I. Henry Jacob and the Religious Setting

The 1590s had not been kind to the cause of religious reform in England. In the “second reign” of Elizabeth, the growing ascendancy of Archbishop Whitgift on the Council concerning Church matters reflected and reinforced notions of a state in which all authority flowed from the monarch. Presbyterian reformers, who had reached their zenith in the mid-1580s, now saw their movement torn apart. The most extreme reformers—Penry, Barrow, and Greenwood—were hanged. The harder-line Calvinists seemed well beaten. The victory of Whitgift and his fervently anti-puritan bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, and their joint belief that ecclesiology was a matter of state, seemed very complete by the later 1590s. Yet as James VI increasingly became seen as the successor, hope rose again among the reformers. James ruled over a church polity much more aligned with the Genevan model and while he had clashed with the kirk and reintroduced a restricted form of episcopacy, a new king meant a chance for a new “settlement.”

The early part of James's English reign has generally received positive reviews concerning church policy. The standard picture is of the new monarch as a ruler who sought to build a consensual mainstream of “moderates” from both religious wings.Footnote ¹ But this interpretation is increasingly being challenged. James's policies are now often seen as marking, and perhaps producing, an increased fragmentation.Footnote ² Notions of a unity forged by a “Calvinist consensus” are being replaced by those of a lesser Calvinist “dominance” or even a “Calvinist dissensus,” which encompassed “significant fault lines.”Footnote ³ Here I wish to add to this more recent picture of discontent, unease, and resistance, by analyzing the struggle of a leading London nonconformist, Henry Jacob, to establish alternate paths to reform amid the crackdown of the first years of the new regime.

Jacob's own career is rather shrouded in mystery.Footnote ⁴ Educated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford (BA 1583, MA 1586), little is known about Jacob's adult life until 1596, when he engaged in debates with the separatist Francis Johnson. Among other things, he argued that church government was an indifferent matter, a view he reversed by 1604. Before this, he had already engaged in print with Bishop Bilson of Winchester on the question of Christ's descent into hell.Footnote ⁵ Perhaps in Middelburg for a time, Jacob was in London at the end of Elizabeth's reign, working with Arthur Hildersham, Stephen Egerton, and Edmund Snape on the petition campaign to influence the new king to reform the Church. Jacob wrote to Christopher Dale, one of the proctors of Oxford University, encouraging him to confer with Henry Airay to gather support there for the reform cause. The form of “subscription” he drew up desired “both the doctryne and disciplyne” that had been “delivered by our Savior Christ, and his holy Apostells.” But he admitted that there were divisions within the reform movement between those such as himself, who wished to follow “the example of other [Reformed] Churches,” and those who wished to amend only particulars, such as ceremonies, subscription, and the ex officio oath, and so suggested there might be less specific forms of the demands drawn up.Footnote ⁶ Jacob's activities, especially in Sussex, led to his imprisonment in London in the fall of 1603. Whitgift and Bancroft described him as a “very insolent person,” who in due course would receive “further censures.”Footnote ⁷ He was at liberty fairly soon thereafter, as he was one of the London representatives in the group of twenty-seven ministers who met to advise the reform “delegates” at the Hampton Court conference in January 1604. Again, there were differences between those who were willing to compromise over the ceremonies and those who denounced them as “simply unlawful.”Footnote ⁸ He was imprisoned again, in the summer of 1604, by Bishop Vaughan of London, for publishing Reasons taken out of Gods Word (1604). In April 1605, when he petitioned the bishop for his release,Footnote ⁹ he complained that Oxford's Answere to the Millenary petition had “vanely traduced me as a schismatike” but now he “faithfully” promised “to disperse no more” copies of the Reasons and to refrain from speaking against the current government of the Church for as long as he was on bail. Jacob's subscription was a lesson in dissembling. He emphasized that his silence was limited to six months and that in the meantime, the Reasons “speaketh sufficiently, & sheweth my judgement therein.”Footnote ¹⁰ Later that year, he noted that nothing had appeared by way of reply to his book.Footnote ¹¹

Jacob's role in early seventeenth-century religious affairs has been analyzed largely in terms of his founding of an independent, covenanted congregation in Southwark, London in 1616, thus of his role in the history of Congregationalism. More particularly, historians have asked whether Jacob located his congregational polity in separatism, especially that of Francis Johnson, and, later, John Robinson, or more loosely in the non-presbyterian puritan ideas of the late Elizabethan period.Footnote ¹² Given this approach, it is understandable that far more emphasis has been given to the period of Jacob's life between 1610 and 1616. Here, I shall concentrate instead on an earlier phase of Jacob's career and show how, in four tracts in the half-decade after the Hampton Court conference, Jacob set out a full (and updated) case against the ceremonies and a diocesan-episcopal church; proffered reasons, and a detailed format, for a new conference, still with the purpose of reforming the state church; and then, finally, in 1609, proposed, purely on the basis of political advantage and reason-of-state arguments, toleration for non-parochial, gathered congregations, wholly outside the Church's discipline. His application of the “policy” arguments, then much in vogue, to the central ecclesiastical questions seems not to have been addressed in earlier work on Jacob. The differences in his approach were direct reactions to what he perceived as changes in the early Jacobean religious-political context and the narrowing of the possibilities for reform. What will emerge is not resignation or pacification in the face of the crackdown on nonconformity, but rather flexibility and dramatic innovation. Jacob can be restored to a place of some importance (even before his Southwark experiment) by situating him as a transitional figure, joined both to the mass-petitioning campaign aimed at the new king and to the beginnings of the long, twisted, and unsure politique thrust for toleration that would wind through the extended liberties of the 1640s and 1650s, the repression of the 1660s, and the tantalizing but fraught indulgences of Charles II and James II. Since Jacob was one of the leading voices of early seventeenth-century reform, the development of his arguments for change, as well as the forms and language of his argument for toleration, tells us much about new directions of Jacobean nonconformist thought and of the possible futures of dissent.

II. The New King's Ideas

James came to the English throne an experienced and skilled monarch. He had overcome imperious tutoring, renegade earls, and, increasingly after 1596, even the presbyterian kirk,Footnote ¹³ edging it slowly toward episcopacy, which he saw as a defense against perhaps his greatest foe, popularity. As part of his practice of monarchy, in 1597 and 1598, James set down his political ideas in Basilicon doron, a privately printed (though widely known) manual of advice to his elder son, Henry, and in The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. In the 1603 amended and public version of Basilicon doron, James complained that the surreptitious circulation of the earlier version had left his ideas “subiect to every mans censure,” a wanton popularity he felt forced to address.Footnote ¹⁴ James had harsh words for reformists. He warned Henry that “Puritanes, [were] verie pestes in the Church and Common-weale, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oathes or promises binde, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies.” For James, their chief offence was opposition to hierarchy: nothing could stop them “maintaining their plots, as paritie in the Church,” which was inherently destabilizing and an “enemie to Unitie, which is the mother of order.”Footnote ¹⁵ It was also a disease that metastasized. If parity were “once established on the Ecclesiasticall government, the Politicke and civill estate should be drawen to the like.” This was because the “common people” of Scotland “fantasie to themselves a Democraticke forme of government.” And where, earlier, James had commented only that reformist claims could not stand with monarchy, in 1603, for an English audience, he noted the popular threat also to an episcopal church. At the same time, James also warned Henry “not to suffer proude Papall Bishops” and to ensure against “that estate . . . creeping to corruption.”Footnote ¹⁶ This is consistent with his proclamation of October 24, 1603 and with his remarks to Whitgift before the Hampton Court conference concerning possible “corruptions” in the Church and the proper exercise of monarchical diligence to correct any errors.Footnote ¹⁷

James also told Henry not to be overly lenient.Footnote ¹⁸ He should “reason not much with them [puritans]” since argument would not work.Footnote ¹⁹ Where puritans deemed royal policy insufficient or wrong, James warned, they would turn to sedition and even cease praying for the magistrate, in effect a popular form of excommunication. While James claimed that he did not automatically condemn those who preferred presbyterian forms to the “many Ceremonies in the Church of England,” he did roundly condemn “brain-sicke and headie Preachers” for the political offences of contempt of authority and interference with the royal prerogative.Footnote ²⁰ Clemency, he insisted, should be offered only after royal authority had been established—a foreshadowing of his biting conformity campaign of 1603–1606 and then his comparative relaxation after 1610. While modified by events, the basis of James's preferred strategy for dealing with religious challenges was thus available in Basilicon doron.

In the Trew Law, James examined the rights of “a free and absolute Monarche,” connecting them to Tudor notions of imperium, while attacking common sixteenth-century ideas of ancient constitutions and a right of resistance.Footnote ²¹ Monarchy in both Scotland and England, he argued, depended not upon contract, but upon the rights of conquest.Footnote ²² While societies could express what they wanted in a ruler—the (Scottish) coronation oath was “the clearest, civill, and fundamental Law, whereby the Kings office is properly defined”—kings could not be held to earthly account for any breaches. A discontented people could not make laws against their monarch.Footnote ²³ In a proclamation issued before the Hampton Court conference, James unsurprisingly condemned those who “seditiously seek reformation” through “gathering subscriptions of multitudes of vulgar persons” and excoriated those “whose heat tendeth rather to combustion than reformation.” Such “unlawful” actions, he warned, could lead to “dissentious partialities.”Footnote ²⁴

At the Hampton Court conference, James similarly made clear that he did not intend to allow any “glory” to “factious spirits.”Footnote ²⁵ His emphasis throughout was on order. He “very well approved” (in William Barlow's biased account) of Bancroft's emphasis on obedience and good works as part of the broader requirements of predestination and agreed that the doctrine, linked by conformists to popular antinomianism, should “be very tenderly handled, and with great discretion.” His objections to the Geneva Bible's marginalia were similarly that they “savour[ed] too much of dangerous, and traiterous conceits,” such as resistance. And although he was determined to plant preachers, he was also willing to take Bancroft's advice that greater emphasis should be placed upon prayer.Footnote ²⁶ To John Knewstub's plea to consider “Christian Liberty” against the king's command, James replied that that “smelled very rankly of Anabaptism” and told Knewstub “never to speak more of this.” To John Rainolds, he replied that “Scottish Presbytery” “agreeth with the Monarchy, as God and the Devil.” Subscription remained necessary as a means to “prevent greater tumults.”Footnote ²⁷ That is, any (even seeming) lessening of monarchical authority was wholly unacceptable to the king. While its place and intent at the conference were disputed in eyewitness accounts, his pithy “no bishop, no king” summarized his political philosophy of the necessity of episcopacy to monarchy. In March 1604, James affirmed to Parliament his antipathy to the politics of the reform movement. He condemned puritans as “Novelists,” who were “ever discontented with the present government, & impatient to suffer any superiority, which maketh their sect unable to be suffred in any wel governed Commonwealth.”Footnote ²⁸ In this he was aligning himself with well-established English fears of popularity, grown even more intense in the recent ideas of such as John Bridges, Thomas Bilson, and Hadrian Saravia.Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, one of Whitgift's chief polemical thrusts against Thomas Cartwright, paralleling James's own fears, had been the likelihood that popular influence in church government “will be easily transferred to the state of the commonweal.”Footnote ³⁰ There was thus a ready choir for James to preach to.

III. Reasons Taken out of Gods Word (1604)

In 1604, Jacob issued Reasons taken out of Gods Word. Although it was published at the height of the crackdown on nonconformists, Jacob tried to construct the time as propitious for reform. As evidence, he cited James's “most holy & religious Confession of his faith [1580]” and quoted Basilicon doron’s praise of the Scottish church's condemnation of “all humane Traditions,” derided now in England as “no better . . . then a Puritan opinion.”Footnote ³¹ He noted James's promise to correct errors and reminded the king that his churches in Scotland and the Channel Islands were far more Reformed than England's.Footnote ³² Jacob offered four “Assertions”: it was necessary to reform the Church of England, in the early church “bishops” had had no coercive authority, scripture set out the form of government of the early church, and this could not lawfully be changed by humans.Footnote ³³ Jacob argued that anything—not “onely thinges simply necessarie to salvation”—that deviated from, or which had been added to, scriptural practices could not be allowed, except for very minor matters.Footnote ³⁴ This meant that since the ceremonies were “contrarie to Gods word,” and since they were actually matters of doctrine and faith (and not indifferent), they had to be eliminated. Especially objectionable was that they were deemed to have “a speciall signification in Gods worship,” a view Jacob linked to popery.Footnote ³⁵

The Reasons also announced Jacob's congregationalist alternative. For Jacob (as for a few others, such as William Bradshaw), “only a Particular ordinary constant Congregation of Christians in Christes Testament is appointed and reckoned to be a visible Church,” having received its “power immediatlie from Christ.”Footnote ³⁶ Jacob argued that the twenty-seven puritan minister-advisers to the Hampton Court conference had thought this meant that each congregation was free to gather and rule itself.Footnote ³⁷ Synods (such as Convocation) would henceforth lack coercive authority and be simply “meetings of choyse men out of many Churches,” “whose counsailles, advises, and determinations are most expedient and wholesome alwayes.”Footnote ³⁸ The “Diocesan Lord Bishop[s]”—hierarchical and coercive—were “plainlie contrary to Gods word” and therefore, like the ceremonies, “utterlie unlawfull.” Their longevity was of no consequence.Footnote ³⁹ Against the frequent charge that reformists were “Schismatikes,” Jacob constructed a loyal but dissenting position for congregationalism, carefully distinguishing himself from the separatists. While the Church of England remained a true church through which one might obtain salvation, it was “no sedition nor disloyaltie at all” to work for the fuller realization of “Christes Gospell.”Footnote ⁴⁰

Noting James's “mislike” of ministerial “paritie,” Jacob emphasized his system's safeguards against “popularitie” and its alleged offshoots: tumult and sedition. It is a stark illustration of the degree to which more fervent reformists and the monarch had wholly different understandings that Jacob could write, quite astonishingly, that “I conceave his [James's] meaning not to be against the paritie which before I have spoken of.”Footnote ⁴¹ In defense of congregationalism, he argued that it was wholly decentralized and so incapable of challenging the national power of the state. It was also hierarchical: within the congregation, pastors, assisted by elders, would normally exercise power, possibly merely asking for consent to implement predetermined solutions.Footnote ⁴² Though matters of congregational authority were not fully explained, it was clear that this was intended to be a very limited participatory democracy. Civil magistrates would maintain “peace and quietnes” in elections of ministers. In synods, too, there would be “a disparitie and prioritie also, namely in the President or Moderator.” Jacob admitted that uncontrolled popular elections could lead to “tumult and much trouble,” but denied any such intention or possibility of such popularity: “such running togeather of a whole Citie or Dioces, such voice-giving of such multitudes of people we desire not neither do we any wayes allow it.”Footnote ⁴³ Indeed, the reformists “gladly acknowledge that the King is, & ought to be Supreme governor even in all causes and over all persons Ecclesiasticall,”Footnote ⁴⁴ a concession James would later use against him. All this allowed Jacob to argue, albeit in forced manner, that “in a sort we say that the [congregational] Churches state is Monarchicall.” The charges against the reformists—“Popularitie, Anarchie, and Enmitie to Princes”—were therefore baseless.Footnote ⁴⁵ Indeed, it was “humane disparitie” (rather than the scripturally mandated sort) that “both is and ever hath ben the true cause of discord.” A congregational church system, he therefore emphasized, would not “proove hurtfull to the Prince.” There was ample proof overseas. Foreign Reformed churches all enjoyed “this ordinance of God” and so also had “most admirable unitie,” whereas England “yet do remaine still (now these 50. Yeeres almost) in wofull dissentions, desolations, and dissipations.” England's troubles were thus not the effect of the pressure for reform from below, but rather of the rigid maintenance of an unwarranted episcopal overlordship, which could never “procure peace.”Footnote ⁴⁶ In 1604, Jacob's aim was therefore to purge the established Church of its unlawful structures and replace them with congregationalism.

IV. The Third Supplication (1605)

In 1605, a short paper, either written by Jacob or corrected by him, further developed the contemporary semi-separatist model and also laid the basis for his later approach to the application of new political arguments.Footnote ⁴⁷ This paper marked a substantial change: it did not concentrate on the Church of England's structure and ceremonies. Rather, it emphasized the key issues of order and loyalty that stood in the way of acceding to their plea (as articulated in the Reasons) that James should “tolerate and to graunt unto so manie of us” the right to assemble and to practice publicly a different model of church government. The tract explained that the reformists’ desired course was “not [a] Schismaticall assertion,” since there could be no schism from the Word.Footnote ⁴⁸ It also repeated the Reasons’ emphasis on the exemptions already granted to the French and Dutch congregations, as well as in Jersey and Guernsey, and in France, Scotland, and the Low Countries. Far from producing “open dissentions in matters of religion among them selves,” it was the very allowance of differences that produced “most rare concord.” Nor would exemption threaten the financial viability of the established church. Those exempted would “afterwards keepe brotherly communion with the rest of our English Churches” and “truly pay all [current] paymentes and dutyes both ecclesiasticall and civill.” To show that this was a respectful, peaceful, and harmonious process, the reformists were willing to swear individually to their loyalty before a justice of the peace. Any offence “against good order and Christian obedience” would be dealt with by the magistrate acting in concert with the authorities of an individual's usual ecclesiastical government.Footnote ⁴⁹ But if this was not quite separatism, it was nonetheless very clearly “popularity,” the establishment of an independent church government, obtainable at the local level through no other authority than the mere will of the believers, and superseding parish boundaries. The Supplication insisted that this form of nonconformity in “no way harmeth the State nor the Princes authority, peace, & security.”Footnote ⁵⁰

V. Christian and Modest Offer (1606)

As yet, however, Jacob concentrated on reforming the national Church, rather than substantially leaving it. In 1606, he published A Christian and Modest Offer of a Most Indifferent Conference, or Disputation [. . .], his response to what he saw as the failure of the Hampton Court conference. It was addressed to James.Footnote ⁵¹ Despite some puritan reports of success, Hampton Court had yielded very little, largely those items agreed to by the bishops, including, most famously, a new translation of the Bible. Much else, supposedly agreed, was not implemented.Footnote ⁵² In the aftermath, James, even more than his bishops, insisted upon conformity rather than mere subscription.Footnote ⁵³ In the worst purge of Protestant ministers since Marian days, some eighty ministers were deprived and many more suspended: Jacob alleged “even three hundred, or there-aboutes” in a little more than a year.Footnote ⁵⁴ The crackdown also made more evident the split in reformist ranks. Jacob now had to distinguish his ideas from those godly, such as Laurence Chaderton, who, on one modern reading, saw the conference as “at worst . . . a tie” and who, while wishing the ceremonies gone, conceded that they were lawful and that they could be used without sin.Footnote ⁵⁵ Against this, Jacob claimed that the more fervent reformists were the truer heirs of the Protestant Reformation, since it had been the original intent “in time to abolish them.”Footnote ⁵⁶

In the absence of thorough reform, Jacob did not shrink from telling James that there was widespread dismay at the perceived decline of the chief magistrate's sense of fairness under pressure from the prelates. Before he came to the English throne, James had “professed . . . that [he] did equally love & honor the learned & grave men of either side of these opinions.” Jacob was bold enough to remind James that the king stood in the reformists’ debt: “Before we saw your face, [we] laboured by all good meanes (not without some danger) to promote your Maiesties iust Title to the Crowne.” Jacob constructed the change as catastrophic: “It is no small heartes-griefe unto us, that, since your comming into this land, your Affections are so alienated & estranged from us.”Footnote ⁵⁷ In effect, Jacob was accusing James of being a less than honorable patron. The godly had favored his cause (even before it was wholly safe to do so) and now were being shunned rather than rewarded.

In an attempt to push the king to reform, Jacob portrayed a deteriorating situation. The purge had employed the ex officio oath—“as cruel a racking of the minde, as the most exquisite Torture can be of the body.”Footnote ⁵⁸ The Canons of 1604 set out that those who held that prelacy “is not Apostolicall and lawfull, are to be excommunicated ipso facto.” Iure divino episcopal claims threatened to lead the church back under the yoke of the Roman Antichrist and even the Gunpowder Plot had resulted in attacks on the godly.Footnote ⁵⁹ But there was a strong note of popular resistance here, too. Perhaps to bolster any wavering courage, as well as to intimidate opponents, Jacob claimed that “many hundreds of the most painefull & profitable Preachers in this Kingdome” were willing, in true Foxean manner, to fight on through “their sufferings.”Footnote ⁶⁰ He was especially concerned that prelates and conformist polemicists had convinced James that “the Church-Government desired is an enemy to your Crowne and dignitie.”Footnote ⁶¹ So Jacob reiterated that the danger to monarchy lay rather in a parallel national episcopal structure exercising civil authority. As such, Jacob insisted, it was bound to become a rival to monarchy, as it had already proven to be to Parliament.Footnote ⁶² He may have been mindful here of ideas, such as those held by Richard Cosin, that the church as an institution was “separate from the civil state” and not restricted by Magna Carta.Footnote ⁶³ Against charges of innovation and political radicalness, Jacob stressed that contention over “Prelacy, Ceremonies, & Subscription” was not new; it had been present ever since “the foggie mistes & black darknes of Popery” had been “Chased away.”Footnote ⁶⁴

The Modest Offer presented sixteen reformist “Propositions” and then ten likely “Oppositions” which Jacob rebutted. Its major thrust was a call for another conference. Jacob bluntly explained to James—convener of the Hampton Court conference—that it had failed because it had been fixed. The form of the conference “was never desired by the Ministers.” The delegates had not been elected and they had refused to represent matters to which they were “of a cleane contrary” view, or even to inform James that stronger views existed. So, even before it started, Jacob argued, “there neither was, nor could be any hope of good by that conference.” Nor was it even clear what had happened. Thomas Morton's criticisms of Barlow's semi-official account of the conference meant that, it “deserves no credit.” So, not only was the conference rigged (“underhand plotted and procured by the Prelats themselves”), but the record had been cooked.Footnote ⁶⁵ The difficult task now was to convince both king and prelates to engage in a rematch.Footnote ⁶⁶ This was necessary, Jacob argued, because not only had some matters not been addressed, but the debate had moved on and the differences “are as great, and greater now, then they were at the first.”Footnote ⁶⁷ Jacob also sought to flatter: another conference would “much redound to the Honor of His Maiesties person, and Government”Footnote ⁶⁸ and would also mean reformists were accepting James's own ideas that they should “presse by patience, and well grounded reasons.”Footnote ⁶⁹ He added the enticement that a true settlement was “like to put an end to all these controversies” and would “see such a blessed unitie and uniformitie in all the Churches within your Dominions, as your owne heart desireth.”Footnote ⁷⁰ But again there was scarcely veiled resistance. Continued persecution would have dire consequences: “many of the people will be forced to leave their ordinary standing in these Churches,”Footnote ⁷¹ a threatening echo of the standard explanation that it was the errors of Rome that had forced true Christians to secede. “Schism,” Jacob was reminding James, could as easily be coerced from above, as perpetrated from below.

In order to design a more transparent and scholarly debate in the proposed new conference, the reformists would deliver to James a written response to questions raised at Hampton Court. As well, allowing the reformists to elect their own representatives to this conference would establish their legitimacy and permitting each side “to take counsell and advise of any other their Brethren” might guarantee that the conference actually did debate what their electors desired. Jacob also insisted that each side be unanimous in its position. This may reflect a hope that the prelate hard-liners would be forced to compromise by those bishops, such as Anthony Rudd, Henry Robinson, Gervase Babington, and Toby Matthew, who were known to favor a more relaxed approach to conformity. He proposed that a final report, in Latin and English, be co-written after the conference. If the king decided not to allow a second oral debate, Jacob asked that the prelates should at least be required to answer the recent reformist publications in writing and grant a right of reply.Footnote ⁷² Jacob also proposed a broad—and temporal—judgment of the debate by “his Maiestie, the Civill Magistates under him, and the High Court of Parliament.” Removing the episcopal right to judge nonconformist causes was an important step in the establishment of an independent congregationalism. Finally, Jacob offered a tempting (if hardly credible) bargain: if the judgment went against the reformists, the prelates might legitimately suppress them. But if the debate went their way, then the reformists should be exempted from conformity and subscription, as well as from “the jurisdiction of the Prelats,” and “restored agayne to their Ministerie from which they have been unjustly deprived.”Footnote ⁷³ James's insistence that those who wanted “mercy” had “first [to] acknowledge a fault” posed a quandary. Mercy was as much a show of authority as of forgiveness; it was to be granted only to the publicly penitent. But since such an admission would make continued resistance impossible, Jacob posited a pro-monarchical yet self-referential standard: they would yield if it “can be proved that they have offended his Majestie in the least thing.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Jacob's intention in the Modest Offer was clearly to keep the reform movement both viable and visible amid the purge. The king's approval of a public debate (whether oral or printed) would serve to legitimate a damaged and badly frayed reformist cause. In 1605, Jacob apparently still thought the king could be enticed to a favorable solution, based primarily on argument from scripture. But a new language provided him with a medium in which to argue that toleration, or at least exemption, should appeal to the king as a public benefit, rather than be seen as a private (and unwarranted) favor.

VI. Reason-of-State

The new “reason-of-state” or “interest” politics entailed the broad principle that custom and positive law, or even usual understandings of God's law, could not bind a sovereign where such limitation would harm or jeopardize the state.Footnote ⁷⁵ This development in part reflected the growing anxiety over intractable religious strife. The wars in France produced both humanist-based calls, on moral grounds, for the abandonment of forcing people's consciences, and politique arguments, from such scholars as L'Hôpital, Castellio, and Bodin, that, no matter the preference for religious uniformity, it should not be pursued at the cost of national unity.Footnote ⁷⁶ But it was Justus Lipius who became the most influential of the late sixteenth-century theorists. His translated works—Constancy, an ethical guide for the individual, and Sixe Bookes of Politickes, a handbook for rulers—both sold handsomely.Footnote ⁷⁷ Given the view that political decisions should in part be based upon analysis of similar contexts in the past, Lipsius unsurprisingly relied heavily on the imperial historian Tacitus, more favored in such perilous times than Livy, historian of the more admired, but now less relevant, republic. Informed also by Stoic and skeptical values (perhaps partly through his connection to the Family of Love), Lipsius stressed “prudence,” “an understanding & discretion of those things which we ought either to desire or refuse, in publike, & in privat.”Footnote ⁷⁸ While the actions of the state should generally follow Christian morality, Lipsius proffered a “mixed prudence” that allowed for occasional deviations, including moderate dissimulation and deceit, if warranted by necessity. Other writers in this vein, such as Scippione Ammirato and Pierre Charron, similarly held that the state had a “right” of self-preservation. The ruler, vested with the power to act, inevitably became seen as the source of the continued well-being of the state. Insisting that “authors of innovations are hurtfull in a common wealth,” Lipsius argued that the duty of the subject was to obey the state, which had a right to impose (and enforce) its own codes.Footnote ⁷⁹ Reason-of-state writers limited the idea of a right-of-resistance, perhaps, in part, because they understood that matters of policy frequently became subjects of popular discussion.Footnote ⁸⁰ The state should take special care to enforce “one pure religion,” Lipsius argued, since folly, mischief, and cruelty “will fall out, if there be confusion of religion,” as evidenced by contemporary European affairs. The best course was maintenance of the “ancient and approved custome” and so “punishment is alwayes to be inflicted upon such as dissent” in religion, at least publicly.Footnote ⁸¹ However, there was an exception. Lipsius stressed that every polity had to recognize that sometimes customs “are to be changed.”Footnote ⁸² Repression was certainly the “course thou oughtest to take, so long as the [religious] disturbers may be quieted without any further trouble.” But then, following Tacitus, Lipsius questioned, what if “a suddaine constraint will bring more damage then profit to the common wealth,” a question of considerable topicality amid the early Jacobean purge and resistance. The answer was to break with custom in order to preserve it: “Somtimes they are to be suffred to the end they may the better to be rooted out.” Where the minority was too numerous or powerful to be extirpated, then a prudential policy of (perhaps temporary) toleration was the answer.Footnote ⁸³

While there was certainly a continuity of Ciceronian- and common law-inflected notions of “commonwealth,” reason-of-state thinking was much in vogue in England at the end of the sixteenth century, with many works appearing in translation.Footnote ⁸⁴ The earl of Essex's circle (and later, Prince Henry's) contained Taciteans, products of an Oxford group which included Richard Greneway (translator of the Annals), as well as Anthony and Francis Bacon.Footnote ⁸⁵ Very early in the new reign, both Francis Bacon (1605) and James Cleland (1607) chose to praise James with citations from Tacitus; presumably, they thought James would be flattered.Footnote ⁸⁶ This was not unreasonable. Toby Matthew, archbishop of York, had called James “a great dissembler” and, at least in the 1599 edition of Basilicon doron, James had advised Henry that it was all right to dissemble in a crisis.Footnote ⁸⁷ James had also argued, in the Trew Law, that while a good king would conform to the positive law, “the health of the common-wealth [should] be his chiefe lawe,” a central tenet of reason-of-state thinking.Footnote ⁸⁸ But James had denounced “that proud inconstant LIPSIUS” in the 1599 edition of Basilicon doron and, in 1603, criticized the contemporary “Stoicke insensible stupiditie” as well as the underlying political wisdom of Tacitus.Footnote ⁸⁹ Lipsius was also suspect because he was “ambiguous” concerning tyrannicide and because of his hostility to imperial rule,Footnote ⁹⁰ which might be read as a parallel to the growing authoritarianism of English monarchy. Jacob's choice of reason-of-state language to approach James was thus timely, but ill chosen.

VII. The Humble Supplication (1609) and James's Marginalia

Three years after his plea for another conference (which had gone unmet),Footnote ⁹¹ Jacob published his Humble Supplication for Toleration (1609), also addressed to James and written on behalf of “the silenced and disgraced Ministers of the Gospel, together with sundrie others, concurring in opinion and persuasion of religion with us.”Footnote ⁹² Nothing had been achieved in terms of reform of ceremonies or prelatical governance and indeed the greater debate now seemed to be not about whether there should be episcopacy but rather whether it was of divine origin. The lack of published reply to the Modest Offer perhaps convinced Jacob, some seven years before he actually practiced it in Southwark, that semi-separatism was the only practicable answer to the trials of the nonconformists. He again argued the illegitimacy (in scripture and positive law) of the repression and complained that James's bishops were trying to “enslave us to Antichrist,” partly by the forced “taking of an unlawful and irreligious oath.” A marginal reference to “Magna charta cap. 28” indicates that Jacob was acquainted with the challenge sympathetic common lawyers had raised to ex officio proceedings.Footnote ⁹³ At the same time, Jacob may have seen an opening in the new language of a heightened royal supremacy, including the argument by canon lawyers in the 1590s that Elizabeth possessed the legal authority to “override English common law” through the High Commission.Footnote ⁹⁴ The Cawdray case had established that England's monarchs possessed what John Guy terms “theocratic authority.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Jacob also noted the king's “gracious proceedings towards some of a Romish & disaffected spirit” and from this inferred, against the judges’ and the Lord Chancellor's view, that it was lawful to petition the king.Footnote ⁹⁶ And so he now decided to rely on James's lawful authority over the Church to seek exemption from its jurisdiction for a class of people—otherwise, the plea for royal, rather than statutory, exemption would make no sense.

Jacob's was by no means the first plea for toleration. As early as 1566–1567, Archbishop Loftus of Dublin and Christopher Goodman had attempted, but failed, to establish in Dublin a congregation operating under the Genevan model of discipline.Footnote ⁹⁷ An anonymous tract of 1604, attributed to Henry Ainsworth and Francis Johnson, defined a “particular” church very similarly to Jacob and asked for a dispensation from James that “we may be suffered peaceably to walk in that faith and ordinance of Christ, which he in his Testament hath bequeathed and enioyned his Church.”Footnote ⁹⁸ However, while also proposing another conference, it did not address the perceived shortcomings of the Hampton Court conference and did not employ reason-of-state language. Catholics, who had lost more and who had fewer rights, also sought relief.Footnote ⁹⁹ Already in 1563, Robert Atkinson called in Parliament for freedom of religion, arguing the political consequences of “sedition and rebellion” if harsh laws were passed against Catholics.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Leicester's Commonwealth made some use of politique analysis. Since persecution of Catholics and puritans would be counterproductive, there should be a “qualification, tolerance and moderation which would be sufficient to retain all parties within a temperate obedience to the magistrate and government.” This was “of no small importance” to the “weal public of the whole kingdome.” The tract noted that a “little toleration” had proved a “great good” where practiced.Footnote ¹⁰¹ In 1584, William Allen condemned the present religious persecution and noted many European examples of toleration. Yet while he did use the terms “politiques” and “Machiavellian,” and pleaded briefly for “license or connivance” for Catholics, he did not argue that the civil state would benefit from such toleration.Footnote ¹⁰² In a number of tracts in the 1580s and 1590s, the indefatigable Robert Persons argued the political benefits to the English state of toleration.Footnote ¹⁰³ He proposed that “prudence and circumspection” had to be applied in considering toleration and a decision made on the basis of whether “great perturbation and peril of the commonwealth might be expected thereby.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ While he made clear that God's “wrath” would manifest against persecutors of Catholics, he argued that toleration would cause “al to be united in defence of the realme; all made friends and familiar together” and cited Germany as an example.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ His Newes from Spayne and Holland (1593) more directly questioned whether the English government's approach to religion followed “laws of pollicy.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In keeping with the usual politique view favoring maintenance of the established religion, he stressed that the introduction of the new religion was “most dangerous and preiudicial to the weal publique.” Where “liberty of conscience to al” would have pacified religion, enforcement through punishment had produced ever-increasing resistance, “both of Catholiques and puritans.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ This would “no doubt by al humane reason of state and common wealth” undermine the Protestant establishment.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Yet despite some use of the new terminology, Persons's tract is more a provocative apologia for the Roman church than an analysis of the civil benefits of toleration.

James's letter to Pope Clement VIII in 1599 had suggested, probably as a way of winning Catholic support for his succession in England, that he might convert to the Roman faith.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Despite much hopeful Catholic pressure for some form of toleration at the beginning of the new reign, James's truer feelings may be reflected in a letter he wrote to Cecil in March 1603, noting that while he wanted no one to die solely for belief, he did not want to see Catholic numbers expand and was especially concerned to control the Jesuits.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Unsurprisingly, therefore, James's first years saw harsh anti-Catholic legislation, even if not always fully enforced by a monarch willing to distinguish between religion and loyalty. A letter to James of 1603 from “The Catholicks of England” noted that the king of France, a country “torne in peeces by civill warres,” had saved his realm by “condiscending of toleration of an adverse Religion to the which he was openly professed.” The petitioners emphasized their loyalty and requested “tolleration, without molestacion,” at least in private houses.Footnote ¹¹¹ John Colleton, in asking James for the same benevolence, noted, this was far less than that permitted “by the Princes and State politique of other Countries, where diversitie of religion is tolerated, and infinite good found to arise thereof.” He stated that limited toleration was “neyther in reason of State, a thing hurtfull,” referencing “Germanie, Fraunce, Poland & other Countries,” which had all “florish[ed]” under the policy.Footnote ¹¹²

Jacob's use of the new political language thus fits into a growing form of political discourse. Indeed, his Humble Supplication seems to have offered the fullest and most novel application of politique argument in a reformist religious “petition” of early Jacobean England. Jacob repeatedly used the phrase “reason of state” or contemporary euphemisms such as “Axioms of pollicie.” That he would adopt this as a way to approach James indicates both the desperateness of the reform cause and the degree to which reason-of-state was an available and evidently approved political language. Jacob's innovation was to apply it to argue that (limited) toleration was a political advantage to the state, beyond both law and English precedent. This dramatic shift shows how fluid, imaginative, and tactically flexible Jacob's political proposals could be. Jacob had toyed with reason-of-state earlier. He had adopted a Lipsian dissimulation in his submission to the bishop of London, and in the Reasons, in saying that while a calling from a congregation was the only necessary warrant of ministerial legitimacy, a different form of calling could be recognized.Footnote ¹¹³ He had also noted that the religious arrangements in France, Scotland, and the Low Countries all included exemptions.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In effect, amid his earlier heavily scriptural arguments, Jacob had already included a political argument for accepting a dissenting, but demonstrably loyal, position, yet had not yet phrased it directly in the new language.

Five years—and very little progress—after the Reasons, Jacob was more limited, yet more concentrated, in his aim. Instead of structural alteration of the Church, Jacob now sought “an entier exemption from the iurisdiction of the said Prelates and their officers” and, in language echoing Ainsworth's and Johnson's, the “libertie of enioying and practising the holy ordinances enacted and left by the Lord.” Rather than a right of religion, he now sought only more simply the absence of active state interference. And rather than scriptural reasons, he now stressed the directly resulting great civil benefits of pacifying disputes. Liberty “removeth both the original cause & nourishment thereof.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ That is, toleration would remove the prelatical power to coerce and so correspondingly eliminate the need for, and purpose of, dispute and resistance. Control would be under solely “your subordinate civill Magistrats.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ It was, after all, a common reformist argument that civil authorities had the right to discipline “misgovernment in persons Ecclesiastique.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ Calm would surely ensue. Nor was this “separatism.” The reformists remained “readie to communicate with them in the Lords worship.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ Where before Jacob had asked for nothing other than what they could prove was due to them by the word of God,Footnote ¹¹⁹ now he asked for favor based, as the new language had it, on royal “interest.”

But what was the specific “interest” for James in abandoning uniformity? To start, Jacob emphasized that toleration fitted better with the king's “Imperiall Scepter” than rule by prelates, since the nonconformists fully acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of England, whereas the prelates’ office “essentially derived” from Rome. Against recent arguments, he insisted—even citing Whitgift and Richard Hooker—that since the papacy was of human origin, it followed that the bishops themselves were not iure divino but “meere humane institutions.”Footnote ¹²⁰ And, unlike the prelates, the present petitioners sought no civil office and therefore presented no threat of divided authority. Jacob stressed (as he had in the Reasons) that he did not wish to replace one coercive national authority with another: “Ruling Synods and united Presbyteries exercising government and imposing Lawes and Decrees upon severall Churches, and the Pastors of them” were “altogether unlawfull,” particularly since they usurped “the Supremacie of the civill Magistrate.” As in the Reasons, provincial or national synods would be allowed, but only as advisory bodies.Footnote ¹²¹

In order to win over a king disturbed by innovation, Jacob emphasized that the “toleration” he requested was not novel. It had been used by “great Monarchs and Potentats both in ancient times & of late yeres.” This spoke to the theorists’ advice to compare one's own situation with other historical (or contemporary) examples. Jacob specifically noted Charles V in Germany, Henry III and Henry IV in France, “the Spaniard in his late Treatie with the States of Holland, and other the United Provinces;” and—most pertinently—Emperor Maximilian, who “was out of the rule of Policie, well pleased to yeelde intertaynement to that Religion, which himselfe regarded not.”Footnote ¹²² This was precisely what Jacob was asking of James. “Policy” arguments taught that where uniformity of religion was beyond practical reach, the ruler should temper his own deeply held personal views in the greater public interest of civil peace. Toleration, while not the norm, and certainly not the ideal, sometimes made prudent policy. Toleration was presented here as a practical political matter, the instituting of which did not require abandoning the belief in the benefits of a coercing church. England's current practice of offering no (or very little) quarter to difference was increasingly out of step with contemporary politique approaches to religion. This was a striking line of persuasion to proffer to a king who already situated himself as a potential pacifier of European religious divisions.

Where conformists questioned whether a state could be secure if some citizens operated under special laws, Jacob turned it around: was it good policy to have some people, by law, “exposed to unmercifull censure and disgrace”? It was repression, rather than difference, that might cause some subjects to question their duty to the prince and so serve to undermine, rather than secure, the state.Footnote ¹²³ Jacob argued that the present instability encouraged Catholics to think that they might achieve toleration for themselves—Bancroft had already been noisily accused of unseemly overtures toward English RomanistsFootnote ¹²⁴ —and even “a reconcilement to the Church of Rome.”Footnote ¹²⁵ But Jacob's shaping of prudence called for toleration for congregationalists to be a solitary exemption, a matter of political benefit rather than a statement of a general right to religious liberty. Indeed, toleration for nonconformists would help to control popery, since Catholicism flourished only where “the Protestant party shall be infeebled & lessened.” Some were still telling James that “for silencing of Dissensions in the Church, the silencing of Inconformitans is an admirable and present meane,” that is, a “moderate” policy.Footnote ¹²⁶ But Jacob pointed out that this had proven a failure: “the experience of sundrie yeares under your Ma. and your predecessor Q. Elizabeth” established that “the urging of the said Conformitie” did not solve the “sicknes of Division and Faction.” Repression simply had not solved the problem. On the other hand, toleration had been field tested, a crucial rhetorical advantage in the new politique emphasis on utility. Rather than mere theory, it “is observed to be of so harmeles & peaceable a nature and carriage, and so farr from wrongdoing any Monarch in his Soveraintie and publike interest.”Footnote ¹²⁷ The evident benefits of toleration elsewhere showed that coerced conformity was also, in the newer language, “unprofitable.”Footnote ¹²⁸ The domestic “profit” of Protestant unity would be that papists would grow more “disharted and unspirited for matter of proiect and conspiracie against your Person and Throne.” Toleration of nonconformity would thus make the monarch and state stronger. And it was easily accomplished. The only step needed was a “surcease on the Prelats parte of executing their authoritie in the silencing and deprivation of their fellow servaunts the faithfull Ministers of the Gospell.”Footnote ¹²⁹ There could not really be “any iust exception against this,” Jacob concluded, since “it standeth with Policie and reason of state”—the new standards of political reasoning—“to allowe the Toleration and exemption desired by us.”Footnote ¹³⁰

Jacob also reflected Lipsian language in his argument that even “in case the said Ceremonies were inioyned by Law, yet out of a regarde to a publique benefite and present necessitie, even good Lawes may, in the iudgement of Politiks, suffer derogation.” But if even good laws sometimes had to be set aside, “how much more repelable then are such Constitutions, as authorise the use of a scandalous and unprofitable Conformitie?”Footnote ¹³¹ Perhaps consciously echoing James's comments at Hampton Court, Jacob insisted that longevity of a practice was not a sufficient reason for its continuance. More specifically, concerning “Conformitie and Subscription,” he insisted that “politique discourse and reason” determine that “when the remedie prepared to cure the disease of the State, doth in the application thereof augment and strengthen the maladie, we ought to forbeare all further recourse to the said remedie.”Footnote ¹³² As reason-of-state writers had argued, the policy needs of the state came before even its own laws. To Jacob this meant, “if the inconvenience of the Law be greater than the fruite reaped thereby, the said Law may with honor to the State be permitted to discontinue and expire.”Footnote ¹³³

That Jacob did not use this approach in any of his subsequent tracts indicates that he was not committed to reason-of-state thinking. Nor did he produce a conceptual understanding of either “religious toleration” or “religious liberty.” He also cannot easily be seen as a proponent of “toleration” in any theoretical sense. He did not present ancient or contemporary arguments for toleration or offer a rebuttal of the Augustine-based arguments for persecution and punishment, as did Bodin.Footnote ¹³⁴ Rather, he was building upon the intermittent Elizabethan episcopal policy of tolerating the nonconformity of the quieter godly ministers, though now he was applying reason-of-state as a theoretical underpinning for wholesale exemption, based on civil benefits. Jacob did not claim a “right” to toleration here. His was very much a narrow politique gamble: toleration of the godly was in the interest of the state. He therefore ended not only with “the dolefull cries of our distresed hearts,” but also with the forceful reminder that “the received Maxims of Policie”—that is, the best of human wisdom and experience—“doe perswade and warrant the grant of the favour wee doe desire.”Footnote ¹³⁵

That a copy of Jacob's Humble Supplication found its way into the king's hands was very likely not serendipitous. James had earlier commissioned Thomas Bilson to write a reply, “with as much speed as you may convenientlye,” to Jacob's Reasons.Footnote ¹³⁶ Bilson agreed, despite remarking that Jacob's views had “neither sap nor substance worth the answering.”Footnote ¹³⁷ In April 1605, Bilson reported to Cecil that he was ill and so could not deliver directly to the king “the Revew that I beganne of jacobs importuned Reformation” and asked that Cecil present “this enterance into that Cause . . . wherein the cheifest of the Reformers plotts are examined and answeared.”Footnote ¹³⁸ In October 1609, James enquired about the involvement of Jacob—described as “a notorious Minister of London for faction and disquietnes”Footnote ¹³⁹ —in an election for the mastership of Christ's College, Cambridge. On October 22, Sir Thomas Lake sent Robert Cecil a copy of the Humble Supplication “with manie annotations of his Maties in the margent,” which James wanted distributed to the Council, to the end of considering “what is to be don for the suppressing of this animosity of theirs.” Lake noted James's continuing concern that considerable popular strength lay behind this “stomachous supplication.” James was convinced that Jacob was indeed the author and wanted Bancroft to “apprehend him again.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The sense of urgency led Bancroft to write back on the same day, indicating that he would attend Council the next day and would “take order for Jacobs beinge there.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ Jacob was clearly seen as an ongoing threat.

James's “manie annotations” are quips rather than elaborate arguments, but they reveal the degree to which James remained hostile to any perceived threat to his authority in either church or state.Footnote ¹⁴² To James, this was not a battle about kneeling or crossing, but about obeying the monarch's will. Time and again in the marginalia, James returned to the point Jacob had taken such pains to rebut: those pushing for further changes in the Church were schismatics and subversives. So to the oft-repeated argument that the form of subscription (and the penalties for non-compliance) were unlawful, James retorted that “that lawe is so interpretid onlie by your puritane lawiers of the lower house.” His disrespect for their thinking is clear: “Ye perverte the lawis as ye do the skriptures.”Footnote ¹⁴³ Against Jacob's plea for toleration, the king countered that they had in fact received “too great toleration . . . in quene elizabeths tyme” and it was this that made them “now too be prikkels in oure sydes.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ James scoffed at the reformists’ desire to be under only the civil magistracy, asking whether “Cuntry constables” could prove “goodlie spirituall judges” or whether “Shoemakers then are better juges then devynes of ecclesiasticall causis & pointis of devinitie.”Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Against the plea that the ministers be granted “the libertie of enioying and practising the holy ordinances enacted and left by the Lord,” James angrily retorted, “ye have that libertie allreadie, if ye coulde be contentid.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ This could simply mean that he thought that the established Church followed these already. More intriguingly, it could also be that James was indicating that, provided there was no political challenge—to be indicated principally by a show of conformity— he was willing to allow some greater (undefined) degree of “libertie,” as, it may be argued, in large part occurred after circa 1610–1611. In reply to the view that nothing should be allowed “whence discord may arise,” James condemned the “puritans” church governance and retorted that “it is worse, then, to suffer a new religion, & quiche is composed onlie of discorde, & contradiction, & fomentid by partialitie & discontentement.” James had battled all his adult life to bring factious spirits under control. Now he again faced turbulent conduct of protesters. And so, to Jacob's complaint that the reformists were taken to be “factious and turbulent spirits, . . . Schismaticks and Puritans,” James responded curtly: The Church “owghte to be noe blamed for calling blakke blakke, & quhyte quhyte, & geving everie thing the right name.” Indeed, against Jacob's stress on the ills of Protestantism in England, James exploded: “The protestant partie cannot but languishe indeid quhen as her bowellis are so gnawin by her viperouse & ungratiouse broode” so that the Church was “never at reste within her owin doores.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Both problem and solution were wholly different in these two minds. So James dismissed the reformists’ claim that they wished to end partiality and faction, and instead insisted that this “canne never be but by the removing of you.” Similarly, concerning the desire to imitate foreign “reformed” churches, he proposed exile rather than exemption: “If ye have so great a mynde to forraine churchis, quhy stay ye heere, goe in goddis name & make youre selfis members of that boddie quhiche ye so much affecte.” In James's mind, reformism led directly to extremism: “Dyverse of youre secte indeid quyd the rowme & become brownists & anabaptists.” This was “but the hyest steppe of your profession.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸ To tolerate this would be to allow the sore to fester. The worst phase of the repression had passed by 1609, but the beliefs and attitude that fomented and permitted it remained untempered.

James seems genuinely to have thought that in terms of political subversion, puritans were very similar to papists. Jacob's admission that nonconformists had subscribed only out of necessity revealed a dissembling that, in others, had long troubled the king.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Now, tying puritans to the Romanist resistance, James described it as “a fyne cloake for apostacie & hypocrasie, & a goode excuse for all recusant papists that come to churche for feare of the lawe.” Concerning the independence of congregations, a similar Catholic linkage sufficed to condemn the proposal: “Millions of brain-sike popis are more dangerous then one.” In any case, it would not be easy to limit toleration to Protestant dissidents. Any “libertie granted . . . by law divine and humane” would surely apply generally. So James accused Jacob, in effect, of “plead[ing] well for the papiste & all sortis of haeritikes” and asked, scathingly: “Can the devill devyse a more forcible argument for toleration of poperie?” Indeed, far from being a bulwark of true religion, Protestant nonconformity was the real reason popery still thrived in England. James therefore drew the obvious, and traditional, conclusion of monarchical “interest” rather than that imparted by the new language: “Thairfore all such factiouse people muste be weadit out of the lande.”Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Toleration was inherently subversive and therefore unacceptable.

The king's other principal line of attack was that the reformists aimed at “paritie.” To James, “a confused gouvernement by paritie can noe but well sute with a monarchie.” Against the ministers’ claim that they accepted royal ecclesiastical authority, James denounced again what he saw as their hypocrisy: “Quhy then doe ye not obeye the Kings lawis that are allreadie maide; quhom ye grawnte to be youre supreme magistrate.” And, to the reformists’ objection that prelacy submitted Christians to human authority over “things sometime indifferent,” James, armed with the judges’ view that all power over religion stemmed from the monarch, pounced: “Quhaire is now the King's Supremacie & youre greate obedience to him?”Footnote ¹⁵¹ To Jacob's claim that neither the “Doctrine” nor the “Governement” the ministers desired would challenge “any Monarch in his Soveraintie,” James again reverted to his fear of popularity: “parishe popes . . . wolde soone shaike of the poor constables authoritie by the powaire of the Spirite.”Footnote ¹⁵² From constable to king, there would be a domino effect on legitimate authority. Jacob had even argued that “the law of unitie and peace in the Churches” was “of a nobler descent and ranke then that of outward Conformitie in humane Rites and Ceremonies.” But to the king, unity and peace meant not concessions to all unhappy parties, but rather uniformity under the king's laws. There could “be no unitie in the churche if thaire be no ordoure nor obedience to superioris, but that it be lawfull to everei man to followe freelie his own fancie.”Footnote ¹⁵³ This was the crux of the matter. James did not believe that a polity—ecclesiastical or lay—could be united, that is, could function, or perhaps even survive, if its authority was not unitary. He had experienced a form of split church in Scotland. In his eyes, Jacob was asking for even greater decentralization and therefore, by definition, greater limitation of the monarch's authority. James saw this, perhaps correctly, as the death knell of free monarchy. There was also a personal note of rancor here. Jacob's support for “paritie” was also seen as a “villanouse skorne of my basilicon doron.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ James evidently felt demeaned (once again) that he, as a monarch, could set down his thoughts about authority and then see them disputed by popular voices, itself an ample demonstration of the ills of “paritie.”

James also reacted sharply to the notes of resistance in the Humble Supplication. Jacob had warned, for example, that the prisons “would not be capable of so great a multitude as should be sentenced therunto,” should conformity be more vigorously enforced. James called this “a brave threatening,” but he was clearly not convinced he would face a storm, especially as those of strongest commitment had already been dealt with. So he both belittled Jacob's numbers—“braggis of your multitudis are skarre crowis & buggis for children”—and countered with a dire warning of his own: “if ye be manie evill enclyned the more neede you have to be suppressed.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ As a reaction to the Northamptonshire petition in 1605, the judges had reiterated both that the king had the legal authority to deprive ministers and that petitioners who threatened mass disaffection came “very near to treason and felony in the punishment. For they tended to the raising of sedition, Rebellion and discontent among the people.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Discerning a similar, direct threat to his authority in Jacob's tract, James wanted his comments sent to the Council for their instruction. A learned exchange was tolerable; a threat of mass, popular disobedience was clearly not.

James's and Jacob's interwoven story thus tells us of a reformer trying desperately to entice the new king to religious reform and a monarch remaining steadfast in his defense of his authority and in his criticisms of the “popularity” and “paritie” that threatened it. After the undulations in the assertion of monarchical power in Scotland, James's approach in his new kingdom was (as he had advised Henry) to use whatever force was necessary to overcome such threats right at the beginning. Tactics might be flexible, but his comments on the Humble Supplication show that he would not countenance any reform that he thought derogated from his own definition of monarchical “interest.” He was certainly not about to let his “free monarchy” collapse into a morass of Christian republics. Here, then, was no indication of a reconciliation, but only a continuing repression of those seen still to be challenging monarchical authority. For James, the bended knee had to precede royal favor.

VIII. Reform, Negotiation, and Resistance

In a time of apparent papist revival, growing claims of iure divino episcopacy, and a dire purge of godly ministers that produced many “conforming nonconformists”—clear indicators of a declension in England's Protestantism—Jacob strove not merely to keep the hope of national reform alive, but also to push forward the centrifugal tendencies unleashed by the Reformation. There was ample ground for recognition of temporal majesty, but a growing unwillingness to compromise over the scriptural requirements of faith. Seeing the path to national structural reform blocked, Jacob, along with a few others, was already insisting that the construction and perpetuation of the visible church could occur only through a voluntary and independent gathered church. By 1609, Jacob was petitioning that any gathered Protestant group, swearing allegiance to the king and obeying all civil laws, should be permitted, out of “necessity,” to become a tolerated “church.” His writings offer a revealing early illustration of the arguments that had to be made to gain toleration in a monarchical state: convincing the king that they were non-schismatic, honoring the rights and status of the established church, demonstrating that there was no threat to the civil authority, and explaining that toleration would not unleash the horrors of popularity, indeed that it would provide immediate civil benefits. As he received unfavorable treatment (after the Reasons) or simply no response to his arguments and challenges (after the Modest Offer), so Jacob was willing to turn to other imagined possibilities. Where earlier he had advanced a fairly rigid scriptural line—God commanded it; therefore, it must be done—in the Humble Supplication he adopted a much more pragmatic approach. Now he was interested to set out, in the novel, altogether murkier language of reason-of-state, the civil advantages of the dissolution of the Church's monopoly, rather than reform of the national body. Jacob's model of “exemption” rather than toleration was, in fact, reasonably close to that which the Protestant dissenters obtained at the end of the century: not equality but rather, alleviation of the burden of the law.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ But in asking for a royal declaration of toleration, Jacob was also entering into the nonconformist dilemma of the seventeenth century: the achievement of desired ends through the questionable means of royal favor rather than statutory right.

Taken together, these tracts reveal the degree to which an indefatigable nonconformist leader would go in trying to design peaceful solutions to what he saw as an increasing refusal to institute godly Protestantism. Jacob's journey took him from criticisms of episcopacy, through a detailed plan for a new conference, to a plea for full exemption from ecclesiastical restrictions so that the godly could be left alone, as loyal subjects, to practice their godliness. But if that were not to happen, then the lens would have to be turned back toward the central authorities, as the resistance notes and veiled warnings in Jacob's writings suggest. This raises, finally, the question of whether the picture of an expanding middle of the Jacobean Church is a tale only partly told. Another view of the spectrum metaphor is that, far from compacting toward the middle, it was already being stretched at both ends: increasingly authoritarian claims of episcopal rights and increasingly alienated ministers were at least as evident as the supposed incorporation of (much of) the puritan thrust into a “mainstream.” James's refusal to tolerate the breadth for which Jacob asked meant that a longer, and much more damaging, struggle would ensue.