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THE PURITAN PARADIGM OF ENGLISH POLITICS, 1558–1642*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2010

NICHOLAS TYACKE
NICHOLAS TYACKE*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT[email protected]
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Abstract

Traditionally puritanism has been treated as a religious phenomenon that only impinged on the world of that ‘secular’ politics to a limited extent and mainly in relation to church reform. Such an approach, however, is to employ a misleadingly narrow definition which ignores the existence of a much more all-embracing puritan political vision traceable from the mid-sixteenth century. First clearly articulated by some of the Marian exiles, this way of thinking interpreted the Bible as a manifesto against tyranny whether in church or state. Under the successive regimes of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, puritans can be found who continued to judge the actions of government by the same biblical criterion, which also helps to explain among other things their prominence in opposing unparliamentary taxation. Puritan ideology itself was transmitted down the generations partly via a complex of family alliances, underpinned by teaching and preaching, and this in turn provided a basis for political organization. Moreover, the undiminished radical potential of puritanism is evident from responses to the assassination of Buckingham in 1628. Given these antecedents the subsequent resort to Civil War appears less surprising than historians often claim.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 527 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

This article is a revised version of a lecture given at University College London, on 19 March 2009, marking my appointment as an honorary professor of history. I am especially grateful to the following for their help and advice: James Burns, Patrick Collinson, Warren Chernaik, Kenneth Fincham, Thomas Freeman, Angus Gowland, Laura and Robin Hillman, Robin Howells, Timothy Knatchbull, Michael Knibb, Peter Lake, Jason Peacey, Glyn Redworth, Geoffrey Roper, Benet Salway, Alexander Samson, Paul Seaver, Christopher Thompson, Andrew Thrush, and Blair Worden. My use of the term ‘paradigm’ owes a debt to T. S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions (Chicago, 1970).

References

1 S. R. Gardiner, The first two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, 1603–1660 (London, 1874), pp. 6, 85–90, 94–7; idem, Cromwell's place in history (London, 1897), pp. 1–22.

2 J. Morrill, The nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), pp. 45–90.

3 A recent exponent is B. Worden, The English Civil Wars, 1640–1660 (London, 2009), pp. 1–39 (especially pp. 7–8). But now see Winship, M. P., ‘Freeborn (puritan) Englishmen and slavish subjection; popish tyranny and puritan constitutionalism, c. 1570–1606’, English Historical Review, 124, (2009), pp. 1050–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This important article complements my own argument at a number of points, not least in the terminology which Winship employs.

4 Neale, J. E., ‘Peter Wentworth’, English Historical Review, 39, (1924), pp. 36–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 175–205; idem, Elizabeth I and her parliaments (2 vols., London, 1953–7), i, pp. 55–6, 421, ii, pp. 436. Neale, however, failed adequately to explore the relationship between the religious outlook of Wentworth and the political stance which he adopted. The intellectual framework or paradigm involved is, by contrast, the focus of the present article.

5 C. H. Garrett, The Marian exiles: a study in the origins of Elizabethan puritanism (Cambridge, 1938; reprinted 1966), pp. vii–viii, 1, 58–9, 253–8.

6 Up until the 1970s Neale's account largely went unchallenged. But since then a series of ‘revisionist’ historians have made some telling criticisms, for example concerning the so-called ‘puritan choir’, and it is certainly not my aim to resurrect Neale warts and all: G. R. Elton, The parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge, 1986), especially pp. 350–5; M. A. R. Graves, Thomas Norton: the parliament man (Oxford, 1994), pp. 1–12; D. M. Dean, Law-making and society in late Elizabethan England: the parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1, 282–90. Cf. N. Tyacke, ‘Puritan politicians and King James VI and I, 1587–1604’, in T. Cogswell, R. Cust, and P. Lake, eds., Politics, religion and popularity in early Stuart Britain (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 21–44. Garrett also, it has to be said, is open to some of the same criticisms levelled at Neale.

7 Despite considerable debate in recent decades, most historians would probably now accept that a desire for church reform was one defining feature of puritan activism: Eales, J. S., ‘Sir Robert Harley KB (1579–1656) and the “character” of a puritan’, British Library Journal, 15, (1989), pp. 134–57Google Scholar; J. Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 3–16, 28–45; J. Coffey and P. C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge companion to puritanism (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 1–7. Even the sceptical Conrad Russell came latterly to use ‘further reformation’ as an analytical category, albeit substituting the term ‘godly’ for that of ‘puritan’: C. Russell, The causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), pp. 20, 84–5, 220–6.

8 W. S. Hudson, John Ponet (1516?–1556) (Chicago, 1942). Appended to this book is a repaginated facsimile of Ponet's Shorte treatise; C. Goodman, How superior powers oght to be obeyd (Geneva, 1558) – facsimile text with a bibliographical note by C. H. McIlwain (New York, 1931); J. Knox, On rebellion, ed. R. A. Mason (Cambridge, 1994). American scholarly interest in Marian protestantism, as evidenced by Garrett, Hudson, and McIlwain, was not sustained.

9 J. Ponet, A shorte treatise of politike power (Strasburg, 1556), as repaginated by Hudson, John Ponet, pp. 47–9, 79–80. This version is cited in subsequent footnotes.

10 Ibid., pp. 3–6, 33–6, 90–1. Cf. Q. Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought (2 vols., Cambridge, 1978), ii, pp. 221–41. To date the origins of this thinking about liberty by the Marian exiles remain unclear. But it would appear significant that in 1549 the leaders of Kett's Rebellion called for the abolition of serfdom on the grounds that ‘God made all ffre with his precious blode sheddyng’: A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor rebellions (Harlow, 1997), p. 145. More generally, Ponet was pretty clearly re-working certain scholastic ideas: Skinner, Foundations of modern political thought, ii, pp. 148–73.

11 Ponet, Shorte treatise, pp. 8–13.

12 Ibid., pp. 19, 167; A warnyng for England, conteyning the horrible practises of the kyng of Spayne in the kyngdome of Naples (Emden, 1555); J. Loach, Parliament and the crown in the reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986), pp. 184–9.

13 Ponet, Shorte treatise, pp. 54–5, 98–126.

14 Goodman, How superior powers oght to be obeyd, pp. 202–6; B. Traheron, A warning to England to repente, and to turne to God from idolatrie and popery by the terrible exemple of Calece (Wesel?, 1558), sigs. Aiiv–Aiii.

15 Hudson, John Ponet, pp. 19–56.

16 Goodman, How superior powers oght to be obeyd, pp. 7, 148–9, 165–6. This understanding of Christian liberty contrasts with that of Luther, and more conservative political thinkers generally, who interpreted the concept in an exclusively spiritual sense. After the 1560s the Marian protestant usage seems to have fallen out of fashion but the thinking behind it remained very much alive – i.e. the idea that civil liberty is a ‘God-given birthright’: Q. Skinner, Liberty before liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), p. 19. I am indebted to Blair Worden for several discussions on this topic.

17 British Library (BL), Harleian MS 419, fos. 143–58v; J. Foxe, The acts and monuments, ed. S. R. Cattley and G. Townsend (8 vols., London, 1837–41), viii, pp. 673–9.

18 T. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the parliaments of Elizabeth I (3 vols., Leicester, 1981–95), i, p. 36.

19 Sermons or homilies (London, 1817), p. 99. Nevertheless the homily did not address the question of resistance on the part of inferior magistrates.

20 W. P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 119–27; D. Crankshaw, ‘Preparations for the Canterbury provincial convocation of 1562–3: a question of attribution’, in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger, eds., Belief and practice in Reformation England (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 60–93; P. Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (London, 1967), pp. 68–83.

21 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, i, pp. 129–64, 174–6; M. Levine, The early Elizabethan succession question, 1558–1568 (Stanford, CA, 1966), pp. 62–85, 165–97; G. M. Bell, ‘Beale, Robert (1541–1601)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) (Oxford, 2004).

22 Neale, ‘Peter Wentworth’, p. 37.

23 Hartley, Proceedings, i, p. 154; Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, i, pp. 152–4, 188, 325. For the views of Peter Wentworth on ‘liberty’, see pp. 534, 536–7 below.

24 BL, Egerton MS 2836, fos. 36, 46r–v, 65, 68. Another Marian exile who argued for the independent power of parliament, vis-à-vis the monarch, was Laurence Humphrey: De religionis conservatione et reformatione vera (Basle, 1559), pp. 82–4.

25 BL, Egerton MS 2836, fo. 67v; Ponet, Shorte treatise, pp. 44–5. Trajan's injunction also featured on Scottish coins issued in the aftermath of the deposition of Queen Mary in 1567: I. H. Stewart, The Scottish coinage (London, 1955), p. 92, plate xiv (no. 183).

26 Calendar of state papers, Spanish, 1558–67, p. 590; ibid., p. 598.

27 Hartley, Proceedings, i, pp. 146, 172.

28 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, i, pp. 136–64; Elton, The parliament of England, 1559–1581, pp. 355–74.

29 Neale, ‘Peter Wentworth’, pp. 175–205; Tyacke, ‘Puritan politicians’, pp. 21–44.

30 W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, eds., Puritan manifestoes (London, 1907), p. 6 and passim; Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, pp. 101–46, 291–329, 385–431 P. Lake, Anglicans and puritans? (London, 1988), pp. 13–87.

31 The National Archives, Kew (TNA), SP 15/21/121.

32 The analytical model being proposed here is a form of Namierism but, all importantly, with the ideology put back. It also offers a way forward for those dissatisfied with revisionist accounts of the politics of the period. For a preliminary essay along these lines, see Tyacke ‘Puritan politicians’. Cf. Brooke, J., ‘Namier and Namierism’, History and Theory, 3, (1964), pp. 331–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 P. W. Hasler, ed., The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1558–1603 (3 vols., London, 1981), i, pp. 552–4, 648–9, iii, pp. 457–8, 596–601.

34 D. Dean, ‘Wentworth, Peter (1524–1597)’, ODNB. This latest account still claims that Wentworth's ‘early life remains obscure’ (p. 133).

35 Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (21 vols., London, 1862–1910), xix, pt i, pp. 10–11, Addenda, i, pt ii, p. 566; N. P. Sil, ‘Gates, Sir John (1504–1553)’, ODNB. Peter Wentworth's mother Jane, née Josselyn, was herself related by marriage to Sir John Gates: W. C. Metcalfe, ed., The visitations of Essex (2 vols., London, 1878–9), i, pp. 225, 229, ii, p. 574. Peter Wentworth was probably present at Boulogne in 1544 when his father Nicholas was knighted by Henry VIII and these court connections help to explain his own first marriage to a cousin of Queen Katherine Parr.

36 Hasler, House of Commons, 1558–1603, ii, p. 173; TNA, PROB 11/37, fo. 123; W. C. Metcalfe, ed., The visitations of Suffolk (Exeter, 1882), p. 139.

37 N. P. Sil, ‘Denny, Sir Anthony (1501–1549)’, ODNB; TNA, PROB 11/32, fos. 286r–v; Garrett, Marian exiles, pp. 143–4, 319–20; Calendar of the patent rolls, 1553–1554, p. 443; D. Starkey, ed., The English court from the wars of the roses to the Civil Wars (Harlow, 1987), pp. 113–17.

38 Acts of the privy council of England, new series, vol. 11: 1578–1580 (London, 1895), pp. 133, 218–19. It is not clear where exactly these religious services were held.

39 Hartley, Proceedings, i, pp. 202, 237, 424–34, 436.

40 C. T. Martin, ed., Journal of Sir Francis Walsingham from December 1570 to April 1583 (Camden Miscellany 6, Old Series, vol. 104, London, 1871), p. 23. Conyers Read missed this reference, which invalidates his claim that ‘there is no evidence’ of Walsingham having ‘any transactions whatever’ with Peter Wentworth: C. Read, Mr Secretary Walsingham and the policy of Queen Elizabeth (3 vols., Oxford, 1925), iii, p. 426.

41 S. Doran, Monarchy and matrimony: the courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996), pp. 154–94; B. Worden, The sound of virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan politics (London, 1996), pp. 89–114; L. Berry, ed., John Stubbs's Gaping Gulf (Charlottesville, VA, 1968), pp. 6–20, 90–1; P. Lake, ‘The politics of “popularity” and the public sphere: the “monarchical republic” of Elizabeth I defends itself’, in P. Lake and S. Pincus, eds., The politics of the public sphere in early modern England (Manchester, 2007), pp. 70–7; see below, pp. 541–2.

42 A. F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535–1603 (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 58–153; D. J. McGinn, The Admonition controversy (New Brunswick, NJ, 1949); Lake, Anglicans and puritans?, pp. 13–70.

43 Lake, Anglicans and puritans?, pp. 56–7, 69; D. Fenner, Sacra theologia (Middelburg, 1585); M. A. Shaaber, Check-list of works of British authors printed abroad, in languages other than English (New York, NY, 1975), p. 70; BL, Harleian MS 6879, fos. 1–8, 80v, 88r–v. I have followed this contemporary English translation of Fenner's Sacra theologia; Stephanus Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra tyrannos, ed. and trans. G. Garnett (Cambridge, 1994), pp. xxii–liv, 35–72; Skinner, Foundations of modern political thought, ii, pp. 236–8, 324–5.

44 Read, Walsingham, ii, p. 218. Ponet had also cited the case of Edward II: Ponet, Shorte treatise, p. 101.

45 The deposition of Mary was justified partly on biblical grounds: R. A. Mason and M. S. Smith, eds. and trans., A dialogue on the law of kingship among the Scots: George Buchanan's De iure regni apud Scotos dialogus (Aldershot 2004), pp. 19–21, 51, 109–25. For the English reception of Buchanan, see Phillips, J. E., ‘George Buchanan and the Sidney circle’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 12 (1948–9), pp. 23–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, ii, pp. 145–58; Hartley, Proceedings, i, p. 438, ii, pp. 320–31.

47 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, ii, pp. 157–65; Hartley, Proceedings, ii, pp. 340, 363.

48 Lake, Anglicans and puritans?, pp. 135–9; J. Guy, ed., The reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 12, 126–49; R. Bancroft, A survay of the pretended holy discipline (1593), pp. 7–8; idem, Daungerous positions (1593), pp. 34–41; Hudson, John Ponet, p. 205.

49 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, ii, pp. 241–2, 325–7, 423, 437; Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, pp. 452–7. My account here, as elsewhere, departs from that of Neale.

50 Neale ‘Peter Wentworth’, pp. 186–98; Tyacke, ‘Puritan politicians’, pp. 22–5, 30–4; Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, ii, pp. 267–79; Hartley, Proceedings, iii, p. 48.

51 N. Tyacke, ed., The English Revolution c. 1590–1720: politics, religion and communities (Manchester, 2007), pp. 12, 14–16; S. Wright, ‘Fuller, Nicholas (c. 1557–1623)’, ODNB; The English reports (178 vols., London, 1900–32), lxxiv, pp. 1131–41, lxxvii, pp. 1260–6; W. R. Prest, ‘The art of law and the law of God: Sir Henry Finch (1558–1625)’, in D. Pennington and K. Thomas, eds., Puritans and revolutionaries (Oxford, 1978), p. 98.

52 Tyacke, ‘Puritan politicians’, pp. 36–44. Some fragmentary evidence also survives of puritan electioneering for the 1604 parliament by the Barringtons (Essex) and the Bromleys (Worcestershire), the heads of whose families were related through marriage via the Cromwells: Bohannon, M. E., ‘The Essex election of 1604’, English Historical Review, 48 (1933), 395–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar; TNA, STAC 8/201/17; A. Searle, ed., Barrington family letters (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 28, London, 1983), pp. 25–6.

53 As late as 1641 Sir Edward Nicholas can be found claiming that the Great Contract was in origin a puritan proposal – ‘attempted first by a sort of phanaticks in ye beginning of K. James’: C. Russell, The fall of the British monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), p. 253.

54 Croft, P., ‘Wardship in the parliament of 1604’, Parliamentary History, 2 (1983), 39–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. G. R. Smith, ‘Crown, parliament and finance: the Great Contract of 1610’, in P. Clark, A. G. R. Smith, and N. Tyacke, eds., The English commonwealth, 1547–1640 (Leicester, 1979), pp. 111–27; S. R. Gardiner, ed., Parliamentary debates in 1610 (Camden Old Series, vol. 81, London, 1862), p. 11; E. R. Foster, ed., Proceedings in parliament, 1610 ( 2 vols., New Haven, CT, 1966), ii, p. 396. Fuller had argued along these lines as early as December 1606, being answered at the time by Sir Francis Bacon: D.H. Willson, ed., The parliamentary diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607 (Minneapolis, MN, 1931), p. 201n.

55 N. Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700 (Manchester, 2001), pp. 64–5.

56 G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart government (4 vols., Cambridge, 1974–92), ii, pp. 170, 174; D. Colclough, Freedom of speech in early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 120–95; Calendar of state papers, Venetian (CSPV), 1603–1607, p. 511. Back in 1576 Peter Wentworth had begun his defence of freedom of speech in parliament by quoting the words, from an unnamed source, ‘“sweet indeed is the name of libertye”’: Hartley, Proceedings, i, p. 425.

57 Foxe, The acts and monuments, i, pt 2, pp. 309–10; Heal, F., ‘What can King Lucius do for you? The Reformation and the early British Church’, English Historical Review, 120 (2005) pp. 598–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Heal does not discuss the type of use to which Fuller put King Lucius. On the other hand she does point out a possible connection between the Lucius myth and the original granting of Magna Carta.

58 Foster, Proceedings, ii, pp. 152–3, 159–60, 164–5; Gardiner, Parliamentary debates in 1610, p. 61; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), 1603–1610, pp. 649–50. The politico-religious circles in which Nicholas Fuller moved require further investigation. His surviving will contains some clues: TNA, PROB 11/135, fos. 203v–6.

59 Tyacke, ‘Puritan politicians’, p. 39; M. Jansson, ed., Proceedings in parliament, 1614 (Philadelphia, PA, 1988), pp. 244–56; T. L. Moir, The Addled Parliament of 1614 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 11, 16–17.

60 A. Thrush, ‘The personal rule of James I, 1611–1620’, in Cogswell, Cust, and Lake, eds., Politics, religion and popularity, pp. 84–102; Jansson, ed., Proceedings, p. 60; S. Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands? The dilemmas of early Stuart foreign policy’, in H. Tomlinson, ed., Before the English Civil War (London, 1983), pp. 86–9; G. Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: the cultural politics of the Spanish match (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 7–18.

61 TNA, SP 14/94/79.

62 Ibid.; T. Scott, Vox populi: or newes from Spayne (London, 1620), sig. C3; A. Milton, ‘Willet, Andrew (1561/2–1621)’, ODNB; J. Craig, ‘Heigham, Sir John (1540–1626)’, ODNB. The six other counties were Bedford, Cambridge, Hertford, Huntingdon, Essex, and Norfolk.

63 A. Willett, A treatise of Salomans marriage (London, 1612), ‘epistle dedicatorie’.

64 T. Ball, The life of the renowned Dr Preston, ed. E. W. Harcourt (London, 1885), pp. 34, 59–61, 106–8.

65 S. Healy, ‘Alured, Thomas (1583–1638)’, ODNB; BL, Additional MS 22473, fos. 74–9.

66 W. Notestein, F. H. Relf, and H. Simpson, eds., Commons debates, 1621 (7 vols., New Haven, CT, 1935), ii, p. 95, iv, pp. 62–4; R. C. Johnson, M. F. Keeler, M. J. Cole, and W. B. Bidwell, eds., Commons debates, 1628 (6 vols., New Haven, CT, 1977–83), iii, pp. 451, 513–22. Earle has been described as playing the role of ‘Elisha to [Nicholas] Fuller's Elijah, his inheritance of the prophetic mantle evident in his sponsorship of the very same bills for church reform and sabbath regulation that were so long identified with his deceased predecessor’: S. Foster, The long argument: English puritanism and the shaping of New England culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), p. 119. Like the present author, Foster argues in terms of puritan ‘continuity’.

67 Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, eds., Commons debates, 1621, ii, pp. 451, 474–5, 488–9, 494–5, iv, pp. 440, 447; M. Jansson and W. B. Bidwell, eds., Commons debates, 1625 (New Haven, CT, 1987), p. 34; J. Dod and R. Cleaver, A briefe explanation of the whole booke of the Proverbs of Salomon (London, 1615), sigs. A3–4; J. T. Cliffe, The puritan gentry: the great puritan families of early Stuart England (London, 1984), pp. 36–7, 40–3; Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, p. 123; R. Zaller, The parliament of 1621 (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 143–87. In the classic revisionist account of the 1621 parliament the role played by Thomas Crewe comes across as muffled to say the least: C. Russell, Parliaments and English politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 130–44. Nor does it help that Thomas Crewe is indexed as ‘John’ Crewe. Cf., however, Russell, C., ‘The foreign policy debate in the House of Commons in 1621’, Historical Journal, 20, (1977), pp. 299–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 R. E. Ruigh, The parliament of 1624 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), pp. 238–45; Ball, Life of Preston, pp. 106–8.

69 The interpreter. Wherein three principall terms of state much mistaken by the vulgar are clearly unfolded (Edinburgh?, 1622). This flattering self-portrait of a ‘puritan’ blurs some important religious distinctions and probably does so intentionally. At the same time, as we have seen above, the link between puritanism and liberty was much older than the poet implies. For a valuable discussion of some of this contemporary literature, see C. Hill, Society and puritanism in pre-revolutionary England (London, 1964), pp. 13–29.

70 S. R. Gardiner, ed., Debates in the House of Commons in 1625 (Camden New Series, vol. 6, London, 1873), pp. 18, 26, 28–9. Apart from Pym, the puritans most involved were Sir Nathaniel Rich and John Crewe, the son of Thomas.

71 Thompson, C., ‘The origins of the politics of the parliamentary middle group, 1625–1629’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 22 (1972), pp. 71–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially pp. 75–81). This article, eclipsed soon after publication by the rise of revisionist historiography, is an essential starting point for any fresh investigation of the pattern of politics during the 1620s.

72 R. Sibthorpe, Apostolike obedience (London, 1627), pp. 22–3. Cf. G. Burgess, Absolute monarchy and the Stuart constitution (New Haven, CT, 1996), pp. 110–11.

73 CSPD, 1627–1628, pp. 81, 134, 233, 246, 275, 299, 310, 445; R. Cust, The forced loan and English politics, 1626–1628 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 170–5, 229–34, 297–9.

74 Clark, P., ‘Thomas Scott and the growth of urban opposition to the early Stuart regime’, Historical Journal, 21, (1978), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (CKS), MS U 951: Z 17, fos. 286, 386–7, Z 14, passim and wrongly attributed to Thomas Knatchbull; Canterbury Cathedral Archives (CCA), MS U 66/1, fo. 104v.

75 Clark, ‘Thomas Scott’, pp. 3, 7; CKS, MS U 951: Z 17, fo. 386v.

76 CCA, MS U 66/1, fo. 54; Cust, Forced loan, pp. 175–82.

77 CKS, MS U 951: Z 17, fos. 45–8, 98–9, 117–18. In the end Scott paid his loan contribution ‘to escape imprisonment and death’: Cust, Forced loan, p. 187.

78 Prior to the meeting of the 1628 parliament, the Harley family are recorded as praying that God would ‘establish his gospel and restore our liberty unto us’: J. Eales, Puritans and roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), p. 48.

79 J. Rushworth, Historical collections (8 vols., London, 1721–2), i, pp. 86, 601; Ponet, Shorte treatise, pp. 85–93; Vindiciae contra tyrannos, ed. Garnett, pp. 127–9. One of the best-known absolutist expositions of the Book of Samuel was that by James VI and I in his The trew law of free monarchies (Edinburgh, 1598): C. H. McIlwain, ed., The political works of James I (Cambridge, MA, 1918), pp. 56–61. Perhaps consciously echoing King James, Archbishop Bancroft in 1606 provided a similar gloss: Willson, ed., Parliamentary diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 61.

80 F. H. Relf, ed., Notes of debates in the House of Lords … 1621, 1625, 1628 (Camden Third Series, vol. 42, London, 1929), pp. 119, 121–2, 124, 131–2, 149, 162–3, 171; CSPD, 1619–1623, pp. 404, 487; Schwarz, M. L., ‘Lord Saye and Sele's objections to the Palatinate benevolence of 1622’, Albion, 4, (1972), pp. 12–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury, xx, p. 48; K. L. Sprunger, The learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch backgrounds of English and Americam puritanism (Chicago, 1972), pp. 80, 237–8 and passim; W. Ames, De conscientia et eius iure vel casibus (Amsterdam, 1630), translated as Conscience with the power and cases thereof (London, 1639), bk v, pp. 164–9; S. J. F. Andreae and T. J. Meijer, eds., Album studiosorum Academiae Franekerensis (1585–1811, 1816–1844) (Franeker, 1969), p. 88.

82 J. Holstun, Ehud's Dagger: class struggle in the English Revolution (London, 2000), pp. 143–91; F. W. Fairholt, ed., Poems and songs relating to George Villiers duke of Buckingham and his assassination (London, 1842), pp. 72–4; CKS, MS U 951: Z 17, fos. 341–2.

83 W. Notestein and F. H. Relf, eds., Commons debates for 1629 (Minneapolis, MN, 1921), p. 13. Sir Walter Earle similarly spoke of a threat of ‘Spanish tyranny’: ibid., p. 19. Cf. R. Zaller, The discourse of legitimacy in early modern England (Stanford, CA, 2007), pp. 668–70, 691–2.

84 L. J. Reeve, Charles I and the road to personal rule (Oxford, 1989), pp. 292–6; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, pbk edn, 1990), pp. 125–63; Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, pp. 120–31.

85 Rushworth, Historical collections, i, p. 359; CSPV, 1636–1639, pp. 217, 273, 295–308; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 126–273.

86 W. Knowler, ed., The earl of Strafforde's letters and dispatches (2 vols., London, 1739), ii, pp. 61–2, 138; Bard, N. P., ‘The ship money case and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 50, (1977), pp. 177–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Thompson, ‘Parliamentary middle group’, passim; A. P. Newton, The colonizing activities of the English puritans (New Haven, CT, 1914), pp. 236–47; K. O. Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630–1641: the other puritan colony (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 1–23. For some of the wider issues involved see Tyacke, English Revolution c. 1590–1720, pp. 1–26.

88 T. B. Howell, ed., A complete collection of state trials (34 vols., London, 1816–28), iii, pp. 1283–93; A speech made by the honorable Denzel Hollis esquire (at that time when the judges had their charge) concerning Sir Randol Crew (London, 1641).

89 S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603–1642 (10 vols., London, 1899), ix, pp. 96–118; Russell, Fall of the British monarchies, pp. 71–146; J. Adamson, The noble revolt: the overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007), pp. 1–20; J. K. Gruenfelder, ‘The election to the Short Parliament, 1640’, in H. G. S. Reinmuth, ed., Early Stuart studies (Minneapolis, MN, 1970), pp. 180–230.

90 E. Cope and W. H. Coates, eds., Proceedings of the Short Parliament of 1640 (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 19, London, 1977), pp. 63, 71–5, 79, 83–9, 91, 135–8, 148–57, 173–87, 190, 195, 198, 254–60, 275–8; CSPD, 1640, pp. 142, 152; Adamson, Noble revolt, pp. 21–3. Robert Greville, second Lord Brooke, had inherited the title in 1628 and was a long-standing intimate of Saye and Warwick.

91 Gardiner, History of England, 1603–1642, ix, pp. 218–56; J. H. Hexter, The reign of King Pym (Cambridge, MA, 1961), pp. 13–99; Russell, Fall of the British monarchies, pp. 206–73, 525–32; Adamson, Noble revolt, pp. 5, 29, 194, 213, 225, 266, 310, 501–19, 712–15.

92 A. Fletcher, The outbreak of the English Civil War (London, 1981), pp. 91–124, 283–321.

93 CCA, MS U 66/1, fos. 114–18; Rushworth, Historical collections, v, p. 27; I. Gentles, ‘The icongraphy of revolution: England 1642–1649’, in I. Gentles, J. Morrill, and B. Worden, eds., Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 91–113.

94 CKS, MS U 951: Z 17, fos. 45–6; G. Robertson, The tyrannicide brief: the story of the man who sent Charles I to the scaffold (London, 2006), p. 192. Robertson usefully describes John Cooke and his ilk as ‘Bible republicans’ and has some trenchant things to say about the ‘neo-roman’ school of ‘Cambridge’ historians: ibid., pp. 125, 127, 389. The religious dimenson is indeed largely lacking from the analysis provided by Quentin Skinner, of what he dubs the ‘neo-roman understanding of civil liberty’: Skinner, Liberty before liberalism, pp. ix, 19–20. On the other hand Jonathan Scott has now begun to address this question more fully: J. Scott, Commonwealth principles: republican writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 41–62, 151–69.

95 E. Ludlow, A voyce from the watch tower: part five: 1660–1662, ed. B. Worden (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 21, London, 1978), p. 144; ibid., pp. 131–43, 201–10. Blair Worden's brilliant rescuing of Ludlow from the hands of the secularizers is, however, open to the criticism that it goes to the opposite extreme: B. Worden, Roundhead reputations: the English Civil Wars and the passions of posterity (London, 2001), pp. 39–64.

96 M. Dzelzainis, ed., John Milton: political writings (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 5, 41–3,107. For Milton's rendition of the Bible as a manifesto against tyranny, see ibid., pp. 80–118. Cf. B. Worden, Literature and politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (Oxford, 2007), pp. 154–94.

97 Some other groups at the time of course, such as the Levellers, drew even more radical conclusions than did the regicides: B. Manning, ‘The Levellers and religion’, in J. F. McGregor and B. Reay, eds., Radical religion in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1984), pp. 65–90. Finally it is worth recalling that four of Peter Wentworth's grandsons emerged as prominent supporters of the parliamentarian cause during the 1640s. They were Sir Edward Boys, Walter and Sir William Strickland, and Sir Peter Wentworth. At least one of them, Sir Peter Wentworth, also became a committed republican: W. L. Rutton, Three branches of the family of Wentworth (London, 1891), pp. 241, 276–88, 300–1; A. M. Everitt, The community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660 (Leicester, 1966), pp. 63, 74–5, 136, 144; T. Venning, ‘Strickland, Walter (1598?–1671), ODNB; A. J. Hopper, ‘Strickland, Sir William (c. 1596–1673)’, ODNB; S. Barber, ‘Wentworth, Sir Peter (1592–1675)’, ODNB.