James I, The Political Works of James I
Charles Howard McIlwain, Ed.

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CHAPTER II

IN considering the political philosophy of James I and his reign, probably no subject is better to begin with than the one about which we have just been speaking, the divine right of kings. This doctrine is set forth by James himself in all his political writings from the earliest to the latest, and set forth in its ex- tremest form, no doubt because in practice " he had been kept short of it in his Native Country," as Welwood acutely remarks.¹ In the Basilikon Doron, he urges Prince Henry to love God, first because He has made him a man, "and next, for that he made you a little God, to sit on his Throne, and rule ouer other men." ² " I am the Husband, and the whole Isle is my lawfull Wife; I am the Head, and it is my Body," as he put it in startling phrase to his first English Parlia- ment in 1603.³ " Kings," he declared in his Defence of the Right of Kings, are "the breathing Images of God vpon earth." ⁴ They " are not only Gods Lieu- tenants vpon earth, and sit vpon Gods throne, but euen by God himselfe they are called Gods." ⁵

The implications of such a theory in the sphere of the reciprocal relations of the King and his subjects must be treated later, but first it is important to con- sider by what title the reigning sovereign was believed to hold such awful power.

Among the supporters of divine right, some, as we have seen, considered the absolute power of the king as arising ex-officio, regardless of his title. " The pos- session of the crowne," wrote Sir John Hayward at the opening of James' reign in 1603, "purgeth all defects, and maketh good the actes of him that is in autho- ritie, although he wanteth both capacitie and right." ⁶ Convocation itself in the early years of the reign definitely accepted the same theory. " If any man shall affirm that . . . when any such new forms of Government, begun by Rebellion, are after thoroughly settled, the Authority in them, is not of God: or that any, who live within the Territories of such new Governments, are not bound to be subject to God's Authority, which is there executed, but may rebel against the same . . . he doth greatly Erre." ⁷

It is not surprising that the English historian of the English Henry the Fourth, or that Tudor bishops should hold such a theory; but if they did, not so the Scots, trained in a different political school. Their views are faithfully reflected by Sir Thomas Craig the great feudist, in the ablest book written in answer to the re- publican views of Robert Parsons, a book that deserves to be better known than it is. " Our enquiry here," says Craig, " is not at all of what is Profitable and Advantageous, but of what is Right and Just, and who it is that by the Laws of God and Men has the best Title and Right to the Succession of so considerable an Empire." ⁸ Not till after the death of Charles I and the republican extremes of the years ensuing did the English royalists unanimously accept this Scottish conception of hereditary right, but then, in the reaction from republicanism it rapidly became the necessary doctrine of Jacobitism. For the essence of Jacobi- tism is Scottish not English; it is based on the Roman law of Scotland rather than the national custom of England. One of its ablest early defenders was the feudal lawyer Craig, and one of its latest, Sir George MacKenzie, " bloody Mac- Kenzie," the civilian, author of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland.⁹ The theory, like the blood of the Stuarts, was Scottish, and the older English doctrine revived only when the House of Stuart disappeared. The contest over the Ex- clusion Bill and the long debate over James II's " abdication " are indications of the strength of this doctrine, but also the prophecy of its end.

James I himself was a true Scot, and to the end of a fairly long life and an English reign of over twenty years could never appreciate or even understand the English constitution. His pedestrian mind, his earlier political experience, and his shrewdness in all things touching his own interests, all contributed to an unwavering insistence on the hereditary character of his title, which appears no less clearly in his earliest than in his latest political utterances. His answer to Convocation's assertion of the right of a defacto king was a sharp letter to George Abbot, afterwards Archbishop. " Good Doctor Abbot " was warned that he had "dipp'd too deep in what all King's reserve among the Arcana Imperii," and advised in future to " meddle no more" with such " Edge-Tools." The King's disapproval kept the canons from becoming operative, and delayed their publi- cation till after the Revolution of 1689.¹⁰ The importance of this part of James's theory can hardly be overestimated, for the whole of his doctrine concerning the powers and duties of kings is directly deducible from it. For him the King's right to his crown is heritable precisely as was the right of the eldest son of a tenant of a feodum militare under feudal law. And it was more. It was a right inalienable and indefeasible. James's whole polit- ical theory appears full-blown in his The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, writ- ten in 1598, five years before he succeeded to the throne of England, not only the first but the most comprehensive of all his political writings. The stubbornness, with which, throughout all the vicissitudes of his later strug- gles with the English Parliament, James held to all points of the doctrine there laid down indeed explains much. James's inability to learn or unlearn anything is displayed in a startling way by a comparison of this book with the history of his rule in England. This and other early expressions of his political views have not been sufficiently emphasized in accounting for the events of his reign and after it. From the opinions there stated no new situations or conditions could ever shake him, and this must be considered one of the fundamental causes of the constitutional revolution of the next three quarters of a century. Of these opinions the doctrine of legitimism was among the most important. Allegiance, he says, is due not only to the reigning king, but also to his " lawfull heires and posterity, the lineall succession of crowns being begun among the people of God, and happily continued in diuers christian common-wealths . . . For, as hee is their heritable ouer-lord, and so by birth, not by any right in the coronation, commeth to his crowne, it is a like vnlawful (the crowne euer standing full) to displace him that succeedeth thereto, as to eiect the former: For at the very moment of the expiring of the king reigning, the nearest and lawful heire entreth in his place: And so to refuse him, or intrude another, is not to holde out vncom- ming in, but to expell and put out their righteous King." ¹¹ "But if God giue you not succession," he warns his son, " defraud neuer the nearest by right, what- soeuer conceit yee haue of the person: For Kingdomes are euer at Gods disposi- tion, and in that case we are but liue-rentars, lying no more in the Kings, nor peoples hands to dispossesse the righteous heire." ¹²

In the speech from the throne opening his first English Parliament, James insisted upon the same point,¹³ and could have found little to quarrel with in Par- liament's answer, "That immediately upon the Dissolution and Decease of Elizabeth late Queen of England, the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England, and of all the Kingdoms, Dominions and Rights belonging to the same, did by inherent Birthright, and lawful and undoubted Succession, descend and come to your most excellent Majesty, as being lineally, justly and lawfully, next and sole Heir of the Blood Royal of this Realm." ¹⁴

James, of course, was not unaware that his right though divine and heritable, could be traced to a historical beginning. How was he then to distinguish be- tween his ancestors' acquisition of the Crown from which all his own rights flowed, and the mere de facto sovereignty of any usurper ? Here the analogy of private property again proved useful. Conquest is to be distinguished from usurpation; the conqueror is in much the same position as one who acquires title by occupatio; and quod . . . nullius est, id ratione naturali occupanti con- ceditur.¹⁵ But Scotland, and England as well, was conquered by James's ances- tors. Thus their right to the realm is nothing less than an absolute ownership, and neither the people nor anyone else can have any rights in what is solely theirs; neither can the people by laws of their own making interfere with the owners' enjoyment of what is theirs alone. " The Kings therefore in Scotland were before any estates or rankes of men within the same, before any Parliaments were holden, or lawes made: and by them was the land distributed (which at the first was whole theirs) states erected and decerned, and formes of gouernement deuised and established. And so it followes of necessitie, that the kings were the authors and makers of the Lawes, and not the Lawes of the kings."¹⁶ "Lawes," of course there were, and even lawes "fundamental." But these James is at pains to explain are " onely those Lawes whereby confusion is auoyded, and their King's descent mainteined, and the heritage of the succession and Monarchie." ¹⁷ The fundamental law is jus Regis and nothing more.¹⁸ Even this is " but craued " by the King's subjects, " and onely made by him at their roga- tion and with their aduice." ¹⁹

This identification of fundamental law with the Jus Coronae was not new in England. In the fourteenth century Edward III and Richard II had attempted to evade troublesome acts of Parliament on the ground that they violated the fundamental law, the Jus Coronae to which they had sworn at their coronation and, therefore, could not partwith even if theywould. Such a complete identifica- tion of the Jus Coronae with the law fundamental never prevailed, however; and the Jus Regni, as well as the law of the Crown, was always regarded as law fun- damental in England, as James himself was at times forced to admit, though he never consented to be brought within it.

With the unfettered ownership of the realm solely in the King, James's next logical step was one made easy and even inevitable by the assumption of the feudal confusion of dominium and imperium. " And as ye see it is manifest that the King is ouer-Lord of the whole land: so is he Master ouer euery person that inhabiteth the same, hauing power ouer the life and death of euery one of them." ²⁰

Thus Kings exercising "a manner or resemblance of Diuine power vpon earth," may, like God, " make and vnmake their subiects: they haue power of raising, and casting downe: of life, and of death .... They haue power to exalt low things, and abase high things, and make of their subiects like men at the Chesse: a pawne to take a Bishop or a Knight, and to cry vp, or downe any of their subiects, as they do their money. . . . For to Emperors, or Kings that are Monarches, their Subiects bodies & goods are due for their defence and main- tenance. . . . Now a Father may dispose of his Inheritance to his children, at his pleasure: yea, euen disinherite the eldest vpon iust occasions, and preferre the youngest, according to his liking; make them beggars, or rich at his pleasure; restraine, or banish out of his presence, as hee findes them giue cause of offence, or restore them in fauour againe with the penitent sinner: So may the King deale with his Subiects." ²¹

Such a theory as this leaves no place for the law of the land or the authority of the estates of the Realm when they conflict with the king's will. Prerogative had been high enough before, but it was acknowledged to have limits. Welwood says of Elizabeth: " As she was far from invading the Liberties of her Subjects, so she was careful to maintain and preserve her own just Prerogative. . . . The whole Conduct of her Life plac'd her beyond the Suspicion of ever having sought Greatness for any other end, than to make her People share with her in it." James, on the other hand, "grasp'd at an Immoderate Power, but with an ill Grace; and if we believe the Historians of that time, with a design to make his People little." ²² This is a serious indictment, but a true one. In James's view the liberty of the subject was only such as he saw fit to allow since it was derived solely from him or his ancestors, while the will of the subject must always bend to his own even though expressed in the most authoritative form of immemorial custom or solemn act of Parliament. It was a necessary deduction from his theory of the kingship and its tenure, and to James dialectic was ever more per- suasive than history. Though the King should not take his subjects' lives " with- out a cleare law; yet the same lawes whereby he taketh them, are made by him- selfe, or his predecessours; and so the power flowes alwaies from him selfe." The King himself "is aboue the law, as both the author and giuer of strength thereto." He is in no way bound to obey it "but of his good will, and for good example-giuing to his subiects." It may therefore "vpon knowen respects to the King by his authoritie bee mitigated, and suspended vpon causes onely knowen to him." ²³

Nor has the king, in James's opinion, divested himself of any of this power by consenting to take the coronation oath, a point much relied on by the oppo- nents both lay and ecclesiastical of royal prerogative. Such an oath is taken to God alone; a king by taking it " makes not his Crowne to stoupe by this meanes to any power in the Pope, or in the Church, or in the people." ²⁴ The prerogative is Arcanum Imperii. It is an act of impiety for any subject, though he be judge or Parliament man, to touch the sacred thing. " Incroach not vpon the Preroga- tiue of the Crowne," James warns the Judges in 1616. " If there fall out a ques- tion that concerns my Prerogatiue or mystery of State, deale not with it:... for they are transcendent matters."²⁵ "It is Atheisme and blasphemie to dispute what God can doe: good Christians content themselves with his will reuealed in his word, so, it is presumption and high contempt in a Subiect, to dispute what a King can doe, or say that a King cannot doe this, or that; but rest in that which is the Kings reuealed will in his Law. . . . That which concerns the mysterie of the Kings power, is not lawfull to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakenesse of Princes, and to take away the mysticall reuerence, that belongs vnto them that sit in the Throne of God." ²⁶

James draws a distinction between his "private Prerogatiue" --" my priuate right, betweene me and a subiect,"²⁷ under which he professes to ask of the judges no more than would be granted to any of his people; and "the absolute Prerog- atiue," the "mystery of State," which "is no Subiect for the tongue of a Lawyer, nor is lawfull to be disputed." ²⁸

To anyone, with even the slightest knowledge of the constitutional history of this time and the period preceding, it must be obvious how utterly inconsistent such theories as these are with the views of practically all the common lawyers and most of the Parliamentarians of the day. By the attempt to make actual these absolutist doctrines the train was laid for the explosion which came later in the century: in fact, it made that catastrophe almost inevitable.

Opposition to these theories was, of course, aroused at once, among lawyers and others, in Parliament and out, but there is no space here to recount it.²⁹ This is the real beginning of the constitutional revolution in England, and as that struggle was in all its stages a contest between law and absolute power, its first phase was a quarrel between the common lawyers and royal commissions acting under the prerogative.

Behind the temporary questions debated by these antagonists, however, we may also detect a clash of principles which may be of even greater importance for the history of political thought. For there is some evidence, not often noticed, that in James's first years a conscious and determined effort was being made, not altogether without the sympathy of the King, to weaken the immemorial custom of the courts of common law by a "reception" more or less complete- more rather than less the lawyers feared - of the principles and procedure of Roman law, already employed in the courts of Scotland and in various jurisdictions in England, particularly the ecclesiastical. The struggle for the prerogative was not a simple one; it can only be understood in combination with the royalist zeal for the absolutist principles of the Roman law.³⁰

To the opposition roused by this propaganda James was forced to yield to the extent of suppressing the most hated expression of these Roman and royalist views, Dr. Cowell's law dictionary; and James even plumed himself - hypocrit- ically I must believe - on account of " my censure of that booke." ³¹ But what- ever concessions the King might make against his real convictions for the sake of obtaining a larger grant by Parliament for his desperate needs, an examination discloses no definitions of Dr. Cowell's which went so far as the King's own windy and extravagant preachments to his Parliaments and judges; and nothing indi- cates that James ever truly departed from these in thought, or - save under extreme pressure - in word or deed.

In James's theory there is no more place for the supremacy or even the inde- pendence of the national assembly than for its decrees. The king, for example, is able to do as he pleases with the lands of his subjects " without aduice or authoritie of either Parliament, or any other subalterin iudiciall seate." Parlia- ment, in fact, is " nothing else but the head Court of the king and his vassals," and the king may "make daily statutes and ordinances, enioyning such paines thereto as hee thinkes meet, without any aduice of Parliament or estates." This was spoken particularly of Scotland, but James adds that the like is true of England, and cites the example of William the Conqueror.³²

In one place he seems to recede somewhat from this extreme, if Salisbury re- ports him correctly, and to acknowledge "that he had noe power to make lawes of himselfe, or to exact any subsidies de jure without the consent of his 3 Es- tates." ³³ But this was while he had hopes of a large supply from Parliament, and his later words are hardly consistent with these. His real views are better expressed in the Trew Law and there is little to indicate any sincere or permanent departure from them.

And as of Parliament and its " ordinances," so also of Parliament's ancient privilege. Probably nowhere is the effect of James's theory upon his outward acts more manifest than in his repeated violations of the Lex Parliamenti, particu- larly of the right of freedom of speech. But this is history too well known to need repeating.³⁴

That these outward acts are a true reflection of James's settled convictions, many of his utterances show. Parliament, he declares, is not a place " for euery rash and harebrained fellow to propone new Lawes of his owne inuention: nay rather, I could wish these busie heads to remember that Law of the Lacedemo- nians, That whosoeuer came to propone a new Law to the people, behooued publikely to present himselfe with a rope about his necke, that in case the Law were not allowed, he should be hanged therewith." ³⁵ " It is no place then for particular men to vtter there their priuate conceipts, nor for satisfaction of their curiosities, and least of all to make shew of their eloquence by tyning the time with long studied and eloquent Orations." ³⁶ The King contrasts the freedom of debate in the English Parliament with the preferable conditions in Scotland, where " they must not speake without the Chauncellors leaue, and if any man doe propound or vtter any seditious or vncomely speeches, he is straight inter- rupted and silenced by the Chauncellors authoritie: where as here, the libertie for any man to speake what hee list, and as long as he list, was the onely cause he was not interrupted." ³⁷ " And therefore," he advises his son, " hold no Parlia- ments, but for necessitie of new Lawes, which would be but seldome: for few Lawes and well put in execution, are best in a well ruled common-weale."³⁸ Though we may agree with the latter part of this advice, any student of English history knows what calamities were brought upon the house of Stuart by the too faithful observance of the first.

Not alone the High Court of Parliament, but the lower courts as well, James means to keep under his constant supervision and control. " Delite to haunt your Session, and spie carefully their proceedings," he urges Prince Henry. " Let it be your owne craft, to take a sharpe account of euery man in his office." ³⁹ And he warns his judges in 1616, in words that Bacon has made famous, that their office is jus dicere not jus dare.⁴⁰ James had thus as early as 1599 outlined a policy which when put in practice later in England by himself and Charles contributed so much to the revolt of the nation against his family.

In all these theories of the King with respect to the relations of the governor and the governed there are many traces of feudalism, particularly in his doctrine of hereditary right; but there is one feature of the feudal relation that is con- spicuous by its absence in James's politics. Of the reciprocal duties of dominus and homo so prominent in the mediaeval conception of English kingship there re- mains not a trace: it has been replaced entirely by the Roman conception of a king legibus solutus, placed at a distance so immeasurably above his subditi that he can in no way be bound by earthly law to the performance of any duties to them. The relation of his subjects to him, on the other hand, must consist entirely of duties, and duties to which no limits can be put; of the " rights of subjects " it is idle, even impious to speak. There are none. It is for the subject " not to ask the reason why." For him the single aspect of his relation to his lawful sovereign is absolute, unquestioning, passive obedience no matter how tyrannous or op- pressive the acts of that sovereign may actually become. An evil king is indeed a scourge, but none the less a scourge sent by God. He is no less God's instru- ment because of his tyranny, and the only remedy for such oppression is in prayers to God that the scourge may be taken away. Against even such a king if his title is lawful no direct remedy can be applied. To James's mind the en- trusting of the royal power to the hands of his ancestors was proved by Scripture to be an irrevocable act,⁴¹ and the corresponding duty of non-resistance in his sub- jects was equally supported by the same high authority.⁴² Their obedience, there- fore, ought to be rendered to him " as to Gods Lieutenant in earth, obeying his commands in all things, except directly against God, as the commands of Gods Minister, acknowledging him a Iudge set by GOD, ouer them, hauing power to iudge them, but to be iudged onely by GOD, whom to onely hee must giue count of his iudgement: fearing him as their Iudge, louing him as their father; pray- ing for him as their protectour; for his continuance, if he be good; for his amendement, if he be wicked; following and obeying his lawfull commaunds, eschewing and flying his fury in his unlawfull, without resistance, but by sobbes and teares to God, according to that sentence vsed in the primitiue church in the time of the persecution. Preces, & Lachrymae sunt arma Eccesiae." ⁴³

The King then turns from Scripture to analogy. If it is absurd that burghers should turn out their provost before his term is over, or pupils their master, " although but subaltern," "how much lesse is it lawfull vpon any pretext to controll or displace the great Prouost, and great Schoole-master of the whole land." ⁴⁴ From the city and the school he passes to the family, and asks, " Yea, suppose the father were furiously following his sonnes with a drawen sword, is it lawfull for them to turne and strike againe, or make any resistance but by flight ? " ⁴⁵ The answer is furnished even by the lower animals, where the parents " with violence and many bloody strokes will beat and banish their yong ones from them," yet the young will never offer any violence in return, except among the vipers. So subjects who answer with violence the " bloody strokes " of their king do but prove themselves "to be endued with their viperous nature." ⁴⁶ "I grant indeed," he says, " that a wicked king is sent by God for a curse to his people, and a plague for their sinnes; but that it is lawfull to them to shake off that curse at their owne hand, which God hath laid on them, that I deny." ⁴⁷ "Patience, earnest prayers to God, and amendment of their liues, are the onely lawful meanes to moue God to relieue them of that heauie curse." ⁴⁸

Any doubt as to whether these doctrines of the King were shared by the up- holders of prerogative among his subjects will be set at rest by a reading of the canons adopted by Convocation or the books of Craig, Blackwood, or Barclay.⁴⁹ Sir Robert Filmer's later theories, though more influential and possibly more systematically set forth, had nothing really original in them.

In holding such high claims for his royal office, James, of course, was not ignorant that he differed from his former tutor, from many of his subjects, and from others of the most famous thinkers and writers on the relation of princes and their subjects. It is evident that his reading of such authors was extensive. That reading, however, had never inspired him with any other feeling than one of mingled contempt and fear, but rather had increased his determination to sup- press such " seditious " utterances whenever they were found, and to punish with all the authority at his command any who dared to question his own view of these "mysteries of princes." He admonishes his son to " represse the insolence of such, as vnder pretence to taxe a vice in the person, seeke craftily to staine the race, and to steale the affection of the people from their posteritie." ⁵⁰ Even the possession of " infamous libels " such as those of Knox and Buchanan is to be severely punished.⁵¹ He warns his Justices of Assize to be on their guard against " Gentlemen of great worth in their owne conceit," who" cannot be content with the present forme of gouernement, but must haue a kind of libertie in the people, and must be gracious Lords, and Redeemers of their libertie; and in euery cause that concernes Prerogatiue, giue a snatch against a Monarchie through their Puritanicall itching after Popularitie." " Some of them," he significantly adds, " haue shewed themselves too bold of late in the lower house of Parliament." ⁵² James is among the first, if not the first, to apply to such men the name of Levellers.⁵³

From such extensive claims as these, and so extravagantly expressed, it would be wrong to infer that the royalist theory imposed no duties upon its king though legibus solutus. Obligations he had, and all the heavier on account of his emi- nence, but they were obligations to God alone. In fairness to James himself, it must be said that in theory if not always in practice, he emphasized these duties only less than his powers. He never denied them. A good king will act as "knowing himselfe to be ordained for them [his people], and they not for him; " ⁵⁴ and though a wicked king may be judged by God alone, his judgment will be the heavier, for " the highest bench is sliddriest to sit vpon." ⁵⁵ "A Tyrannes miserable and infamous life," he warns his eldest son, "armeth in end his owne Subiects to become his burreaux ⁵⁶ and although that rebellion be euer vnlawfull on their part, yet is the world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned by the rest of his Subiects, and but smiled at by his neighbours."⁵⁷ The reed placed in Christ's hand by the Jews when they derisively crowned him as their King, James tells his son Charles, should " put him in minde to manage his authoritie boldly, and yet temperately, not stretching his royall Prerogatiue but where necessitie shall require it ";⁵⁸ and he adds an aphorism to which among the kings of his day he himself was on the whole unusually faithful; " A King should neuer pun- ish but with a weeping eye." ⁵⁹ A precept not so well observed was his advice to Prince Henry not to enrich himself at his subjects' expense and to exact sub- sidies " as rarely as ye can." ⁶⁰

Among the duties which God required of a Christian king the protection and advancement of the interests of the true faith was one of the chief. As James said, "That it is one of the principall parts of that duetie which appertaines vnto a Christian King, to protect the trew Church within his owne Dominions, and extirpate heresies is a Maxime without all controuersie." ⁶¹ James as successor of Elizabeth was " the only supreme governor " of the realm " in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes," and all ecclesiastics and state officials had to acknowledge this by oath; but ecclesiastics, for a single refusal of the oath, pro- vided they went no further, could be punished only by the loss of ecclesiastical office and emoluments. But Catholics, and many nonconformists also, had, of course, lost all these long before James's accession. This fact and the limitations put upon the royal power in ecclesiastical matters during Elizabeth's later years made the King's relation to Catholics and nonconformists somewhat different from that of Elizabeth in the first year of her reign, when Catholics still filled so many of the benefices and bishoprics.

In Elizabeth's reign also, as we have seen, the doctrine of the two kingdoms had come to be accepted more or less fully by all opponents of the king as su- preme governor, and had been tacitly recognized even by royal ministers in the administration of the laws.

These were changes which account for a large part of James's ecclesiastical policy. But there was one title to which James succeeded which had undergone less modification, the title first conferred by the Pope upon Henry VIII for his book against Luther, Defender of the Faith. Though the papal gift had been withdrawn, and notwithstanding the fact that it was not entirely certain just what faith would be defended, as Maitland aptly remarks;⁶² Elizabeth had as- sumed the title and it passed to James in 1603. But Elizabeth's long reign had at least done one thing. It had practically determined what that faith was of which James now declared himself the defender. The Canons, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Prayer Book, The Act of Uniformity, and the Council of Trent had produced their effect. In Elizabeth's first years, the Ecclesia Anglicana in so far as it differed from that of Rome was Protestant; that is about all that can be said of it. And Protestant was a term implying primarily only protest and nega- tion, a meaning entirely accurate just after the Reformation and nowhere more properly applicable than in England. By James's time however, this is all changed. Though the diversity of sects may have deprived the general term Protestantism of much positive content, Parliament and Convocation had now supplied the defect for England at least, and the definiteness of the break with Rome made evident by the decrees of the Council of Trent had done the rest. In 1603 England had what she certainly had not in 1558 or 1559 - a national, or at least a state faith as well as a state church, to which it is entirely proper to apply the term Anglo-Catholicism. It is true many things might not have been determined with entire definiteness. Its creed might be susceptible of inter- pretations differing as widely as those of Bishop Burnet and Tract Ninety, and its episcopal polity might be of divine ordination, or only " for order sake; " ⁶³ but there is certainly at last in existence a faith to defend; a faith defined by Parliament, even though negatively, as based on Scripture and the first four general councils, and explained, though with some vagueness, by the same authority and by Convocation in the Articles of Religion.

It is, of course, not impossible that James might have disregarded this. His theory certainly was that his faith was the one to be defended, and all his prede- cessors since Henry VII had acted on the German principle of cujus regio ejus religio, a principle that was by no means dead yet in England. The Revolution of 1688 still had to be fought partly to disprove the reassertion of it by James's grandson, and its death warrant was not signed till 1701 in the Act of Settlement. In 1603 it might indeed be fairly said that the question was not entirely closed: it was simply not raised; because of the fact that James's own private convic- tions were in all essential points - at least in all points likely at that time to lead to controversy - at one with those of the supporters of Anglo-Catholicism, and hence James's reign is marked by a closer alliance of King and higher clergy than can be found at almost any other time. In fact the fruits of the theory of the " supreme governor" did not fully ripen until England had a governor whose own faith was different from that of his people and his clergy. When this oc- curred we see the familiar linking of religious and political questions. For the Revolution of 1688 was as much religious as secular, nay it was more. Religion, though to a less extent than in the sixteenth century, was still" the motive power of the age." It is not surprising that the opponents of prerogative should then republish as their own the republican doctrines of Parsons, the Jesuit, first uttered under Elizabeth,⁶⁴ at the same time that they were holding up to popular detestation another book of the same author, his Jesuits' Memorial. " Jesuit," in fact, then became one of the favorite taunts hurled by the followers of a Catho- lic prince at the very party which existed only to exclude that prince, and to ex- clude him merely on account of his Catholicism. " Puritanism and Popularitie " were charged in the same breath against these opponents of prerogative, precisely as had been done a century earlier, and for the same reason - a reason only to be understood in the light of the long history of the doctrine of the two Kingdoms and of the temporal power ad finem spiritualem. Truly Tunstall's warning was hardly misplaced: the supreme headship was indeed a propositio multiplex. But such quarrels as came later and earlier were spared in James's time because he and his bishops agreed. It was the Anglo-Catholicism of Whitgift and An- drewes that he was called upon to defend and he was nothing loth. In an age not of pragmatism but of jus divinum this meant that this faith could be defended only because it was true while all material departures from it must therefore be false, and that being true it could not but be a living branch of the one true Catholic and Apostolic faith. But the age was one of uniformity as well as legal- ism, and this assertion of the faith true and Apostolic carried with it inevitably also the condemnation and the suppression of every other faith as necessarily false and heretical.⁶⁵ It is this general theory that explains James's laborious attempts to prove that he himself is no heretic.⁶⁶ In an age of uniformity instead of toleration an admission of the contrary must be fatal. He has to disavow any sympathy with admitted heretics such as Anabaptists or members of the Family of Love. Though he may have done it " with a weeping eye," and though he certainly did do it with evident hesitation, James has the unenviable distinction of being the last English king to order the issue of the writ De Haeretico Comburendo.⁶⁷ The King was also forced by the theory of his day to go at wearisome length into the practice and doctrine of the early Church to prove that the Ecclesia Anglicana had never essentially departed from these; and it was sometimes a nice task to draw the lines just wide enough to include the faith of the bishops -- and the Presbyterians, while shutting out Brownists, and other varieties of sectaries. There are also many other long and tiresome pages of James's political writings to be explained only by the opinions summarized above. James to de- fend his faith had not only to prove it true: he had also to show the falsity of doctrines not in agreement with it. Thus in his arguments against the Roman Church and its doctrines he follows the lead of the Elizabethan divines in at- tempting to prove the Pope to be Antichrist.⁶⁸ Our utter aversion to this kind of argumentation should not blind us to its great importance in moulding the thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is important because they thought it important. In the application of these theories the great diffi- culty lay in dealing with the two opposite parties of Catholics and Puritans. Of the Puritans we need say little more because most of the political phases of their activity have appeared already. Strict uniformity, of course, meant their per- secution along with all others who disobeyed the laws.⁶⁹ With the Catholics, the case was far different. Though the Puritans were in a few years to be a power as menacing to royal authority as ever Pope was, and though James personally hated them more than he did any Catholic, yet in his reign it was the Catholic danger that was in the foreground. The Counter Reformation was gaining volume year by year, and Catholics had what Puritans never had, a centralized organization and a human head, one whose authority was international and temporal and whose claims no " supreme governor " could ever allow. This danger was at once foreign and domestic. At the very beginning of his reign, therefore, and even before it began, James was confronted with the most difficult of all his problems, and apparently the most dangerous. Was a reconciliation with Rome still possible, and on what terms ? If not, how were Roman Catho- lics to be treated in England ? Was Catholicism to be granted a real toleration ? If so a change in the laws was necessary. Or, was the policy to be continued under which Catholics could only enjoy the exercise of their religion as " tole- rated vice," through the tacit unenforcement of existing laws ? Or, finally, should Catholicism be totally extirpated as heresy always deserved ? These were the question that James had to answer in 1603. Their difficulty must have appalled any man less cocksure than James Stuart.

Probably three-fourths of the systematic political writing of James I consist of a defense of the one administrative measure of his which really went beyond the methods and purposes of Elizabeth's ministers in dealing with this Catholic problem, the Oath of Allegiance. And this is a not inaccurate index of the im- portance of the principle of the measure in the eyes of contemporaries not only in England but in the whole of western Europe. It was in reality England's answer to the Jesuit challenge contained in Bellarmine's theory of the Pope's indirect power, but an answer which tacitly accepted one-half of Bellarmine's theory, the separation of the spiritual from the secular. It looked to a partial translation into law of what Elizabeth's ministers had practiced by holding the law in abeyance. It must therefore be considered a considerable advance in principle, and one of the really important landmarks in the history of the idea of religious toleration. To understand its real importance as an attempted solu- tion of this chronic problem we must keep in mind the particular phases of that problem which were uppermost in the first years of the seventeenth century. Most important among these is the new aspect of the papal claims, the result of Bellarmine's theory of the indirect power. True, this doctrine was not accepted by the Catholic left, which was opposed entirely to the temporal power; ⁷⁰ nor by the extreme right, which still held to all the high claims of Boniface VIII.⁷¹ But the new doctrine had been adopted by practically all the Jesuits and by many others, and the Jesuits were the undoubted leaders of Catholic thought and action during the Counter-Reformation.⁷² In England the whole programme of the aggressive party was based upon this theory, and the Archpriest Blackwell under examination by the High Commission admitted that the majority of Cath- olics probably accepted it.⁷³ Of this doctrine it was a cardinal point that no heretical king must be permitted to reign, that it was the right and even the duty of the Supreme Pontiff to depose him, and that this right could and should be made effectual by the absolving of the king's subjects from their oath of allegiance and by the summoning of the Catholic princes of Europe to help in carrying out the sentence by means of foreign invasion.⁷⁴ We must remember that this" right" of the Pope had not been allowed to remain a mere theory, but had been asserted in 1570 in the bull deposing Elizabeth and followed up by the Armada, the re- volt in Ireland, and armed insurrection in England itself, to say nothing of the many smaller plots against the life of the Queen. We must remember the alarm- ing advance that the Counter-Reformation had made and was making in the beginning of the seventeenth century, with all south Germany recovered, with the hopes of the French Huguenots dashed by the wars of religion, and with no indication that the tide would stop anywhere, even at the Channel. In addition to the attempts on the life of Elizabeth, we must not forget the similar attempt of Jean Chatel in France, or the Bye-Plot in England itself, ineffective though it was, or further back, Saint Batholomew's day, or the murder of Henry III of France and of William the Silent. In France Henry IV had "received instruc- tion," an ominous thing in itself but not enough to save him, and for England the sharpest awakening came with the powder plot in 1605. Among the influ- ences upon opinion, particularly Catholic opinion, we must also include the harsh legislation to which the fear of aggression and assassination spurred the English Parliament. These laws against recusants, seminarists and convertisseurs and the victims of them cannot be ignored by anyone who tries to understand the political theory of the reign of James I.

In Elizabeth's reign Spain had been the chief foreign instrument in the at- tempt to carry out the Pope's sentence. And Spain's intrigues did not stop with the defeat of the Armada in 1588. They continued throughout Elizabeth's life, but as she grew older her enemies became more content to let nature take her course, and turned their attention to the next succession. Among these enemies, if we confine ourselves to Englishmen, there is no doubt that the most active, the ablest, and the most influential, was Robert Parsons, "Jésuite, Anglois de nation, & Espagnol de dévotion." ⁷⁵ This remarkable man had written, or was to write, on practically every phase of the great controversy. And whatever he wrote, whether in English or Latin, was written remarkably well. He was master of a clear, direct and forcible English style which stands comparison with the best of his time, the time of the Authorized version of the Bible. Among his many books, the most important for the history of political theory is his Con- ference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England published in 1594. Though written nine years before Elizabeth's death this book really belongs to the reign of James, for its purpose was: in the first place, by discrediting the principle of legitimism, to emphasize the popular basis of the tenure of the Crown; in the second, to show that on all precedents the "rights " put forward in the interests of all the existing claimants, with one exception, were without founda- tion in law or fact; and lastly - the real purpose of the book - to prove that the one exception, the one rightful claim to the throne of England at Elizabeth's death was that of the Spanish Infanta, daughter of Philip II, a princess whose faith was unimpeachable.

The book was a double blow at James, against whom it was mainly aimed; it denied his favorite principle of legitimism, and it attempted to disprove his own particular claim. James was right in regarding it as the most dangerous book of the time. The first part of the book, which deals with the abstract question of hereditary right and the basis of royal tenure has an even greater importance for political thought. It is hardly too much to say that this book was the chief storehouse of facts and arguments drawn upon by nearly all opponents of the royal claims for a century, Protestant as well as Catholic; and its importance is attested not only by the many attacks made upon it down to the Revolution of 1688 and after, but by the frequent surreptitious use of it in this period by men and parties who did not dare to disclose the source of their arguments and illus- trations.⁷⁶ The Spanish party of which Parsons was the most able and active member did not confine itself entirely to writings. It strove in every way, among others by the founding of new seminaries in Spain for English Catholics and by secret negotiations with the Spanish King, to prepare the way for an attempt that should promise greater success than the Armada. In general the results were disappointing, and one result in particular even threatened the total overthrow of their schemes. This was the division among Catholics themselves which grew, partly out of the old quarrel between the regular and the secular clergy and partly from the aversion of the seculars to the designs of the "His- panized faction," who, they believed, were the real cause of the harsh laws against Catholics in general.

We have seen how Bancroft labored to widen this gap under Elizabeth. As Primate under a king who conceded far more power to his clergy than his prede- cessor had ever done, Bancroft was free to pursue still further this policy.

It was the conditions set forth briefly above, combined with the favorite policy of Bancroft, the ready acquiescence of the King, and the even more ready zeal of the Parliament, that led to the enactment of the most important legisla- tion of James's reign dealing with the religious question, the statute which framed and imposed the new oath of allegiance. This act ⁷⁷ empowered any bishop or any two justices of the peace to tender to anyone under sentence or indictment of recusancy, or to any stranger confessing the same under oath - if over eighteen and not noble - an oath acknowledging James as " lawful and rightful " King, denying the authority of the Pope to depose him, promising to defend him in case of attack and to disclose all treasons or conspiracies against him; also dis- avowing the doctrine that a prince excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, might be deposed or murdered and in the following terms: " and I do further swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any other whatsoever." Four years later the oath was extended to all non-noble persons whatsoever, if of eighteen and above, while the procedure was simplified and the penalty increased.⁷⁸ A refusal to take the oath under the act of 1606 in- volved the penalty of a praemunire. These important acts included laymen as well as ecclesiastics, private persons as well as office holders. In this respect they go much further than Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy which included only eccle- siastics or holders of office.

But while in respect of the persons affected James's legislation is more inclu- sive than Elizabeth's, in the extent of the engagement of these persons it is far less. The older oath of supremacy - which, it must not be forgotten, was still in existence - exacted an acceptance of the Queen as supreme governor and a denial of all authority of any outside person or state in matters " ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm." The oath of 1606 required the acknowledgment of James only as " lawful and rightful King " and the abjuration merely of the doctrine of the deposing and absolving power, but the theory that this deposition could be made effectual by the people must be condemned by the swearer as impious, heretical, and damnable, and the penalty is a heavy one.

These are differences not merely of detail. The Act of 1559 made it impossible for any Catholic to hold high secular office, or any ecclesiastical one, for no Cath- olic, however radical, could deny the Pope's authority in England in matters ecclesiastical or spiritual. The act of 1606 does not ostensibly touch the Pope's spiritual authority at all. To that extent it seems to have recognized the division between the secular and the spiritual jurisdiction, the doctrine of the two king- doms. What it really does do is to deny emphatically that the Pope can ever override this division by exercising the secular power of deposition under pretext of a spiritual end. Had the act done this and nothing more than this, in straight- forward and unequivocal terms it seems probable that it would have been enough to drive a wedge between those Catholics who held and those who rejected Bellarmine's doctrine of a Papal power indirecte to interfere in secular matters ad finem spiritualem, and it would have been extremely difficult to dispute James's frequent assertions that his oath was " meerely Civill." But the act might be considered to do somewhat more than this. It might plausibly be said to require not merely the rejection of the doctrine of the deposing power: to demand that that doctrine be branded as impious, damnable, and even heretical. What is this but to declare all holders of such a doctrine to be heretics ? And it was notorious that the majority of Catholics did hold it. Could it be said that this requirement had nothing to do with things spiritual ? The King here demands. that English Catholics shall deny the Pope's authority in secular matters, but what is he himself doing when he sets himself up to adjudge as heretical a doctrine believed by the majority of Catholics ? Could James expect the Pope to regard the line of division between the secular and the spiritual when he so ignores it himself ?

Such offensive terms as these applied to a doctrine firmly held by many Catholics, no doubt gave an opening for the attacks of James's enemies, particu- larly Cardinal du Perron, who dwelt at length upon this point; but the real ob- jection of the Papacy went far deeper and was exactly expressed in Cardinal Bellarmine's letter to the English Archpriest, "For most certain it is, that in whatsoever words the Oath is conceived by the adversaries of the faith in that Kingdom, it tends to this end, that the Authority of the head of the Church in England may be transferred from the successor of S. Peter, to the successor of King Henry the Eighth."⁷⁹ Such an objection could not have been obviated by any softening of terms which retained the denial of the Pope's temporal power. The less fundamental criticisms of du Perron and others we may regard largely as an attempt to discredit the argument of an opponent, but the question re- mains, why did James unnecessarily give them the opportunity ?

To the English Parliament, however, the provisions of this act were displeas- ing only because they did not go far enough. Apparently they were entirely satisfactory to both Bancroft and James, both in their general tenor and in their wording.

James's real attitude toward Catholicism springs from the same root as his views on Puritanism. In both cases his hostility is more political than religious. What made him love the bishops was the congé d'élire and little more, what made him hate equally a Scottish synod and a Roman pontiff was their common denial of his royal power as supreme governor in matters and causes ecclesiastical, and nothing else. With the doctrines of the Pope, as well as those of the less extreme Puritans, he had little quarrel. He acknowledged that the Roman church was catholic, and that its faith was " the ancient mother religion of all the rest," and he acknowledged this not on account of any theory of toleration, a theory most hateful to him, but because he believed the Roman faith to be in its essentials true. It was only the pretensions of the later popes to a temporal power in con- flict with the rights of princes that he denied. He had even admitted the Pope's spiritual primacy, but this was before he became " supreme governor."

Of James's two grandsons, Charles II and James II, in matters of religious conviction he more resembled the former than the latter. Though priding him- self more on his acuteness in theological disputation than on anything else, there is little real indication that he cared much for religion. Both in Scotland and in England policy demanded that he should remain true in the main to the religion of his tutors rather than that of his mother, but the Stuart tendency toward Cathol- icism which finally cost them the throne can be seen in his whole reign. It is one of the chief causes of his continual quarrel with his Commons who were strongly Protestant, and it would probably have disturbed even the harmony of his relations with his bishops, had not their political interests and his been identi- cal. In reality he was less Protestant than most of his bishops, notably Abbot. Their common bond was the political necessity of combating the Puritans and the " Papists." "No bishop no king," but also no king no bishop.

Theirs was a defensive alliance against popery and parity, little more; an alliance essentially political, in which matters of religion had but a small part. The Stuart kings, James even included, were really foreigners in thought as they all were in their marriage alliances. None of them ever showed a clear under- standing of the English constitution, of England's true international position, or - most important of all - of the religious instincts of the nation. These things have a bearing on the nature and the purpose of the oath and upon the manner of its administration. That they are true, James's whole public life and nearly all his writings attest.⁸⁰

From the time of the Reformation to the present a division has existed among Catholics which corresponds to the difference between Ultramontanes and their opponents. The policy of employing this division fell in exactly with James's theories of Church and State, and this must be considered one of the reasons for the enactment of the oath. But James had no doubt been influenced in favor of this policy by his correspondence with Cecil while he was still in Scotland, and it was in fact nothing new in England. Cecil and Bancroft had been em- ploying it for years in fomenting the quarrel between seculars and Jesuits in England before James's arrival. We cannot, therefore, consider the oath as due merely to James's influence or its history as beginning only at his accession.⁸¹ A clear understanding of the purposes which led to its enactment requires some consideration of the eagerness of a Puritan House of Commons inflamed by the memory of the recent gunpowder plot, the long-standing quarrel among Catholics themselves, the views of James, and the previous policy of Bancroft, all taken together.

We must now turn to the history of the results of this legislation. If a further division of the Catholic opposition in England was aimed at it may be said that this aim was achieved. From 1606 until the Revolution, when the oath was altered, and even to the present time, Catholics have disagreed as to the wisdom and justice of this measure. To Charles Butler " Nothing . . .could be more wise, or humane, than the motives of James, in framing the oath; ⁸² while Dodd asserts that it "was never designed to be a test of allegience, but a state trick, to squeeze money from the party, and nourish an opinion in the common people, that they were enemies to the civil government." ⁸³ And this disagreement, furthermore, had also the ultimate result intended. The oath as the Catholic historian confesses," effectually broke the power of the Catholic body in England, by dividing them into two parties marshalled against each other." ⁸⁴ To a his- torian of the Stuart period results such as these certainly give to the enactment of the oath an importance hardly secondary to anything that occurred in that crowded epoch, but to the student of the history of political thought the oath should if possible have a still greater significance. For in reality it marks a turn- ing point in the history of modern politics, and its effects were felt at once in every corner of the western intellectual world. "The anti-papal controversy of James's reign," says Mark Pattison in his life of Casaubon, " is as obsolete for our generation as any other theological squabble, and the books, in which it is consigned, are equally forgotten; Casaubon's among the rest. But those who are acquainted with the situation of affairs at that period, are aware that this was no brawl of rival divines. . . . But in 1611 he [James] was heartily contending against the still advancing tide of the catholic reaction. The form in which this was threatening Europe was indeed that of military force, but it was also an invasion of opinion. The jesuits did not draw the sword in Germany until they had gained a footing in the minds of men. The books and pamphlets they were now disseminating were what made the thirty years' war possible. When the enemy was successfully availing himself of the power of the press, it was wise and necessary that he should be met on the same ground." ⁸⁵

This was no merely English struggle. It was equally important for Venice, for France, for every prince in Europe, and above all for the Papacy itself; and it was important for all because the revived Catholic world was now making ready for its mightiest renewal of the old quarrel between Church and State under the changed conditions imposed by the rise of national states and the schisms which the Reformation had produced. In the history of western political thought no more critical time can be found than the opening years of the seven- teenth century and at no time in her whole history was England so prominent in that world of thought as in the earlier part of the reign of James I. England was universally recognized then as the one corner of Christendom in which there was still hope of checking the onward moving tide of the Catholic reaction; the hopes of Catholics and Protestants alike had been concentrated upon her as upon no other part of Europe, and therefore, the dramatic effect produced in every corner of the intellectual world, Catholic or Protestant, by the challenge to the theory of that reaction which James's oath contained is hard for us to estimate highly enough.

Referring to Bellarmine and to the Gunpowder plot in England, Hallam says, The temporal supremacy would . . . have been left for obscure and unauthor- ised writers to vindicate, if an unforeseen circumstance had not called out again its most celebrated champion."⁸⁶ The truth of this we may doubt, but the fact we can never doubt, that the English oath of allegiance actually did give rise to a paper warfare in Europe the like of which has never been seen since and is hardly likely ever to be seen again now that the common language of that war- fare has fallen into disuse. As Krebs says, " Gelehrte von fast ganz Europa waren in den Streit verwickelt, dessen Höhepunkt in die Jahre 1609 bis 1611 fällt," ⁸⁷ or a French writer: "Non mente hodie fingere possumus quam variis quamque acribus studiis haec controversia, inter potentissimum principem, unum- que ex doctissimis Europae viris exorta, initio saeculi XVII animos accenderit. Dum praecipui catholici theologi, Galli, Germani, Belgae, Hispani, Itali, Angli in auxilium Bellarmini concurrebant, fidelem doctamque operam rex Jacobus cum apud protestantes' theologos omnium gentium invenit, tum etiam apud aliquos gallicanos doctores, in ceteris quidem rei catholicae studiosissimos, regiis antem placitis de potestate pontificia faventes." ⁸⁸ " To all who are interested, either in the history of the times," says Charles Butler, ". . . or in the history of the pretensions of the popes to temporal power, this controversy is of singular importance." ⁸⁹

The great stir caused by the new oath can only be understood in the light of the special interest in the old controversy between the Pope and the princes which had been roused by the recent and repeated assertions of the right of tyrannicide, by the application of this theory to the Jesuit doctrine that no heretic might bear rule, and by the startling effects of these theories, such as the murder of Henry III, or the attempts on the life of Elizabeth.⁹⁰ To understand the results of the oath one further characteristic of the intellectual activity of the time must also be kept constantly in mind. It is this; that Europe was divided into two camps, armed as yet with only intellectual weapons, but none the less under the direction of leaders who employed these means as part of a great campaign. It would be wrong to think of the innumerable books which poured from the presses between 1606 and 1620 merely as the work of detached individu- als who wrote on account of their private enthusiasm for their cause. The Jesuits, and to a lesser degree the Gallicans and the Anglicans carefully planned every move. As men showed special fitness for dealing with a certain phase of the controversy they would be detached for that special service, and care was taken that all phases should be touched upon. Nothing was left to chance. When a man's reputation as a scholar was too solid to be taken by direct assault, as in the case of Joseph Scaliger, the services of a sapper like Scioppius would be called in to attack him on the personal side. Whenever a specially able attack was made by any of the enemy, the men best fitted would be detailed to prepare an answer. It was a carefully planned campaign for the conquest of intellectual Europe in which every move of the enemy was met by a counter move carried out by the method and the men best adapted to make it effective. Care was taken, for example, that a telling book should appear both in Latin and in the vernacular in the country where its effect was most desired. Sometimes such books were translated into several languages, and occasionally different books were written along the same lines by different men, each proficient in the lan- guage in which he wrote. In France where the contest was critical the ability of Cardinal du Perron, who had converted a king and vanquished the "Pope of the Protestants " in public debate, was too great to be allowed to lie idle. He was accordingly employed to counteract by his powers of persuasive eloquence the efforts of the Gallican party in the States General of 1614-15 and to write an answer to the English King himself; while Pere Coton was set on work to dispel the distrust which had been created in France by the Catholic defenders of tyrannicide such as Mariana or Boucher. So men of the type of the scholarly and temperate Jesuit, Fronton du Duc were given the more congenial task of answering the learned arguments of Casaubon, while the attacks on his character, when the time came for them, were entrusted to a Scioppius or a Eudaemon- Johannes. In Italy and Spain, at Louvain and Ingolstadt and Maintz it was the same. When Martin Becan had written one of his most effective books against the oath, provision was made that it should soon appear in English dress for English readers, while Parsons and others nearer home, were rapidly turning out others in both Latin and English. On the Anglican side, too, though the forces were less effectively handled than among the Jesuits, and the available champions fewer, this is equally noticeable. Nothing else explains the anxiety of James to bring to England Casaubon, then the chief scholar of the age, whose book, De Libertate Ecclesiastica, James had known for several years.⁹¹ Only thus can we account for the activity of Bishop Andrewes in the controversy, the man prob- ably best fitted in the whole of England for his particular service but at the same time totally disinclined to it by temperament. The same could probably be said of Doctor Donne. In fact, it was notorious in England that the surest road to ecclesiastical or academic preferment was by thewriting of a book defending the oath and its royal apologist; and many there were who sought it. There is little doubt, on the other hand, that magistrates were instructed to wink at the recu- sancy of a Catholic who was willing to employ his voice or pen on the side of the King.

The contest was opened by one of the principals himself. It began with the Breve of Pope Paul V of Sept. 22, 1606, commanding English Catholics under no circumstances to take the oath, cum multa contineat, quae fidei, & saluti aperte adversantur.⁹² The English Catholics were in consternation. Like Henry II's bishops after the Constitutions of Clarendon, they were " between the hammer and the anvil." Many finally consented to take the oath, among them the Arch- priest George Blackwell, head of the Catholics in England.⁹³ Not content with this Blackwell withheld the papal breve from publication, and under pressure of Bancroft and the Council wrote a letter advising Catholics to take the oath, copies of which Bancroft made sure to be widely scattered.⁹⁴ This led to the issu- ing of a second breve on August 23, 1607 reiterating in unmistakable terms the command of the first.⁹⁵

On September 28th of the same year, Bellarmine wrote to Blackwell condemn- ing in severe terms the Archpriests' course and declaring the oath to be contrary to the Catholic faith.⁹⁶ To this Blackwell returned an answer on November 13th, setting forth the grounds of his acceptance of the oath.⁹⁷

It was these two papal breves and Bellarmine's letter to Blackwell which James set himself to answer in the book which was the occasion of the extension of this quarrel from England to Christendom. This book, with the title Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus or an Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, was published anonymously in 1607. It is given in full here and commentary is unnecessary. James's editor says the King only drew it up as rough notes for a treatise to be written by the Bishop of Winchester and that it took only six days.⁹⁸ It was written in English and at once translated into Latin.⁹⁹ The edition given here is the one printed later with James's Monitory Preface included, but the king says no changes were made save corrections of the errors of copyists and printers,¹⁰⁰ though his enemies assert that the first edition was suppressed on account of the serious mistakes pointed out in Bellarmine's answer, which were corrected by the bishops for the second edition.¹⁰¹ The substance of the Apology is the attempt to prove that the oath " is meerely ciuill."

Though the Apology was anonymous, it was printed by the King's printer and the edition contained the royal arms. James's authorship was an open secret in England and not doubted at Rome. This was a challenge that could not be ignored. The fittest person to answer a king's book was the greatest of Catholic controversalists. This he did at once in a book entitled Responsio ad Librum Inscriptum Triplici nodo, Triplex Cuneus, sive Apologia, etc., under the name of Matthaeus Tortus, one of his almoners; ¹⁰² and with its publication the contro- versy over the oath became a European instead of an English question. The Cardinal's chief point of attack was James's assertion that the oath was merely civil. Primum ostendemus, he says, Juramentum Catholicis propositum, non solum civilem obedientiam, sed etiam Catholicae fidei abnegationem requirere: haec enim est principalis Quaestio quae inter nos hoc tempore disputatur.¹⁰³ Any- thing, he asserts, is a matter of faith which concerns the primacy of the Apostolic See, which all Catholics believe as a dogma orthodoxae fidei to be founded upon the holy Scriptures.¹⁰⁴ Non igitur hoc Juramento sola civilis obedientia quaeritur, sed quaeritur abnegatio fidei Catholicae, & ut obediatur homini contra obedientiam Dei.¹⁰⁵ To take this oath non tam jurari fidelitatem ad Regem, quam abjurari fidelitatem ad Christi Vicarium.¹⁰⁶ This is the chief argument, though he does not end it without denying James's claim that he is no heretic.¹⁰⁷

The name of Tortus no more concealed the authorship of Bellarmine's answer than had the omission of James's name from his Apologie. The Responsio had carried the Apologie and the answer to it into every part of western Europe. It was now the King's move, and he made a double one. A new edition of the Apolo- gie, was issued with the King's name on its title-page accompanied by a long preface addressed to the princes of Europe, with an appendix consisting of " A Catalogue of the Lyes of Tortus, together with a briefe Confutation of them."¹⁰⁸ At the same time Bishop Andrewes was given the task of making a more detailed answer to Tortus. The King's book appeared in 1609, the preface entitled A Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarches, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendome. The chief purpose of the Premonition is to show to the princes of Europe that the pretensions of the Papacy are a menace to the rights which they all claimed as sovereign rulers. It also deals at length with the question of James's alleged heresy. It is included in this volume, pp. 110-160. The Bishop's book appeared in the same year, printed at London by Robert Barker with the title Tortura Torti sive Ad Matthaei Torti Librum Responsio, etc.¹⁰⁹8

It is a detailed answer between three and four hundred octavo pages in length to all the points in Tortus, with some personalities added.¹¹⁰

Bellarmine now returned to the attack with his Apologia pro Responsione sua, in which the Responsio was acknowledged and defended and James's Premonition answered.¹¹¹ A new edition of the Responsio accompanied it.

To this Andrewes, in turn, replied in probably the weightiest book written on the King's side, his Responsio ad Apologiam Cardinalis Bellarmini, London, 1610,¹¹² an elaborate examination of the whole question at issue in some four hundred pages, in which he had some assistance from Casaubon.¹¹³

But the controversy was not confined to these champions. In England and on the Continent many men were busy attacking this question from every pos- sible angle, or engaged in less creditable literary assaults on the persons of their antagonists.

Among English supporters of the Papacy one of the most important in the earlier part of the controversy was the indefatigable Robert Parsons. He had now ostensibly accepted the succession of James and when the oath appeared was bending his great energies to secure a mitigation-of the laws against Catho- lics.¹¹⁴ Clearly seeing by 1608, however, that mitigation would never come, he turned on James with his accustomed force and ability in The Judgment of a Catholicke Englishman living in banishment for his religion . . . concerninge a late booke set forth and entituled Triplici Nodo triplex cuneus, etc.¹¹⁵ This book was too able and too important to leave unanswered in England, so William Bar- low recently translated from Rochester to Lincoln was set to answer it, which he did in 1609 in his Answer to a Catholicke Englishman (so by himself entituled). Parsons returned with a long and abusive answer which was not published till 1612, after the author's death: A Discussion of the Answere of M. William Bar- low, D. of Divinity. Bellarmine's theory is defended at great length,¹¹⁶ but the personalities make the book very tiresome. But though English Catholics con- tributed, the chief burden of defense of the Papacy fell on the Catholics, more especially the Jesuits, on the Continent, and among them were some of the most learned and eminent polemical writers of that day. Of these probably none had more authority or more ability than Martin Becan, Becanus, Verbeeck, or Van der Beeck, of Maintz. Becan entered the controversy as early as 1609 by the publication of his Refutatio to James's Premonition, three editions of which ap- peared in as many years. He followed it the next year by a Refutatio Torturae Torti, to which three English answers appeared in 1611, one of which by William Tooker is referred to below. Another was Richard Thomson's Elenchus Refuta- tionis Torturae Torti, Pro .. . Episcopo Eliensi adversus Martinum Becanum Jesuitam. The third was Robert Burhill's Responsio pro Tortura Torti. In 1610 Conrad Graser, professor at Thorn, had written a book entitled Plaga Regia in support of James's opinion that the Pope was Antichrist. This Becan answered by his Examen Plagae Regiae in the same year and was himself answered the next in Becano-Baculus-Salconbrigiensis; vel Rufutatio Beccanici Examinis Plagae Regiae, quoad orthodoxam Protestantium doctrinam, et Serenissimi Regis Angliae Primatum Ecclesiae Regium vincat Veritas.¹¹⁷ No better illustration than this could be had of the way the controversy had spread. In 1612 Becan turned to answer the English critics of his Refutatio Torturae Torti. His answer was entitled Dissidium Anglicanum with a brief preface to English Catholics. This book was translated by William Wright as The English larre, Or Disagreement among the Ministers of Great Britaine, concerning the Kinge's Supremacy. St. Omer, 1612. William Tooker, Dean of Litchfield, in 1611 defended the King against Becan in his Duellum sive singulare certamen cum M. B. ... futiliter refutante Apologiam . . . Jacobi Regis Magnae Britanniae. This Becan answered by the Duellum Martini Becani Societatis Jesu Theologi, cum Guilielmo Tooker . . . De Primatu Regis Angliae, Maintz, 1612. The same year he published De Pontifice Veteris Testamenti, Et de Comparatione illius cum Rege; also Controversia Anglicana, De potestate Regis et Pontificis, against Andrewes and in defense of Bellarmine. This was one of his best known books and often reprinted. It was condemned by the faculty of the University of Paris and in 1613 this condemnation was printed in England. In 1612 Richard Harris wrote in answer to Becan's Dissidium Angli- canum his Concordia Anglicana de Primatu Ecclesiae. This Becan in turn replied to in 1613 by his Examen Concordiae Anglicanae. In 1614, Harris returned after the publication of the Dissidium in English by writing his English Concord in Answer to Becane's English Jarre, and his Examen of the English Concord. Among these books of Becan might also be reckoned his De Republica Ecclesiastica, 1619, in answer to the book of the renegade De Dominis whom James had encouraged in his attacks on Rome.

The voluminous Becan is possibly more remarkable than typical, but his books and those which called them forth or answered them furnish a concrete, not to say horrible, example of the nature and extent of this controversy which the English oath had stirred up; and they indicate it better than any amount of generalization. Among other books elicited by the King's Apologie a few are so important that they must not be entirely passed over. One such was the book written at the request of the Pope himself by the celebrated Spanish Jesuit Suarez,¹¹⁸ which had the distinction of being burnt both by the Parliament of Paris and the English government. Another was the Examen Praefationis Moni- toriae Jacobi I, etc. of Coquaeus, published at Freiburg in Breisgau in 1610. The Apologia Adolphi Schulkenii Geldriensis, Coloniae Aggrippinae, 1613, is a defence of Bellarimine against Widdrington usually attributed to Bellarmine himself.¹¹⁹ An Italian attack on James was F. M. Antonii Capelli Franciscani Conventualis adversus praetensum Primatum Ecclesiasticum Regis Angliae Liber, etc., Bononiae, 1610.

Of the Jesuits who rushed to Bellarmine's defense none was more respected or influential than James Gretser, professor at Ingolstadt.

In 1610, he published an important attack on James's two books concerning the oath under the significant title Basilikon Doron.¹²⁰ It was dedicated to James' mother, "now in heaven." To these might be added the two books of Leonardus Lessius, Defensio Potestatis Summi Pontificis adversus librum regis Magnae Britan- niae, Caesaraugustae, 1611 ; and De Antichristo et ejus Praecursionibus Disputatio qua refutatur Praefatio Monitoria Jacobi Regis of the same year; also the several works of the scurrilous Scioppius; Scorpiacum, 1612, Collyrium, and Ecclesiasti- cus, 1611, all aimed at James; and many others. While books were thus pour- ing forth against the King from Germany to Spain, in France the struggle was equally intense though possibly not so violent. Before the English oath appeared, the activity of French Jesuits, the defence of the Gallican liberties, and the quar- rel of the Venetians with the Pope, had called out a considerable number of im- portant books for and against the papal claims, which it is impossible to notice here.¹²¹ But in France as everywhere else these controversies in great part con- verged after 1606 on the English oath, the principles contained in it, or the royal writings in its defence. Of these, the writings of five of the chief antagonists of James may be selected for brief notice: those of Pelletier (Peleterius) Coeffeteau, Pere Coton, Eudaemon-Johannes, and Cardinal du Perron.

The book of Peleterius, La Religion Catholique soustenue en tous les poincts de sa doctrine, contre le livre addresse aux Rois . . . par . . . Jacques I, &c. appeared at Paris in 1610, but a more important answer was the Responce a l'advertissement addresse par le Serenissime Roy de la Grande Bretagne, Jacques her, a tous les princes et potentats de la chrestiente¹²² of the celebrated Nicolas Coeffeteau, a book which probably had the greater effect because of its modera- tion, the result of the advice of Henry IV, and of the fact of its author's being a Dominican and not a Jesuit. Its importance was recognized and it was answered by the equally celebrated French Protestant, Peter du Moulin (Molinaeus), in his Defense de la foy catholique contenue au livre du tres puissant et serenissime Jacques 1er contre la response de F. N. Coeffeteau, which James lost no time in having translated into English.¹²³ The larger part of it consists of a defense of the definition of his faith which James had made in his Premonition. This book was answered by Coeffeteau in his Apologie pour la response a l'advertissement du serenissime roy de la Grande Bretagne. Pere Coton, confessor to the King, was in many respects the most influential Jesuit in France just before the murder of Henry IV. So influential with the King himself that it was a common saying in France that "les oreilles du roi sont bouchees de coton," and important for Ameri- can history as the chief originator of the scheme of sending Jesuit missionaries to North America;¹²⁴ a man, as Foulis quaintly says, "of a subtil Head-peice." ¹²⁵ His celebrated letter to the Queen Regent acquitting his order of any complicity in the murder of the King ¹²⁶ is not immediately connected with the question of the oath, but the book and the famous anonymous answer to it,¹²⁷ coming just when they did, played an important if an indirect part in the controversy.

If Coton's part in this particular controversy was indirect, the same could not be said of the activity of the next writer to be noticed, " a Jesuite," according to the author of Anti-Coton, "named John l'Heureux, but disguising his name in an Hyrogliphicall forme, cals himselfe Andreas Eudaemon-Johannes Cydonius."¹²⁸ The history of this man, who claimed to be a native of Crete, is rather obscure, but his part in the controversy was prominent. In addition to an elaborate de- fence of Garnet, he wrote two books directly connected with it: an attack on Casaubon, and answer to his letter to Fronto Ducaeus (Fronton du Duc); and the more important Parallelus Torti ac Tortoris ejus L. Cicestrensis: siue Respon- sio ad Torturam Torti pro illustrmo Card. Bellarmino, Coloniae Agrippinae, 1611. His books, as will appear later, were considered important enough to require a good deal of answering in England.

Of all French antagonists of King James, however, far the most considerable was Jacques Davy, Cardinal du Perron, one of the greatest if not the greatest orator and controversialist of France, a man of enormous memory, high mental power, and great tact; who had the further advantage of knowing both sides of the controversy as he was a convert from Protestantism. The occasion of his ap- pearing in the lists against the King of England was the assembling of the Estates General of 1614-15, their last meeting till the fateful one of 1789. In their cahier the Third Estate had adopted as the first article the corresponding article of the Cahier de Paris, which contained the form of an oath to be sworn by officers, ecclesiastics, and others, condemning the doctrine of the right to depose, rebel against, or kill the King, as "impie, detestable, contre verite, & contre l'establisse- ment de l'Estat de la France, que ne depend immediatement que de Dieu." ¹²⁹ When the clergy got wind of it they at once put forth all efforts to have it sup- pressed, by petition to the Queen Regent,¹³⁰ and by appeal to the other estates not to " bring in question the authority of the Pope and the Holy See along with that of the King." ¹³¹ Negotiations followed which led, among other things, to the selection by the clergy of Cardinal du Perron to set forth their views to the other two estates.¹³² The Cardinal's oration for this purpose before the Third Estate was published and is a remarkable document, covering many phases of the great controversy, and filled with passages of fiery eloquence.¹³³It is significant here as the occasion of one of the most important of James's political writings, for whose interpretation some consideration of this oration is necessary.

Of the three main points in the article of the Third Estate, du Perron was able to agree with the first two - that the assassination of kings is not permis- sible,¹³⁴ and, qu'en la nuë administration des choses temporelles, ils dependent im- mediatement de Dieu.¹³⁵ But with the third, he was in total disagreement- Qu' il n'y a nul cas auquel les Subjets puissent estre absous du serment de fidelité qu'ils ont faict à leurs Princes; ¹³⁶ and it is against it that he inveighs throughout the larger part of his oration, citing at length the opinions of many councils and theologians to prove that this weapon had been and could be used against any prince who was a heretic, an infidel, or a persecutor of the Catholic faith. His chief objections to this articlewere four in number: first, that itwould compel the people to believe and assert under anathema as a doctrine of faith and conformable to the word of God the contrary of what was held by all parties of the Catholic Church; second, that it would make it the province of laymen to judge of the faith and to pronounce one doctrine conformable to God's word and the opposite one "impie et detestable"; third, that this condemnation of the belief of all the rest of the Church as contrary to God's word, "impie, et detestable," would inevitably create a schism; and lastly, that this means proposed, instead of securing its object, the safety of the person of the King, must result rather in a return to the horrors of the civil wars.¹³⁷ These objections he took up in turn. For the first, he asks, if no doctor, or theologian, or jurist, council, or decree in France ever dared assert that subjects might not be absolved from allegiance to a heretic or infidel prince, how can they now without forcing and violating the consciences of men declare such to be the perpetual and universal doctrine of the Gallican Church, or require ecclesiastics to swear to it as a doctrine of faith and against its opposite as impie, perverse, et detestable; and how can they declare to be a fundamental law of the State a theory which only arose in France more than eleven centuries after that state had been established ?¹³⁸ Under the second of these four "manifestes inconvenients," the Cardinal demanded after long citations of authorities, Et voulez, non vous, mais ceux par l'inspiration desquels ces clauses se sont glissees en vostre article, que les laiques la facent jurer aux Ecclesiastiques, que les laiques exigent en matiere de Foy le serment des Ecclesiastiques, que les laïques imposent les loix de Religion aux Ecclesiastiques ? O opprobre! ô scandale! ô porte ouverte à toutes sortes d'heresies! Et donc nostre Foy sera subjette aux varietez & incon- stances des affections des peuples qui changent de vingt-cinq ans en vingt-cinq ans ? Et donc les troupeaux guideront les bergers ? Et donc les brebis condui- ront les Pasteurs ? Et donc les enfans instruiront les peres ?¹³⁹

Adopt this oath, he warns the bourgeosie, under his third objection, this oath which is modelled on that of England, and the schism which must inevitably result will not be of the Pope's making but our own. And it will be a schism not merely against the person of the Pope but against the Apostolic See and against all the rest of the body of the Church. For if the Church's communion consists in unity of faith, how can we believe and swear that the Pope and all the rest of the Church are errant to the faith and to the things that make for salvation and holders of a doctrine contrary to the word of God, impious, detestable, and hereti- cal, without withdrawing ourselves from that communion, and what is that but to dismember the Church or to cut ourselves off from it ? The article would not only drive us into schism: it would of necessity make us heretics as well. For in condemning this doctrine as impious and detestable we must admit that the Pope is not head of the Church and Vicar of Christ but a heretic and Anti- christ; and all other parts of the Church, not true parts but members of Anti- christ. But if so what is to become of the Church Catholic ? ¹⁴⁰ Under the Fourth objection, the Cardinal, among other things, declared that "ces deux horribles assassinats" which had occurred in France were not the result of the teachings of the Church, and asserted that the Church never condemns a prince to any punishment but a spiritual one; and that against the condemned, qu'elle abhorre toutes sortes de meurtres. He made a distinction entre les tirans d'usurpation, lesquels les loix permettent d'exterminer par toutes sortes de voyes: &, les tyrans d'administration qui sont legitimement appellez à la principauté, mais l'adminis- trent mal. Heretical princes, persecutors of the faith and of their Catholic sub- jects, belong to the second class; not to the first contre lesquels seuls il est permis de conspirer par embusches occultes & clandestines; and the laws allowing such things even in their case are les loix politiques prophanes & payennes . . & non les loix politiques Chrestiennes.¹⁴¹

Thus disposing of the actual effects of such an oath he turns to its origin and purpose. Its real authors are not the Third Estate, and its avowed purpose is the protection of the King, mais sous ceste couverture est caché le Schisme & le dessein de deviser l'Eglise.¹⁴² This oath he likens to the monster of Horace that had the head of a beautiful woman - the pretext of the service and protection of the King; but the tail of a fish - i.e., schism and a division of religion. Et à la verité il peut bien estre dit avoir une queue de poisson puis qu'il est venu par mer & à nage d'Angleterre. Car c'est le serment d'Angleterre tout pur, excepté que celuy d'Angleterre est encore plus doux & plus modeste.¹⁴³ He hastens to add that he means no offence to King James to whom he applies many flattering terms. He even acquits him of evil intent by laying the blame upon his religion - Je sçay que tenant la Religion qu'il tient, il pense faire ce qu'il doit quand il essaye de mettre le Schisme & la division parmy la nostre - a method not apt to be particularly soothing. But because James has done this thing in England, be- cause Catholics there must take the oath pour avoir permission de respirer, ou plustost souspirer, must it also be done en un Royaume Catholique? And if Catholics are found even in England willing to suffer all sorts of punishment rather than consent, shall none be found in France who do the same rather than sign and swear to an article which met les resnes de la foy entre les mains des laïques, and brings division and schism into the Church ? ¹⁴⁴ In the person of Queen Elizabeth of England, the interests of the State came into conflict with the claims of conscience and obliged her to remain separated from the communion of the Pope, but in France the common interest of Church and State require a preservation of the union with him.¹⁴⁵

In answer to this oration, Miron, president of the Chamber of the Third Estate, gave in defense of the condemned article much the same reasons which James had urged in justification of the English oath. His defense, in brief, was that the object of the article was merely civil.¹⁴⁶ The outcome was that the Coun- cil forbade further discussion of the objectionable article,¹⁴⁷ and that it was left out of the cahier in obedience to royal command, not however, without " un grand bruict & murmure " among the Third Estate.¹⁴⁸

The open challenge to James's favorite doctrine thus dramatically made by the Cardinal in the Estates and spread broadcast by publication of the Harangue, under the conditions then existing in the intellectual world, laid upon the Angli- cans the burden, not to be escaped, of making an answer. And as the challenge had come in the name of the whole estate of the French clergy it was one not beneath a King to answer. James therefore again entered the controversy in his Declaration du serenissime roi Jacques I, roi de la Grande-Bretagne, France et Irlande, defenseur de lafoi pour le droit des rois, et independence de leurs couronnes contre la Harangue de l'illustrissime Cardinal du Perron, prononcee a la chambre du tiers-etat, 1615. It was written in French and revised as to style by du Moulin.¹⁴⁹ An English translation was made as usual and included in James's collected works,¹⁵⁰ from which it is reprinted here at page 169, the Remonstrance for the Right of Kings. A Latin translation was published in 1616. At his death Cardi- nal du Perron left the manuscript of a reply to James's Dclaration, which was printed in 1620 with the title Replique a la Response du Serenissime Roy de la Grande-Bretagne par l'illustrissime et reverendissime Cardinal du Perron, arche- vesque de Sens, Primat des Gaules et de Germanie, et grand Aumosnier de France. The manuscript of another and much longer answer, unfinished at the Cardinal's death, is included in his OEuvres posthumes preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale.¹⁵¹

From the foregoing summary it must be clear what a furore James's works created in Europe. It now remains to consider briefly the efforts made in England to reply to the many Catholics antagonsists whom James had thus aroused.

Among the most important of the books which appeared on this side of the controversy must be reckoned one which was not written in England, and was not aimed merely at the support of the oath. William Barclay, its author, was an orthodox Catholic, who utterly rejected the claims of the Pope to a temporal power directe or indirecte. He was a jurisconsult and a layman, a Scot who had taught law at Pont-a-Mousson in Lorraine, and at Angers. His book, the De Potestate Papae; An & Quatenus in Reges & Principes seculares jus &' imperium habeat: Guil. Barclaii I. C. Liber posthumus,¹⁵² though it was written after the enactment of the English oath, was not directly a defence of it. It took a far wider range. Its underlying principle, nevertheless, was the same as that of the oath, and its very moderation, the work of a sincere Catholic and one who had suffered nothing by the oath, made its influence on the controversy the greater. Throughout Europe this book was considered one of the most effective presenta- tions of the argument against the temporal claims of the Pope, and its influence was considerable upon English Catholics who were already wavering. In 1611 Birkhead, the Archpriest, wrote that Sheldon's book " and Barclay's translated into English cause many to stagger about the oath." ¹⁵³ The heresy which Barclay deplored as much as any man he believed to be due to the temporal power. Ita quicquid haereticorum in Gallia Britanniaque hodie est, id est illorum unicum robur, hoc temporalis potestatis miserabili calore, tanquam pestilenti ovo concep- tum est & educatum.¹⁵⁴ He is not now writing in the interest of the State, though it is important, as in his De Regno. The safety of the Church itself demands the rejection of this pernicious doctrine. As might be expected he expressly denies the doctrine of the indirect power and singles out Bellarmine for contradiction as its main defender.¹⁵⁵ He detects the fact that the immunity of the priesthood lies at the bottom of this question, and denies it with vigor.¹⁵⁶ To hold it as Bellar- mine does really creates two republics, one of kings and laymen, the other of the Pope and ecclesiastics - quo nihil adsurdius . . . dici potest.¹⁵⁷ For there is but one republic in which are two powers or magistrates one spiritual, one temporal, with never any necessity for either to infringe upon the other.¹⁵⁸ If this is true of the clergy, it is also of the Pope. And if the Pope has any power in temporals he must have received it by divine grant, for which there ought to be authority in Scripture. Christus commendando suas oves Petro, dedit ei omnem potesta- tem necessariam ad tuendum gregem. Atqui non dedit ei potestatem tempora- lem: ergo potestas temporalis non est necessaria ad tuendum gregem. Deinde progrediemur hoc modo; Absurdum est summum Pontificem, quatenus successor est B. Petri, habere plus potestatis, quam habuit ipse Petrus: at Petrus non habuit ullam potestatem temporalem in Christianos: ergo nec summus nunc Pontifex, quatenus successor ejus est.¹⁵⁹ All temporal power is left to princes, therefore all temporal punishments. Hence no Pope can depose kings or dis- pense with the allegiance of their subjects.¹⁶⁰ Popes may only strive by prayers and tears to bring back even an evil king to the right path.¹⁶¹

Barclay's theory, as James's, contains no important element not employed long before in the struggle between the Pope and the Emperor, but this book was a brief and powerful restatement of the royal and imperial position, in answer to the doctrine of the indirect power, a doctrine by which, Barclay de- clared, quicquid Pontifici per abnegationem directae potestatis subtractum est, id ei per obliquam & indirectam hanc imperandi viam cumulate restituitur.¹⁶² Coming as it did in the very heat of the controversy over the oath there is little doubt that this book did cause many English Catholics " to stagger," and it brought out a reply from Bellarmine himself, now nearly seventy years old, his Tractatus de Potestate summi Pontificis in rebus Temporalibus adversus Gulielmum Barclaium, Rome, 1610.¹⁶³ This is a masterly and concise restatement of Bellar- mine's theory of pontifical authority, hinging, of course, on the doctrine of the indirect power.¹⁶⁴ It really adds nothing of importance to his earlier statement in the De Romano Pontifice, but its brevity and the clearness of its argument, to- gether with the pure and direct ecclesiastical Latin, make it the most satisfactory source of Bellarmine's theory.¹⁶⁵

In 1611 John Barclay in answer published Joannis Barclaii Pietas, sive Pub- licae pro Regibus, ac Principibus, et Privatae pro Guilielmo Barclaio Parente Vindiciae,¹⁶⁶ a long detailed reply point by point reasserting his father's views and denying those of the Cardinal.¹⁶⁷

Although a thorough-going acceptance of any theory which sharply separated the temporal and the spiritual was really as inimical to a supreme governor as to a supreme pontiff, James was quick to see that a defense of his oath by a Catholic who denied the Papal authority in temporals would be all the more persuasive just because it was combined with a complete acceptance of the Pope's spiritual claims. Hence he particularly sought the aid of moderate Catholics who were willing to enter the contest on his side, and a few of these he found, of whom one at least is of sufficient importance to merit some attention. These Catholics must have hated the pretensions to ecclesiastical authority of a supreme governor even more than the papal claims to a temporal one, but they saw clearly that the oath itself was a departure, even though a very slight one, from the principle of the oath of supremacy, and they hoped that it might be the be- ginning, as it really was, of a development which in time would secure a toleration of their faith in England. The real difference between the Jesuits and the moder- ates among the Catholics, was that the former hated and opposed a toleration which might later be an embarrassing precedent in the way of complete Catholic uniformity under the prince for whom they hoped and plotted; while the moder- ates wished above all for a toleration of their own faith and were willing to support any measure which seemed to tend however slightly in that direction. The oath was a challenge to the indirect power, but it was a challenge which, so far as it went, also gave up the spiritual power of the King. If, as James con- tended, the oath was merely civil, it derogated from his own claims as supreme governor as much as from those of the Pope. Hence many Catholics who really believed it to be merely civil, and cared nothing for the temporal power, were willing to accept it. In this connection there is a significant difference even be- tween the objections of du Perron, who mainly tried to prove the oath to be a matter of faith and therefore a breeder of schism; and the method of Bellarmine, who took his stand squarely upon the indirect power. Among the English Cath- olic defenders of James's policy the most important was Thomas Preston, an English Benedictine who wrote under the name of Roger Widdrington. He wrote many works, almost all in defence of the oath, and in one or other of them answered most of the important foreign opponents of it, Bellarmine, Gretser, Lessius, Becan, Suarez, Schulkenius, du Perron, and others; in many cases eliciting replies.

On account of his activity on the side of the King, Widdrington seems to have been in some danger from the Jesuit party, and measures were taken for his protection by the government. He also received other favors and concessions not ordinarily accorded to Catholic ecclesiastics, in return for his services.¹⁶⁸ The works of Widdrington are now very rare, and probably the most acces- sible is his first book, which is reprinted in Goldast's Monarchia,¹⁶⁹ his Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini pro Jure Principum.

This, however, contains the substance of his views and may be briefly sum- marized as a typical statement of the position of moderate Catholics who were willing to submit to the oath as merely civil. It is a clear and comprehensive statement of the views of Catholics who opposed the temporal power, one of the most powerful arguments that appeared, answering Bellarmine's arguments for the indirect power step by step in excellent Latin and with the citation of many authorities, fully up to the level of the better known work of Barclay, and possi- bly more important for us because the author always has the oath in mind and applies his theory more concretely to the situation in England.

The question of the Pope's temporal power, Widdrington says, has been re- opened in England on account of the oath and there are many Catholics there, who, though they hold that the Pope as Pope has no power merely temporal, jure divino, believe nevertheless that he does have in ordine ad bonum spirituale, supremum dominium temporale, seu potestatem disponendi de rebus temporali- bus, omnium praesertim Christianorum, et consequenter Regna, atque Imperia transferendi; et Reges, ac Principes supremos Principatu privandi. Et hanc sententiam tam mordicus tenent, ut contrariam non tam sententiam quam haere- sim esse arbitrentur. There are, however, many (permulti) other English Catho- lies who declare the oath to be permissible; and still others, not few in number, who, though they deny that it can be taken with a safe conscience by any Catho- lics, on account of certain of its terms (quasdam clausulas in eo insertas), yet hold that no satisfactory proof can be shown either from Scripture, apostolic tradition, the writings of the Fathers, or theological deduction, that the Supreme Pontiff has by Christ's institution any dominion truly temporal or any power sive directe, sive indirecte, sive absolute, sive respective ad bonum spirituale, to despoil sovereign princes of their temporal dominions for any crime what- soever.¹⁷⁰

He then cites many authorities against the temporal power; ¹⁷¹ and proceeds to prove affirmatively that the temporal sword is not in the hands of the Church, but of the Commonwealth,¹⁷² and that if it should be necessary for ecclesiastics ever to use that sword, they could do it non . . . qua Ecclesiastici sunt, sed qua homines.¹⁷³ If this doctrine of indirect power is to be believed, Scripture or apos- tolic tradition should be produced in its support. But of tradition there is none, and of Scripture, two passages alone: Matthew 16 - Tu es Petrus, etc., and the last chapter of St. John - Pasce oves meas; neither of which, however, has any- thing to do with temporal things, as he explains at length. Next, he takes up for his main attack Bellarmine's exposition of this indirect power, and finds re- sulting from it four inconvenientes: that it leads to tyrannicide; that it may be abused by employing it for offences not worthy of such punishment; that it is open, not merely to the Pope, but to any bishop; and that its effect will inevitably be to create disorder and suspicion.¹⁷⁴ Besides, it is not easy to say just what is meant by bonum spirituale, whether the good of all, or of the majority, or of particular individuals.¹⁷⁵

He then sets out to prove by numerous citations that the Church has taught not this doctrine but passive obedience to temporal princes.¹⁷⁶

The real core of this question, he says, lies in the determination of what punishment is properly ecclesiastical, and to what offences it can rightly be ap- plied. No one among Catholics denies the power of the Church to punish evil doers, even Christian kings and emperors; but the whole difficulty lies in de- termining'whether the taking away of temporal goods and the depriving a king of this temporal principality ought to be included among the punishments which can be inflicted by ecclesiastical power as such.¹⁷⁷ To prove one is by no means to prove the other. Such punishments, in fact, are secular, and may not be employed by the Church. Just as the Pope, qua Pope, has no right jure divino to punish a thief for theft or one who kills another pro homicidio, neither can he in ejusmodi causis pure temporalibus Principibus Secularibus, aliisque laicis in foro exteriori quoad vim coercentem imperare, quia ejusmodi causae, et peccata non sunt fori Ecclesiastici, sed secularis.¹⁷⁸ Bellarmine's reasoning, Widdrington thinks is debilissima, because the indirect power is really inconsistent with the separateness and immunity of the clergy upon which he himself insists. This point had been noted by many critics; Barclay, for instance, asserting that Bellarmine was not able to regain under the indirect power what he himself had surrendered by admitting the separation of spiritual and temporal jurisdiction.¹⁷⁹

To Bellarmine's argument that the Pope may exercise a temporal power per accidens when the spiritual republic is endangered, Widdrington aptly replies, as Andrewes had done, but with more effect since he was a Catholic, that this was a dangerous argument, as it could be used both ways. If the Pope under his spiritual power could thus interfere in a Commonwealth, why, he asks with England evidently in mind, could an infidel king who sincerely believed that preachers of the Gospel were a danger to his realm not exclude them from it under the severest penalties ? ¹⁸⁰ Thus disposing of Bellarmine's general theory of the Church as a societas perfecta which must therefore have potestas sufficiens in ordine ad suum finem, Widdrington turns to the most important form of the exercise of such power, the deposing of a temporal prince, and the argument on this head is summed up in his statement: The present argument is not over the the reasons for which kings may be deposed. The only question at issue is simply whether the Supreme Pontiff has authority jure divino to do it. To prove that in some cases princes may be deposed is not to the point. Nam dato, sed non concesso, illicitum esse Christianis tolerare Regem haereticum, aut infidelem, si ille conetur pertrahere subditos ad suam haeresim aut infidelitatem, quae est prima propositio Cardinali Bellarmini, et ab ipso quamvis pluribus, nullo tamen valido argumento (ut mox videbimus) confirmata, quomodo tamen hinc recte deduci potest, Summum Pontificem habere auctoritatem Principes deponendi ? ¹⁸¹

Passing from the punishment of a king to the judgment which precedes it, Widdrington would justify a denial of papal authority on much the same grounds as those asserted by Blackwell at his examination before the High Commission.¹⁸² The Pope may declare generaliter what is heresy and in this his decision is bind- ing upon all Catholics, but it is a different thing when he undertakes to determine "in particular whether this or that act, alleged to be heresy, has been committed by a King." In the first case the Pope is laying down a general rule of right reason between true and false, good and bad, applicable in all circumstances actual or speculative, and his decision must be accepted; but in the second, he is acting as a man, on evidence that is not certain, and his judgment is fallible and not binding.¹⁸³

In this way Widdrington goes through Bellarmine's Apology point by point, but it is impossible to follow him further here. Enough has been given, however, to show the attitude of the party which he represented on the larger questions at issue, and also to demonstrate the remarkable keenness of his criticism and force of his language.¹⁸⁴ So important was he, that Foulis says the Catholic op- position to the oath was commonly referred to as " Widdrington's Doctrine." ¹⁸⁵

Among other Catholics supporters of the oath are Richard Sheldon, the im- portance of whose book, Certain General Reasons Proving the Lawfulness of the Oath of Allegiance, London, 1611, was admitted by the Archpriest, Birkhead; ¹⁸⁶ and William Warmington, who in 1612 published A Moderate Defence of the Oath of Allegiance, wherein the Author proveth the said Oath to be most Lawful, notwith- standing the Pope's Breves.¹⁸⁷

To these might be added, Jus Regis, sive De Absoluto et independenti Secula- rium Principum dominio et obsequio eis debito . . . Libri tres in quibus summi Pontificis Jus non esse Principes deponere aut civiliter plectere autoritate sacra Historica et Forensi Probat Guil. Barret Catholicus Anglus J. C., etc., Basiliae, 1613.

Some idea of James's eagerness to enlist the aid of foreigners in the contro- versy, and of his methods of so doing may be gained from the inclusion in this list of one of the most remarkable characters of the time, the able but unscrupu- lous adventurer, Marco Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, upon whom James showered English benefices in return for his attacks upon Rome.¹⁸⁸

Much invaluable help was undoubtedly given to the cause of the King by the writings of these Catholics who supported the oath. Their arguments no doubt had greater weight with Catholics in England and elsewhere than similar views expressed by Protestants could have had. But the number of Catholic apologists for the oath was very limited, and James had to rely in the main upon the sup- port of his own party, who in a measure made up for their lack of influence by the greater zeal, not to say violence, of their partisanship.

Long before the enactment of the oath itself this party had been laying the foundation for James's attacks on the pretensions of the later Popes by their attempts to prove that the Popes had in the later ages fulfilled the prophecy of St. John in regard to Antichrist. This had begun in the time of the Tudors ¹⁸⁹ and was continued after the accession of James in such books as George Downame's A Treatise affirming the Pope to be Antechrist, 1603,¹⁹⁰ or Robert Abbot's Anti- Christi Demonstratio of the same year. James owed much to these books, and they did not come to an end with the enactment of the oath.¹⁹¹ But the oath tended to focus the controversy even more directly upon the new phase of the old question of obedience which had been created by the papal claims as inter- preted by Bellarmine and the Jesuits. Convocation made an explicit denial of all the grounds on which those claims were based, and of all the theories to which they gave rise.¹⁹²

When the oath itself appeared, and the defense of it by the King in person, a considerable number of Anglican writers also enlisted not without royal encour- agement in support of its principle or in defense of its author. Some of these have been mentioned already. A few others are important enough to throw some further light on the nature of the controversy and of the way it was conducted. Of those not referred to already probably none was of more consequence than Dr. John Donne. In 1610 appeared his Pseudo-Martyr wherein out of certaine Propo- sitions and Gradations. This conclusion is euicted. That those which are of the Romane Religion in this Kingdome, may and ought to take the Oath of Allegeance. Isaac Walton in his life of Doctor Donne gives an account of how his book came to be written. The King, much impressed with his arguments against refusing the oath, . . . "commanded him to bestow some time in drawing the arguments into a method, and then to write his answers to them." The result was the Pseudo-Martyr, and so satisfactory, Walton says, that the King " persuaded Mr. Donne to enter into the ministry." ¹⁹³

The attacks of Eudaemon-Johannes upon Bishop Andrewes, referred to above,¹⁹⁴ the reply of Bellarmine himself to Andrewes's arguments, and the contributions of other writers on the Papal side, also brought out a number of English books, - chiefly in defense of Andrewes, some of which have been noticed.¹⁹⁵ Others were the Increpatio Andreae Eudemono-Johannis Jesuitae, de infami Parallelo, et renovata assertio Torturae Torti pro clarissimo domino atque antistite Elieno, 1612, of Samuel Collins; and the same author's Epphata to F. T. or, the defence of... the lord Bishop of Elie . . . concerning his answer to Cardinall Bellarmines A polo- gie, 1617. The latter was an answer to Thomas Fitzherbert's Confutation of certain Absurdities, Falsities, and Follies, uttered by M. D. Andrews in his Answer to Cardinall Bellarmines Apology, 1613, to which Fitzherbert in turn replied in The Obmutesce of F. T. to the Epphata of D. Collins. Collins's Epphata was dedi- cated to the King and undertaken at his command. Its appearance in 1617, the same year that its author obtained his regius professorship at Cambridge, is hardly a mere coincidence.

To these might be added the De Potestate Papae in rebus temporalibus sive in regibus deponendis usurpata adv. Robertum Cardinalem Bellarminum libri duo, 1614, of John Buckeridge, then bishop of Rochester, and a man high in James's favor; and the contributions of Robert Burhill to the controversy. In addition to his first defense of Andrewes's Tortura Torti, noticed above,¹⁹⁶ Burhill published in 1613 De Potestate regia et Usurpatione papali pro Tortura Torti contra Paralle- lum Andr. Eudaemon, and Assertio pro Jure regio contra Martini Becani Jesuitae Controversiam Anglicanam.

As early as 1610, John Gordon, dean of Salisbury, entered the struggle, a man who enjoyed the King's favor and repaid it by literary support of some of James's favorite projects, notably the union of England and Scotland. His first contribu- tion to the controversy bore the title Anti-torto-Bellarminus, sive refutatio Calumni- arum mendaciorum, et Imposturarum Laico-Cardinalis Bellarmini contra jura omnium regum et sinceram illibitamque famam Serenis. Principis Jacobi, etc. He returned to it again in 1612 with his Anti-bellarmino-tortor, sive Tortus Re- tortus.

But of all the Protestant supporters of the King's contention against the Pope, the one whose reputation for learning was highest, whose arguments had probably the greatest weight on the Continent, was Isaac Casaubon. Since the death of J. J. Scaliger he was recognized as the first scholar of Europe, and like Scaliger he was a Protestant. The death of Henry IV made Paris a place none too com- fortable for a such a man, and James in his search for apologists was able to in- duce him to come to England to his support. The patent for Casaubon's pension shows that he was asked to come not merely on account of his reputation: he was expected to render valuable service in return for his £300, the nature of which appears in his writings. He had been invited " here to make his aboad; and to be used by us as we shall see cause for the service of the church."¹⁹⁷ The story of how he was " used " in this controversy, of the concerted efforts of the opposite party to answer his arguments or discredit him personally, and of the measures taken in England for his defense, has been told in the model biography of Casaubon by Mark Pattison so much more fully and so much better than I can tell it here that the best service I can render students of the political thought of that time is to refer them to that book as the best account of these things, and in fact, the best statement in English of the general conditions in intellectual Europe which made this whole controversy what it was.¹⁹⁸

The intellectual war which I have been endeavoring to trace was at its height from 1606 to 1620. It did not end with the latter date, but all the important lines in which political thought. was to flow were indicated by that time. It is true that the controversy broke out again with something of its old violence after the Restoration; and continued until the Revolution, when many of the political principles of the Stuarts and their time disappeared with the dynasty itself.¹⁹⁹ Religious uniformity with the slight concessions granted under the oath was a policy not originated by the Stuarts, but one which lasted with one interruption till their downfall, when it was superseded by the qualified toleration of the Toleration Act. The Oath of 1606 was a very slight advance beyond Elizabeth's policy of a very limited " tolerance for a consideration," ²⁰⁰ but slight as it was it does mark an important stage in that development in which the year 1689 stands out with such prominence. As Dr. Figgis says, " Only because neither party could subdue, exterminate, or banish the other was toleration the result of the Revolution of 1688." ²⁰¹

In the period between 1603 and 1625 these things were still uncertain. It was by no means clear yet that some such fate as this might not be in store for the Catholic party in England, and at the same time one branch of that party itself had not yet given up hope that the tables might be completely turned after all, and that the sufferers under such a subjugation, extermination, or banishment would be their enemies and not themselves.

The few years of James's reign remaining after 1620 are important for political history but for political theory they offer little that is new. The battle of the White Hill marked the transfer of the struggle from the sphere of the intellectual so that of the physical; and it is not laws alone that inter arma silent. But in the years that preceded 1620 the intellectual struggle between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League had been intense, and in it England had taken a larger place than she had ever had in matters of general Europran concern since the beginning of modern times. That important place, she owed to her peculiar position as the great protector of Protestantism. When, after 1620, the bitter contest between religions in Europe passed from words to arms, James played a sorry part as protector or leader. His forte was words not acts. But in the earlier part of the struggle there was no more conspicuous champion than he, no more important opponent of the principles upon which the Counter-Reformation rested and the wars of religion were to be fought. He owed this eminence, of course, more to his office than to his ability. Not that his writings were in them- selves negligible: they were by no means so. We have no way of knowing how much of them is due to the King's own undoubted controversial ability, and how much was contributed by others without hope of recognition, but these writings as they stand would probably not have passed without notice even had they been anonymous. We may be equally sure, however, that without the authorship of a king, they would hardly have elicted replies from such opponents as du Perron and Bellarmine.