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The Royal Supremacy and Episcopacy ‘Jure Divino’, 1603–1640
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
Laudian divines cried up the king's prerogative. But they also affirmed that episcopacy was by divine, not human right. Was jure divino episcopacy, which many clerics asserted in the decades after Bancroft's famous sermon of 1589, in fact incompatible with the traditional English theory of the Royal Supremacy? Catholics and extreme puritans answered this question in the affirmative, and many recent commentators have accepted their judgement. The purpose of the present study is to question this interpretation, and to suggest that the first two Stuarts endorsed the theory of jure divino episcopacy not because they were misled by the rhetoric of such men as Bancroft, Barlow and Laud, but because they correctly perceived that these divines were vigorous supporters of the king's Supremacy in ecclesiasticals.
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References
1 By 1559 the question of whether the Prince possessed the spiritual powers of ministers had been resolved in the negative: Head, R. E., Royal Supremacy and the Trials of Bishops, 1538–1725, London 1962, 4Google Scholar; Davies, E. T., Episcopacy and the Royal Supremacy in the Church of England in the XVI Century, Oxford 1950, 63, 73, 137Google Scholar.
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31 Ibid., 40.
32 Ibid., 36–7. Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, 3 vols., London 1641, i. 10; cf. George Townsend's edition of the same work, 8 vols., London 1843–1849Google Scholar, i. 26.
33 Cf. note 19 above.
34 Lamont, Godly Rule, 41, citing the epistle dedicatory to Barlow's Answer. Several privy councillors held that the king's ventures into theological controversy were politically inexpedient: Boderie, A. le Fevre de la, Ambassades en Angleterre, 5 vols., Paris 1750, iii. 163–4Google Scholar; Loomie, A. J. (ed.), Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, 2 vols., London 1973–8, i. 108Google Scholar.
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37 Ibid., 46.
38 William Bradshaw, English Puritanisme, Amsterdam? 1605, 12–13. This work was printed by William Jones the elder, but its place of publication has not been established: Curtis, Mark H., ‘William Jones: puritan printer and propagandist’, in The Library, 5th ser., xix (1964), 38–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially at pp. 47, 58.
39 Lamont, Godly Rule, 46. The work in question is The New Man or A Supplication from an unknowne Person, a Romane Catholike unto James, the Monarch of Great Brittaine, and from him to the Emperor, London 1622Google Scholar. The emperor in question is the Holy Roman Emperor, and not Lamont's ‘Christian Emperor’. The translator, William Crashaw, suggests that the work is by Marta at sig. bib. The book attacks the pope because ‘he defends not the Ecclesiasticall power and Jurisdiction of the Church, and the right thereof, which were maintained by his predecessors', holding that he did not proceed vigorously enough against Venice at the time of the Interdict: pp. 34–5. Clearly, this work tells us nothing whatever about the views of puritans.
40 Lamont, Godly Rule, 46, 49.
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42 Lamont, Godly Rule, 45, 11, 41. The work in question is Richard Sherwood, Mr. Downames Sermon… Answered and Refuted, the second part of his An Answere to a Sermon Preached the 17 of April Anno D. 1608, Amsterdam 1609. Sherwood's authorship is accepted by Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Booksprinted abroad, vol. 2, ed. Jackson, W. A. et al. , London 1976Google Scholar, no. 20605, and evidenced by Paget, John, A Defence of Church Government, London 1641Google Scholar, sig. 4Xib–2a, and Tuttle, J. H., ‘The libraries of the Mathers’, in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xx (1910), 268–356Google Scholar, at p. 285. That Amsterdam was the place of publication is shown by Johnson, A. F., ‘The exiled English church at Amsterdam and its press’, in The Library, 5th ser, v (1951), 219–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 226.
43 Lamont, Godly Rule, 45, 39. Sherwood, Answere to a Sermon, ii. 13, 90, 59–60, 4.
44 Lamont, Godly Rule, 45.
45 Paul Baynes, The Diocesans Tryall, Amsterdam 1621, 8, 10, passim.
46 Laud, A Speech delivered in the Starre-Chamber, 8–9.
47 Examples of the use of this allegation by Catholics are Thomas Fitzherbert, An Adioynder to the Supplement of Father Robert Persons his Discussion, St Omer 1613, 459, 476–7, 482; Richard Broughton, Protestants Demonstrationsfor Catholike Recusance, Douai 1615, 45–6, 81–2, 88–9. Puritans used the allegation that the Royal Supremacy was incompatible with jure divino episcopacy not only to tar the bishops with the brush of sedition, but also to exculpate themselves from the charge that in attacking the bishops they were indirectly attacking the king: e.g. Burton, Henry, For God, and the Kinge, 1636, 72–5Google Scholar.
48 Many also denied that clergymen could exercise the purely spiritual power of excommunication against the king: Thomas Jackson, Works, xii. 237–9; De Dominis, De Republica Ecclesiaslica, ii. 741–2; Owen, David, Anti-Paraeus, Cambridge 1622, 12–14Google Scholar; Harris, English Concord, 218; Burhill, Robert, De Potestate Regia, Oxford 1613, 285–6Google Scholar. Jackson, Owen, Harris and Burhill did not regard Ambrose's action against Theodosius as a case of judicial excommunication. An illuminating discussion of the uses to which the example of Ambrose and Theodosius were put in Elizabeth's reign is Collinson, Patrick, ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius: St Ambrose and the integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana’, this Journal, XXX (1979), 205–29Google Scholar.
49 Lamont, Godly Rule, 40.
50 Barlow, William, A Brand, Titio Erepta, London 1607Google Scholar, sig. Fia.
51 Lamont, Godly Rule, 37.
52 Prynne, William, The Church of Englands Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme, London 1629Google Scholar, sig 2π4a–b. At this period Prynne was clearly far more concerned with doctrinal innovations than with the theoretical question of the origins of episcopacy. It was not his devotion to the Royal Supremacy but his conviction that liturgical and doctrinal abuses could be eradicated only if episcopacy were abolished or radically reformed which was to lead him to attack jure divino episcopacy.
53 Barlow, William, The first of the foure sermons preached before the Kings Maiestie, at Hampton Court, London 1607Google Scholar, sig. A2a.
54 Paul Baynes, Diocesans Tiyall, 83, 88. Few puritans before 1640 explicitly permitted active resistance to the king. But, looking to parliament to reform the Church, they insisted that the king's powers were limited by common law and by statute, and that he could only exercise his ecclesiastical Supremacy in parliament: Prynne, , The Church of England Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme, London 1629Google Scholar, dedication, sig. A2b; Burton, For God, and the Kinge, 39–42; Bastwick, John, An Answer oflohn Bastwick, Doctor of Phisicke, To the exceptions made against his Letany, 1637, 26Google Scholar. Their opponents, who looked to the king to protect the Church against puritans and parliament, claimed that the king's Supremacy was personal and not limited by human laws: Heylin, Peter, A Briefe and Moderate Answer, to the seditious and scandalous Challenges of Henry Burton, London 1637, 26–33Google Scholar, 156; Christopher Dow, Innovations, 65, 176.
55 Prynne, William, A Briefe Survay and Censure of Mr Cozens his Couzening Devotions, London 1628, 98–9Google Scholar.
56 The condemnation of Paraeus's book is discussed in Judson, M. A., The Crisis of the Constitution, New Brunswick 1949, 204–5Google Scholar, 312–13.
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