1 See Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar and Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

2 The classic contributions to this research are: Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tierney, Brian, Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Black, Antony, Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. A recent study that recapitulates and develops the arguments for continuity between later medieval and early modern teachings is Monahan, Arthur P., From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300–1600 (Montrèal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

3 Burns, J. H., “Introduction” to Burns, J. H. and Goldie, Mark, eds., The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The diffusion of rights language in seventeenth-century England has been explored by Horne, Thomas A., Property Rights and Poverty: Political Argument in Britain, 1605–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)Google Scholar. For recent applications of Locke's rights theory, see Simmons, A. John, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar and Sreenivasan, Gopal, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

5 Skinner, Quentin “Modernity and Disenchantment: Some Historical Reflections,” in Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism, ed. Tully, J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 39.Google Scholar

6 The classic statement of this position is Villey, Michel, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d'Occam,” Archives de philosophie du droit 9 (1964): 97–127.Google Scholar

7 Tuck, , Natural Rights Theories, pp. 20–31.Google Scholar

8 Coleman, Janet, “Medieval Discussions of Property: Ratio and Dominium According to John of Paris and Marsilius of Padua,” History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 209–228Google Scholar; “Dominium in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Political Thought and Its Seventeenth-Century Heirs: John of Paris and John Locke,” Political Studies 33 (1985): 73–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Property and Poverty,” in Burns, J. H., ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 607–648.Google Scholar

9 Tierney, Brian, “Tuck on Rights: Some Medieval Problems,” History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 429–41Google Scholar; “Conciliarism, Corporatism, and Individualism: The Doctrine of Individual Rights in Gerson,” Cristianesimo nella storia 9 (1988): 81–111Google Scholar; and “Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150–1250,” History of Political Thought 10 (1989): 615–46Google Scholar. Support for Tierney comes, for instance, from Reid, Charles J. Jr, “The Canonistic Contribution to the Western Tradition: An Historical Inquiry,” Boston College Law Review 33 (1991): 37–92Google Scholar and Pennington, Kenneth, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 5, 123–24.Google Scholar

10 For the salient issues, see Coleman, , “Property and Poverty,” p. 633.Google Scholar

11 As I have pointed out in “Conciliarism and Constitutionalism: Jean Gerson and Medieval Political Thought,” History of European Ideas 12 (1990): 199–200.Google Scholar

12 A prime example of this is Pennington, The Prince and the Law, which cobbles together wholly disparate and fragmentary juristic sources into a supposedly coherent constitutional theory. For a more extensive examination of the difficulties implicit in this project, see my review of his book in Parergon, N.S. 12 (1995): 223–25.

13 Horne, , Property Rights and Poverty, pp. 22–24, 41–72Google Scholar; McNally, David, “Locke, Levellers and Liberty: Property and Democracy in the Thought of the First Whigs,” History of Political Thought 10 (1989): 17–40.Google Scholar

14 For a brief summary, see Wootton, David, “Leveller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution,” in Burns, and Goldie, , Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, pp. 412–13.Google ScholarThe classic examination of the English radical thought of the period remains Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down (New York: Viking, 1972).Google Scholar

15 Ashcraft argued for the need to place “Locke in much closer proximity to the Levellers and to the radical political theory they developed than has previously been supposed” (Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government ]Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986[, p. 165).Google Scholar Elements of this reading have been challenged by, for example, Wootton, David, “John Locke and Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics”, Political Studies 40 (1992): 79–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schochet, Gordon, “Ashcraft on Locke”, Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 491–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 For a recent examination, seeMarshall, John, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 205–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Skinner, , “Modernity and Disenchantment,” p. 40.Google Scholar

18 In the volume edited by Moisant, Joseph, De Speculo Regis Edwardi III (Paris: J. Picard, 1891)Google Scholar. Moisant, however, believed the tracts to be the work of Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, an attribution convincingly refuted by Tait, James, “On the Date and Authorship of the Speculum Regis Edwardi,” English Historical Review 16 (1901): 110–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This misascription in no way detracts from Moisant's edition, which will be cited in the text (with translations by the present author) according to the recension (either “A” or “B”) and section number.

19 For example, the treatise receives no mention whatsoever in either Burns, , Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought or Antony Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar The only recent remark on its ideas that I have encountered is in Jean-Philippe, Genet's “General Introduction”; to Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. x-xi.Google Scholar

20 The dating was first established by Tait, “On the Date and Authorship.” It was confirmed, and the authorship of Pagula finally established, by Boyle, Leonar, “William of Pagula and the Speculum Regis Edwardi III,” Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 326–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The circumstances of its composition have been analyzed in an unpublished paper by Nederman, Cary J. and Neville, Cynthia J., “The Origins of the Speculum Regis Edwardi IIIof William of Pagula.”Google Scholar

21 For the details of Pagula's life, see Boyle, Leonard, “The Oculus Sacerdotis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, 5 (1955): 81–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Duby, George, The Early Growth of the European Economy, trans. Clarke, H. B. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 172.Google Scholar

23 On the context for purveyance in later medieval English life, see White, A. B., Self-Government at the King's Command (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938), pp. 97–123Google Scholar and Maddicott, J. R., The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294–1341 (Oxford: Past and Present Society, 1975), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

24 Nederman, Cary J., “Welfare or Warfare? Medieval Contributions,” International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 1 (1986): 219–234.Google Scholar

25 See Duby, , Early Growth of the European Economy, pp. 174–77Google Scholar and Coleman, , “Property and Poverty,” pp. 607–617.Google Scholar

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27 Tierney, , “Tuck on Rights”, P. 431.Google Scholar

28 Coleman, , “Medieval Discussions of Property,” p. 226.Google Scholar

29 Tierney, , “Origins of Natural Rights Language,” pp. 633–37.Google Scholar

30 Maddicott, , English Peasantry, pp. 15–23.Google Scholar

31 Although it must be pointed out that, here and there, jurists began to change their attitudes towards commercial wealth during the late Middle Ages. See Nicolini, Ugo, La proprietà, il principe e l'espropriazione per publica utilità (Milan: Giuffrè, 1952), pp. 15–36Google Scholar and McGovern, John F., “The Rise of New Economic Attitudes in Canon and Civil Law, A.D. 1200–1550,” The Jurist 32 (1972), pp. 39–50.Google Scholar

32 For the use of “just price” arguments in medieval Europe, see Baldwin, John W., Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 1: 264–69Google Scholar and Langholm, Odd, Economics in the Medieval Schools (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), pp. 24–25 and passim.Google Scholar

33 On the foundations of Marsiglio's doctrine of consent, see Nederman, Cary J., Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 75–79, 83–94.Google Scholar

34 See the texts edited by Genet, Four Englbh Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, for a comparison. Given the very concrete observations made by William, it is odd that Genet characterizes the Speculum Regis Edwardi III as “highly polished, theoretical and scholastic” (pp. x-xi).

35 On the background to modern resistance theory, see Skinner, , Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2: 302–348.Google Scholar

36 On awareness of this doctrine in the medieval ius commune, see Ibid., 2:124–27 and McGovern, , “The Rise of New Economic Attitudes in Canon and Civil Law,” pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

37 There was considerable medieval precedent for the view that God might authorize violence against an evil ruler; for example, see Nederman, Cary J., “A Duty to Kill: John of Salisbury's Theory of Tyrannicide,” Review of Politics 50 (1988): 365–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 John of Paris, De potestate regia et papali, ed. Bleiestein, F. (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, 1969), chap. 7.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.

40 Another rare case of a late medieval theorist firmly resisting this trend was Marsiglio of Padua, who insisted in his Defensor Paris that individuals must retain their power to consent to laws even if the ensuing legislation is “less useful.” In sum, individual consent takes priority over objective definitions of common benefit. On this remarkable argument, see Nederman, , Community and Consent, pp. 75–79.Google Scholar