The Royal Supremacy and Episcopacy ‘Jure Divino’, 1603–1640

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Laudian divines cried up the king's prerogative. But they also affirmed that episcopacy was by divine, not human right. Wasjure divinoepiscopacy, which many clerics asserted in the decades after Bancroft's famous sermon of 1589, in fact incompatible with the traditional English theory of the Royal Supremacy? Catholics and extreme puritans answered this question in the affirmative, and many recent commentators have accepted their judgement. The purpose of the present study is to question this interpretation, and to suggest that the first two Stuarts endorsed the theory ofjure divinoepiscopacy not because they were misled by the rhetoric of such men as Bancroft, Barlow and Laud, but because they correctly perceived that these divines were vigorous supporters of the king's Supremacy in ecclesiasticals.