the monstrous empire of women and john knox

[RRR 5.2 (2003) 166-187] ISSN 1462-2459

© Equinox Publishing 2003

JOHN KNOX: GYNAECOCRACY, ‘THE MONSTROUS EMPIRE OF WOMEN’

Maria Zina Gonçalves de Abreu

[email protected]

Abstract

This paper aims at providing a critical reading of John Knox’s views on female monarchs, based on his writings, correspondence and interviews with contempo-rary queens, namely Mary of Guise and her daughter, Mary Stewart, of Scotland, and Elizabeth I, of England, highlighting Knox’s religious thought and the political implications of his antigynaecocratic doctrines. From Knox’s reasonings with the British queens, one can to some extent perceive his putting into practice the theories of resistance to political authority he formulated during his exile in Geneva, as expressed in the tracts and correspondence addressed to his British friends and proselytes. By the analysis of Knox’s antagonistic views on the regiment of women, solidly grounded on the Holy Scriptures, namely the Old Testament, and on long-established tradition—classical, canonical and patristic—, one is made aware of his unwavering faith and indefatigable struggle for the Reformation of the Church, both in Scotland and in England.

The literal reading of the Christian tradition that God’s power was of supreme nature, a power that was above all secular authority, along with the stress on the equality of all believers in faith,1 led sixteenth-century British reformers to claim that if there were no social distinctions before God, if no soul was set above any other, no temporal power, neither in the Family nor in the State, had any legitimate right to repress the soul, which was free and sovereign, even if such power be divinely instituted. The belief in a universal religious equality and the claim that the soul was sovereign in a hierarchically structured world pervaded by inequality and subjection were potentially subversive of the established order.

1. See, for instance, St Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, where the Apostle teaches that all believers are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3.26-28). Yet, to the Apostle, spiritual equality did not entail any other form of equality, as he makes clear in his first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1).

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Unsurprisingly, this fundamental Christian liberty universally enjoyed and exer-cised led to the rising claim that each Christian, male or female, had the right to liberty of religious conscience, which progressively developed into Protestant theories of resistance to godless secular authority: Christians should first obey God and His Law; all authority that violated the Moral Law should be utterly resisted. These were teachings of resistance to religious oppression that, in Britain, first ripened in the reigns of the contemporary British queens, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, of England, and Mary of Guise2 and Mary Stewart, of Scotland. As mon-archs these women were in a position that enabled them to have a religious role that went beyond the conventional one, that of patrons and protectors: they could impose their religion. In England, Mary I revoked her brother’s religious reforms, restoring Catholicism, and Elizabeth I re-established Protestantism. In Scotland, both the Queen-Regent, Mary of Guise, and her daughter, Mary Stewart, opposed the establishment of a Protestant Church. It was Mary Tudor’s religious policies and repression of Reformation advocates and sympathizers that incited John Knox to formulate theories of active resis-tance to political authority, namely in his tract The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558),3 which, albeit a general con-demnation of female rulers, was chiefly addressed to the English queen, whom he called the ‘horrible monster Jezebel of England’.4 But Mary Tudor died soon after the publication of the First Blast, and her successor, Elizabeth, found it an offence to the legitimacy of her title, and Knox’s exhortations an incitement to subversion of the public order. Despite the First Blast having provoked a storm of protest throughout Europe for its uncompromising rhetoric and political injudiciousness, namely by Conti-nental reformers5 and many of Knox’s more temperate associates, like John Foxe

2. Belonged to the French House of Guise (see n. 63). 3. John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (Geneva, 1588), in Roger A. Mason (ed.), John Knox: On Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, repr. 1999), pp. 3-47. 4. Knox, First Blast, p. 46. 5. Years later Calvin and Beza still complained of Queen Elizabeth’s suspicion of them: Hastings Robinson (ed.), The Zurich Letters (2 Series; Parker Society, 1842-45), II, pp. 34-36, 131. Troubled with Mary’s idolatry and religious policies, Knox had consulted John Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger and Pierre Viret as early as 1554 on the legitimacy and propriety of female rule, and on matters of resistance: John Knox, Works (ed. David Laing; 6 vols.; Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1846-64), III, pp. 217-26; R. L. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, Journal of Modern History 48 (1976), pp. 1-31, 4-14.

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and John Aylmer, to Elizabeth I Knox became a persona non grata and all Marian refugees suspect of sedition.6 In a letter sent from Dieppe to his English friend Anne Lok, dated 6 April 1559, Knox laments that his First Blast had ‘blowne from [him] all [his] friends in England’. Referring to the contemptuous reaction to his First Blast, he says: ‘My booke, as I understand, is written against. Assuredelie I feare that men shall rather destroy than edifie, be such interprises.’ However, he continues, ‘the veritie which I affirme is invincible, and shall triumphe to the confusion of all oppugners. England hath refused me; but because, before, it did refuse Christ Jesus, the lesse doe I regard the losse of that familiaritie.’7 Knox was thus responding to his critics,8 namely to John Aylmer (AElmer)’s defense of gynaecocracy in the tract entitled An Harborowe for Faithfvll and Trewe Subiects agaynst the late blowne Blast (1559)9—an attempt to pacify Queen

6. The First Blast also proved a source of embarrassment to the Scottish Congregation that looked to Elizabeth I for aid. See, for instance, Richard L. Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation: Studies in the Thought of John Knox (Grand Rapids: Christian Univer-sity Press, 1980), p. 166; Mason, John Knox, p. xvi; J.E.A. Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes: England, Scotland and the 1558 Tracts’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991), pp. 555-76, 560. 7. Knox, Works, IV, pp. 14-15. 8. In addition to Aylmer, Knox’s earlier critics were fellow exiles like John Foxe, Lawrence Humphrey and Richard Bertie, who whilst attacking his views on female government defended Knox personally. See, for instance, Laurence Humphrey, De religionis conseruatione and reformatione uera (Basle, 1559), trans. in M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 176-77; Richard Bertie An answer to the First Blast (1568); Thomas Smith, De Republic Anglorum (1583); George Whetstone, The English Myrror (1586); John Bridges, Defense of the Government Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters (1587); Henry Howard, A Dutifull Defence of the Lawfull Regiment of Women (c. 1589); Thomas Craig, The Right of Succession to the Kingdom of England (1603); John Hayward, Answer to the First Part of a Certaine Conference, Concerning Succession (1603); Thomas Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (1607); William Leigh, Queen Elizabeth, paraleled in her princely vertues (1612). Later critics, assuming more liberal positions, had mostly the defense of Mary Queen of Scots in mind. They were mainly Catholics who hoped she would restore Catholicism in Scotland. See, for instance, The Mirror for Magistrates (1563); Peter Frarin, Oration against the Vnlawful Insurrections of the Protestantes of ovu time (Louvin, 1565); John Leslie, A Defence of the honour of the Right Highe, Mightye and Noble Princesse Maria Quene of Scotlande and Dowager of France (1569); David Chambers, Discours de la légitime succession des femmes aux possessions de leurs parens: du gouuernement des princesses aux Empires et Royaumes (Paris, 1579). 9. John Aylmer (AElmer), An Harborowe for Faithfvll and Trewe Subiects agaynst the late blowne Blast, concerninge the Gouernment of Wemen wherin be confuted all such reasons as a straunger of late made in that behalfe, with a breife exhortation to obedience (Strasborowe, 26 Aprill, J. Day, 1559).



Elizabeth and, as the chronicler John Strype put it, to ‘the better to obtain the favor of the new queen, and to take off any jealousy she might conceive of them, and of the religion which they professed’,10 probably with an eye in a nomination as bishop of the Church of England. Differently from Knox, who asserts that the accession of a woman to the throne is against the natural order,11 Aylmer accepts it when it happens by the course of inheritance, though as an exception by ‘God’s will and order’12—that, as John Calvin explained to William Cecil,13 represented ‘a deviation from the original and proper order of nature’, and God’s chastisement for the sins of a people. Refuting Knox’s arguments that female rule was against nature, Aylmer says:

You take this word nature too largely, you deceive yourself wittingly, thinking that because it is not so convenient, so profitable, or meet, therefore it is unnatural […]. For though […] it be for the most part seen that men and not women do rule commonwealths, yet when it happeneth sometime by the ordinance of God and course of inheritance that they bear rule, it is not to be concluded that it re-pugneth against nature: no more than the old man’s black hairs, or the woman’s two twins. So that you see that in this acception of nature, their rule cannot be against nature.14

Having fled from the powerful Scottish Catholic and pro-French regime of Mary of Guise, to avoid having the same fate as his mentor, George Wishart (c. 1513-46), and later from Marian England, John Knox saw the persecution of British Protestants as the consequence of an anomalous power—that of female rule. Knox’s fundamental premise—that women were unfit and ineligible to bear rule over kingdoms—was commonplace wisdom among his contemporaries,15 supported by a wide variety of examples. As noted by John E. Neale, sixteenth-century statesmen believed that to reign over a nation was ‘a mystery revealed

10. John Strype, Historical Collections of the Life and Acts of….John Aylmer (Oxford, 1821), p. 16; cited by James E. Phillips (Jr.), ‘The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers’, in The Huntington Library Quarterly 5 (San Marino, 1941-42), p. 15. 11. Knox, First Blast, pp. 8-9. For the nature of Aylmer’s views on women rulers, see Constance Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought’, Renaissance Quarterly 40 (1987), pp. 421-51, 437-41. 12. Almyer, An Harborowe (1559), fos. B1rff., in Kate Aughterson (ed.), Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 134. 13. Letter from Calvin to Cecil (‘Letter 15’, c. 1559), Robinson (ed.), Zurich Letters, II, 35. 14. Almyer, An Harborowe (1559), fos. B1rff., in Aughterson (ed.), Renaissance Woman, p. 134. 15. Greaves, Theology and Revolution, ch. 8; Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, p. 559.



only to men’.16 This despite the fact that in the sixteenth-century European political pantheon, namely in Britain, there was a great number of female rulers, a reality that made the question of female government a favourite theme in Renaissance literature, defended by some and reviled by others. Many of such works supplied arguments and examples to both parties in the gynaecocratic controversy. Their authors dealt with such matters as the authority of scriptural pronouncements on womankind, both canonical and patristic, the philosophical status of reason, ethics, natural law, the legal validity of customary practices dis-criminating against women, and historical testimonies.17 Cornelius Agrippa, for instance, invoked examples of famous queens to highlight the outstanding role women had played as rulers of nations. Thomas Elyot argued that women had all the intellectual and physical qualities necessary to the exercise of political power.18 Conversely, though a prominent defender and theorist of female education, the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives asserted that women had not energy, intelligence or discretion enough to rise to political power.19 Sir David Lyndsay, an old acquaintance of John Knox, went even further in his disapproval of female rule: ‘Ladyis no way I can commend / Presumptuouslye quhilk doith pretend / Tyll vse the office of ane kyng, / Or Realmes tak in gouernyng.’20 Lyndsay grounded his arguments on the Christian tradition that God commanded man’s dominion over women and that, to him, was a clear sign that God did not want women to rule over men. Still, as James E. Phillips claims, these were arguments that had more to do with the capability than with the eligibility of women to become rulers of nations.21

16. Cited by Greaves, Theology and Revolution, p. 158. 17. For this debate, see, for instance, Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought’, esp. pp. 422-23; P. L. Scalingi, ‘The Scepter and the Distaff: the Question of Female Sovereignty, 1516-1607’, The Historian 41 (1978), pp. 59-75; Phillips (Jr.), ‘The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers’, pp. 5-32. 18. Cornelius Agrippa, A Treatise of the Nobilitie and excellencye of woman kynde (trans. David Clapman), sig. E viiiv; Thomas Elyot, The Defence of Good Women, sigs. E iiii-Ev, cited by Phillips (Jr.), “The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers”, p. 7. 19. Juan Luis Vives, The Instruction of a Christian Woman (trans. Richard Hyrde, 1540), p. 100v; cited by Phillips (Jr.), ‘The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers’, p. 7. 20. Dialogue of Monarchy (1552), L1. 3247-56, Early English Text Society, O.S., Nºs. 11, 19 (1883), p. 106; cited by James E. Phillips (Jr.), ‘The Woman Ruler in Spenser’s Faerie Queene’, in The Huntington Library Quarterly 5 (San Marino, 1941-42), p. 6. 21. Phillips (Jr.), ‘The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers’, p. 8.



In Britain, the debate on female rule was launched, on the one hand, by the novelty of the accession of a Princess to the throne of England in 1553, Mary Tudor, whose legitimacy had to be conferred by Parliament,22 and, on the other hand, by the fact that she was Catholic.23 It was this reality, along with Mary Tudor’s religious policies and persecutions, that provoked the publication of several tracts advocating resistance to her reprobate regime. Albeit using a broad variety of arguments, all of their authors proposed Mary’s deposition. Thomas Becon and John Ponet were the earliest of the Marian exiles to engage in this controversy.24 In An humble supplication vnto God for the restoring of his holye woorde unto the churche of England (1554), Becon deplored the calamities of Mary Tudor’s reign, which he perceived as signs of God’s wrath and punishment to his fellow Englishmen for tolerating such a degenerate regime, identifying the English Queen with the biblical Jezebel25—the paradigm of idolatrous, wicked and tyrant female ruler (sig. A7v). Becon resorted to the Pauline injunctions that forbade women to speak in public and commanded their subjection to their husbands, which he read as divinely instituted restrictions to women’s access to public activities and positions of power (sig. A7). To Becon the accession of a Catholic Princess to the throne of England was part of a broader scheme to establish godless government in that nation. In A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power (1556), John Ponet also describes Mary’s accession as a violation of the Moral Law, and inveighs against the queen’s 22. Mary Tudor was the first English regnant queen, though this status might be claimed for King Henry I’s daughter, princess Maud or Matilda (1127-35). Mary’s succession was provided for under the terms of the Third Act of Succession (1544) of her father, Henry VIII. Yet, this Act did not recognize the legitimacy of her authority as a female ruler. This was achieved by an Act of Parliament (1554), which declared that Mary had the same authority conferred to a king. The Act granted that: ‘What and whensoever statute of law doth limit and appoint that the king of this realm may or shall […] do anything as king […] the same the queen […] may by the same authority and power likewise do’: J.R. Tanner (ed.), Tudor Constitutional Documents: 1485-1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), p. 123, cited by Mortimer Levine, ‘The Place of Women in Tudor Government’, in D.J. Guth and J. McKenna (eds.), Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G.R. Elton and His American Friends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 109-23, 109. 23. For the nature and status of Mary Tudor as a ruler, see Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought’, pp. 424-30. 24. Greaves, Theology and Revolution, pp. 152-53, 157, 163; Christopher Hill, The English Bible and Seventeenth-Century Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 187, 190, 247, 407; Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, p. 561; Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought’, pp. 430-31 and n. 17. 25. 1 Kgs. 16; 18; 21; 2 Kgs. 9; 30.



idolatry and her marriage to Philip of Spain, that he saw as treason. However, differently from Thomas Becon, Ponet centres his objections more on the queen as a tyrant who abuses the royal prerogative rather than on gender. Yet, the most adamant antagonist of female government was John Knox, whose tract The First Blast of the Trumpet (1558) is a ruthless manifesto against the regiment of women. To Knox, ‘to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordinance […] the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice’.26 It was thus urgent, continues the Scottish reformer, that the ‘monstriferous empire of women’, that this usurped power, ‘abominable, odious, and detestable […] be openly revealed and plainly declared to the world’.27 We shall not discuss the misogyny28 entrenched in Knox’s rhetoric, as our aim is to highlight the political aspects of his arguments. The reformer began by unfolding evidence that validated the social and civic limitations that disquali-fied women to bear rule over men. To this end, he availed himself of an array of authorities, ranging from Aristotle, with his theory of the inherent inferiority of women, to the ancient Roman Law (the Digest), and above all he appealed to

26. Knox, First Blast, p. 8. 27. Knox, First Blast, p. 6. 28. Though by the standards of his day Knox should not be considered abnormally misogynist, several scholars have labelled him as such, certainly grounded on the virulence of his arguments for the subordination of women expressed in his First Blast. In fact, despite Knox’s relationship with common women (cf. his letters) bearing witness to his concern with the mutuality of gender and comradeship, this ‘mutuality’ was limited to matters of religious conscience and spirituality—a concern which was commonplace amongst reformers. To Knox, as to other reformers of his day, the concept of ‘mutuality of gender’ scarcely went beyond their need of support for his major goal—the Reformation of the Church—for which the unswerving obedience to God, the Supreme Patriarch, was crucial. Thus, though I agree with Susan M. Felch that ‘the biblical model of active, virtuous women was greatly promoted’ by Knox and other reformers, from a feminist perspective it is difficult not to read critically the First Blast and Knox’s addresses to the British female rulers as stringent reassertions of women’s subordinate status, independently of Knox’s motivations being papistry and idolatrous regiments rather than misogyny: Susan M. Felch, ‘The Rhetoric of Biblical Authority: John Knox and the Question of Women’, Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), pp. 805-22, esp. 808-12, 816, 817-22. For readings of Knox’s rhetoric as misogynistic see, for instance, Edwin Muir, John Knox: Por-trait of a Calvinist (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), pp. 119-120, 130; A. Daniel Frankforter, ‘Correspondence with Women: The Case of John Knox’, Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 6 (1985), pp. 159-72; Mary Beth Rose, ‘Where Are the Mothers in Shakespeare? Options for Gender Representation in the English Renaissance’, Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991), pp. 291-315.



patristic and canonical authorities, namely the Holy Scriptures29 and the Church Fathers,30 from whose statements and teachings he inferred that man is above woman as God is above the angels. From the compilation of evidence he eventually gathered, Knox reasoned that queens had only managed to get their titles ‘by treason and conspiracy com-mitted against God’, hence defining the regiment of women as illegitimate, an intolerable subversion of the original order established by God, which should thus be suppressed. Likewise, he asserted that all those who consented in women’s ‘authority, honor, or office’ should be ‘most assuredly persuaded that in so main-taining that usurped power, they declare themselves enemies to God’.31 Addressing his invective against Mary Tudor, whom he considered a ‘traitor-ess and rebel against God’, who had betrayed England into the arms of the Church of Rome and of Spain, Knox called to God to provide a Phinehas, Elijah, or Jehu to overthrow her degenerate regime. Seeing himself as a prophet and following the example of his Hebrew predecessors, Knox forewarns the English people of their duty to repress ‘her inordinate pride and tyranny to the uttermost of their power’, a duty which, he asserts, is not exclusive of those at her service but also of the ‘nobility and estates by whose blindness a woman is promoted’, and of the people ‘that hath been blinded’. Thus, first, he continues, following the example of the royal guards that deposed and killed Athaliah32—the usurper of the throne of Judah—the English people ought also ‘to remove from honor and authority that monster against nature’, as a sign of repentance for the offence committed against God for having sanctioned the coronation of a woman. In addition, says Knox, they should also ‘pronounce and then after […] execute the sentence of death’ of all those who endorsed her impiety. All oaths of allegiance and obedience, he argues, proceeding from ignorance should be violated: if they had sinned when swearing allegiance to the queen in ignorance,

29. Knox quoted mostly from the Old Testament, most all of his references to the New Testament being from the Pauline corpus. In short, Knox ignored the biblical passages that elevated women. For Knox’s selective use of Scripture (and of the Judaeo-Christian tradition), see W.I.P. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan: John Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet’, in Willem van’t Spijker (ed.), Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), pp. 279-90 (286-88). 30. Knox, First Blast, pp. 10-11, 15-23. Knox cites, among others, Tertullian (converted c. 195, prolific writer from Carthage); Augustine (Bishop of Hippo, 354-430); Ambrose (Bishop of Milan, c. 339-97); Chrysostom (c. 354-407, Bishop of Constantinople), and Basilius Magnus (c. 329-79, Bishop of Caesarea). 31. Knox, First Blast, p. 43. 32. 2 Kgs. 11.



the preservation of allegiance, once aware of having sinned was ‘plain rebellion against God’.33 Knox ends his blast of the trumpet vociferously inciting the English people against the cruelties of Mary’s degenerate regime, and calling for the overthrow of the Jezebel of England and of the authority of all women—‘a wall without foundation’.34 As Roger A. Morgan remarks, this is ‘without doubt, an un-equivocal call to revolution’,35 a call to rouse the lethargic English to evict a constitutionally legitimate monarch from office. In his preface to the First Blast, Knox declares his intention to ‘thrice […] blow the trumpet in the same matter’.36 However, the disapproval of his First Blast led him to abandon this plan. Yet, he did draft a summary of the proposed Second Blast of the Trumpet,37 in which, unlike the First Blast, Knox’s concerns were chiefly with the lawfulness of rebellion not the legitimacy of female rule. One of the themes Knox intended to delve into was the question of succession by hereditary line: ‘[I]t is not birth onely nor propinquitie of blood that maketh a Kinge lawfully to reign above a people […]’, says the Scottish reformer, ‘but in his election must the ordenance, which God hath established in the election of inferiour judges, be observed’. The legitimacy of the monarch’s power needed, therefore, divine sanction. Hence, argues Knox, no oath of allegiance or promise can compel a people ‘to obey and maintein Tyrants against God and against his trueth knowen’. If the people, in ignorance, have consented or elected a monarch that later proved to be ‘unworthie of regiment above the people of God, (and suche be all idolaters and cruel persecuters)’, they could with all legitimacy ‘depose and punishe him that unadvysedly before they did nominate, appoint, and electe’.38 As R. L. Greaves notes, although Knox states ‘that tem-poral rulers received their authority from God, he clearly implied here that the people or estates were the agency through which that authority was bestowed’, thus asserting the ‘idea of a covenant or social compact between the people and their rulers’.39 Catherine of Medicis, who persecuted the Huguenots in France, the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, and her daughter Mary Stewart, of Scotland, and above 33. Knox, First Blast, pp. 43-44. 34. Knox, First Blast, pp. 46, 47. 35. Mason, John Knox, p. xv. 36. Knox, First Blast, p. 8. 37. Published in July 1558 attached to the Appellation and the Letter to Commonalty, in Knox, Works, IV, p. 539. 38. Knox, Works, IV, pp. 539-40. 39. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 23.



all Mary Tudor, whose bloody persecutions in England forced many Protestants to either seek refuge in Protestant European states or be burnt at the stake, were the vicious female rulers that inspired the seditious tract The First Blast of the Trumpet. Knox’s political objectives were, in truth, ‘to have these women deposed’, namely the ‘unholy trinity of Marys’ who, as W. I. P. Hazlett points out, ‘opposed to the Reformation with varying degrees of zeal’ and exercised their sovereignty ‘keenly in the interest of maintaining the position of the old Church’. Moreover, in Knox’s view these women were not only agents of idolatry and repression, especially Mary Tudor, they were also traitors who were ‘reducing Scotland and England to satellite status’ of France and Spain,40 through their marriages with foreign Princes.41 Thus, the remedy was a prophetic appeal to the English people and the Scottish Lords of the Covenant to rise up and liberate their nations from the prospect of a Babylonian captivity, by waging holy war against the female idolatrous usurpers, who were leading their nations on the path of destruction and wholesale infidelity to God and his commandments. Not to revolt in these circumstances was rebellion against God, ‘Non resistere est peccare’, as W. I. P. Hazlett has noted.42 Hence, though as has been said Knox’s views on women were relatively uncontroversial,43 his intent upon transforming the commonplace principle of the impropriety of female rule into an immutable, inviolable and universal law was not. As W. I. P. Hazlett points out, ‘What is distinctive in Knox’s work is that […] he elevates his point of view virtually to that of being an articulus fidei, and so essential dogma’.44 Tied to the supreme authority of God, it tolerated no exceptions and, hence, should always override all human laws and customs. Moreover, what was even more disturbing to his contemporaries was the revolu-tionary conclusion Knox drew from his premise that a female ruler was ineligible for rule. Having no legitimate title or qualification, a female ruler was by defini-tion a usurper, and therefore should be immediately deposed.45

40. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, pp. 282-83. 41. Mary Tudor married Philip of Spain in 1554, and Mary Stewart married the French dauphin in 1558. 42. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, p. 289. Hazlett briefly compares Knox’s views on active resistance with the less militant views of other reformers like Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Bucer and Viret, and with revolutionary theocrats like Thomas Muntzer (ibid., pp. 289-90). 43. For the nature of Knox’s views on women, see also Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Six-teenth-Century Political Thought’, pp. 421-51, 426, 432-37. 44. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, p. 286. 45. Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, pp. 564-65.



Further to voicing his views on idolatrous female rule, Knox had also the opportunity to put them into practice. Returning to Berwick in the autumn of 1555 to marry Marjory Bowes, he ventured into Scotland where for a few months he criss-crossed the country on an invited preaching mission to underground congregations of brethren already sympathetic to his cause, and succeeded in securing the support and protection of sympathetic noblemen, who were to lead the organized Protestant party that within a few years embarked on rebellion.46 In a letter he addressed to the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, urging her to reform the Church of Scotland, albeit writing in a more compliant tone, he nevertheless indulged in some dire warnings: Catholicism, he asserted, was ‘a cuppe envenomed’ and the queen would suffer ‘torment and payn everlasting’ if she refused to reform the Church. Knox reminded her the duty of magistrates was to submit to the omnipotence of God and to defend the true Faith to the uttermost of their power:47 ‘Ye thinke, peradventure, that the care of religion is not committed to Magistrates, but to the Bishoppes and Estate Ecclesiastical, as they terme it: No, no, the negligence of Bishoppes shall no lesse be required of the handes of Magistrates (because they foster and maintein them in tyranny) then shall the oppression of fals judges, whiche kynges mainteyn and defend.’ Mary of Guise should, therefore, with ‘all carefull diligence, […] study how that the trewe worshippinge of God maye be promoted, and the tyranny of ungodly men repressed within the boundes of [her] dominion, to the uttermost of [her] power.’48 It was Alexander, Earl of Glencairn, who handed over Knox’s letter to the queen. After having read it, she gave it to James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, saying in a deriding tone: ‘Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.’49 This sneer-ing remark angered Knox who, nevertheless, ascribed it to the queen’s hasty reading of his letter. Hence, when back in Geneva he learned that in his absence the Scottish bishops had condemned him for heresy and publicly burnt his effigy at the Cross of Edinburgh after he left Scotland in 1556,50 he decided to send an expanded version of the same letter to the queen, with additions and clarifi-cations. To this letter, Knox attached a petition in which he pleaded ‘the libertie 46. Mason, John Knox, pp. xiii-xiv; Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, p. 557. 47. Letter from Knox to Mary of Guise (May, 1556), in Knox, Works, IV, pp. 78-79, 83. 48. Letter from Knox to Mary of Guise (May, 1556), in Knox, Works, IV, pp. 78-79, 83. 49. John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland (ed. William Croft Dickinson; 2 vols.; London: Nelson, 1949), I, p. 252; Knox, Works, IV, pp. 425, 457. According to Roger A. Mason, Pasquil (pasquillus, pasquillo or pasquino) ‘was the name given to a mutilated statue disinterred at Rome in 1501 where it was re-erected by Cardinal Caraffa. It became customary to post satirical Latin verses on it on St Mark’s day’: Mason, John Knox, p. lv. 50. Knox, History, I, p. 124.



of tongue’ and the opportunity to be confronted with the bishops before ‘a lawfull and general Counsell’, to defend himself of the charges of heresy. Knox further reasserts the queen’s duty to obey God and to promote the reformation of the Church, reminding her of the usurped nature of her power, due to her sex.51 This new version of his 1556 letter to the Scottish queen was indeed, as R. L. Greaves notes, a ‘general statement of the right of rebellion and an attempt to justify it against a second female ruler whom he detested’.52 Mary of Guise’s reaction to Knox’s exhortations was certainly not much different than her reac-tion to his earlier letter, as his Appellation53 to the Scottish lords seems to confirm. Despite Jane E. A. Dawson’s assertion that Knox’s harsh words to the Queen Regent were essentially personal rather than constitutional,54 they do anticipate Knox’s premise that women, namely Catholic women, were ineligible as rulers—a premise he later used to call for the deposition and regicide of Mary Tudor, and to justify the Scottish Lords’ rebellion against Mary of Guise and her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots.55 The premature death of Mary Tudor, main target of Knox’s Blast of the Trumpet, did, as already mentioned, undermine Elizabeth’s benevolence towards the Marian refugees, to whom her accession to the throne of England aroused new hopes of having the Protestant Faith re-established and the reformation of the Church of England fostered. Seeing in Elizabeth’s accession the possibility of uniting the Church of England and the Church of Scotland under a single creed, Knox felt particularly distressed with the queen’s hostility towards him, namely with her adamant refusal to allow his entry into England.56 He strongly desired to return to England to discuss the reformation of the Church with William Cecil, and visit his old congregations ‘to communicat […] suche thingis as willinglie I list nott to committ to paper, neither yet to the knawledge and creddit [illegible] of many; and then, in the Northe pairtes, to offer Goddis favouris to suche as I suppoise do murne for thair defectioun’.57

51. Letter from Knox to Mary of Guise (May 1559), in Knox, Works, IV, pp. 431-60, 452 [italics mine]. 52. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 20. 53. The Appellation of John Knox from the cruell and most iniust sentence pronounced against him by the false bishoppes and clergie of Scotland (Geneva, 14 July 1558), in Knox, Works, IV, pp. 465-520. 54. Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, pp. 566-67, 571, 572. 55. For Knox’s specific calls for the execution of Mary Tudor, see The Apellation, in Knox, Works, IV, p. 507. 56. Eustace Percy (Lord), John Knox (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1937), p. 286. 57. Letter from Knox to Sir William Cecil (10 April 1559), in Knox, History, II, pp. 16-22;



Elizabeth’s hostility towards Knox was further increased by his Brief Exhorta-tion to England (1599), where he urged the English people not to accept any alterations in religion that were not commanded in Scripture. Negligence of this duty was to deny Christ, and treason to God. Should Elizabeth or any authority seek to establish idolatry, they were to be reputed enemies to God and therefore should be executed.58 After having in vain twice attempted to get the queen’s permission to visit England on his way back to Scotland, Knox decided to appeal to William Cecil hoping that the minister might persuade Elizabeth to give him a safe-conduct. Yet, the tone of Knox’s letter59 probably contributed little to move Cecil to endorse his cause. Knox reprimands Cecil for his apostasy under Mary Tudor, accusing him of being a ‘traitor to his Majestie [God and worthie of hell]’, for having consented with his silence ‘the suppressing of Christis trew Evangell, […] the erecting of idolatrie, and […] the schedding of the blood of Goddis most deare childrein’. Moreover, he reminds Cecil that it was from God that he had ‘receavit […] this present estait, in the quhilk now ye stand’ and that, hence, God demanded from him repentance and eagerness to promote His glory. He further assures the minister that the publication of The First Blast was of his exclusive responsibility and that, therefore, the suspicion of subversion cast on his ‘poore floke, of lait assembled in the most godlie Reformed Churche and citie of the warld, Geneva’ was unfair and unjust. Besides he also asserts that it was difficult to prove that his tract was ‘treassonable’, assuring Cecil that he did not doubt more of the truth of his ‘principall propositioun, then that [he doubted] that [it] was the voce of God whiche first did pronunce [the] penaltie aganis woman, “In doloure sall thou beare thy childrein”’. In a conciliatory tone, Knox adds that Elizabeth’s accession was ‘a miraculouse wark of God, conforting his afflicted by ane infirme veschell, […] and the power of his most potent hand (raiseing up quhome best pleiseit his mercie to suppresse such as fecht aganis his glorie)’. Hence, he assures Cecil that, should the queen acknowledge ‘that the extraordinarie dispensatioun of Goddis great mercie macketh that lauchfull unto her, whiche boyth nature and Goddis law do deny to all women’, then ‘non in

also in Knox, Works, VI, p. 18. Original in BL, Harl. MSS, nº 7004, but dated 22 April. This was the first of a series of letters sent to William Cecil, as attempts to change the queen’s and her ministers’s opinions about the exiles. Knox first met Cecil in Edward VI’s court, when he was royal chaplain. 58. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 24. 59. Letter from Knox to Sir William Cecil (10 April 1559), in Knox, History, II, pp. 16-22; also in Knox, Works, VI, p. 18.



England be more willing to mainteine her lauchfull authoritie then [he] salbe’. This time Knox had the good sense not to wait for a reply to his letter, departing soon after directly to Edinburgh. Back in Scotland in May 1559, Knox wrote another letter to Queen Eliza-beth,60 which, notwithstanding his attempt to moderate his discourse, was, in truth, a sheer reiteration of the previous letter he addressed to Cecil. Bluntly admitting the authorship of The First Blast, Knox draws the queen’s attention to its date of publication, in an attempt to make her realize that it had not been his intention to challenge her person or authority. Yet, Knox did not refrain from preconditioning his loyalty and obedience to her to the queen’s acknowledging that her title entirely derived from God’s ‘exceptional providence’: ‘If thus in God’s presence yee humble your self […] so will I with toung and pen justifie your Authoritie and Regiment, as the Holie Ghost hath justified the same in Deborah,61 that blessed mother in Israel.’ Elizabeth I’s reaction to Knox’s letter is not known, nor even whether she received it. Sent as an attachment to a letter addressed to Cecil, the minister might have simply left it ‘forgotten’ amidst the official papers.62 Despite having yielded to acknowledge Elizabeth’s title, though as a ‘divine exception’, and this way apparently siding with Aylmer and other moderate reformers, thus seemingly contradicting his previous views against female gov-ernment, Knox in reality continued loyal to his own convictions. This is at least what one may infer from the analysis of Knox’s personal reasonings with the Scottish monarch, Mary Stewart, when the reformer made quite clear that he owed obedience first to God, even if it meant disobeying the magistrate. Similarly to Elizabeth, Mary Stewart also harshly reacted against Knox’s First Blast. Her return to Scotland in August 1561 made the Scottish Catholics hopeful of having their Faith restored. The queen had been educated in the French Court, where her relatives, the Guises,63 taught her that the restoration

60. Letter from Knox to Elizabeth (20 July 1559), in Knox, History, II, p. 26. 61. Though here Knox cites Deborah as an example of a female ruler whom God has ele-vated for His own designs, it is however important to note that he never assumed that this status of exception established common rule or custom. As W.I.P. Hazlett remarks, what Knox is saying is that ‘despite all the horrors associated with the female gender, a (competent) female ruler is acceptable as long as she […] is “God-fearing”’: Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infi-dels and Satan’, p. 288. Cf. Mason, John Knox, pp. 35-36. 62. Greaves, Theology and Revolution, p. 164. 63. A ceded branch of the House of Loraine, the Guises played a major and stormy part over three generations in the politics of France. They were held to have dynastic pretensions to the French throne. Louis de Guise (1555-88) was Cardinal Loraine, associated with the massacre of St Bartholomew, the slaughter of the French Huguenots, followers of Calvin.



of the papal jurisdiction in Scotland would be the greatest deed of her reign.64 However, despite not having sanctioned the ecclesiastic acts passed by the Scot-tish Reformation Parliament of 1560, that established Protestantism in Scotland, and having nominated some Catholic clerics to ecclesiastic benefices, Mary Stewart never restored Catholicism. Yet, the fact that she kept Mass in the Royal Chapel65 enraged the Scottish Protestants. From the pulpit in St Giles, Edinburgh, John Knox inveighed against the queen’s idolatry, assuring that ‘one Messe […] was more fearful to him then gif ten thousand armed enemyes war landed in any pairte of the Realme, of purpose to suppress the hoill religioun’.66 The reformer was right: the queen’s chapel gradually became the centre of Catholic revival in Scotland.67 Mary Stewart was aware not only of the perils to her Government that the political-religious situation she encountered in Scotland represented, but also of the serious implications of John Knox’s seditious statements.68 To Knox, Mary Stewart was far from being God’s ‘extraordinary exception’ that legitimated female rule. The fierceness of his attacks against the reintroduction of the Mass in the realm made the queen aware of the significance of the public impact of his sermons, and see Knox as an indomitable interlocutor of the opposition.69 She thus decided to summon him to her presence, seeking to either make him her ally or else to intimidate or destroy him. The outcome was, however, to give Knox the opportunity to carry out in practice what he advocated in principle. From the sequence of interviews that ensued, recorded in Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland,70 one is made aware that to the Scottish reformer to disown the positions he had assumed in relation to women rulers was out of the question. In the first of such interviews,71 soon after the queen’s arrival from France, she accused Knox of having fomented sedition in England, and incited her own

64. James Anderson, The Ladies of the Reformation: England, Scotland and the Netherlands (Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1855), pp. 520-21; Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland 1470-1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), pp. 122-23. 65. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community, p. 123. 66. Knox, Works, II, p. 276. 67. Percy, John Knox, p. 373. 68. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community, p. 146. 69. Pierre Janton, John Knox (ca. 1513-1572): l’homme et l’oeuvre (Paris: Didier, 1967), p. 180. 70. Knox, Works, I-II, pp. 270-41. Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland is also available in a modernized version edited by William Croft Dickinson (2 vols.; London: Thomas Nelson, 1949). 71. 4 September 1561.



subjects to rebel against her mother, Mary of Guise, and against herself. In a direct reference to the First Blast, she argued that he ‘had writtin a book against hir just authoritie, […] which sche had’,72 an assertion to which, in a clear attempt to avoid a confrontation with the queen, Knox tactfully answered in an apologetic and evasive tone that substantially differed from the more uncom-promising tone of his previous writings, namely in the letters he addressed to Elizabeth and Cecil. Mary Stewart, however, not satisfied with his answer, fur-ther accused him of having cast doubts on the legitimacy of her title, confronting him with the following question: ‘Ye think then that I have no just authority?’ To this Knox’s answer was once again deliberately vague: ‘Like the wise men of other eras’, said he, ‘he had just expressed his thought to the world’. Yet, he continued, ‘Learned men in all aiges have had thair judgmentis free, and most commonlie disagreing frome the commoun judgment of the warld; suche also have thei publisshed, boyth with pen and toung, and yit notwithstanding thei thame selves have lived in the commoun societie with otheris, and have borne patientlie with the errours and imperfectionis whiche thei could not amend.’ Still he conceded, ‘yf the Realme fyndis no inconvenience frome the regiment of a woman, that whiche thei approve shall I not farther disallow, then within my awin breast, but shalbe also weall content to lyve under your Grace, as Paull was to lyve under Nero’. Moreover, he assures, ‘so long as that ye defile not your handis with the blood of the sanctis of God, […] neather I nor that Booke shall eather hurt you or your authoritie’. It was this condition, along with his unfortu-nate reference to St Paul and the Roman Emperor Nero, that made Knox fail his attempt to pacify the queen.73 72. Knox, Works, II, pp. 277-78. Albeit, as Jane E.A. Dawson argues, Knox had different audiences (English and Scottish) in mind when he wrote the 1558 tracts, and the First Blast was specifically addressed to Mary Tudor of England, not to the Scottish queens, it seems quite clear from this specific reference to the tract that Mary Stewart perceived it as a generalized attack upon female government, including herself and her mother, as did Queen Elizabeth: Dawson, ‘The Two Knoxes’, esp. pp. 558-60. On the other hand, as W.I.P. Hazlett points out, for Knox ‘there were no two Kingdoms’ […] no antimony between spiritual and secular […], but a sovereign God to whose Will everyone had to yield’. Moreover, Knox’s milder addresses to both Scottish female rulers, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, might be explained by his concern to avoid confronting the French, as he did the Spanish, and thus risk jeopardizing his ties with Reformed Geneva. Regarding Elizabeth I, Knox had to be discreet, as she was the prospective guarantor of the Scottish Reformation: Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, pp. 288, 290. Yet, as R.L. Greaves notes, ‘Knox’s views on disobedience per se to secular authority never changed’, disobedience to higher powers being always justified whenever such powers commanded things contrary to divine precept: Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 2. 73. Knox, Works, II, pp. 278-79.



Reminding the reformer that ‘God commandis subjectis to obey thair Princes’, Mary Stewart then accused him of converting the people to a Faith that she neither acknowledged nor sanctioned as a true religion. Knox, however, citing the examples of the Hebrews under the Pharaoh, of Daniel under Nabuchado-nozzar, and the tradition of the Early Christian Church under the Roman emperors, assured the queen that ‘rycht Religioun tooke nather originall strenth nor authoritie frome worldly Princes, but frome the Eternall God allone’, and that the subjects are not ‘bound to frame thair Religioun according to the appe-tites of thair Princes’.74 Inciting the reformer to verbalize his subversive doctrines, the queen then inquired of him if, in that case, the people had the right to resist their rulers, a question to which Knox’s response was utterly unambiguous: ‘Yf thair Princes exceed thair boundis, […] and do against that whairfoir they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but thei may be resisted, evin by power […] to tack the sweard frome thame, to bynd thair handis, and to cast thame selfis in preasone, till that thei be brought to a more sober mynd’. And, he continues, ‘doing that is no disobedience against princes, but obedience, becaus that it aggreith with the will of God.’75 According to Knox’s own report, his answer left the queen in shock for ‘more then the quarter of ane hour’, before she could utter the conclusion she had finally drawn from his words: ‘Weall then I perceave that my subjectis shall obey you, and not me; and shall do what thei list, and nott what I command: and so man I be subject to thame, and nott thei to me.’76 Mary Stewart’s major concern seems however to have been more with the challenge to her authority that Knox’s doctrines represented rather than his personal religious beliefs. It was a matter that had to do with her prerogative to impose her will, that Knox subordinated to the will of God. Commenting the queen’s reasoning, he says: ‘God forbid that ever I tack upoun me to command any to obey me, or yitt to set subjectis at libertie to do what pleaseth thame. Bot my travell is, that boyth princes and subjectis obey God.’ Moreover, he con-tinues, 'think not […] that wrong is done unto you, when ye ar willed to be subject unto God: for it is he that subjects people under princes, and causses obedience to be gevin unto thame […]. And this subjectioun, Madam, unto God, and unto his trubled Churche, is the greatest dignitie that flesche can get upoun the face of the earth, for it shall cary thame to everlasting glorie.’77 When

74. Knox, Works, II, p. 281. 75. Knox, Works, II, p. 282. 76. Knox, Works, II, pp. 282-83. 77. Knox, Works, II, p. 283.



asserting that ‘my travell is, that boyth princes and subjectis obey God’,78 Knox aimed not at opposing princes, but their exceeding pride, as he opposed all claim to the primacy of the human will.79 The massacre of the French Huguenots in Vassey, led by Mary Stewart’s uncle, the Duke of Guise,80 made Knox believe that the queen’s parties in Holy-rood were celebrations and an ill presage to Scotland. In his sermon preached on 13 December 1562, Knox denounced the corruption of the throne of God on Earth by the ‘ignorance, […] vanitie, and […] dyspyte of princes against all virtue’. The overstated report of this sermon to Mary Stewart led her to once again summon Knox to Court.81 This time she accused him of having ‘irrever-entlie spoken of the Quene’, and ‘travailled to bring hir in haitterent and contempt of the people’. Knox, however, assured her that, in his sermon, he had only spoken the words of Solomon, which were directed to all monarchs. Yet, he did not refrain from adding that God had appointed him to ‘ane publict func-tioun within the Kirk of God, […] to rebuk the synnes and vices of all’, not to flatter rulers.82 A year later, the Easter Mass was not celebrated in the Royal Chapel, in Holyrood, but in St Andrews where the queen was at the time. This was a prece-dent that led the bishops of other dioceses to also celebrate public Masses in their churches, an attitude that the Scottish Protestants saw as a demonstration of the vigour of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Enraged, the Protestant lords imprisoned some priests and threatened to take the law of the land in their own hands. Alarmed with this insurrection, Mary Stewart summoned Knox,83 this time to persuade him to intervene and dissuade the lords from their intents. In a discussion that lasted two hours, Knox refused to collaborate and reminded Mary Stewart the duty of subjects to their rulers, and the duty of monarchs to their subjects: ‘Thei ar bound to obey you, and that not but in God. Ye ar bound to keape lawis unto thame. Ye crave of thame services: thei crave of you pro-tectioun and defence against wicked doaris. Now, Madam, yf ye shall deny your dewtie unto thame, (which especialle craves that ye punishe malefactouris) think ye to receave full obedience of thame? I feare, Madam, ye shall not.’84

78. Knox, Works, II, p. 283. 79. Janton, John Knox: l’homme et l’oeuvre, p. 180. 80. John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, repr. 1962), p. 302. 81. Second interview, 15 December 1562. 82. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, pp. 331-35. 83. Third interview, 13 April 1563, apparently held in Lochleven castle. 84. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, pp. 370-74.



Knox thus reminds the queen of the mutual covenant between monarchs and subjects, clearly asserting the right of the latter to disobey whenever the mon-archs do not fulfil their obligations. Moreover, despite having earlier tactfully steered away from asserting the divinely-prescribed punishment for idolaters in Deuteronomy 13, in this interview Knox also explicitly warns the queen that idolaters could be lawfully executed by believers, namely by referring the execution of the biblical reigning monarch, Agag, by Samuel, a religious leader (1 Sam. 15.33), which, as R. L. Greaves notes, must have been not only offen-sive but chilling if Mary knew her Old Testament well.85 After Easter 1563, the Scottish Parliament debated the queen’s marriage to the Spanish prince D. Carlos. From his pulpit, Knox denounced this idolatrous and treacherous alliance, which he believed would jeopardize the work of his entire life. In his opinion, once crowned King of Scotland, Carlos would banish ‘Christ Jesus from this Realm’. Knox’s intrusion in her personal life exasperated Mary Stewart, who once again summoned him to her presence.86 Infuriated she asked: ‘What have you to do with my marriage? Or what ar ye within this Commonwealth?’, a question to which Knox calmly answered: Though ‘[a]s tueching natour [I am no more than] ane worm of this earth, [yet I am] ane subject of this Commounwealth’, and thus ‘albeit […] neather [being an] Erle, Lord, nor Barroun within it, yitt […] God maid me, (how abject that ever I be in your eyes,) a profitable member within the same’. So, asserts the reformer: ‘To me it apperteanes no lesse to foirwarne of suche thingis as may hurte it, yf I foirsee thame, then it does to any of the Nobilitie.’ Noticing that he had upset the queen, who burst into tears, Knox added unabated: ‘Seing that I have offered unto you no just occasioun to be offended, but have spocken the treuth, as my vocatioun craves of me, I man sustean (albeit unwillinglie) your Majesties tearis, rather then I dar hurte my conscience, or betray my Commounwealth through my silence.’87 As John T. McNeill remarks, Knox was here defending his right to speak of a matter of public interest, not as a minister of Christ, but as a citizen. By reinforcing the funda-mental concept of civil liberty with a religious conviction, Knox was freed from the fear of temporal power.88 Upon the analysis of Knox’s correspondence and interviews with the British queens, one can glimpse his antigaenecocratic and resistance theories being put

85. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 26. 86. Fourth interview held at the end of May or beginning of July 1563. 87. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, pp. 385-89, 409-10. 88. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, p. 302.



into practice, namely those contained in the First Blast. Moreover, these disputes of perspicacity and logic highlight not only Knox’s unswerving faith but also the grand question of liberty of conscience.89 Knox’s bluntness and strict adherence to the Protestant scriptura sola principle produced theories of active resistance to tyrannical rule, by arms if necessary, whenever secular commands infringed the Moral Law or forced true Christians to disobey God’s supreme commands. These were doctrines shared by his fellow companions of exile,90Christopher Goodman91 and Anthony Gilby,92 teachings that have penetrated deep in the minds of radical British Protestants of subse-quent generations, to which the writings of the Scottish humanist George Buchanan93 and of the English Poet John Milton bear witness.94 Such teachings seem to have also influenced Continental reformers like Theodore de Beza and even, in a later phase, John Calvin, as well as major Huguenot writers, like François Hotman and Philippe de Duplessi-Mornay.95 Irrespective of Knox’s political thought being forged within specific religious and theocratic parameters, and of his concern being with the reformation of the Church within the existing political structures both in Scotland and in England, not with democratic principles, his emphasis on the primacy of the religious duties of every Christian towards God and His Church in a context of a divinely limited Government, and on the right to rebel against idolatrous rulers, con-ceiving such rebellion as legitimate, had democratic implications.

89. M.A. Macmillan, A Biography of John Knox (London: Andrew Melrose, 1905), p. 268. 90. For a study of the Marian exiles, see Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938). 91. C. Goodman’s How Superior Powers ought to be Obeyd of their Subjects: and Wherein they may lawfully by Gods Word be disobeyed and resisted (Geneva, 1558). Goodman, however, centres his objections against Mary Tudor less on her womanhood than on her Catholicism and tyranny. Declaring her a traitor to God, he argues that the queen ought to be deposed by her subjects and punished with death (sig. G2). 92. A. Gilby, Admonition to England and Scotland to call them to repentance (Geneva, 1558). 93. G. Buchanan’s De Ivre Regni apvud Scotos (c. 1569), and Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582). The English titles are Law of the Scottish Kingship (1579), and History of Scotland (1722), respectively. These writings are apologias of Mary Stewart’s deposition in 1567. 94. J. Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (13 February 1649), in Works (I; printed for A. Millar, 1738). Milton justifies the overthrow and execution of Charles I, in 1649, invoking Knox and his fellow exiles. 95. Euan Cameron, European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, repr. 1991), p. 355; Greaves, Theology and Revolution, pp. 150, 155-6. This influence is perceptible in works like Du droit des magistrates (1574) by Theodore de Beza; Institution, IV (1560) by Jean Calvin; Franco–Gallia (1573) by François Hotman, and Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (1576), by [Philippe de Duplessi-Mornay].



Knox’s outstanding merit was indeed, as R.L. Greaves notes, to have extended his doctrine of ‘the right of rebellion against idolatrous and tyrannical sovereigns from the magistrates and nobility to the elect [the common people], and to have stressed that this right was ‘the ordinary vocation of any [godly] man’, thus making ‘the road to rebellion psychologically inevitable’.96 In the long run, Knox’s (and other radical Protestants’) claim that godly subjects had a duty to overthrow and execute a godless and tyrant ruler had as a logical consequence, as Constance Jordan points out, their assuming the ‘right to determine their own form of government’.97 The most immediate practical con-sequences of such teachings were the religious dissidence and political insurrec-tions that followed in both nations, and the fight for toleration of religion and for civil rights and liberties, which ultimately created the ideological and philoso-phical conditions that triggered the overthrow of the oppressive feudal and patriarchal98 legacy, both sustained by the old Church of Rome. Though, as W. I. P. Hazlett notes, ‘Knox can hardly be seen as a visionary of a society based on human rights in the modern sense, one may with some legiti-macy claim that his contribution to the ‘democratization of the right of active resistance’, that he extended to every Christian, makes him one of the fore-runners of modern social and political democracy.99 R. L. Greaves, for instance, suggests that Knox’s political thought was a major contribution to the ‘develop-ment of political ideology that culminated in the American Revolution’,100 and

96. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 20, 2. 97. Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought’, p. 435, n. 22. This essential Christian duty/right had different public and political significance. Radical Protes-tants, like John Ponet and Christopher Goodman, admitted that an ordinary subject might depose and execute a tyrant that imposed idolatry. Calvinist Protestants limited this right/duty to the inferior magistrates acting on behalf of the people. For conformist Protestants (Angli-cans) obedience was owed to all secular authority, even if arbitrary and oppressive. For a study of these different positions, see Richard L. Greaves, ‘Concepts of Political Obedience in Late Tudor England: Conflicting Perspectives’, Journal of British Studies 22 (1982), pp. 23-34. 98. In England, godly female Protestants learned to extend the Christian duty/right to obey God first and man second to the family, confronting their husbands on the basis of conscience. Subsequently, many women exercised it in public, confronting civil and eclesiastical authori-ties. This was particularly conspicuous among mid-seventeeth-century female sectarians (Inde-pendents, Quakers, Fifth-Monachists, Ranters) and radicals (Levellers) whose role in the fight for tolerance of religion and civil rights and liberties makes them the forerunners of later suffragist movements. 99. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, p. 280. 100. Greaves, ‘John Knox, the Reformed Tradition and the Development of Resistance Theory’, p. 31.



W. I. P. Hazlett points out the direct appeal the example of Knox continues to have, referring that in twentieth-century National Socialist Germany ‘some thinkers in the Confessing Church were interested in Knox’ theology of revolt’, as to them there was ‘little doubt that the tyranny in their midst was satanic, and that on Christian grounds, it may well be mandatory to oppose it by force’.101

101. Hazlett, ‘ “Jihad” against Female Infidels and Satan’, p. 280.

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