For counsel and criticism, the author wishes to thank Sacvan Bercovitch, Patrick Collinson, Stephen Foster, Richard L. Greaves, Dale E. Hoak, Rhys Isaac, John C. Livingston, Arthur Cushman McGiffert Jr., and James H. Smylie. Research for the project of which this article is a product study of the history of covenant thought has been aided by a fellowship (1977-78) from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Institute of Early American History and Culture. Previous versions of the article were presented to the October 1978 colloquium of the Institute, at the annual convention of the American Historical Association, December 1978, and at the Workshop on Federal Theology of the Center for the Study of Federalism, Temple University, February 1980.

¹ Frere, W.H. and Douglas, C.E. (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes: A Study of the Origins of the Puritan Revolt (London, 1907), pp. 6, 8, 9, 90Google Scholar; see pp. 107-09, 118ff., for Cartwright's Presbyterian design.

² Dering, , A Sermon Preached Before the Queen's Majesty, M. Bering's Works (London, 1597), pp. 7, 13, 22-23, 28Google Scholar; reprinted with an introduction in Trinterud, Leonard J. (ed.), Elizabethan Puritanism (New York, 1971), pp. 131–61Google Scholar. Dering was putting a covenantal gloss on a major theme of the coronation ceremonies that linked the queen to the royal line of David, extending back to Moses and Joshua, and prefigured by Abraham. See Smith, Edward O. Jr., Crown and Commonwealth: A Study in the Official Elizabethan Doctrine of the Prince (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 12–17Google Scholar.

³ Dering, , Sermon, Works, pp. 22, 26, 28Google Scholar. Nearly two decades later, the popular Puritan writer Udall, John, in his dialogue, The State of the Church of England (London, 1588)Google Scholar, had Diotrephes, a bishop, recall “one Dering that by our negligence preached … [I]f he and such as he had but continued the whole Lent, I am afraid there would have been never a lord bishop in England before the next Lent had come again” (G1r). It should be noted, however, that Richard Bancroft's hostile account of the rise of Puritanism in Dangerous Positions and Proceedings… (London, 1593Google Scholar) makes no mention of Dering or his sermon.

⁴ Dering, , Sermon, Works, p. 27Google Scholar.

⁵ Collinson, , A Mirror of Elizabethan Puritanism: The Life and Letters of “Godly Master Dering” (London, 1964), pp. 2, 17, 31Google Scholar. On Dering's important role in the Puritan movement, see also Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar, passim; Knappen, M.M., Tudor Puritanism: A Chapter in the History of Idealism (Chicago, 1939), pp. 219ff, 240ff.Google Scholar; and Pearson, A.F. Scott, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535-1603 (Cambridge, 1925) pp. 115ff.Google Scholar and passim.

⁶ Dering, , Sermon, Works, p. 2Google Scholar.

⁷ “M. Dering's Own Preface to Her Majesty,” Works, 2r.

⁸ Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 25Google Scholar.

⁹ Aylmer, , An Harbor for Faithful and True Subjects (Strasbourg, 1559), Rlr-vGoogle Scholar. Pilkington, , Works, Scholefield, James (ed.), (Cambridge, 1842), pp. 37–38Google Scholar, and passim in his 1562 commentary on Haggai and Obadiah. Gilby, , A Pleasant Dialogue Between a Soldier of Berwick and an English Chaplain (London, 1581Google Scholar; written c. 1566), Flr. On Gilby, see Danner, Dan G., “Anthony Gilby, Puritan in Exile, A Biographical Approach,” Church History, XL (1970), pp. 412–22Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Tyndale, , Exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of Matthew (1532)Google Scholar, in Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures … by William Tyndale, Walter, Henry (ed.), (Cambridge, 1849), p. 67Google Scholar.

¹¹ Dering, , Sermon, Works, p. 24Google Scholar. The repetition of this scriptural injunction, as also in the first Admonition, Frere, and Douglas, (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes, p. 19Google Scholar, conveys a sense of the awakening of the Puritan movement itself.

¹² Knox, , The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558)Google Scholar, in The Works of John Knox, IV, Laing, David (ed.), (Edinburgh, 1855), pp. 363–420Google Scholar. Ponet, , A Short Treatise of Politic Power ([Strasbourg?], 1556)Google Scholar. Goodman, , How Superior Powers Ought to Be Obeyed of Their Subjects (Geneva, 1558)Google Scholar, Charles H. Mcllwain (ed.), (New York, 1931). On Knox, see Greaves, Richard L., “John Knox, the Reformed Tradition, and the Development of Resistance Theory,” Journal of Modern History, XLVIII (September 1976 demand article)Google Scholar, and “Calvinism, Democracy, and the Political Thought of John Knox,” Occasional Papers of the American Society for Reformation Research, I (1977), pp. 81–92Google Scholar. On Ponet, see Hudson, Winthrop S., John Ponet (15169-1556): Advocate of Limited Monarchy (Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar. On Goodman, see Danner, Dan G., “Christopher Goodman and the English Protestant Tradition of Civil Disobedience,” Sixteenth Century Journal, VIII (1977), pp. 61–73Google Scholar; and Dowson, Jane E.A., “The Early Career of Christopher Goodman and His Place in the Development of English Protestant Thought,” (PhD diss., University of Durham, 1978)Google Scholar.

¹³ For evidence of the sobering effect of these examples, see Pearson, , Cartwright, p. 104Google Scholar, and Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 148Google Scholar. On Müntzer, see Rupp, Gordon, Patterns of Reformation (London, 1969), pp. 157–353Google Scholar. On the Anabaptists, see Zuck, Lowell H., “Anabaptist Revolution through the Covenant in Sixteenth Century Continental Protestantism” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1954)Google Scholar, and Cottrell, Jack Warren, “Covenant and Baptism in the Theology of Huldreich Zwingli” (PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1971)Google Scholar; on both, see George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (London, 1962).

¹⁴ See the valuable article by Höpfl, Harro and Thompson, Martyn P., “The History of Contract as a Motif in Political Thought,” American Historical Review, LXXXIV (1979), pp. 919-45, esp. 931–34Google Scholar, which notes that covenant was “compromised by the circumstances of its first [sic] employment” in such Huguenot tracts as the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (p. 934).

¹⁵ Bruce, John (ed.), The Correspondence of Matthew Parker (Cambridge, 1853), p. 105Google Scholar. The Scottish cat was long out of the bag when the first Admonition raised the rhetorical question (giving a club to Bancroft, at it turned out): “Is discipline mete for Scotland? and is it unprofitable for this realm?” Frere, and Douglas, (eds.), Puritan Manifestoes, p. 19Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Knox, , The Appelation of John Knox … (1558)Google Scholar, Works, IV, p. 501Google Scholar, and see also pp. 416,505.

¹⁷ II Kings 11:17; cf. I Chronicles 23:16. Knox, , First Blast of the Trumpet, Works, IV, p. 399Google Scholar; Knox, , History of the Reformation in Scotland, Dickinson, William Croft (ed.), (London, 1949), II, p. 72Google Scholar. See Greaves, Richard L., “John Knox and the Covenant Tradition,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XXIV (1973), pp. 29–32Google Scholar, and Williamson, Arthur H., “Antichrist's Career in Scotland: The Imagery of Evil and the Search for a National Past” (PhD diss., Washington University, 1973)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Bilson, , The True Difference Between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (London, 1585), pp. 20, 341Google Scholar. See also the fulsome likening of Elizabeth to Deborah, Judith, Hester, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah by Archbishop Sandys, to whom Jehoiada figured not as a regicide but as a bishop loyal to his rightful king. Ayre, John (ed.), The Sermons of Edwin Sandys (Cambridge, 1841), pp. 81, 147Google Scholar. Though the queen's churchmen made occasional use of the Israelite paradigm, they rarely put a covenantal point on it.

¹⁹ Bancroft, , Dangerous Positions, Bk. 2, p. 49Google Scholar. Cf. Gilby, Pleasant Dialogue, E2v, J8r-v. Gilby was “cunning” in that although he justified the overthrow of evil princes and indicated that Elizabeth, by requiring the surplice, did evil, he did not explicitly associate her with Ahab, Jeroboam, and the like.

²⁰ Goodman, , Superior Powers, p. 185Google Scholar. Parker wrote in 1559 that if Goodman's “principles be spread into men's heads,” so that it should be “referred to the judgment of the subject to discuss what is tyranny, and to discern whether his prince, his landlord, his master, is a tyrant… what lord of the council shall ride quietly in the streets among desperate beasts? What minister shall be sure in his bed chamber?” Strype, John, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (Oxford, 1821), I, p. 85Google Scholar.

²¹ Ayre, John (ed.), The Works of John Whitgift, I (Cambridge, 1851), pp. 42, 423, 466–67Google Scholar. Cartwright, , The Second Reply… (London, 1575), pp. 130, 146, 290Google Scholar. Bancroft, , A Survey of the Pretended Holy Discipline (London, 1593), pp. 432–33Google Scholar. Bancroft went on (pp. 433-34) to quote Henry Barrow on the contempt of the “counterfeit reformists” for the “base” and “ignorant” mass of England's folk.

²² Sacra Theologia was Protestant England's pioneer contribution to systematic divinity, a field otherwise preempted by the continental masters whose writings, by their glut, depressed the domestic theological industry. Here, as in his other works, Fenner displayed familiarity with the latest refinements of continental covenant doctrine, though he wove its threads only loosely into the fabric of his thought.

²³ Quotations from pp. 130,131 of an anonymous untitled MS translation made no later than 1588 (Harleian MSS 6879, British Library). Other translations are in Dr. Williams' Library and the Lambeth Palace Library. On Fenner, see Pearson, Cartwright, esp. pp. 274-75, and Knappen, , Tudor Puritanism, pp. 372–74Google Scholar. The range and value of Fenner's work remain to be appreciated.

²⁴ Sacra Theologia (trans.), pp. 135,153, 154. The amplest study of the appeal to the inferior magistrates is Benert's, Richard Roy, “Inferior Magistrates in Sixteenth-Century Political and Legal Thought” (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1967)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Pearson, , Cartwright, pp. 334–35Google Scholar. Pearson's account of Cartwright's conduct is apologetic; certainly, the Puritan leader was under heavy pressure. Note Pearson's observation in Church & State: Political Aspects of Sixteenth Century Puritanism (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 2ff., 128–32Google Scholar, that Cartwright, though he cautioned against clerical meddling in practical politics, was a politician malgré lui.

²⁶ Carlson, Leland H. (ed.), The Writings of Henry Barrow, 1587-1590 (London, 1962), p. 64Google Scholar.

²⁷ Buchanan, , The Powers of the Crown of Scotland, Arrowood, Charles Flinn (ed. and trans.), (Austin, Texas, 1949), pp. 54, 102, 131, 134, 142Google Scholar. Parliament condemned Buchanan's book in 1584,1664, and 1688.

²⁸ Travers, , A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline ([Zuich?], 1574), pp. 4,55, 185Google Scholar. Pearson, comments (Church & State, p. 91)Google Scholar that “the conception of a compact between prince and people was known to the Puritans, but they did not utilise it to justify rebellion against Elizabeth.”

²⁹ Bancroft, , Dangerous Positions, Bk. 1, pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

³⁰ Ibid., Bk. 2, p. 44; Bk. 4, pp. 135, 170. Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 292Google Scholar.

³¹ Fuller, , The Church History of Britain, Nichols, James (ed.), (3rd ed., London, 1842), III, p. 116Google Scholar. To Fuller, Marprelate's “bastardly libels” signified a decisive change of party tactics. “It is strange,” he reflected, “how secretly they were printed, how speedily dispersed, how generally bought, how greedily read, yea, and how firmly believed, especially of the common sort, to whom no better music than to hear their betters upbraided. Some precise men of that side thought these jeering pens well employed. This was conceived would drive on their design, strengthen their party by working on the people's affections …” (ibid., p. 99; emphasis added).

³² Burton, , A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Norwich… 1589 (n.p., 1590)Google Scholar, H4r, I4r, and David's Evidence, or the Assurance of God's Love (London, 1592), p. 147Google Scholar.

³³ Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 25Google Scholar. See also Pocock, J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), p. 345Google Scholar.

³⁴ Calvin, , The Institution of the Christian Religion, Norton, Thomas (trans.), (London, 1561), III, xxi, pp. 1, 6, 7Google Scholar.

³⁵ Burton, , David's Evidence, p. 148Google Scholar. See Burton, , The Conclusions of Peace Between God and Man (London, 1594)Google Scholar, for covenantal definition of the privileges and duties of the elect, with a sharp distinction between “the citizens of heaven” and the “courtiers of hell” (D4v).

³⁶ Ursinus, Zacharias, Explicationum Catecheticarum … (Cambridge, 1587), p. 722Google Scholar, and A Collection of Certain Learned Discourses, I.H. (trans.) (Oxford, 1600), p. 258Google Scholar. See Baker, J. Wayne, Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition, pp. 267ff.Google Scholar, and Stoever, William K.B., “A Faire andEasie Way to Heaven”: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, Conn., 1978), pp. 81ff.Google Scholar

³⁷ Rollock, , A Treatise of Our Effectual Calling… (Edinburgh, 1603)Google Scholar, Holland, Henry (trans.), from Tractatus de Efficaci Vocatione (Edinburgh, 1597)Google Scholar, in Gunn, William M. (ed.), Select Works of Robert Rollock, I (Edinburgh, 1849), p. 34Google Scholar. For Knewstub, see his Lectures … upon Exodus 20 … (London, 1577)Google Scholar; Elizabethan Puritanism, Trinterud, (ed.), pp. 302–77Google Scholar, gives excerpts from these lectures, with a commentary on covenant theology. For Cartwright's identification of the covenant of works with the Ten Commandments, see A Treatise of the Christian Religion… (London, 1616), pp. 80-86, 165–68Google Scholar; “Methodical Short Catechism,” in Dod, John and Cleaver, Robert, A Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1612)Google Scholar; and “Short Catechism,” in Peel, Albert and Carlson, Leland H. (eds.); Cartwrightiana (London, 1951), pp. 159–73Google Scholar. Similarly, for Fenner, see Sacra Theologia (trans.), pp. 69-71, 236-43; and for Perkins, see esp. A Golden Chain (Armilla Aurea, 1590) in Perkins, , Collinson, Works (Cambridge, 1616–1618), I, p. 32Google Scholar. The principal studies of covenant in Perkins' thought are I[an] Breward, , “The Life and Theology of William Perkins, 1558-1602” (PhD thesis, Manchester University, 1963)Google Scholar; The Work of William Perkins, Breward, (ed.), (Appleford, 1970)Google Scholar; Priebe, Victor Lewis, “The Covenant Theology of William Perkins” (PhD thesis, Drew University, 1967)Google Scholar; and Munson, Robert Charles, “William Perkins: Theologian of Transition” (PhD thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 1971)Google Scholar. Breward minimizes the importance of covenant for Perkins; Priebe magnifies it; Munson treats covenant as a “structuring principle of Perkins' theology” subordinate to predestination. See also Fisch, Harold, “Shakespeare and the Puritan Dynamic,” Shakespeare Survey, XXVII (1974), p. 81f.Google Scholar

³⁸ Rollock, , Treatise, Works, I, p. 36Google Scholar. This was the argument, for example, of Allen's, Robert copious A Treasury of Catechism (London, 1600)Google Scholar, which called the Decalogue a “testimony of God's love to his people,” because “the condition of the covenant of the law [is] such as no man can perform it…” (32).

³⁹ Ponet, Politic Power, M4r.

⁴⁰ Rogers, , The Faith, Doctrine, and Religion Professed and Protected in the Realm of England (Cambridge, 1607)Google Scholar, “Preface.” The modern edition is The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, Perowne, J.J.S. (ed.), (Cambridge, 1854)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Bownde, , The Doctrine of the Sabbath Plainly Set Forth (London, 1595)Google Scholar, enlarged as Sabbathum Veteris et Novi Testamenti, or the True Doctrine of the Sabbath (London, 1606)Google Scholar. Quotation from Solberg, Winton U., Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), p. 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Collinson, Patrick, “The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism,” Studies in Church History, I (1964), pp. 207–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, Ch. 5 in “The Uses of Sabbatarianism.” The affinity of covenantal and Sabbatarian thinking is evidenced in puritan treatises of the Sabbath at that period. John Sprint, in Propositions Tending to Prove the Necessary Use of the Christian Sabbath … (London, 1607), p. 14Google Scholar, observed that the moral law, containing the Lord's day commandment, “is God's constant or perpetual covenant and direction of good works.” George Widley argued in The Doctrine of the Sabbath (London, 1604), p. 190Google Scholar, that civil magistrates should require all and sundry to go to church, for while in Israel there had been strangers “without the covenant” who were exempt from such compulsion, now “every hill is Zion, every river is Jordan, every country Jewry, every city Jerusalem, every faithful company, yea every body, the Temple.”

⁴² Rogers, Faith, Doctrine, and Religion, “Preface.” Fuller, , Church History, III, p. 144Google Scholar.

⁴³ Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 464–65Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Perkins, , A Faithful and Plain Exposition upon the First Two Verses of the Second Chapter of Zephaniah, Works, III, p. 418Google Scholar. At about the same time, a sermon by the puritan Oliver Pigge cited Jehoiada's covenant of God, king, and people, and converted it to general use. “Thus should every prince promise for all the people of his kingdom,” Pigge declared, “and every householder for those that be of his family” (Sermons upon the 101 Psalm [London, 1591], p. 9Google Scholar). Muffling the political implications of his text, this preacher did not amplify the prince's promise but expatiated on the householder's.

⁴⁵ Perkins, , Zephaniah, Works, III, p. 415Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 420.

⁴⁷ Perkins, , A Commentary or Exposition upon the First Five Chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians (1604)Google Scholar, Works, II, p. 300Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Perkins, , Zephaniah, Works, III, p. 420Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Cf. Michael Walzer's generalizations on the rising popularity, after about 1590, of published puritan sermons, largely supplanting “the earlier polemical tracts,” which, save Marprelate, ‘had never sold well.” Walzer suggests that Perkins began “the long process in which Genevan theology was turned into English experience and practice. … The rise of the sermon as a popular literary genre symbolizes the appearance of an audience far larger than the Elizabethan Puritans had ever known. Now the ministers … began to educate a national public.” The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 145, 146Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Knappen, M.M. (ed.), Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries … (Chicago, 1933), pp. 61, 81Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Anon., The Reformation of Religion by Josiah (n.p., [1590]), A2v, C2r. The tract is datable by its reference (A2v) to thirty-two years of partial reformation in England.

⁵² Ibid., C4r, C4v.

⁵³ Ibid., D2r.

⁵⁴ Ibid., B2v, D3v. See also John Udall's bugling for political action in The State of the Church of England (London, 1588), J4v-Ilv.

⁵⁵ Rogers, , Seven Treatises Leading and Guiding to True Happiness (London, 1603), pp. 477–78Google Scholar. The meeting seems to be the one mentioned in Rogers' diary entry of late November or early December 1587. Knappen, (ed.), Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, p. 67Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Winthrop Papers, I ([Boston], 1929, p. 199Google Scholar. The documentation of such gatherings of the godly is lamentably thin. Rogers' meeting was certainly not the first: his account seems to reflect a developed form of procedure. Nor was it by any means the last. A decade later, Richard Leake, preacher at Killington in Westmoreland, where saints were scarce, spoke matter-of-factly of “the godly societies and assemblies of the righteous” there and differentiated them from the regular meetings of the parish (Four Sermons… [London, 1599] p. 8Google Scholar).