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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
… not long after this he was sent to the Tower, and soon after condemned of treason. Notwithstanding the queen, when she could not honestly deny him his pardon, seeing all the rest were discharged, and especially seeing he last of all others subscribed to king Edward’s request, and that against his own will, released to him his action of treason and accused him only of heresy; which liked the archbishop right well, and came to pass as he wished, because the cause was not now his own, but Christ’s; not the queen’s but the church’s.
Cranmer’s condemnation for treason was almost as great an embarrassment to John Foxe as it had been to the Archbishop himself. Obedience to lawful authority was axiomatic to both, as to all the orthodox reformers of die first generation. Against Catholic accusations that all Protestants were natural subverters of established order, they argued that the good Christian would be least a traitor to his Prince. Preaching upon the text ‘Render unto Caesar’ in November 1550, Hugh Latimer had declared,
1 Foxe, 8, p. 38.
2 William Tyndale made one of the earliest and most forceful statements of this position in The Obedience of a Christian Man (Hesse, 1528), p. 32: ‘He thatjudgeth the king judgeth God; and he that resisteth the king resisteth God and damneth God’s law and ordinance…’.
3 Sermon at Stamford, 9 Nov. 15 so: Sermons of Bishop Latimer, ed. G. E. Gorrie, PS (1844), p. 300.
4 PRO, Baga de Secreris, KB. 8/23. Calendared in the Fourth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, App. 2, pp. 237–8.
5 Hooker, Richard, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. Walton, Isaac (Oxford, 1885), viii, 1, p. 2 Google Scholar.
6 Janelle, Pierre, Obedience in Church and Slate; Three Political Tracts by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1930 Google Scholar); Redworth, G., In Defence of the Church Catholic; a Life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford, 1990), pp. 66–7 Google Scholar.
7 The best recent exposition of this view is Whiting, R., The Blind Devotion of the People; Popular Religion and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1989 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
8 Foxe, 6, p. 539; 8, pp. 37–8; Loades, D. M., The Oxford Martyrs (London, 1970), p. 118 Google Scholar.
9 BL, MS Harleian 417, fol. 123; Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and his Book (London, 1940), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar.
10 ‘The troubles of Thomas Mowntayne …’ in Nichols, J. G., ed., Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Camden Society, 77 (1859), p. 185 Google Scholar.
11 Foxe, 8, p. 63.
12 Ibid., p. 54.
13 The Works of Thomas Cranmer, ed. J. E. Cox, PS (1844-6), 2, App. p. 43.
14 Foxe, 7, p. 524, ‘I acknowledge an unspotted church of Christ… that is the congregation of the faithful; neither do 1 allegiate or bind the same to any one place, as you said, but confess the same to be spread throughout the world; and where Christ’s sacraments are duly ministered, his gospel truly preached and followed, there doth Christ’s church shine as a city upon a hill.’
15 Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978), 2, pp. 234–5 Google Scholar.
16 Ibid., p. 189.
17 Hildebrandt, E. F. M., The Magdeburg Bekenntnis as a possible link between German and English resistance theory in the sixteenth century’, Archivfur Reformationsgeschichte, 71 (1980), pp. 227–53 Google Scholar; Skinner, , Foundations, 2, pp. 207–10 Google Scholar.
18 Gray, J. R., The political theory of John Knox’, ChH, 8 (1939), pp. 132–47 Google Scholar.
19 Skinner, , Foundations, 2, p. 211 Google Scholar; Dawson, J. E. A, ‘Resistance and Revolution in sixteenth century thought: the case of Christopher Goodman’, in Berg, J. van den and Hoftijzer, P.J., eds. Church, Change and Revolution (Leiden, 1991 Google Scholar).
20 Goodman, Christopher, How Superior Powers Ought to be Obeyed of their Subjects (Geneva, 1558), pp. 187–8 Google Scholar.
21 ‘I have offended no law, unless it be a late law of your own making for the altering of matters in religion, which, in my conscience, is not worthy to have the name of law.’ Mary to the Council, 22 June 1549; Foxe, 6, p. 7. Loades, D. M., Mary Tudor; a Life (Oxford, 1992), p. 146 Google Scholar.
22 26 Henry VIII c.I: Statutes of the Realm, 3, p. 492: ‘Albeit the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and oweth to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England …’
23 Foxe, 8, p. 51.
24 Foxe, 6, p. 388.
25 A Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of the first two years of Queen Mary, ed. J. G. Nicholas, Camden Society, 48 (1850), pp. 18–19.
26 In 1559, in the Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum, Foxe had included such an uncomplimentary description of John Dudley, but it was cut out of the English edition in 1563.1 am indebted to Mr Tom Freeman for drawing my attention to this fact.
27 Foxe, 6, p. 545.
28 Ibid., pp. 546–8.
29 Ibid., pp. 415–25.
30 Ibid., p. 424.
31 Foxe, 8, pp. 393–7.
32 Ibid., p. 395.
33 Ibid., p. 393.
34 Foxe, 1, p. 289.
35 Haller, William, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963 Google Scholar); Olsen, V. Norskov, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley, California, 1973 Google Scholar).
