References to apostates from the monastic life appear frequently in ecclesiastical and governmental records of the later Middle Ages, yet little attempt has been made to examine motives for flight or the measures which were adopted to recapture the fugitives. The problem of apostasy regularly attracted the attention of the legislators of the Orders, bishops were anxious both to restrain the culprits and to mitigate the severity of vengeful superiors, and the crown lent the weight of the secular arm to attempts at coercion, although an appeal to Rome might often avert the worst consequences of flight. The ecclesiastical authorities were, of course, concerned that no religious should prejudice his hopes of salvation by the rejection of his profession. Those who without the licence of their superior emigrated to another Order, accepted a secular benefice, or wandered off in search of carnal pleasure or spiritual benefits must be restrained, and those sinners and criminals who sought to evade the jurisdiction of their superiors must be punished. Most serious, however, were those cases in which apostasy was a symptom of dissension within the community and polarisation into factions, and where the fugitive sought from outside the walls to disrupt the life of the cloister until he might return to dominate his monastery.

At a time when the theology of the reformed English Church was in the process of formation, Richard Hooker was compelled by the pressure of puritan argument to come to terms with Calvin's theological legacy and the Genevan experiment in theocracy—upheld by English reformists as the perfect model of a reformed Church. Hooker himself had been schooled in Calvinist theology: his nineteenth-century editor, John Keble, suggested that his earliest work revealed him to be still under the spell of the puritan divines who looked to Calvin and his successor Beza for their inspiration. Another nineteenth-century commentator, F. D. Maurice, observed that Hooker not merely reverenced but trembled before the name of Calvin, pointing out that ‘the caution and hesitancy of Hooker in finding fault with the foreign Reformer, when he was most disposed to be severe upon his English imitators, show how much the metaphysics of the Institutes governed his mind.’

The question of Hooker's relationship to Calvin is an interesting one, but I wonder how far the evidence Dr Avis presents can really take us towards understanding it.

One aspect of the evidence which he has pointed out is the rather surprising paucity of Hooker's references to Calvin. In the Polity, outside the account of Calvin's proceeding at Geneva, Hooker cites Calvin only nine times, six times in his support and three times in order to disagree with him. In Hooker's works other than the Polity, there are six citations from Calvin, all in support of Hooker's argument. It should also be noticed that almost all of these references are polemical in intent, referring to Calvin because Calvin is an authority for Hooker's opponents. In most cases Hooker is trying to show that at some point even Calvin supports Hooker's case against the puritans. This material can, therefore, tell us little about Calvin's real theological influence on Hooker, which, if significant, must appear in ways other than explicit reference to Calvin.

Several historians have recently observed a dichotomy in early nineteenth-century British evangelicalism both within the establishment and outside it. One camp was increasingly traditional, concerned with moral and social improvement, preaching an individualistic gospel of salvation by faith, and decidedly fearful of emotion and enthusiasm; other more daring spirits proved to be more radical, millenarian and ‘apostolic’ emphasising the place of spiritual experience, the need for a ‘higher’ ecclesiology and the dangers of respectability, and in so doing were generally alarming their more staid contemporaries.

Writing in Past and Present in 1964 Henry Pelling commented:

The influence of the churches on the working class in nineteenth century Britain is a subject which has long aroused sporadic interest among political and social historians, but which has apparently lent itself more readily to hasty generalisation than to detailed investigation for its own sake.

Calvin's teaching on the authority of magistrates to resist a tyrannical ruler has been much debated. The main ground of debate has been his discussion of the source of that authority, in the penultimate paragraph of the Institutes. Some commentators have stressed that for Calvin magisterial ‘authority comes from God and not from the people’. Others have insisted that on this question his thought has ‘democratic aspects’, and have argued that these influenced his immediate protestant successors.

Mr Lloyd's argument is based on the fact that Calvin, when discussing the magistrates' duty to protect the commons against a tyrannical ruler, describes them as tutores. He suggests that Calvin was specifically referring to the tutela of Roman law.

Tutela in Roman law was the power allowed by the law to a ‘guardian’ over a free person—normally one who had been left independent by the death of his father, in whose power he had been—who by reason of age was unable to look after his own affairs. The tutor's function was confined to safeguarding the property interests of the child, and did not extend to control over his personal welfare or education. Tutela lasted in the case of a boy until puberty (the age of fourteen years) but thereafter it was usual for a young man to have a curator to look after his property and he was subject to cura or curatio until he was twenty-five. The tutor was liable for both fraud and negligence, and the liability was enforced by two actions. One, the crimen suspecti tutoris, could be brought by anyone other than the ward himself, to obtain the removal of the tutor for misconduct; the other, the actio tutelae, was brought by the former ward, after the completion of the tutela, for any misconduct committed during it.