Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T03:17:48.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Kingship by Descent or Kingship by Election? The Contested Title of James VI and I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2013

Abstract

Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, a steady stream of tracts appeared in English print to vindicate the succession of the most prominent contenders, Mary and James Stuart of Scotland. This article offers a comprehensive account of the polemical battle between the supporters and opponents of the Stuarts, and further identifies various theories of English kingship, most notably the theory of corporate kingship, developed by the Stuart polemicists to defend the Scottish succession. James's accession to the English throne in March 1603 marked the protracted end of the debate over the succession. The article concludes by suggesting that, while powerfully renouncing the opposition to his succession, over the course of his attempt to unify his two kingdoms, James and his supporters ultimately departed from the polemic of corporate kingship, for a more assertive language of kingship by natural and divine law.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jansson, Maija, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia, 1988), 310Google Scholar.

2 See also the account of John Chamberlain communicated to Dudley Carleton, 26 May 1614, in Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, Norman Egbert, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), 1:533Google Scholar. The Venetian ambassador also reported later that the members' reference to foreign kingdoms angered the French ambassador. Antonio Foscarini to the Doge and Senate (27 June 1614), Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 1613–5, ed. Hinds, Allen B. (London, 1907), 138Google Scholar.

3 James, Trew Law of Free Monarches, in Political Writings, ed. Sommerville, J. P. (Cambridge, 1982), 73, 74Google Scholar.

4 Russell, Conrad, “1603: End of English National Sovereignty,” in The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Burgess, Glenn and Wymer, Rowland (London, 2006), 4Google Scholar.

5 For the Catholic/Protestant tension related to Mary, see Dawson, Jane E. A., “The Two John Knoxes: England, Scotland, and the 1558 Tracts,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991): 555–76Google Scholar; Dawson, Jane E. A., The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2002), 137–42, 165–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McLaren, Anne, “Gender, Religion, and Early Modern Nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Genesis of English Anti-Catholicism,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002): 739–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Neale, John, “Peter Wentworth: Part II,” English Historical Review 39, no. 153 (January 1924): 177–79Google Scholar.

7 Levine, Mortimer, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question (Stanford, CA, 1966)Google Scholar; Axton, Marie, The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Brooks, Christopher W., Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2009), chap. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Collinson, Patrick, “The Religious Factor,” in The Struggle for the Succession in Late Elizabethan England: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representations, ed. Mayer, Jean-Christophe (Montpellier, 2004), 143–73Google Scholar; Alford, Stephen, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1556–1569 (Cambridge, 2002), 1Google Scholar.

9 For the heightened sense of security and alarm for the unsettled succession, see Guy, J. A., “The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?”, in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. Guy, John (Cambridge, 1990), 119Google Scholar.

10 Although, Susan Doran argues that James suffered a fractured and fragile relationship with Elizabeth. See Doran, “Loving and Affectionate Cousins? The Relationship Between Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland,” in Tudor England and Its Neighbours, ed. Doran, Susan and Richardson, Glenn (Basingstoke, 2005), 203–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Arbella's numerous attempts to escape, her connection with the earl of Essex, and her secret marriage to the earl of Hertford failed to earn the credit of chief courtiers such as Robert Cecil. See De Lisle, Leanda, After Elizabeth: How James King of Scots Won the Crown of England in 1603 (London, 2004), 96115Google Scholar. On James's correspondence with Cecil and Henry Howard, see Stewart, Alan, A Cradle King: A Life of James VI and I (London, 2003), 164–85Google Scholar; Newton, Diana, prologue to The Making of the Jacobean Regime (London, 2006)Google Scholar; Andersson, D. C., Lord Henry Howard: An Elizabethan Life (Cambridge, 2009), 177–78Google Scholar. Cecil's religious stance broadly matched James's liberal policies. See Croft, Pauline, “The Religion of Robert Cecil,” Historical Journal 34 (1991): 773–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Langdon, Robert McCune, “William Allen's Use of Protestant Political Argument,” in From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honour of Garrett Mattingly, ed. Carter, Charles Howard (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Clancy, Thomas H., Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-Reformation in England, 1572–1615 (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar.

13 Clancy, T. H., Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-Parsons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-Reformation in England, 1572–1615 (Chicago, 1964), 1443Google Scholar; Brown, Nancy Pollard, “Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 1 (1989): 120–34Google Scholar.

14 In response to Jenny Wormald, who thought that James's Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598) was an academic exercise, Peter Lake has argued that it was written specifically to rebut Parsons's theory of elective monarchy. See Wormald, Jenny, “James VI and I, Basilicon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies: The Scottish Context and the English Translation,” in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Peck, Linda Levy (Cambridge, 1991), 3654Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, “The King (Queen) and the Jesuit: James Stuart's Trew Law of Free Monarchies in Context/s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004): 243–60Google Scholar. Marie Axton focuses primarily on the cultural manifestation of succession anxieties (Axton, Queen's Two Bodies, chap. 7). Doran, Susan, “Three Late-Elizabethan Succession Tracts,” in Struggles for the Succession in Late Elizabethan England: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representations, ed. Meyer, Jean-Christophe (Montpellier, 2004), 91117Google Scholar; Doran, Susan, “James VI and the English Succession,” in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, ed. Houlbrooke, Ralph (Aldershot, 2006), 2542Google Scholar; McLaren, Anne, “Challenging the Monarchical Republic: James I's Articulation of Kingship,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, ed. McDiarmaid, J. F. (Cambridge, 2007), 165–81Google Scholar. All three, however, identify Persons's Conference as the watershed for the polemics for the Jacobean succession, producing a “Protestant Stuart counterblast” (Axton, Queen's Two Bodies, 95).

15 Lake has argued that James's absolutist theory in his Trew Law is indisputably a riposte to Parsons. See Lake, “King and Jesuit,” 250–57. James's aversion to elective monarchy remained unchanged later in his reign, as he was extremely reluctant to support his son-in-law, Elector Palatine Frederick, who had been elected the king of Bohemia in 1619. See Patterson, W. B., King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997), 303–05Google Scholar.

16 Croft, Pauline, King James (Basingstoke, 2003), chaps. 1 and 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also see Doran, “Loving and Affectionate Cousins,” 223–24.

17 Harrison, G. B., The Elizabethan Journals, being the record of things most talked about during the years 1591–1594 (New York, 1929), 168, 213Google Scholar.

18 Hammer, Paul E. J., The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Gajda, Alexandra, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford, 2011), 142–51Google Scholar.

19 Dawson, Jane E. A., “Anglo-Scottish Relations: Security and Succession,” in A Companion to Tudor Britain, ed. Tittler, Robert and Jones, Norman L. (Oxford, 2004), 169Google Scholar. Also see MacCaffrey, Wallace T., Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588–1603 (Princeton, NJ, 1992), chap. 21Google Scholar. Andersson thinks that the separation of favor between Howard and Essex around 1600 marked the earl's fall in court. See Anderson, Lord Henry Howard, 173–218.

20 Galloway, Bruce, The Union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608 (Edinburgh, 1986), 8081Google Scholar. Jenny Wormald has most extensively studied anti-Scottish sentiments in the union debate. See Wormald, Jenny, “Gunpowder, Treason and Scots,” Journal of British Studies 24, no. 2 (April 1985): 141–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wormald, Jenny, “James VI and I: Two Kings or One?History 68 (1983): 187209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wormald, Jenny, “The Union of 1603,” in Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603, ed. Mason, Roger (Cambridge, 1994), 1740CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The recent work of Diana Newton follows this view stressing English xenophobia. Newton, Diana, Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England (Woodbridge, 2005), 3741Google Scholar. Conrad Russell argued that the union anticipated James's wish to settle the succession without an act of Parliament. See Russell, Conrad, “1603: The End of English National Sovereignty,” in The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Burgess, Glenn, Wymer, Rowland, and Lawrence, Jason (New York, 2006), 114Google Scholar; Russell, Conrad, “The Union,” in King James VI and I and His English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995, ed. Cust, Richard and Thrush, Andrew (Oxford, 2011), 123–39, esp. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Keith Brown thinks that the issue of union was of marginal importance except at specific moments like James's accession, while Brian Levack argues that the union was one of the most controversial topics of the seventeenth century. Brown, Keith, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603–1715 (New York, 1992), 2Google ScholarPubMed; Levack, Brian P., The Formation of a British State: England, Scotland and the Union, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 1987), 14Google Scholar.

22 Galloway, Bruce and Levack, Brian P., The Jacobean Union: Six Tracts of 1604, (Edinburgh, 1985)Google Scholar. On the union of laws, see Charls Drummond, “The Jacobean ‘Union of the Laws,’ 1603–1608” (MPhil diss., Cambridge University, 2010). Also see McColl, Alan, “The Meaning of ‘Britain’ in Medieval and Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (April 2006): 248–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Conrad Russell sheds light on the issue of succession in the union debate (The Anglo-Scottish Union, 1603–1643: A Success?” in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Roberts, Peter [Cambridge, 1994], 249–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar). In her study of early modern drama, Lisa Hopkins has also suggested that Jacobean literary productions continued to address the legal and constitutional questions raised by the succession debate, perceiving the issue to be unresolved. See Hopkins, Lisa, Drama and the Succession to the Crown, 1561–1633 (Farnham, 2011)Google Scholar.

24 For the impact of Mary's marriage on Elizabeth's matrimonial negotiations, see Doran, Susan, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996), 7898CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mary had long claimed her inheritance to the English crown from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, supported by those at home and overseas unhappy with the settlement of religion and who believed that the queen of Scots was the rightful monarch to Mary Tudor. For the early Elizabethan discourse over Mary and her supporters, see Guy, John, Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (Boston, 2004)Google Scholar; Alford, Stephen, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven, CT, 2008), 104–05, 185, 191, 193, 254, 265Google Scholar.

25 William Camden, Annales of the true and royall history of the famous empresse Elizabeth (1625), bk. I, 111.

26 John Hales, A Declaratyon of the Successyon of the Crowne Imperyall of England (1563). For the detailed analysis, see Levine, Succession Question, chap. 7. However, Mary's marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, in 1565 would effectively undermine Hales's argument since the children between them could claim to be English. For the “weakness” of the Elizabethan regime that the Darnley marriage exposed, see Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 121–38.

27 The English questioned Lesley's involvement in the Rudolfi Plot. See Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. Hartley, T. E., 3 vols. (Leicester, 1981) 1:271, 272, 320–23, 346–48Google Scholar.

28 There is a manuscript treatise titled “A discors upon certen pointes touching the Enheritaunce of the Crowne: Conceaued by Sir Anthonie Browne Iustice, and aunswered by Sir Nicholas Bacon L: Chancellor of Englande,” MS Harley 537, ART 4 (Harley 555), British Library, reported to be written by Nicholas Bacon. Levine pointed out that the tract was wrongly attributed to Bacon by Booth, Nathanial, The Right of Succession (London, 1723)Google Scholar, and a comparison of the two texts reveals that the tract attributed to Bacon is the second book of Lesley's Defence of Mary and that attributed to Browne is Hales's Declaration. See Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession, 220.

29 Lesley, A defence of the Honor of … Marie, Queen of Scotland (hereafter Defence of Mary) (1566), sig. 61v.

30 Lesley, Defence of Mary, sigs. 68v–69r.

31 Lesley, A Treatise touching the right, title, and interest of the most excellent Princess Marie, Queen of Scotland (hereafter Treatise) (1584), sigs. D2.

32 Lesley, Treatise, sigs. D3r, D4v.

33 Lesley, Treatise, sigs. E2r–E3r.

34 The term “corporate sole” was increasingly used to refer to parsons in their inheritance of glebes, but church was not described as a “corporation.” See Maitland, F. W., The Collected Papers of F. W. Maitland, ed. Fisher, H. A. L., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1911), 3:244–70Google Scholar; Maitland, F. W., State, Trust and Corporation, ed. Runciman, David and Ryan, Magnus (Cambridge, 2003), 1115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Maitland, State, Trust and Corporation, 13, 25.

36 Haereditates iacentes are things belonging to an inheritance between the death of the parson whose estate it is and acquisition of the inheritance by the heir. See Maitland, State, Trust, and Corporation, li. Edward Coke, The first part of the institutes of the laws of England: or a commentary upon Littleton (1628), 342b.

37 Coke, Commentary on Littleton, 341a.

38 Plowden, Commentaries or Reports, (London, 1816), 2122, quoted in Maitland, State, Trust and Corporation, 46.

39 Levine, Succession Question, 111.

40 Lesley, Treatise, sigs. E3.

41 The theory of the king's two bodies was originally advanced by Plowden as part of a legal dispute involving the Duchy of Lancaster in 1561. Marie Axton has most extensively analyzed Plowden's treatise. She argued that Plowden's theory of the two bodies was “popularised,” seeing greater dissemination in theatrical and literary productions as “analogues” for a Stuart succession (Axton, Queen's Two Bodies, 36).

42 Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957), 9Google Scholar.

43 Harley MS 849, f. 2r, British Library. The theory of the king's two bodies was more officially elucidated in Plowden's Commentaries, available in English Reports, 75:213.

44 Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, 10–13.

45 Ibid, f. 7r.

46 Ibid, ff. 19v–20r.

47 Axton, Marie, “The Influence of Edmund Plowden's Succession Treatise,” Huntington Library Quarterly 32 (1974): 209–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 A collection of state papers relating to affairs in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1571 to 1596, ed. Murdin, William (London, 1759), 122Google Scholar.

49 See Hartley, Proceedings of Elizabethan Parliament, 302–10.

50 Legal scholars suggest that it was composed by Middle Temple lawyer William Fleetwood (c. 1525–1594), sometime between 1571 and the 1580s. Multiple copies remain. See Brooks, Law, Society and Politics, 74–75; Baker, J. H. and Ringrose, J. S., eds., A Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library (Suffolk, 1996), 652–53Google Scholar. For the debate in the Parliament of 1571/72, see Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 2 vols., ed. Hartley, T. E. (Leicester, 1981), 1:1558–1581, 259–318Google Scholar.

51 MS Rawlinson C. 85, f. 19v, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

52 Ibid., f. 20v.

53 Ibid., f. 21r.

54 Ibid., f. 23v.

55 Ibid., f. 24r.

56 Ibid., ff. 39v–40r.

57 The Parliaments of 1571, 1572, and 1586/87 made many attempts to take matters in hand, and most notably, Lord Burghley William Cecil was prepared to erect a republican council and appoint the heir in case Elizabeth died without children. Many modern studies highlight the incentives of Parliament for their intervention in the succession. See Collinson, Patrick, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994): 5193Google Scholar; Alford, Elizabethan Polity, 110–15. Alford suggests that Cecil was involved in drafting the proposal as early as 1563.

58 Hartley, Proceedings in Elizabethan Parliament, 169.

59 For the discussion on the activity of the High Commission in Cyndia, see Clegg, Susan, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997), 4849CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 For the level of general anxieties over the succession in the last months of Elizabeth's reign, see Lee, Maurice, Great Britain's Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana, 1990), 106Google Scholar.

61 The remaining drafts of the “Bond” are The National Archives: State Papers, 12/174, 12/178/81–4. Also see Cressy, David, “Binding the Nation: The Bonds of Association 1584 and 1696,” in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G.R. Elton from his American Friends, ed. Guth, Delloyd J. and McKenna, John W. (Cambridge, 1982), 271334Google Scholar.

62 Linda Levy Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (1982), 19. For the meeting that took place in London, 1601, between Robert Cecil and James's representative, the Earl of Mar, see Loades, David, The Cecils: Privilege and Power behind the Throne (London, 2007), 220–22Google Scholar. For the letters exchanged between James and Cecil, see J. Bruce, ed., The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI (1766), nos. 9 and 6.

63 For the Allen-Parsons league of Catholic pamphlets, see Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers, 14–43. Clancy stresses the prevailing anti-Cecilian element in the Catholic campaign.

64 Doleman, R. [Robert Parsons], A Conference about the Next Succession for the Crown of England (Antwerp, 1595), pt. II, 32Google Scholar.

65 For the composition and reception of Persons's Conference, see Holmes, Peter, “The Authorship and Early Reception of a Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England,” Historical Journal 23, no. 2 (June 1980): 415–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tutino, Stafania, “The Political Thought of Robert Parson's Conference in Continental Context,” Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 4362CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houliston, Victor, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Parsons's Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Aldershot, 2007), 79Google Scholar. For the Scottish reception of the Conference, see Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 95–99.

66 Doleman, Conference, pt. 1, 131.

67 1 February 1601, ibid., 682.

68 1 February 1603, ibid., 719–23. Also contributing to the course correction was the infanta's husband, Archduke Albert of Austria, who was much more interested in maintaining the Spanish Netherlands than the British Isles.

69 Ibid., 726–27. Recent studies have argued that by appropriating Protestant rhetoric of lawful resistance theories of election, the Conference failed to earn papal support. On 9 December 1596, Thomas Phelips reported to Essex that Persons's book infuriated a papal nuncio, who stated that Persons had ruined himself. It was also said that the “Pope would detest his behaviour, and that he could never have done anything more disgustable to the Pope” (Calendar of Cecil Papers, 6:512–13). For the continental reception of the Conference, also see Tutino, “Parsons's Conference,” 51–56; Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England, 87–88.

70 Peter Wentworth's first tract managed to win Burghley's favor. Neale thought that Wentworth, who had earlier hoped for the Suffolk succession, had been “converted” at least by 1594 to supporting James following Mary's death. See Neale, “Peter Wentworth,” 186–87, 195–98. Collinson further suggested that from extremely “Puritan” motives, Wentworth had decided on James after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. See Collinson, “The Religious Factor,” 243–73. Doran has successfully demonstrated that Wentworth's works, commissioned by the royal printer Robert Waldegrave, were part of James's campaign against Parsons. See Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 99. Also see Hartley, T. E., Elizabethan Parliaments: Queen, Lords and Commons, 1559–1601 (Manchester, 1992), chap. 7Google Scholar. Hartley stresses that as he became “patently” concerned for the succession toward the end of his career, the speech of 27 February 1587 on Parliament's freedom of speech was “undoubtedly a speech for the succession” (137). But Hartley hardly discusses the religious agitation in Parliament that contributed to Wentworth's support for James VI.

71 Hartley, Proceedings, 1:427–28.

72 Wentworth, Peter, A Pithie Exhortation to her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crown (written in 1587), 5Google Scholar.

73 Wentworth, A treatise containing M. Wentworths judgement concerning the person of the true and lawfull successor to these realmes of England and Scotland (1598), 53–54, 55–56.

74 See McLaren, “James's Articulation of Kingship,” 171. Doran suggests that in addition to Wentworth, Alexander Dickson was part of James's campaign against Parsons. See Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 101–04.

75 Irenicus Philodikaios, A treatise declaring, and confirming the just title and righte of Iames the sixt (1599), sigs. 3r–4v. A manuscript draft survives in Cambridge University Library (MS Ii. IV. 33). The tract was given the first scholarly light by Susan Doran, who dates the work to be between 1598 and 1600. See Doran, “Three Succession Tracts,” 106–11.

76 Philodikaios, Treatise, sigs. B1.

77 MS Ii. IV. 33, f. 51v, Cambridge University Library.

78 See Lesley, Treatise, sigs. E3v–E4r.

79 Wilson, Thomas, “The State of England. Anno. Dom. 1600,” Camden Third Series 52 (1936): 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Ibid., 7.

81 Ibid., 8.

82 Harington had advocated the Stuart succession as early as 1584, and had long sought the patronage of James VI and William Cecil, by dedicating his works to them. See Jason Scott-Warren, “Harington, Sir John,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For the composition of the tract and Haringon's association with James, see Mayer, J.-C., Breaking the Silence on the Succession (Montpellier, 2003), 223–26Google Scholar.

83 Harington, John, A Tract on the Succession to the Crown, ed. Markham, Clements R. (1880), 16Google Scholar.

84 Ibid., 46, 52, 57.

85 Willson, David Harris, King James VI and I (London 1956), 139Google Scholar.

86 James, Trew Law, 82.

87 Cecil's negotiations for peace with Spain may have contributed to uncertainties of his position in the succession, and rumours spread that Cecil supported the infanta. For a detailed analysis of Cecil's part in the peace treaty, see Croft, Pauline, “Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 Peace with Spain,” in The Accession of James VI and I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Burgess, Glenn (Basingstoke, 2006), 140–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Cecil to James, Correspondence, 23.

89 Cecil to James, Correspondence, 7, 19.

90 Cecil to James, Correspondence, 23.

91 17 March 1603, Henry Earl of Northumberland to King James, in Bruce, Correspondence, 73.

92 Harington, John, “To my good friend Sir Hugh Portman. Of succession,” in The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington Together with The Prayse of Private Life, ed. Egbert, Norman (Philadelphia, 1930), 288–89Google Scholar.

93 26 March 1603, 14, 1, 3, The National Archives: State Papers, f. 9.

94 19 May 1603, in Stuart Royal Proclamations: Volume I, Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625, ed. J. F. Larkin and P. L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), no. 9, 18.

95 James VI and I, Speech on 19 March 1604, in Political Writing, ed. Sommerville, J. (Cambridge, 1994), 134, 135, 136Google Scholar.

96 Russell, “The Union,” 67.

97 18 April 1604, Journals of the House of Commons (hereafter CJ), 1:176. All citations from CJ are from the first volume, unless otherwise indicated.

98 CJ, 1:318. All references from the Commons Journal are from this volume.

99 1 Jac. 1 c. 1.

100 James, “Speech, 1607,” Political Writings, 161.

101 See Galloway, Union, 145–47.

102 Complete Collection of State Trials (hereafter ST), ed. Howell, T. B. and Cobbett, C. (London, 1809), vol. II, col. 380Google Scholar. All citations are taken from this volume.

103 For Bacon, the naturalization of Scots was to serve as the springboard for union of laws. See Bacon, Works, 10:314. James's involvement is also testified by Ellesmere in his letter to the king. See Galloway, Union, 149.

104 ST, cols 560–1.

105 Kim, Keechang, “Calvin's Case (1608) and the Law of Alien Status,” Journal of Legal History 17, no. 2 (August 1996): 156–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 ST, col. 567.

107 Bacon, Francis, “The Case of Post-Nati,” in Collected Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, James, 14 vols. (London, 1868), 7:652Google Scholar.

108 ST, col. 567.

109 ST, cols. 579–81.

110 ST, cols. 691–92. Louis Knafla has demonstrated Ellesmere's later elaboration of the one body theory. See Knafla, Louis, Law and Politics in Jacobean England: Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (San Marino, 1977), 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Levack, Formation, 183.

112 ST, col. 629.

113 The thrust of this argument is best exemplified by the civil lawyer John Cowell in his legal dictionary, The Interpreter (1607), which caused uproar in the parliament of 1607. For Cowell and his Interpreter, see Crimes, S. B., “The Constitutional Ideas of Dr. John Cowell,” English Historical Review 64 (1949): 461–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coquillette, D. R., The Civilian Writers of Doctors Commons, London: Three Centuries of Juristic Innovation in Comparative, Commercial and International Law (Berlin, 1988), 7990Google Scholar.

114 Collinson, Patrick, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 69 (1986–87): 394424CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994), 5155Google Scholar; Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 110–15; Peltonen, Markku, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 1214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 Collinson, “Monarchical Republic,” 44–50. Burghley and other ministers, against the queen's will, proposed either the continuance of the sitting Parliament or the calling of a new one, which would adjudge claims to the throne together with a ruling council. A bill planning for an interregnum was produced in Parliament in January 1585. These proposals failed to earn approval from the queen or Parliament, but they evince the degree of the readiness of the chief ministers to depart from the standard procedures of hereditary monarchy and accept an elective one. See Collinson, “Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis”; Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 116–18; Alford, Burghley, 124–25, 256, 280–88.

116 Guy, “The 1590s,” 7–9; Peter Lake, “‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited,” in Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, 144–45.

117 McLaren, James's articulation of kingship, 166–70.

118 Pauline Croft, “‘The state of the world is marvellously changed’: England, Spain and Europe 1558–1604,” in Tudor England and Its Neighbours, 139–77.

119 Alan Haynes suggested that James had rather been an “Essexite” than “Cecilian,” whereas Cecil was thought to support the Suffolk candidate Edward Seymour. It was not until the meeting of Cecil and the king's Scottish representatives in 1601 that the secretary made clear his unswerving support for the king. See Robert Cecil: Earl of Salisbury, 1563–1612, the Servant of Two Sovereigns (London, 1989), 88–89. For the specific role of William Cecil, who was convinced that Mary was the greatest threat to Elizabeth's throne, played for her execution, see Alford, Burghley, chap. 18. For Wentworth and his letter to Cecil, see Neale, “Peter Wentworth,” 185. For the puritan motive for the Stuart claim, see Collinson, “Religious Factor.”

120 Jansson, Proceedings 1614, 311.