In the aftermath of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605, the English parliament in 1606 passed ‘An act for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants’. This gave the crown the authority to seize two-thirds of recusants’ lands, a stiffer penalty than the fine of £20 per month set by Elizabethan legislation. In addition, it imposed on all suspected recusants an oath, carefully devised by James i himself, which bound them not only to ‘bear faith and true allegiance to His Majesty, his heirs and successors’, but also to acknowledge that the papacy had no powers to depose the king, or discharge any of his subjects of their allegiance and obedience to the crown. These papal claims were even described as ‘impious and heretical’. The imposition of the oath led immediately to the revival of earlier political and ecclesiological disputes over who should wield sovereignty by divine right: the monarch or the pope? James i found himself in conflict with Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who regarded the oath of allegiance as fundamentally incompatible with apostolic faith, which to him presupposed unfailing Christian unity centred on the papacy. James regarded his powers as indivisible; he saw himself as the possessor of legitimate sovereignty over all his subjects in matters of both Church and State by virtue of the divine right of kings. This clash of different ecclesiastical-political models, Bourdin argues, is central to the origins of the democratic foundations of modern western societies, since at the heart of the debate is the concept of secularisation and its ramifications. The controversy between the king and the cardinal over the oath is certainly significant, and Bourdin's account is both scholarly and insightful. However, it skims over the importance and impact of pre-existing Scots and English law. Nor does it discuss the role of representative parliamentary assemblies in curbing James's often extravagant concepts of sovereignty. He might emphasise the divine right of kings, but in 1606 he knew perfectly well that at the same time he must set out his requirements of his English subjects in a bill which would be thoroughly debated before becoming an act of parliament. As James had already found out in Scotland, parliaments were by no means rubber-stamps; his dealings with the English parliament ran into similar problems, and the unity between monarch and people was often stretched nearly to breaking point. Even in 1606, amidst the outpourings of loyal speeches occasioned by the discovery of the plot, James's ministers had to push hard to get him the vote of taxation that they had requested.

The French text must have been difficult in some places, and the translation, although mostly very readable, is occasionally ambiguous or in error. What is meant by ‘the episcopacy’ – the episcopate, or episcopacy? ‘Peace between Spain and Flanders’ (pp. 124–5) refers to England's peace in 1604 with Spain and Flanders. The word ‘ecclesial’ frequently occurs, but its meaning is unclear. In what sense was Bodin the author of an Anglican thesis? (p. 68 n. 134). Nevertheless, the comprehensive analysis of James's dispute with Bellarmine emphasises the importance of the issues, and the king's deep interest in political ideas even where he disagreed with them.