r.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., fols. 38r–v.

33 Ibid., fol. 25v.

34 Ibid., fol. 25r.

35 Ibid., fol. 24v.

36 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 13v–14r; Carte MS 105, fol. 28v.

37 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 38v.

38 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 10r; Carte MS 105, fol. 22r.

39 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 33v–34r; Carte MS 105, fol. 47v.

40 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 5r–v.

41 Ibid., fol. 6r–v.

42 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 33v, 34v; Carte MS 105, fol. 49r: “but it was obtained by the sword and the kings of Scotland, as long as the sword held them in awe, were content to do their homage to our king.”

43 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 7r.

44 Ibid., fol. 13v.

45 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 34r; Carte MS 105, fol. 48v.

46 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 6r.

47 Ibid., fol. 13v.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid., fol. 33v.

50 Ibid., fol. 34v.

51 Ibid., fol. 10r.

52 Ibid., fol. 10v.

53 Ibid., fol. 13r.

54 Ibid.

55 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 9v; Carte MS 105, fol. 21v.

56 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 11r. Quoted passages not in Carte MS 105.

57 Leslie, A treatise touching the right, 23–24.

58 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 35r.

59 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 17r–v; Carte MS 105, fols. 31r–v.

60 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 5r; Carte MS 105, fols. 24v–25r has “partly because of his young age and partly (it is to be presumed) because of his folly.”

61 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 23v; Carte MS 105, fol. 37v.

62 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 22v; a point not made at this point in the argument of Carte MS 105, which at fol. 25v gives a fuller account of John's rejection of Arthur and of the “choice” of John “to be their king” by “the nobility and clergy.”

63 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 16v.

64 Ibid., fol. 16r.

65 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 21r; Carte MS 105, fol. 34v.

66 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 5v; Carte MS 105, fol. 25v.

67 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 22r; Carte MS 105, fols. 34v–35r, with slightly altered wording.

68 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 6v.

69 BL Stowe MS 273, fols. 10v.–11r; Carte MS 105, fols. 22v–23r.

70 CUL Additional MS 9212, fols. 28v–29r.

71 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 4v; Carte MS 105, fol. 19r.

72 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 21r; Carte MS 105, fol. 35r, which reads “the queen of Scot's title, which in truth is as good now as Stephen's was before he was elected king” (emphasis added).

73 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 22r; Carte MS 105, fol. 36r.

74 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 6v.

75 Ibid., fols. 7r–v.

76 Ibid., fol. 6r.

77 Ibid., fol. 11r.

78 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 29r.

79 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 35v.

80 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 20r–v.

81 The term “Eltonian” refers to the life and work of Geoffrey Elton, whose oeuvre was notoriously dominated by a vision of the sovereignty of the crown-in-parliament, the origins of which he located in the statutes, devised (as he claimed) by Thomas Cromwell, to effect the breach with Rome in the 1530s. The texts under discussion here seem to me to vindicate an essentially Eltonian account of Elizabethan political thinking, an account that I often heard Elton himself expound while I was attending the Elton seminar in the 1970s. There is a certain irony to this, since it was against Elton's view of the period, and indeed of the discipline, even more than that of his mentor, Sir John Neale, that Collinson directed his original account of the “monarchical republic.”

82 Ibid., fol. 33r.

83 Leslie, A treatise touching the right, fol. 29v.

84 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 39v.

85 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 37r; Carte MS 105, fols. 51v–52r.

86 CUL Additional MS 9212 fols. 18r–v. See also fol. 39v.

87 The rest of this section is a discussion of a long passage at CUL Additional MS 9212, fols. 39v–42r.

88 Ibid., fol. 40r.

89 Axton, Marie, “The Influence of Edmund Plowden's Succession Treatise,” Huntington Library Quarterly 37, no. 3 (May 1974): 209–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Axton, The Queen's Two Bodies.

90 CUL Additional MS 9212, fols. 40r–v.

91 Ibid., fol. 40v.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid., fols. 40v–41r.

94 Ibid., fol. 41v.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid., fols. 41v–42r.

98 Ibid., fols. 42r–v.

99 Ibid., fol. 43r.

100 Ibid., fol. 43v.

101 Ibid., fol. 41v.

102 Ibid., fol. 43v.

103 Burgess, Glenn, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke, 1992), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 For a recent discussion of this aspect of Leslie's work, see Kanemura, Rei, “Kingship by Descent or Kingship by Election? The Contested Title of James VI and I,” Journal of British Studies 52, no. 2 (April 2013): 317–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 323–29.

105 CUL Additional MS 9212, fol. 22r.

106 Ibid., fol. 21v.

107 Ibid., fol. 21r.

108 Ibid., fols. 21v–22r.

109 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 37v; Carte MS 105, fol. 52r.

110 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 38v; Carte MS 105, fol. 53r, with slightly differing wording.

111 BL Stowe MS 273, fol. 37v; Carte MS 105, fol. 52r, omitting the final sentence, quoted above.

112 Carte MS 105, fols. 23v–24v.

113 Ibid., fol. 26v; passage not in BL Stowe 273.

114 Ibid., fol. 25v.

115 Ibid., fols. 41v–42r.

116 Ibid., fols. 43r–v.

117 Ibid., fols. 22r–v.

118 Ibid., fol. 19r.

119 Ibid., fol. 23v.

120 The university printer, Joseph Barnes, was a client of the earl of Leicester. See Rosenberg, Eleanor, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York, 1955), 295–99Google Scholar, especially 299.

121 See Lake, Peter, Anglicans and Puritan? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitfgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 132–35Google Scholar.

122 Bilson, Thomas, The true difference between Christian subjection and unchristian rebellion: wherein the princes lawful power to command for truth . . .(Oxford, 1585), 514Google Scholar.

123 Ibid., 514, 515.

124 Ibid., 513, 518 (marginal heading), 520.

125 For Scotland, see ibid., 119, and for France, ibid., 521.

126 Ibid., 515, 520–21.

127 Ibid., 498–99.

128 Ibid., 515, 420.

129 See, in particular, Collinson, “Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis.”

130 Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957), 30–39Google Scholar; Burgess, Politics of the Ancient Constitution, 85–86.

131 Compare Burgess, Politics of the Ancient Constitution, especially chapter 5.

132 Compare Pawlisch, Hans, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 9; Pawlisch, “Sir John Davies, the Ancient Constitution and the Civil Law,” Historical Journal 23, no. 3 (September 1980): 689–702CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks, Christopher and Sharpe, Kevin, “History, English Law and the Renaissance,” Past and Present 72, no. 1 (August 1976): 133–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Bilson, True difference, 520.

134 Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity; Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (London, 2008)Google Scholar; Guy, John, My Heart is My Own (London, 2004)Google Scholar.

135 Lake, Peter, “Presbyterianism, the National Church and the Argument from Divine Right,” in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed. Lake, Peter and Dowling, Maria (London, 1987), 193–224Google Scholar.

136 Lake, Peter, “The King (the Queen) and the Jesuit: James Stuart's True Law of Free Monarchies in Context/s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14, no 1. (December 2004): 243–60Google Scholar.