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“Who Can't Pray With Me, Can't Love Me”: Toleration and the Early Jacobean Recusancy Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

John J. LaRocca S.J.
John J. LaRocca S.J.*
Affiliation:
Xavier University
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Extract

On March 24, 1603, the day on which Elizabeth was both dead and alive, James VI not only inherited the English throne, but also the Queen's Catholic subjects and the policy which she and her council had devised to contain and render neutral a potentially rebellious minority. Unlike religious minorities on the continent, however, the recusants were not an armed force waiting to defend their freedom to worship. Rather, they were a minority considered dangerous because of their potential as rebels. In dealing with that potentially rebellious group James's policy differed from continental solutions to the problem of religious minorities. His policy was based on his firm belief that the human conscience was inviolable and that “force never helped in religious matters and that gallant men should not be forced to die as martyrs.” These beliefs led James to attempt to introduce religious toleration in England. Previous treatments of the first three years of James's reign and previous analyses of the Oath of Allegiance of 1606 have failed to see that James was using the oath as the basis of religious toleration. The oath solved both the problem of religious authority and the problem of fidelity to a monarch with whom one differed in religion, because the oath recognized the King's God-given authority as a monarch while not denying that the Bishop of Rome did have a spiritual authority over the Englishmen who belonged to his church. If Catholic subjects accepted that oath, James would grant them a limited form of toleration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Spring 1984 , pp. 22 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1975

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References

1 Notestein, Wallace, The House of Commons, 1604–1610 (New Haven, 1971), p. 281Google Scholar.

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3 The following authors have analyzed James's recusant policy and stated that it favored toleration, but he abandoned it shortly after his accession because of English pressure and the powder plot. They do not see the 1606 oath as an attempt to induce toleration. Vide: Willson, D. H., King James VI and I (New York, 1967), pp. 227–28Google Scholar; Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England: From the Accession of James I to the Convention of the Long Parliament, 1603–1640 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pp. 22, 56, 57, 61, 70, 72, 77, 78, 80 n. 1, 81–82, 83, 511–12, 516–17, 520Google Scholar; Thomas H., Clancy S.J., Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-Reformation in England, 1572–1615 (Chicago, 1964), pp. 89–90Google Scholar; Ross, Elliot, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans Under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 55, 57, 231Google Scholar. In all of the above James is seen as favoring toleration, but abandoning it shortly after his accession because of English pressure and the powder plot. They do not see the 1606 oath as an attempt to introduce toleration.

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30 The King and Council arrested and executed only those who took part in the plot. They did not use the plot as a reason to persecute Catholics in England. They did not scruple, however, to use the plot to prove that all priests were disloyal and powers of sedition; Calendar of Salisbury Manuscripts, XVII, Giuseppi, M., ed. H. M. Stationery Office (London, 1938), p. 511Google Scholar; Calendar of Salisbury Manuscripts, XVIII, Giuseppi, M., ed. H. M. Stationery Office (London, 1940), p. 246Google Scholar, #37; p. 269, #20; p. 281, #28, p. 265.

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33 Ibid., pp. 10–13, n. 1; p. 61.

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