Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s

Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match

Bibliographic Data

ID8958246
AuthorsPeter Lake (0000-0003-1544-1020, Bedford College, corresponding author), P G Lake
Year1982
Volume25
Issue4
Pages805-825
Publication date1982-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x00021233
OpenAlexW2165536552
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited10

In 1620 Thomas Scott published a notorious pamphlet entitled Vox Populi . This purported to recount the proceedings of the Spanish council of state and denounced the devious machinations of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and by implication the pro-Spanish policy of King James. Once Scott's authorship became known he took the traditional way out and fled to the Low Countries. There he served as a preacher with the English regiments and as a minister at Utrecht. He also continued his pamphlet commentary on events in England. Scott, then, was that well-known figure, the radical puritan opponent of the Jacobean regime. He has certainly been cast in that role and until recently such a view of his career would have seemed unexceptionable enough. However, of late there has emerged a corpus of work which might be thought to render any such view of Scott untenable. On the one hand, the existence within the mainstream of English protestantism of anything approaching a coherent body of puritan attitudes has been challenged, at least until the emergence of Arminianism polarized religious opinion and almost created a self-conscious and aggressive puritanism where there had been none before. In the political sphere it has been claimed that within the predominant view of constitutional and political propriety any attempt at concerted opposition to royal policy was both conceptually and practically impossible

Adversary · Mainstream · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy

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