Abstract
“I have heard threats of great indignation against mee: and ... that his majesty’s settled resolution was to hang mee if I came into England.”1 Thomas White was not exaggerating the gravity of his predicament at the Restoration of the monarchy, and it was not for nothing that in 1659 he had fled to the Netherlands. It was by then not so much theological notoriety that put his life at risk, as his one major foray into political theorising: The Grounds of Obedience and Government, published in 1655, had established his reputation, even in the highest court circles, as an anti-monarchical troublemaker. As early as 1656, Charles himself identified White as a corrupter of his fellow Catholics — he having advised them to support Cromwell and having “printed a book for submission to the present [i.e. Protectorate] government.”2 Some few years later, the king, though by no means generally anti-Catholic, allegedly reemphasised his personal hostility: when White was “highly recommended to his Majesty, by a Man of great Note, ... the King, who hath a Royal insight in Persons and Businesses, stopt him with this short answer: ‘No more of that. I know what Man he is’.”3
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References
B.C. Southgate, ‘Thomas White’s Grounds of Obedience and Government: A note on the dating of the first edition’, Notes & Queries N.S. 28, 1981, 208–209.
Thomas White, The Grounds of Obedience and Government, facsimile of 2nd edn. (Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers Ltd., 1968).
Thomas Carte, A Collection of Original Letters and Papers... (2 vols.; London, 1739), I.221.
William Prynne, quoted by R.T. Petersson, Sir Kenelm Digby, the Ornament of England (London, 1956), p. 250.
Sir Edward Nicholas, Papers, ed. G.F. Warner (4 vols.; London, 1886), 1.303; cited henceforth as Nicholas Papers.
C. Hill, God’s Englishman (London, 1970), p. 145.
William Assheton, Evangelium Armatwn (London, 1663), p. 58.
Roger Palmer, The Catholique Apology (London, 1667), p. 79.
J.W. Adamson, Pioneers of Modern Education, 1600–1700 (Cambridge, 1905), p. 60.
John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
M.Y. Hughes ed., Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. III (London, 1962), p. 202.
C. Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, 1977), p. 280.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Southgate, B.C. (1993). Politics: The Grounds of Obedience and Government . In: “Covetous of Truth”. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idés, vol 134. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1850-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1850-7_6
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