Scotland, in the course of her revolution, produced almost as brilliant an array of pamphleteers as had France. John Knox maintained that, "If men, in the fear of God, oppose themselves to the fury and blind rage of princes, in doing so they do not resist God, but the devil, who abuses the sword and authority of God," and again, he asked, "What harm should the commonwealth receive if the corrupt affections of ignorant rulers were moderated and bridled by the {603} wisdom and discretion of godly subjects?" But the duty, he thought, to curb princes in free kingdoms and realms, does not belong to every private man, but "appertains to the nobility, sworn and born counsellors of the same." Carrying such doctrines to the logical result, Knox hinted to Mary that Daniel might have resisted Nebuchadnezzar and Paul might have resisted Nero with the sword, had God given them the power.
Another Scotch Protestant, John Craig, in support of the prosecution of Mary, said that it had been determined and concluded at the University of Bologna [Sidenote: 1554] that "all rulers, be they supreme or inferior, may be and ought to be reformed or deposed by them by whom they were chosen, confirmed and admitted to their office, as often as they break that promise made by oath to their subjects." Knox and Craig both argued for the execution of Mary on the ground that "it was a public speech among all peoples and among all estates, that the queen had no more liberty to commit murder nor adultery than any other private person." Knollys also told Mary that a monarch ought to be deposed for madness or murder.
To the zeal for religion animating Knox, George Buchanan [Sidenote: Buchanan] joined a more rational spirit of liberty and a stronger consciousness of positive right. His great work On the Constitution of Scotland derived all power from the people, asserted the responsibility of kings to their subjects and pleaded for the popular election of the chief magistrate. In extreme cases execution of the monarch was defended, though by what precise machinery he was to be arraigned was left uncertain; probably constitutional resistance was thought of, as far as practicable, and tyrannicide was considered as a last resort. "If you ask anyone," says our author, "what he thinks of the punishment of {604} Caligula, Nero or Domitian, I think no one will be so devoted to the royal name as not to confess that they rightly paid the penalty of their crimes."
[Sidenote: English monarchists]
In England the two tendencies, the one to favor the divine right of kings, the other for constitutional restraint, existed side by side. The latter opinion was attributed by courtly divines to the influence of Calvin. Matthew Hutton blamed the Reformer because "he thought not so well of a kingdom as of a popular state." "God save us," wrote Archbishop Parker, "from such a visitation as Knox has attempted in Scotland, the people to be orderers of things." This distinguished prelate preached that disobedience to the queen was a greater crime than sacrilege or adultery, for obedience is the root of all virtues and the cause of all felicity, and "rebellion is not a single fault, like theft or murder, but the cesspool and swamp of all possible sins against God and man." Bonner was charged by the government of Mary to preach that all rebels incurred damnation. Much later Richard Hooker warned his countrymen that Puritanism endangered the prerogatives of crown and nobility.
[Sidenote: and republicans]
But there were not wanting champions of the people. Reginald Pole asserted the responsibility of the sovereign, though in moderate language. Bishop John Ponet wrote A Treatise on Politic Power to show that men had the right to depose a bad king and to assassinate a tyrant. The haughty Elizabeth herself often had to listen to drastic advice. When she visited Cambridge she was entertained by a debate on tyrannicide, in which one bold clerk asserted that God might incite a regicide; and by a discussion of the respective advantages of elective and hereditary monarchy, one speaker offering to maintain the former with his life and, if need be, with his death. When Elizabeth, after hearing a refractory Parliament, complained to the {605} Spanish ambassador that "she could not tell what those devils were after" his excellency replied, "They want liberty, madam, and if princes do not look to themselves" they will soon find that they are drifting to revolution and anarchy. Significant, indeed, was the silent work of Parliament in building up the constitutional doctrine of its own omnicompetence and of its own supremacy.
[Sidenote: Tyrannicide]
One striking aberration in the political theory of that time was the prominence in it of the appeal to tyrannicide. Schooled by the ancients who sang the praises of Harmodius and Aristogiton, by the biblical example of Ehud and Eglon, and by various medieval publicists, and taught the value of murder by the princes and popes who set prices on each other's heads, an extraordinary number of sixteenth century divines approved of the dagger as the best remedy for tyranny. Melanchthon wished that God would raise up an able man to slay Henry VIII; John Ponet and Cajetan and the French theologian Boucher admitted the possible virtue of assassination. But the most elaborate statement of the same doctrine was put by the Spanish Jesuit Mariana, in a book On the King and his Education published in 1599, with an official imprimatur, a dedication to the reigning monarch and an assertion that it was approved by learned and grave men of the Society of Jesus. It taught that the prince holds sway solely by the consent of the people and by ancient law, and that, though his vices are to be borne up to a certain point, yet when he ruins the state he is a public enemy, to slay whom is not only permissible but glorious for any man brave enough to despise his own safety for the public good.
If one may gather the official theory of the Catholic church from the contradictory statements of her doctors, she advocated despotism tempered by {606} assassination. No Lutheran ever preached the duty of passive obedience more strongly than did the Catechism of the Council of Trent.