Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2017
At the beginning of James I's reign, a petition campaign, the Hampton Court conference, numerous tracts, and considerable effort in Parliament all failed to overcome the king's adamant defense of the forms and practices of his episcopal church. In a milieu of deprivations and perception of declension, Henry Jacob, one of the organizers of the petitioning, denounced the illegitimacy and dangers of prelatical church government in several tracts between 1604 and 1609, advocated congregationalism, and outlined the basis for a second conference to bring continuing religious disputes to a close. In 1609, having achieved no success, Jacob turned away from scriptural arguments for reform and instead boldly adopted the novel reason-of-state political language to request “toleration” for politically loyal nonconforming Protestants. Jacob relied on “axioms of pollicie” and recent examples to demonstrate that necessity sometimes determined that toleration, while unpalatable, was the most prudent political course (as the new language had it). James's handwritten marginalia on this tract reveal his continuing antipathy toward any reform he believed derogated from his monarchical “interest.” The variety of arguments Jacob employed illustrates both the difficulties facing early Jacobean reformers and the often-unrecognized degree of flexibility and development in their thought and tactics. In asking for toleration as a royal favor, Jacob also illustrates the seventeenth-century nonconformist dilemma of achieving desired ends through doubtful means.
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4 See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Jacob, Henry.” There is much material in Brachlow, Stephen, The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritans and Separatist Ecclesiology 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar and in Brachlow, , “The Elizabethan Roots of Henry Jacob's Churchmanship: Refocusing the Historiographical Lens,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, (1985): 228–253 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 233–237. See also Rohr, John von, “The Congregationalism of Henry Jacob,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society 19, no. 3 (1962): 107–117Google Scholar; Duesing, Jason G., “Henry Jacob (1563–1624): Pastoral Theology and Congregational Ecclesiology,” Baptist Quarterly 43, no. 5 (2010): 284–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), 452–454 Google Scholar, 456–457.
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6 Harleian MS6849, fol. 254, British Library (hereafter cited as BL); MS113, fol. 253, Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter cited as LPL), London. Both documents are printed in Burrage, Champlin, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550–1641) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 2: 146–148Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Dissenters). Babbage, Stuart Barton, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London: S. P. C. K., 1962), 52–53 Google Scholar.
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9 Burrage, Dissenters, 2:149–150. The petition is undated, but Burrage suggests it was written “not long before April 3, 1605” (148). In his “subscription,” dated April 4, 1605, Jacob noted that it was “allmost 3. quarters of a yeare since I published . . . Reasons taken out of Gods word” (151). See also Burrage, Champlin, “Lost Prison Papers of Henry Jacob,” The Review and Expositor 4, no. 4 (October 1907): 489–513 Google Scholar.
10 MS113, fols. 242–243, LPL. These documents are printed, in part, in Burrage, Dissenters, 2:148–153.
11 Burrage, Dissenters, 2:166. Jacob confirmed, in A Christian and Modest Offer of a Most Indifferent Conference, or Disputation [. . .] (s.l., 1606), 32, that “the Bishop of Winchester (as is well knowen) undertooke the Answer of M. Iacobs last booke.” Brachlow notes that Thomas Bilson, who knew (of) Jacob from the earlier dispute, was encouraged by Robert Cecil to reply to the Reasons, but that Bilson seems not to have published the proposed piece: Brachlow, “Elizabethan Roots,” 235n37. This seems correct but incomplete: see below, p. 721.
12 The argument may be traced back at least to Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans [. . .] , 4 vols. (London, 1732–1738). Burrage argued in Dissenters that Jacob was not a separatist. Miler, Perry, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts: A Genetic Study (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, generally followed Burrage. Von Rohr argued in “The Congregationalism of Henry Jacob” that Jacob had been convinced by Johnson. Brachlow suggests that Jacob had not really changed his views; he was merely reacting differently in 1604, given the resistance of the Church to reform: Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, 56–62. In chapter 6 of The Communion of Saints and in “Elizabethan Roots,” Brachlow locates Jacob in the tradition of Cartwright, Fulke, and Travers, though he does concede (“Elizabethan Roots,” 241–242) that in his Reasons, Jacob “argued along lines identical with Johnson's” and “privately embraced the same views all along.” See also Goehring, Walter R., “The Life and Death of Henry Jacob,” Hartford Quarterly 7, no. 1 (Fall 1966): 35–52 Google Scholar; Paul, Robert S., “Henry Jacob and Seventeenth-Century Puritanism,” Hartford Quarterly 7, no. 3 (Spring 1967): 92–113 Google Scholar; White, B. R., The English Separatist Tradition from the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Tolmie, Murray, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London, 1616–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Yarbrough, Slayden, “The Ecclesiastical Development in Theory and Practice of John Robinson and Henry Jacob,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 5, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 183–197 Google Scholar; and Polly Ha, “Ecclesiastical Independence and the Freedom of Consent” in Freedom and the Construction of Europe, ed. Skinner, Quentin and van Gelderen, Martin, vol. 1, Religious and Constitutional Liberties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 57–76 Google Scholar.
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15 Ibid., 26–27.
16 Ibid., 30, 26–27, 44; and Rhodes, Neil, Richards, Jennifer, and Marshall, Joseph, eds., King James VI and I: Selected Writings (hereafter cited as King James Selected Writings) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003), 225Google Scholar. In 1609, James publicly congratulated himself for having “depressed all their popular piety” in Scotland: quoted in Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution, 158.
17 “A Proclamation concerning such as seditiously seek reformation in church matters,” 24 October 1603, in Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England, ed. Cardwell, Edward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1839), 2:43–47Google Scholar; and James to Whitgift, 29 October 1603, Additional MS38139, fol.183, BL.
18 Sommerville, King James, 22–23.
19 Rhodes, King James Selected Writings, 225 and 225n71.
20 Sommerville, King James, 27, 7, 6.
21 Ibid., 64; Cramsie, John, “The Philosophy of Imperial Kingship and the Interpretation of James VI and I,” in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, ed. Houlbrooke, Ralph (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 44–46 Google Scholar; J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community, 147–148; Sommerville, J. P., Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London: Longman, 1999), 10Google Scholar, 48, 250; Sommerville, , “James I and the Divine Right of Kings: English Politics and Continental Theory,” in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Levy, Linda Peck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58Google Scholar; and 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 (2004): 243–260 Google Scholar, esp. 254–260.
22 Sommerville, King James, 73–74.
23 Ibid., 64–65, 78–79, 74.
24 “Proclamation . . . seditiously seek reformation,” in Cardwell, Documentary Annals, 2:43–47.
25 William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference . . . at Hampton Court Jan. 14, 1603 (s.l., 1604), 4 (hereafter cited as Summe).
26 Ibid., 22–23, 31–34, 35–36, 40–43.
27 Ibid., 53–54, 60–63, 69–70.
28 Cramsie, “Philosophy of Imperial Kingship,” 45, 48; and Sommerville, King James, 138.
29 John Guy, “Introduction: The 1590s: The second reign of Elizabeth I?” in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth I, 11–13 (hereafter cited as “Introduction”); Guy, “The Elizabethan Establishment and the Ecclesiastical Polity,” in Reign of Elizabet I, ed. Guy, esp. 126–129, 132–135; Sommerville, J. P., “Richard Hooker, Hadrian Saravia, and the Advent of Divine Right of Kings,” History of Political Thought 4, no. 2 (Summer 1983)Google Scholar: esp. 236–243; Lake, Peter, “‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, ed. McDiarmid, John F. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), esp. 137–138Google Scholar; Kelley, Donald R., “Elizabethan Political Thought,” in The Varieties of British Political Thought 1500–1800, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 73Google Scholar; and Gajda, Alexandra, “Political Culture in the 1590s: The ‘Second Reign of Elizabeth,’” History Compass 8, no. 1 (2010): 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Quoted in Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution,136; and Guy, “Elizabethan Establishment,” esp. 128–129.
31 Jacob, Henry, Reasons taken Out of Gods Word and the Best Humane Testimonies Proving A Necessitie of Reforming Our Churches in England (Middelburg, 1604), 74–75 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Reasons).
32 Ibid., sigs. A2v, A4.
33 Ibid., sig. A4v.
34 Ibid., p. 16, sigs. A2v, A4v, p. 2, emphasis added.
35 Ibid., 4, 9, 11, 14, 16–17, 24; and HMC Beaulieu, 32–36, 37–40. See, similarly, An Abridgment of That Booke Which the Ministers of Lincoln Diocess delivered to his Maiestie upon the first of December last (s.l., 1605), 31–32.
36 Jacob, Reasons, 5, 18. Both Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers had come close to this position, but they had hedged it with ambiguous statements about the authority of synods and conferences: Webster, Tom, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c.1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 289–290 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jacob's brief catechism from this period also reflected his view of a church as “a free mutuall consent of Believers [was] joyning & covenanting to live as Members of a holy Society togeather”: Burrage, Dissenters, 2:157. For William Bradshaw's similar ideas, see esp. his English Puritanisme Containeing. The maine opinions of the rigidest sort of those that are called Puritanes (s.l., 1605).
37 Jacob, Reasons, 38, 45.
38 Ibid., 31, 33. Polly Ha notes that in his An Attestation of Many Divines (s.l., 1613), Jacob did argue that synods could pronounce on errors but still not excommunicate without the local congregation's consent: Ha, , English Presbyterianism 1590–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, 222n40.
39 Jacob, Reasons, 5, 7–8, 65, 25, 18, 23, 59–63.
40 Ibid., sig. A3, pp. 76, 50, 80. As he edged toward his own “semi-separatism,” Jacob seems to have become less harsh in his approach to separatists. In 1612, while noting their over-strictness, he argued that he held “Separation to be very farre off from being so evil as commonly they are held to be”: Jacob, A Declaration and Plainer Opening of Certain Points [. . .] (Leiden, 1612), sigs. A3–A3v.
41 Jacob, Reasons, 37.
42 Ibid., 37–38, 28. Jacob did not make clear whether the original authority, which rested with the congregation, was transferred irrevocably to the pastor, once called by the congregation. For the view that church officers were “potentially immune to discipline” by the congregation, see Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, 187–190; and Brachlow, “Elizabethan Roots,” esp. 245–250. Polly Ha argues that while Jacob allowed the pastor “ordinary sway,” he also lodged “the weight of ecclesiastical power and authority with the people”: Ha, English Presbyterianism, 78.
43 Jacob, Reasons, 27.
44 Ibid., 42–43, 56–57.
45 Ibid., 37–38, 28. In 1610, however, Jacob argued that congregational church government “is that mixt government which the learned do judge to be the best government of all”: Jacob, The divine beginning of Christs church (Leiden, 1610), sig. A3v, emphasis added.
46 Jacob, Reasons, 39–40, 26.
47 MS113, fols. 241–241v, LPL, in Burrage, Dissenters, 2:161–165. “The Lambeth Palace MS Calendar” notes suggest “Possibly by Henry Jacob” and that “the corrections appear to be in his hand.” This very short piece (two folio sides) may have been co-produced. A marginal note (Burrage, Dissenters, 2:162) on the “Princes authority” reads “See our Protestacion of the Kings Supremacie,” a work of 1605 by William Bradshaw. Bradshaw may have been using the royal “our” or it may be that he and Jacob, who were of very close mind at this time on congregationalism and the necessity of expressing political loyalty, in some way worked together on the Protestation and so the “our” is a plural. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Jacob also suggests the possibility of a Jacob-Bradshaw connection. Bradshaw does not seem to have developed an argument based on reason-of-state.
48 Burrage, Early English Dissenters, 2:163.
49 Ibid., 2:161–164.
50 Ibid., 2:162.
51 Henry Jacob, A Christian and Modest Offer of a Most Indifferent Conference, or Disputation [. . .] (s.l., 1606) (hereafter cited as Modest Offer.) It was published by William Jones, who produced a series of works critical of the early Jacobean Church, including some by William Bradshaw. On Jones, see Curtis, Mark, “William Jones: Puritan Printer and Propagandist,” The Library, 5th ser., 19, no. 1 (1964): 38–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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58 Ibid., sigs. *, *v, *3v. Even Burghley had likened the High Commission's use of the ex officio oath to the methods of the Spanish Inquisition: Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 270–271.
59 Jacob, Modest Offer, 21, 15–16, 18.
60 Ibid., sig. *3, pp. 6–8, 21.
61 Ibid., sig. *2.
62 Ibid., sig. *2, *2v, pp. 2, 26.
63 Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution, 131; and Guy, “Elizabethan Establishment,” 148
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65 Jacob, Modest Offer, 28–30.
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71 Ibid., 38–39, emphasis added.
72 Ibid., 28–30, 3–7, 9.
73 Ibid., 41–42, 6.
74 Ibid., 14, emphasis added; 3, 35–36.
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91 In 1610, Jacob commented that “the chiefest Prelates in the land [did] refuse openly the tryall heereof by a reasonable Conference or Disputation”: Jacob, The divine beginning of Christs church, sigs. *5v–*6.
92 Henry Jacob, To the right High and Mightie Prince, James . . . An humble Supplication for Toleration and libertie [. . .] (hereafter cited as Humble Supplication) (s.l., 1609), sig. A3.
93 Ibid., 44.
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96 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 6.
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101 Peck, D. C., ed., Leicester's Commonwealth: The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985), 67–68 Google Scholar, 184–185, 79. The criticism of “certain busy fellows [Scottish ministers] . . . to use such insolency towards their king and prince as is not only undecent but intolerable” (170) is prescient of James's own attitudes, as displayed in his response to Jacob: see below, p. 722–725.
102 Kingdon, Robert M., ed., The Execution of Justice in England by William Cecil and A True, Sincere, and Modest Defence of English Catholics by William Allen (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press/Folger Shakespeare Library, 1965), 261Google Scholar, 203, 265.
103 Holmes, Resistance and Compromise, 61–62, 195–196.
104 Ibid., 213.
105 N. D. [Robert Persons], A Temperate Ward-Word, To the Turbulent and Seditious Wach-Word of Sir Francis Hastings [. . .] (s.l., 1599), 124, 128.
106 [Robert Persons], Newes from Spayne and Holland Conteyning An information of Inglish affayres in Spayne [. . .] (s.l., 1593), fol. 22 (hereafter cited as Newes). See also Pauline Kewes, “The Puritan, the Jesuit and the Jacobean Succession,” in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 60–62.
107 [Persons], Newes, fols. 22, 23–26v.
108 Ibid., fols. 27v, 30.
109 Akrigg, G. P. V., ed. Letters of King James VI and I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 301–302 Google Scholar.
110 Ibid., 204–205.
111 SP14/1/56, The National Archives, London.
112 John Colleton, A Supplication to the Kings most excellent Maiestie, Wherin severall reasons of State and Religion are briefely touched [. . .] ([Douay?], 1604), sigs. A3, A2v, pp. 5–6, 8, 9.
113 Burrage, Dissenters, 2:149–151; and Jacob, Reasons, 50.
114 Jacob, Reasons, 40.
115 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 21.
116 Ibid., 8.
117 Ibid., 8–9, 10–12. See, similarly, Bradshaw, William, A protestation of the Kings supremacie [. . .] (London, 1605)Google Scholar.
118 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 20.
119 For example, Jacob, Reasons, 16; Jacob, Modest Offer, 36.
120 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 8–10.
121 Ibid., 13–14.
122 Ibid., 21–23, emphasis added.
123 Ibid., 26–27.
124 Curtis, “William Jones: Puritan Printer,” 41–42; and Healy, Simon, “Debate in the House of Commons, 1604–1607,” in Parliament, Politics and Elections, 1604–1648, ed. Kyle, Chris R., Camden Fifth Series, vol. 17 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 79Google Scholar, citing Sir Edward Mountagu's parliamentary diary.
125 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 29.
126 Ibid., 30, 32. On the various contemporary meanings of “moderation,” see Shagan, Ethan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
127 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 32, 23, emphasis added.
128 Ibid., 33–34.
129 Ibid., 34–35, 28.
130 Ibid., 31–32, 20.
131 Ibid., 33–34.
132 Ibid., 32.
133 Ibid., 34.
134 There is a burgeoning literature on early modern toleration. A useful recent literature review is Walsham, Alexandra, “Cultures of Coexistence in Early Modern England: History, Literature and Religious Toleration,” The Seventeenth Century 28, no. 2 (2013): 115–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See, among others, Kaplan, Benjamin J., Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glaser, Eliane, ed., Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives (London: Palgrave, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laursen, J. C. and Nederman, C. J., ed., Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 1–10; Coffey, John, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000)Google Scholar, esp.1–20; and Creppell, Ingrid, Toleration and Identity: Foundations in Early Modern Thought (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.
135 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 46.
136 Cecil to the Bishop of Winchester, [1604], Cecil Papers CP109/82, BL.
137 Quoted in Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, 141.
138 Bishop of Winchester to Cecil, 16 April 1605, CP108/115, BL. Jacob seems not to have known about this: see above, n11.
139 Sir Thomas Lake to Cecil, 15 October 1609, Cecil Papers, CP128/6, BL; and Lake to Cecil, 11 October 1609, CP127/173, BL.
140 Lake to Cecil, 22 October 1609, Cecil Papers, CP128/15, BL. This calls into question Brachlow's claim that James was at times contemptuous but “mostly amused” by Jacob's Supplication: Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, 260; see also Brachlow, “Elizabethan Roots,” 236.
141 Archbishop of Canterbury to Cecil, 22 October 1609, Cecil Papers, CP128/16, BL.
142 James's marginal comments were published (though with numerous minor errors) by Maitland, S. R. in a reprint of the Humble Supplication (London: Rivingtons, 1859)Google Scholar. They were also largely transcribed in “King James and the English Puritans: An Unpublished Document,” Blackwood's Magazine 188, no. 1139 (September 1910): 402–413 Google Scholar, but they were not connected to the passages upon which James was commenting. Jordan, Wilbur K. made some slight use of them: The Development of Religious Toleration in England From the Accession of James I to the Convention of the Long Parliament (1603–1640) (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936)Google Scholar, 239n2, 241n3. I have taken James's comments from the original annotated Lambeth Palace copy of the Humble Supplication.
143 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 33, 44.
144 Ibid., 32.
145 Ibid., 8.
146 Ibid., 8.
147 Ibid., 33, 20, 45, 30.
148 Ibid., 47, 38, 37.
149 James had made clear in 1605 his intention to deprive ministers who did not subscribe ex animo: Newton, Diana, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England, 1603–1605 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 79–80 Google Scholar.
150 Jacob, Humble Supplication, 21, 42, 15–17, 28.
151 Ibid., 41, 46, 13, 42.
152 Ibid., 23, 29, 16.
153 Ibid., 34.
154 Ibid., 19.
155 Ibid., 37, 35.
156 Newton, Making of the Jacobean Regime, 89–91, quotation at 91.
157 The commonly named “Toleration Act” of 1689 was formally entitled “An Act for exempting Their Majestyes Protestant Subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the Penalties of certaine Lawes.”