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Select document: Sir George Radcliffe’s ‘Originall of Government’ (1639) and absolutist political theory in Stuart Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

Ian Campbell
Ian Campbell*
Affiliation:
School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast
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Extract

A seventeenth-century manuscript miscellany, which once belonged to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, contains a short treatise on the origins of government by Sir George Radcliffe. Radcliffe was legal assistant to Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord deputy of Ireland (from January 1640 earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant). The treatise insisted on the divine origin of all human political power and implied that the best form of government was absolute monarchy, in which the monarch was free of all human law and subject to divine restraint alone. It will be suggested below that the composition of this treatise can be dated to the summer of 1639. This introduction will offer an outline of Radcliffe’s education and political career, explain the genesis of his treatise on government, point out some pertinent aspects of its argument, and finally assess the document’s significance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 154 , November 2014 , pp. 308 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2014

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References

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