The English Inquisition
Constitutional Conflict and Ecclesiastical Law in the 1590s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8957358 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ethan H Shagan (Northwestern University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 541-565 |
| Publication date | 2004-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x0400384x |
| OpenAlex | W2105481407 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
This article examines the relationship between religious debate and constitutional conflict in the 1590s, focusing on the status of ecclesiastical law and the right of the church courts to impose ex officio oaths upon English subjects. It argues that Richard Cosin, a client of Archbishop Whitgift and the leading apologist for the government's use of ex officio oaths, used the issue to make a series of aggressive and controversial assertions of state power. These theoretical claims did not involve sovereignty or the powers of the monarch – the issues usually addressed by historians of political thought – but rather the much more theologically charged question of the line between public authority and private conscience. As such, Cosin and his supporters transformed the raw materials of conformity and anti-puritanism into a view of the state and its coercive powers that seemed to threaten both the common law and the Elizabethan regime's own claims that it did not make ‘windows into men's souls’
Archbishop · Conscience · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sovereignty · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616
Defining the Jacobean Church
Legal Debates on ‘Ex Officio’ Procedure in Late 16th Century England
Popularity and Monarchy
Mixing Canon and Common Law in Religious Prosecutions under Henry VIII and Edward VI
Religion, Political Thought and the English Civil War
Political Culture in the 1590s
Exploring biographical fictions
Hebraism and the problem of church and state in England, 1642–1660
Conscience and the Word of God
Excommunication in Postrevolutionary England, 1689–1714
Public Worship and Political Participation in Elizabethan England
Royal ecclesiastical supremacy and the Restoration church
Remembering usurpation
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2024 (20) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |