1 This doubleness of the woman is the subject of frequent comment by Christian theologians of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. For a comprehensive study see McLaughlin, Eleanor Commo, “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Women in Medieval Theology,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Ruether, Rosemary K. (New York, 1974), pp. 213-66.Google Scholar

2 I use the term feminist advisedly to describe the criticism of sixteenth-century writers who protest contemporary attitudes and practices that systematically underprivilege women. Their assertions do not constitute the basis of a practical political program. Rather they reveal the nature of contemporary patriarchalism as ideology. By referring to divine and natural law, they indicate its injustice and imply the need to reconstitute society on other and fairer principles.

3 Literary and historical criticism on the representation and lives of Renaissance women is now so vast that I mention only a few seminal and recent works. For a general survey see Kelso, Ruth, Doctrine for the Gentlewoman of the Renaissance (Urbana, 1956)Google Scholar; for a theoretical approach to the history of women, see the essays of Joan Kelly, recently collected in Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago, 1984). For an analysis of the Renaissance legal and theological attitudes toward women see Maclean, Ian, The Renaissance Notion of Women (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For essays on women and their humanist education, see Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York, 1980). For some comprehensive recent work, see Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. by Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse, 1986), and Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago, 1986).

4 Levine, Mortimer, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460-1571 (London, 1973), pp. 64–72.Google Scholar For further studies of the events and issues concerning the Tudor succession, see Levine, Mortimer, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question: 1558-1568 (Stanford, 1966)Google Scholar, and “The Place of Women in Tudor Government,” in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton, ed. Delloyd J. Guth and John W. McKenna (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 109-23. For studies of woman's rule in sixteenth-century England see Phillips, James E., “The Background to Spenser's Attitude Toward Women Rulers,” HLQ 5, 1 (1941), 5–32 Google Scholar; Scalingi, Paula Louise, “The Scepter or the Distaff: The Question of Female Sovereignty, 1516-1607,” The Historian 41, 1 (1978), 59–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greaves, Richard L., Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation: Studies in the Thought of John Knox (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980), pp. 157–253 Google Scholar; Warnicke, Retha M., “Queens Regnant and the Royal Supremacy, 1525-1587” in Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport, Connecticut, 1983), pp. 47–66 Google Scholar; and Levin, Carole, “Queens and Claimants in Sixteenth-century England” in Gender, Ideology, and Action: Historical Perspectives on Women's Public Lives, ed. Sharistanian, Janet (Westport, New York and London, 1986), pp. 41–66 Google Scholar. Dennis Moore, of the Rhetoric Program, University of Iowa, is currently preparing an edition of Henry Howard's important sixteenth-century treatise on woman's rule, A Dutifull Defence of the Lawfull Regiment of Women, hitherto available only in manuscript.

5 Certain of the conditions governing Mary's accession have a tangential relevance to the question of woman's rule. Mary claimed the throne not by right of inheritance but by virtue of Parliamentary statute, that is, the Third Succession Act of 1544, which had given Henry the right to determine in his will the eligibility of his daughters to succeed to the throne. His will declared that if either woman married “without the consent of the councillors named by Henry to rule during Edward's minority,” they would lose their right to the throne; obviously this reflects Parliament's concern that a queen regnant could not be expected (or perhaps trusted) to exercise appropriate rule (Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, p. 74-75.) John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, also challenged Mary and Elizabeth on these grounds. He arranged for Edward VI to issue “letters patent” fixing the succession on Lady Jane Grey in which Mary and Elizabeth were rejected in part because “after their accessions they might marry aliens, and such unions might lead to the subversion of the laws and customs of England.” As Levine points out, however, the marriage of a queen regnant to a domestic nobleman was also dangerous: it “might provoke baronial jealousies and even factional strife … ” (Levine, p. 85). And a virgin queen would inevitably cause difficulties in the succession. In short, the prospect of a woman on the throne was not a comforting one, in part because of what was perceived as her inferior standing vis a vis a potential husband.

6 For the significance of this change see Elton, G. R., The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 333, 335-36.Google Scholar

7 The most thorough discussion in a work of the sixteenth century of the emotional (in contrast to the legal and political) difficulties queens regnant confront because of liabilities of gender is to be found in Bodin's Six Livres de la République (1576). Bodin is persistently hostile to the notion of woman's rule and argues that the sexuality of a queen regnant, whether she marries or not, will be a detriment to the welfare of her people. Many of his most perceptive remarks—on the ignominy inevitably suffered by the prince consort of a queen regnant, and on the unsettling effects of an unmarried queen regnant's amorous favors—appear to reflect on the various courtships of Elizabeth I. It was probably not an accident that his work was not translated or printed in England until after her death; see especially Book VI in Six Bookes of the Commonweale, trans. Richard Knolles (London, 1606), pp. 746-54.

8 The question of woman's rule had been raised indirectly earlier. Sir John Fortescue, declaring invalid the Yorkist claims of Edward IV, did not believe that women could become queens regnant under any circumstances; see Litzen, Veikko, A War of Roses and Lilies: The Theme of Succession in Sir John Fortescue's Works (Helsinki, 1971), esp. pp. 17–28.Google Scholar For Catherine of Aragon, who had to contemplate the succession after Henry VIII, the example of her mother, Isabella of Castile, was probably more compelling than Fortescue's common law arguments. For a discussion of some of the evidence concerning Catherine's plans for the accession of her daughter, see my “Feminism and the Humanists: The Case of Sir Thomas Elyot's Defence of Good Women,” Renaissance Quarterly 36, 2 (1983), 181-201.

9 The following articles added to the treaty further limit Philip's activities in England:” That Philip shall have none in his service but the queen's natural born subjects. That he shall not bring Foreigners into England, to make the English uneasy, and that he shall punish the contraveners. That he shall make no Alteration in the laws and customs of England. That he shall not carry the queen out of the kingdom unless she desire it, and that he shall not convey her children from thence without consent of the English Nobility. In case that the queen dies first, and leaves issue behind her, Philip shall not pretend any right to the Kingdom. That he shall not carry away the Jewels of the queen, or of the crown, nor make Alienation of what belongs to the kingdom. That England shall not directly nor indirectly be involved in the wars of the Emperor against “France.” Acta Regia: or An account of the Treaties, Letters, and Instruments Between the Monarchs of England and Foreign Powers (London, 1728), III, 407-408.

10 Tudor Constitutional Documents: 1485-1603, ed. J. R. Tanner (Cambridge, 1948), p. 123.

11 For a study of this theory in relationship to queenship, and particularly to the reign of Elizabeth I, see Axton, Marie, “The Influence of Edmund Plowden's Succession Treatise,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 37, no. 3 (1974), 209-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977). For the development of the theory itself, see Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1959).Google Scholar

12 Feb. 10, 1555, Cal. Span., XIII, 276, quoted in Loades, D. M., The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government, and Religion in England, 1 1553-1558 (London, 1979), p. 235.Google Scholar

13 Goodman, Christopher, How Superior Powers ought to be Obeyd of their Subjects: and Wherein they may lawfully by Gods Word be disobeyed and resisted (Geneva, 1558), sig. g2v.Google Scholar For a study of the Marian exiles, see Garrett, Christina Hallowell, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1938).Google Scholar

14 PRO SP69/13/856, 856 (i); quoted in Loades, Mary Tudor, p. 364. On the question of the English attitude toward and participation in the war, see Loades, pp. 241-43.

15 Elizabeth appears to have feared the political consequences of fostering any close familial ties whatsoever. Her reluctance to marry seems to derive both from a wish neither to share political power nor to subject it to the envy of a potential successor, whether or not this be a husband or her own child. See, for example, her comments reported in George Buchanan, Rerum scoticarum historia, published in an English translation as The Tyrannous Reign of Mary Stewart, trans, and ed. by W. A. Gatherer (Edinburgh, 1958), pp. 58-59. See also her response to Parliament in 1563 quoted in Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1601 (New York, 1953-57), I, 127.Google Scholar

16 Becon, Thomas, An humble supplicacioun unto God for the restoring of his holye woorde unto the churche of England (Strasburg, 1554), sig. A7.Google Scholar

17 One should note, however, that although Becon identified Catholicism and woman's rule as part of a larger and diabolical scheme to instutute Godless government, his was not the only position a Protestant could take. Becon's contemporary, John Ponet, in his Shorte Treatise ofPolitike Power (1556), disliked Mary as much as Becon did, but he objects to her only as a tyrant who abuses the royal prerogative and never as a woman. When he complains that she has used the prerogative to alienate portions of the realm, he compares her to her father, who did not, but he attributes her tyranny to her refusal to obey the law not to her womanhood. See specifically Ponet's attack on Bishop Bonner, A Shorte Treatise, reprinted in facsimile in Hudson, Winthrop S., John Ponet (1516?- 15S6): Advocate of a Limited Monarchy (Chicago, 1942), pp. 67–70.Google Scholar

18 Gilby, Antony, An Admonition to England and Scotland to call them to repentance … in The Appellation of John Knoxe from the cruell and most injust sentence pronounced against him by the false bishippess and clergie of Scotland … (Geneva, 1558), sig. I4, I4V.Google Scholar

19 Knox, John, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in Works (Edinburgh, 1895), p. 373.Google Scholar Knox had written against Mary Tudor as early as 1554; in letters to fellow Protestants in England early that year, he reported that he had consulted divines in Switzerland on various matters, among them whether “a female can rule a kingdom by divine right, and transfer the right to her husband,” and in July he published his attack on her Spanish marriage, A Faithful Admonition to the Professors of Cod's Faith in England. For a comprehensive study of Knox, see Greaves, Theology and Revolution.

20 The basic distinction was between positive law, the creation of the legislature, and natural or fundamental law, innate in the human mind as a set of guiding legal principles. For English historians, Roman law tended to be regarded as ambiguous; it was neither purely positive law nor was it the law of nature despite its alleged universality. Most historians were reluctant to identify either Roman law or English common law with a law of nature. See, among others, Charles Howard Mcllwain's classic study, Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modem (Cornell, 1940); Gough, J. W., Fundamental Law in English Constitutional History (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar; and Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957).Google Scholar Thomas Starkey's character, “Cardinal Pole,” however, claims that Roman law most resembles natural law because it is “now the commyn law almost of al Chrysteyen natyonys” (Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset, 1535; quoted in Manley, Laurence, Convention, 1500-1750, Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 In his conception of the image of God as double, expressed in a superior fashion in the man, and inferior in the woman, Knox follows both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (McLoughlin, “Equality,” p. 218.) Aristotle's text is the Politics, I, v, 5-8.

22 The question is complicated by the fact that Protestants in England regard the public and political significance of this essentially Christian right in various ways. In general, three principal positions are evident: that of the radical Protestants (Ponet, Goodman); that of the Calvinists; and that of conservative Protestants or Anglicans. The first insisted that an ordinary subject might commit tyrannicide should his conscience so dictate; the second that the subaltern magistrate acting on behalf of the people might do so for the same reason; the third that conscience could only influence prayer and that actual political obedience was owed even the tyrant. For an analytic summary of these positions, see Greaves, Richard L., “Concepts of Political Obedience in Late Tudor England: Conflicting Perspectives,” Journal of British Studies, 22 (1982), 23–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Because the family was regularly regarded as a diminutive kingdom, whose head was the husband, the obligation of the wife to obey was also conceived of more or less in terms of the right to resist on the basis of conscience. The question was, of course, what kind of resistance was legitimate, whether a wife might translate into action a conscientious objection to her husband's demands or whether she should sustain them “passively,” that is, within her mind and spirit. In general, a wife, like the conservative Protestant, was restricted to prayer alone. William Gouge, for example, insists that “the evil quality and disposition of his heart and life, doth not deprive a man of that civill honour which God hath given unto him. Though an husband, in regard of evill qualities may carry the Image of the divell, yet in regard of his place and office, he beareth the Image of God: so doe Magistrates in the Commonwealth, Ministers in the Church, Parents and Masters in the Family” (Works, I, 160; quoted in Charles, H. and George, Katherine, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation: 1570-1640 [Princeton, 1961], p. 279.)Google Scholar A theoretical basis for a woman's right to take public action if her conscience so dictates was provided by numbers of treatises, both Catholic and Protestant, in England and on the continent, on sixteenth-century marriage, but the right itself does not appear to have been much exercised before the middle of the seventeenth century, when Leveller women actually petitioned Parliament. See Higgins, Patricia, “The Reactions of Women with Special Reference to Women Petitioners” in Politics, Religion, and The English Civil War, ed. Manning, Brian (London, 1973), pp. 179–222.Google Scholar Betty Travitsky's unpublished study of the case of Margaret Vincent—“The ‘Pittilesse Mother’: A Filicide of the English Renaissance“—suggests, however, that Vincent's crime was motivated by religious conscience as well as by hatred of her husband.

23 Calvin, John, “Letter 15,” The Zurich Letters, second series, ed. Robinson, Hastings, the Parker Society 18 (Cambridge, 1845), p. 35.Google Scholar

24 Aylmer, John, An Harborowe for Faithful and Trewe Subjectes (Strasburg, 1559), sig. G4.Google Scholar

25 John Colet had similarly historicized scripture in his analysis of Romans 13, where he declares that St. Paul's instructions to Christians to respect secular authority are to be understood to refer to the precarious status of Christians in first-century Rome: “it is St. Paul's wish, while the Church is as yet in its infancy, and especially in the case of those at Rome, under such wide control of heathens, that all things should be done discreetly… . For, as St. Paul implies, God allows and suffers such magistrates, and the power of the unbelieving, for a time”; An Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, trans. J. H. Lupton (London, 1873; rept. Ridgewood, N. J., Gregg Press, 1965), pp. 91, 92. Manley points out that when interpreting scripture Colet, like Erasmus, is concerned “to distinguish between the particular historical circumstances that contribute to the wording of the text and its universal human meaning” (Convention, p. 74.) While this is also true of Aylmer's text here, other defenders of women, notably Bruni da Pistoia, in his Difese delle donne (Milan, 1559), argue more subversively for purely historical interpretations of laws and customs governing women.

26 Greville specifically refers to Sidney's opinion of Elizabeth's relationship to the Duke of Anjou, stating that Sidney feared their marriage would end in precisely the situation that had obtained between Mary I and Philip: “Because the weaker sort here (ie. Anjou), being fortified by strong parties abroad, and a husband's name at home, must necessarily have brought the native soveraigne under a kinde of covert baron, and thereby forced her Majesty, either to lose the freedom and conscience of a good Christian, and the honor of an excellent prince, or the private reputation of an obedient wife”; “The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney,” in Works, ed. Alexander Grosart (n.p., 1870; rept. New York, AMS Press, 1966), p. 53.

27 Smith, Sir Thomas, De Republica Anglorum, ed. Alston, L. (Cambridge, 1906), p. 22.Google Scholar

28 Leslie, John, A Defence of the honour of Marie Quene of Scotlande (London, 1569), sig. I2v. Google Scholar Leslie's argument on the whole is very difficult to follow; I have rearranged the order in which he makes his points so that it makes more logical sense. Leslie became Mary's privy councillor in 1561 and Bishop of Ross in 1565.

29 “for those who willjudge [the work] otherwise, it will reflect rather to their detriment than to the scorn of others.” Chambers, David, Discours de la légitime succession des femmes aux possessions de leur parens et du gouvernmmt des princesses aux Empires et Royaumes (Paris, 1597), sig. a3.Google Scholar

30 sig. A5V. “And however much in many respects the status of the man is given preference over that of the woman, if it is a question of the dowry, there is no legal matter that is more subject to privilege.”

31 Despite the fact that the Salic law (1464), which prevented royal women in France from inheriting the throne, had no status in English common law, both Leslie and Chambers are concerned to show that it has no bearing on the general question of the fitness of a woman to rule. Leslie states that the fact that in France women were as frequently appointed to regencies as men indicates that the French did not regard women as unfit for civil government (sig. r4). Chambers makes the same point (sig. C8v). Chambers repeatedly points out that, apart from France, women have been entitled to inherit property and, by extension, a title, when this is at issue (sig. B7V, B8v.) The authorship of the Salic law itself is unknown. First published in Rouen in 1488, it appeared in the 1541 edition of Claude de Seyssel's Monarchic de France and was thereafter attributed to him. De Seyssel argues that the law benefits the kingdom, “for by falling into the feminine line it [the crown] can come into the power of a foreigner, a pernicious and dangerous thing, since a ruler from a foreign nation is of a different rearing and condition, of different customs, different language, and a different way of life from the men of the lands he comes to rule. He ordinarily, therefore, wishes to advance those of his nation, to grant them the most important authority in the handling of affairs, and to prefer them to honors and profits”; The Monarchy of France, trans. J. H. Hexter, ed. Donald Kelley (New Haven, 1981), p. 48. De Seyssel assumes that there will not (or perhaps cannot) be any rearrangement of the traditional terms of marriage in the case of a queen regnant—in effect, she will have no civic authority over her husband. His picture of her situation is, of course, a precise reflection of the difficulties encountered by Mary I. François Hotman's is the most comprehensive contemporary treatment of the Salic law, which he in fact invalidates because, he claims, it originated in “the lands beyond the Rhine,” that is, in the kingdom of the Salic not the Gallic French, and it is relevant only “in the context of private law, and not of the public law of the kingdom and commonwealth.” Hotman declares that women are in fact prevented from inheriting the throne in France by virtue of ancient custom and that “even if no article of the Salic or Frankish law, by which women were excluded from hereditary right in the kingdom, be extant, nevertheless the practices and customs of the nation have acquired for force of written law”; Hotman, François, Francogallia (1573), trans. Salmon, J. H. M., ed. by Giesey, Ralph (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 270-75.Google Scholar

32 sig. B7. “Histories make it clear, and it is also approved by every law, that in cases where an elective office falls vacant and there are no worthy men in the town or nearby provinces, qualified persons may be chosen from elsewhere.”

33 sig. B7. “As there are among men those who are superior from instinct and without education, others who are quite capable, and a third group which is completely useless, understanding nothing and unwilling to learn, so there are the same differences among women. This being the case, there is no one so stupid who would consider that a dull-witted and uneducated man in this third category ought to be preferred to an intelligent woman, endowed with the qualities of persons in the first category.”

34 sig. B8. “This direction of the family is the first step in ascending to higher forms of government.”

35 sig. B8. “The advice of such experienced women, even though they may have no claims to a magistracy, is necessary for government, especially for a well-established republic where there is no need for a legislator to make laws.”

36 Bodin, Six Bookes, p. 754.

37 In England a married woman could request from Chancery the status of feme sole in distinction to that of her married state, of feme couverte. The former status preserved the married woman's right to her property. For a discussion of women and the law in Renaissance England, see Hogrefe, Pearl, “Legal Rights of Tudor Women and the Circumvention by Men and Women,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 3 (1972), 97–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Rogers, Thomas, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, (1607), ed. Perowne, J. J. S. (1854; rept. Cambridge, 1968), pp. 337-38.Google Scholar