² Hasler, P. W., The House of Commons, 1558-1603, 4 vols. (London, 1981), 2:238.Google Scholar

³ Hales, John, A Declaration of the Succession of the Crowne Imperiall of Ingland, 1563, printed in Francis Hargrave, The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, pp. xx–xliii, (London, 1713)Google Scholar. Manuscript copies of Hales’ tract a re found in: BL, Sloane 827, fos. 1-17; BL, Harleian 555, fos. 1-11 (this manuscript, a copy of Hales’ tract, is identified erroneously as that of “A. Browne,” most likely by a later librarian. The manuscript that follows, fos. 11-47, although identified as that of “F. Bacon,” is in fact the tract written by Anthony Browne in response to Hales; BL, Harleian 4666, fos. 1-19, (this is actually a later copy as it is not in 16th-century hand); Cambridge Gg iii 34, ff. 144-73 and Rawlingson B7, ff. 1-14. I have uncovered several more previously unidentified manuscript copies of Hales’ tract: BL, Harleian 4314, a three part “book” in which fos. 59-71 are Hales’ treatise. Though untitled as such, close examination leaves no doubt it is another copy of Hales’ tract. BL, Cotton Julius F VI, fos. 431-444, titled a “Motion for succession to the Crown made in parliament 13 Elizabeth, an argument that Lady Catherine is the next heir to the Crown,” is another copy of Hales’ tract, despite its incorrect date. Sub sequent citations are to the printed edition.

⁴ 28 Henry VIII, c. 7 and 35 Henry VIII, c. 1. In his attempt to control the succession long after his death, Henry VIII had diverted the strict hereditary claims of the Stuart line, descended from his eldest sister, Margaret, in favor of the Grey line, descending from his younger sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. However, Mary Stuart remained a formidable claimant. She possessed the strongest hereditary claim, a fact that weighed heavily in her favor given the preference for hereditary descent, and certainly in the face of Northumberland’s fiasco with Jane Grey in 1553. Mary also had powerful allies and a close physical presence to England.

⁵ Precedent for Parliament’s involvement in the succession had been well established during the reign of Henry VIII. In 1534, Princess Mary was bastardized by statute, and the succession vested in Princess Elizabeth and all issue from Anne Bolyen. After Anne’s fall, a Parliamentary act of 1536 similarly bastardized Elizabeth, and vested the succession in all issue from Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour. In 1543, the order of succession was established by statute: Edward and his issue inheriting first, followed by Mary and her issue, and Elizabeth and her issue. Despite being named as successors however, neither bastardized princess was declared legitimate. Both the acts of 1536 and 1543, moreover, gave Henry the authority to enact the order of succession established in his last will as law, which he did in 1546. That statute reiterated the order of succession established in 1543 and added the important stipulation that should Elizabeth die without issue, the junior Suffolk line should inherit the Crown, despite the senior hereditary claim of the Stuart line. Levine, Mortimer, “A Parliamentary Title to the Crown in Tudor England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 25 (1962): 121–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ MacCaffrey, Wallace, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton, 1968), p. 176 and p. 207Google Scholar. SirNeale, John, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1:103–04 and pp. 129–30Google Scholar. Hales’s tract is also mentioned in Elton, Geoffrey, England Under the Tudors, (3rd ed.; Cambridge, 1986), p. 207.Google Scholar

⁷ Levine, Mortimer, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question 1558-1568 (Stanford, 1966), pp. 62–85 and pp. 99–162.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., p. 64.

⁹ Alford, Stephen, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558-15 69 (Cambridge, 1998).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 7 and p. 33.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 33, 7, 2, and 222. Alford draws on the work of Patrick Collinson and the notion of a monarchical republic, extending the concept further back in the reign. Collinson, Patrick, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth,” in Elizabethan Essays (London and Rio Grande, 1994), pp. 31–57.Google Scholar

¹² Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, pp. 34-35.

¹³ Mendelson, Sara and Crawford, Patricia, Wome n in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), pp. 345–58Google Scholar. Jordan, Constance, “Women’s Rule in Sixteenth Century British Political Thought,” Renaissance Quarterly 40, 3 (Autumn 1987): 421–51, “Feminism and the Humanists: The Case of Sir Thomas Elyot’s Defence of Good Women,” Renaissance Quarterly 36, 2 (Summer 1983): 181–201Google Scholar, and Renaissance Feminism (Ithaca, 1990). Weisner, Merry, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 239–58Google Scholar; Sommerville, Margaret, Sex a nd Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early Modern Europe (London, 1995), pp. 40–78.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Levin, Carole, The Heart and Stomach of a King (Philadelphia, 1994)Google Scholar; Heisch, Allison, “Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence of Patriarchy,” Feminist Review 4 (1980): 45–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Queen Elizabeth I Parliamentary Rhetoric and the Exercise of Power,” Signs 1, 11 (1975): 31-55; Frye, Susan, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Richards, Judith, “To Promote a Worn an to Beare Rule”: Talking of Queens in Mid-Tudor England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28, 1 (1997): 100–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Quene’? Gendering Tudor Monarchy,” Historical Journal 40, 1 (1997): 895-924; McLaren, A.N., Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 349-365. Doran, Susan, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Ann-Lee, Patricia, “A Body e Politique to Governe: Aylmer, Knox and the Debate on Queenship,” The Historian 52 (February, 1990): 242–61Google Scholar; Scalingi, Paula, “The Scepter or the Distaff: The Question of Female Sovereignty, 1516-1607,” The Historian 41, 1, (November 1978): 59–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, p. 2.

¹⁶ See, for example, Juan Luis Vives, Instruction of a Christian Woman, trans. Richard Hyrde (1540), STC 24857 and Tilney, Edmund, A brief and pleasant discourse of duties in Mariage, called the Flower of Friendshippe (London, 1568).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Richards, “To Promote a Woman to Beare Rule,” pp. 103-05; Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, p. 7; Sommerville, Margaret, Sex And Subjection (London, 1995), pp. 54–58.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, pp. 1-3

¹⁹ Jones, Norman, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age (Oxford, 1993), p. 4.Google Scholar

²⁰ Richards, “Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Quene?’”

²¹ Loach, Jennifer, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986), p. 79.Google Scholar

²² I Mary, st. 3, c. 1, Statutes of the Realme, IV, 222, in Loades, David, The Reign of Mary Tudor, (2nd ed.; New York, 1991), p. 89.Google Scholar

²³ Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern Europe, p. 350.

²⁴ Loades, Reign of Mary Tudor, 89. Richards, “Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Quene’?” pp. 903-05.

²⁵ Commons Journal, 1: 53. SirSmith, Thomas, “Orations For and Against the Queen’s marriage,” in Strype, John, The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith (Oxford, 1820), app. 3, pp. 184–259.Google Scholar

²⁶ Smith, “Orations,” in Strype, Life of Smith, p. 208.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 210.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Sir David Lyndsay’s lengthy work, The Monarchic (1552) in The warkis of the famous and worthie knicht Schir David Lyndesay (Edinburgh, 1574), STC 15660, was one of the first tracts written in response to female rule. In 1558, Goodman’s, Christopher How Superior Powers Ought to Be Obeyd (Geneva, 1558, reprint, New York, 1931)Google Scholar and Gilby’s, Anthony An Admonition to England and Scotland to call them to repentance in The Appellation of John Knox from the cruell and most injust sentence pronounced against him by the false bishippes and clergie of Scotland,” in The Works of John Knox, ed., Laing, David, vol. 4, (New York, 1966), pp. 553–71Google Scholar, both appeared. In these works, zealous Protestant reformers justified rebellion against an ungodl y, and female, ruler.

³⁰ Knox, John, The First Blast Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (Geneva, 1558)Google Scholar, in The works of John Knox, ed. Laing, 4:365-422. Some of the many works addressing Knox’s First Blast and its importance to the issue of female monarchy include: Amanda Shephard, Gender and Authority in Sixteenth-Century England: The Knox Debate (Keele, 1995; A. N. McLaren, “Delineating the Elizabethan Body Politic: Knox, Aylmer and the Definition of Counsel 1558-8 8,” History of Political Thought 27, 2 (Summer 1996): 224-52, and idem, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I; Lee, “A Bodye Politique to Governe: Aylmer, Knox and the Debate on Queenship,” pp. 242-61.

³¹ Richards, “To Promote a Woman to Beare Rule,” pp. 114-18.

³² Knox, First Blast, in Works of John Knox, ed., Laing, 4:373-74.

³³ Aylmer, John, An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjects (London, 1559) STC 1005.Google Scholar

³⁴ DAylmer-An Harborowe, Dlv.

³⁵ Ibid., B3.

³⁶ Ibid., B2v.

³⁷ Mclaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 69. Mclaren contends that Aylmer’s obedience and loyalty to the queen rested on her acceptance of counsel by godly men, since only then would the godly commonweal legitimate her rule.

³⁸ Aylmer, An Harborowe, C4.

³⁹ Aylmer, An Harborowe, H2v-H3.

⁴⁰ Lewd Pasquil, BL, Stowe 354, f. 18.

⁴¹ Peck, George T., “John Hales and the Puritans during the Marian Exile,” Church History 10 (1941): 159–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Read, Conyers, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1961), pp. 42, 50, 66.Google Scholar

⁴² Hales is referred to as a leader of the commonwealth men in Peck, “John Hales and the Puritans during the Marian Exile,” pp. 161-62 and in Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil, pp. 42, 50, 66. However, Geoffrey Elton (in “Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men’ of Edward VI’s Reign,” in The English Commonwealth 1547-1640, ed. Peter Clark, Alan G. T. Smith and Nicholas Tyacke [Leicester, 1979]), draws on the work of Michael Bush, The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (1976) and reiterates Bush’s thesis that even if there were a group of men who could be called the commonwealth men, that they had no set agenda or program and cannot be called a party. Elton goes on to disprove the entire notion of a party, and traces the use of the term back to Pollard, who, he argues, had little evidence on which to base the use of the term party. However, even Elton himself notes that the Commonwealth-Men, who included Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, and Robert Crowley, in addition to Hales, all shared similar goals, that they were “men exercised over social distress” who tried to correct the social ills of society. Elton, “Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men,’” pp. 23-25, 36. He adds that “if there was a commonwealth party active in the reform of the realm” during Somerset’s regime, Hales was it, and that it was Hales “alone who pushed the anti-enclosure policy” (ibid., p. 35). Moreover, A. N. McLaren, in challenging the older emphasis on whether or not the group was a party, has convincingly demonstrated that whether or not there was a party is incidental to the key point of Hales’ political involvement, which, she argues, was motivated by a developing “commonwealth ideology,” one that demanded action as citizens for the good of the commonweal and True Church (Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, pp. 204-06).

⁴³ Elton, “Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men,’” pp. 35-36.

⁴⁴ Peck, “John Hales and the Puritans,” pp. 161-62; Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil, p. 50 and p 66.

⁴⁵ Peck, “John Hales and the Puritans,” pp 162-175.

⁴⁶ Ibid„ p. 163.

⁴⁷ Peck, “John Hales and the Puritans,” pp. 164-67; Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, pp. 7-8, pp. 14-24 and p. 32; McLaren, Political Cultu re in the Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 4.

⁴⁸ Peck, “John Hales and the Puritans,” p. 167.

⁴⁹ McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 4.

⁵⁰ During the reign of Edward VI, Hales worked quite closely with Protector Somerset, and as Elton has noted, “was without doubt in close touch with the Duke of Somerset.” Elton, “Reform and the ‘Commonwealth-Men,’” p. 34.

⁵¹ Hales, John, “An Oration of John Hales to the Queen’s Majesty,” in Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Townsend, G. and Cattley, S.R., 8 vols. (Oxford, 1837-41), 8:673–79.Google Scholar

⁵² Hales, “An Oration to the Queen’s Majesty,” p. 673.

⁵³ Ibid., pp. 678-79.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 676.

⁵⁵ MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, pp. 121-22; Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question, pp. 30-36.

⁵⁶ “Queen Elizabeth’s Conversations with the Scottish Ambassador, William Maitland, Laird of Leth-ington, September and October 1561,” in Elizabeth I Collected Works, ed. Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago, 2000), p. 66.

⁵⁷ Ibid., pp. 62-63.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 67.

⁵⁹ Though the meeting did not take place, the attempt to have a meeting in the face of negotiations that placed Mary in a powerful position intensified the succession crisis for Protestants such as Haynes, Hales. Samuel, ed., Collection of State Papers.. Left by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 2 vols. (London, 1740-1759), 1:388–89Google Scholar; Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, Elizabeth, 4 vols., ed. M.A.S. Hume (London, 1892-99), 1:246.

⁶⁰ Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1:213.

⁶¹ Jones, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age, pp. 103-04.

⁶² Ibid., p. 104.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 106.

⁶⁴ “Queen Elizabeth’s Conversations with William Maitland,” in Marcus, et.al, Elizabeth I, p. 66; MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 204.

⁶⁵ MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 176.

⁶⁶ Collinson, Patrick, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994): 51–92.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Levine, Mortimer, Tudor Dynastic Problems 1460-1571 (London, 1973), p. 98 and p. 176.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ In 1559 a deputation from the Commons asked the queen to marry, being careful, however, not to limit the queen’s choice to an Englishman, as had the deputation whic h requested Mary Tudor to marry a man from within the realm. “Queen’s Reply to Petition to Marry, 10 February,” in Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the Parliament of Elizabeth I, 2 vols. (Leicester, 1981) 1:44-45.

⁶⁹ “Commons’ Petition to the Queen,” in ibid., 1:91.

⁷⁰ MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, pp. 174-76. Arguments to exclude Mary Stuart, urgent because of Elizabeth’s perceived favoritism towards her and the strength of her claims, were premised both on her Scottish birth and her religion. MacCaffrey has argued that English contemporaries perceived a growing “Catholic menace” early in the 1560s and responded accordingly. More recently, Patrick Collinson has said there was in fact, an “exclusion crisis” regarding the succession, and that intense anti-Catholic sentiment was responsible for the maneuvers to ban Mary Stuart as a successor Collinson, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” pp. 51-92. Both historians, moreover, point out that this anti-Catholic sentiment was coupled with the very real animosity to the idea of a foreign (Scottish) succession.

⁷¹ “Commons’ Petition to the Queen,” 28 January, in Hartley, ed., Proceedings, 1:92.

⁷² The number of manuscript copies partly attests to its wide circulation, so too does the number of responses that appeared subsequently. MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 176; Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 89.

⁷³ Levine, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 64.

⁷⁴ Hales, Declaration, in Hargrave, ed., Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, pp. xxii-xxix.

⁷⁵ MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, pp. 208-209; Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 151. No such objection to the will surfaced during Henry’s reign, nor for decades afterward. Nonetheless, anticipating arguments from supporters of Mary’s rights to the succession, who seemed to be circulating rumors that the will was invalid because it was stamped and not signed, Hales provided hearsay evidence that it was, in fact, signed. Hales, Declaration, in Hargrave, ed., Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, pp. xxi-xxvi.

⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. xxix-xxxviii.

⁷⁷ Hales supplemented his argument regarding alien inheritance by contending that Mary Stuart did not meet the criteria of a medieval statute that exempted the children of English monarchs from the common law rule. He stipulated that the 1351 statute passed by Edward Ill’s Parliament, which stated that “the children of the kings of England whenever and wherever they were born, and children after-wards born abroad of parents in the allegiance of the king of England” could inherit, did not apply to Mary. Hales, and others who wrote after him, argued that Mary Stuart was not a child of an English king, and that the statute clearly intended that only children of the king, not any li neal descendants several generations removed, were exempted from the common law rule. Moreover, Mary Stuart’s parents, unlike the exception noted in the statute, were out of the allegiance of the king of England at the time of her birth. Hence, Hales argued, Mary Stuart could not use this statute to claim she was exempted from the common law rule against alien inheritance of property, an argument that anticipated the strength of her claim and supporters, as well as the arguments of those supporters.

⁷⁸ Hales, Declaration, in Hargrave, ed., Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, p. xxxviii. Hales was careful to qualify the Grey claim, however, by stating that there were opponents to Catherine’s inheritance who claimed the line was illegitimate since Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, had a wife living at the time he wed Mary Tudor, Henry’s younger sister. Hales presented evidence and arguments for the inaccuracy of such an allegation, most obviously that Henry VIII would neve r have allowed his sister to enter such an unlawful union, much less divert the succession to their issue if Brandon had a living and lawful wife. Hales, Declaration, in ibid., pp. xxxviii-xli.

⁷⁹ Ibid., p. xx.

⁸⁰ Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, p. 1.

⁸¹ Hales did not develop the idea of obtaining foreign legal opinion on his own, nor did he obtain these opinions alone. Robert Beale had traveled abroad specifically for the purpose of obtaining opinions about the marriage from continental canon lawyers. The cost of such a trip had lent credence to suspicions that Hales probably had financial and political assistance for the tract, and Levine argued that Lord John Grey became an important “manager” of Beale’s trip. The idea for sending Beale to the continent emanated from Hales, though it appears that Sir John Grey and Francis Newdi-gate, stepfather of Hertford, both wanted to see the marriage validated, the latter for family reasons, the former most likely for political reasons. See Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question, pp. 71-73. In addition, the interrogatories of John Grey and Hales support this conclusion. Haynes, Bur-ghley State Papers, 1:411-17.

⁸² Hales, Declaration, in Hargrave, ed., Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, p. xx.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 8.

⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 149.

⁸⁶ The 1563 Parliament was prorogued and did not meet again until 1566. Sure enough, the first matter raised by the Commons was the succession, with a speech given by an MP. referencing a bill nominating a successor. A constitutional crisis was narrowly averted, as Elizabeth, first responding to the Commons by attempting to limit speech on the matter, ultimately rescinded the order that speech on the succession cease after MP.s began debating their constitutional right to free speech. Commons Journal, 1:76-77.

⁸⁷ Jones, Norman, “Parliament and the Political Society of Elizabethan England,” in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Hoak, Dale (Cambridge, 1995), p. 236.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Hales, Declaration, in Hargrave, ed., Hereditary Right of the Crown of England, xlll. “Therefore, on account of the injustice and harm, the royal sovereignty is transferred by the nation to the nation.”

⁸⁹ McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, pp. 149-159; Alford, William Cecil and the British Su ccession Crisis, p. 36.

⁹⁰ Letters from Bacon to Cecil begging his intercession to restore him to favor are in BL, Harleian 1877, fos. 26-26(v) and BL, Harleian 5176, fos. 97-98. MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 176; Jones, Birth of the Elizabethan Age, p. 106; Levine, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, pp. 64-76.

⁹¹ Levine, Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 72.

⁹² Hasler, The House of Commons, 2:239.

⁹³ Hoak, ed., Tudor Political Culture, p. 1.