Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in History
First Advisor
Isaac Stephens
Second Advisor
Marc Lerner
Third Advisor
Graham Pitts
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This thesis investigates printed polemics discussing succession crises during the long seventeenth century, and it traces how continuity and change defined religio-political debates from the Elizabethan period to the Stuart era. To do so, it focuses on the impact of two Catholic clergymen—John Lesley, the Scottish Bishop of Ross, and Robert Parsons, English exile and Jesuit priest. Lesley was the author of A Defence of…Marie Quene of Scotlande—originally—printed in 1569 and republished twice more in English in 1571 and 1584—which combatted Protestant efforts to exclude Mary Queen of Scots from the English throne by promoting her hereditary right to succeed Elizabeth I. Conversely, Parsons wrote A Conference About the Next Succession eight years after the Scottish queen’s execution in 1587 with the intention of undermining Mary’s Protestant son, James VI, in favor of the Spanish Habsburgs’ potential claim to the English crown. Both men deployed historical and legal arguments in their respective treatises, but with Lesley in favor of hereditary monarchy and Parsons devoted to elective monarchy. These Catholic clerics’ intellectual legacy proved strong and long-lasting well into the seventeenth century as their rhetorical techniques and ideas found traction as England experienced succession crises between the 1650s and 1690s. Historically and historiographically, recognition of this shows that the Catholic thought of two Britons—one Scottish and the other English—played a major role in shaping the religio-political cosmology of the early modern British, even among Protestants, as they faced the challenges of reformation, restoration, and revolution from the Elizabethan period to the late Stuart age. In short, this thesis argues that it is impossible to fully tell the history of these succession crises without giving Catholics and their contributions a central role in a narrative that has conventionally been told through a Protestant lens.
Recommended Citation
Bone, Troy Dallas, "The Bishop and the Jesuit: Catholic Influence on Succession Polemic in the Long Seventeenth Century" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2791.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2791