During the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558) a high number of English and Scottish Protestants left their country and went into exile on the Continent. From the new Protestant communities, especially from Germany and Switzerland, many of the so-called ‘Marian exiles’ started to oppose the reign of the Catholic Queen, by publishing pamphlets on the right of disobedience against tyrannical rulers. This is the case of John Ponet, Christopher Goodman and John Knox. In their political treatises, issued between 1556 and 1558, they contributed to rethinking the Calvinist concept of non-resistance and established the right of resistance to a ruler who becomes idolater and degenerates into a tyrant. The tyrant must be resisted by inferior magistrates; when they fail or neglect their duty, the common people or a single individual should act.
Mary Tudor was compared by the Marian exiles to Jezebel and Athalia, the wicked queens described in the Old Testament, and was considered as an enemy to oppose. The goal of these resistance pamphlets, then, was to encourage in England an armed opposition and rebellion to the ungodly Queen. In my paper I aim to evaluate the role played by the heated context of the exile in the composition of these treatises. I will focus on the interesting connection between the exile condition and the foundation of the right of resistance, in order to prove the efficacy of opposing a tyrannical government from the outside.
Prison/Exile: Controlled Spaces in Early Modern Europe 