The “Political Thought” of the “Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I,” Discovered and Anatomized

Abstract

This paper uses two manuscript tracts to reconstruct the vision of the English polity underpinning Lord Burghley's interregnum proposals of 1584–85. These proposals famously prompted Patrick Collinson's work on “the monarchical republic of Elizabeth I,” which in turn became embroiled in subsequent attempts to recuperate distinctively “republican” strands of thought and feeling in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Written by two clients of central figures in the regime, the two texts are replies to a tract by John Leslie outlining Mary Stuart's claim to the English throne. This tract was republished in 1581 in Latin and then in 1584 in English as part of a Catholic propaganda offensive of the summer of 1584 to which, in turn, the Bond of Association and the interregnum scheme itself were responses. By comparing different versions of the two texts with one another and with Thomas Bilson's later printed tract,The true difference between Christian subjection and unchristian rebellion, something like the structuring assumptions, indeed the political thought, underlying the interregnum scheme can be recovered and analyzed and the republican nature of the monarchical republic assessed in detail for the first time.

Was Elizabethan England really a monarchical republic?

“…The importance of the Bond as a political and even cultural touchstone should not be understated, and it is interesting to note by way of aside that loyal subjects sometime in the mid fifteeneighties started wearing jewel-set miniature portraits of Elizabeth, possibly to indicate that they were willing participants in the scheme. 61 Likewise, Paulina Kewes argued that subsequent interregnum proposals drawn up by Thomas Digges and Burghley did not attempt to trigger a 'constitutional revolution', but rather to find 'an effective stopgap measure that would prevent the accession of the Catholic Mary, queen of Scots'. 54 This description seems questionable, for the Bond opens with a textbook statement of the doctrines of divineright kingship and obedience to princes, insisting that 'Almighty God hath ordained Kings, Quenes and Princes to haue dominion and rule ouer all their subiectes, and to preserue them … and in like sort that all subiectes shuld loue fear and obey their Souerayn Princes'.…”