British Political Thought, 1500-1660: The Politics of the Post-Reformation. By Glenn Burgess. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 448 pp. $171 (hardback), $49.45 (paper).
The push for retrieval in the Protestant tradition has broadened to include political thought only within the past few years, thanks in no small part to Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. In turn, the work of recovering Anglican political thought specifically has scarcely even begun.[1] It is thus important to remember, for the sake of avoiding wasted effort, that scholars have already done a considerable amount of work that is germane to this goal. We have much to learn by availing ourselves of the fruits of their labors, with one standout example being Glenn Burgess’s British Political Thought, 1500-1660.
As the title indicates, this book is a survey of some of the most important English and Scottish political thinkers and their writings, from the sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century (or in other words, from the eve of the Reformation to the English Restoration). The Prologue covers the early 1500s, prior to the English Reformation; Chapter 1 the early English Reformation (Henry VIII and Edward VI); Chapter 2 the Marian period; Chapter 3 the reign of Elizabeth I; Chapter 4 the rule of James I and Charles I; Chapter 5 resistance and royalist literature of the English Civil War; Chapter 6 religious “Radicalism” during the same period; Chapter 7 the thought of Thomas Hobbes; and Chapter 8 the Interregnum.
Burgess examines a wide variety of thinkers, some well known (e.g., Hooker, Hobbes) and others more obscure. His treatment of them and their major writings is always careful and nuanced, with many other relevant sources available in the copious endnotes for those who are interested. Notably, Burgess’s historiography is not secular, meaning that he does not dismiss professed religious belief as a smokescreen for the “real” driving forces of history, i.e., material concerns. To the contrary, the entire book is framed around the question of how religion shaped British political thought during this time: “My central subject, then, is the way in which Scottish and English political thinking was marked by the impact of religion (above all, of the Reformation) on the affairs of the commonwealth and its government” (xiii). The importance of religion in Burgess’s historical account is apparent, as religious developments are shown to have consistently provided a major impetus for the political ideas under discussion. England’s rejection of papal authority, for example, led authors such as William Tyndale and Robert Barnes to write on the English monarch’s supreme temporal authority, to which all English subjects owed their unconditional obedience. By the same token, the accession of Mary I and her persecution of the English Reformers prompted fresh inquiries into the limits of political obedience—and the possibility of resistance or even tyrannicide—from the likes of John Ponet and Christopher Goodman. This pattern is maintained throughout the book, wherein it is made clear that much political writing of the period was an attempt to wrestle with the question of how best to govern Britain in the face of various religious factions vying for control and influence.
The political-philosophical issues raised in this book are numerous, too many to explore in detail. Perhaps one of the more interesting facts laid out by Burgess is the continued presence of resistance theory in Anglican thought (not just British thought) over time. The general impression one gets from scholarly overviews is that resistance theory finds no place in the Anglican tradition outside of the Marian exiles, who are treated as an anomaly. It is true that many of the Church of England’s most famous divines, both before and after Mary I, taught unconditional obedience to political rulers, which heavily contributes to the general impression mentioned above. Nevertheless, Anglican resistance theory did not disappear completely even after the accession of Elizabeth I. To name just one example, Burgess speaks briefly of an Anglican clergyman named Andrew Willet who argued that armed resistance to a tyrant could be permissible “under certain conditions” if carried out by “inferiour Magistrates” (116). The fact that any Church of England cleric was willing to maintain such a position in writing following the Elizabethan Settlement is noteworthy, and, without embarking on a full-scale discussion here, it raises the possibility that the Anglican tradition’s reputation for unconditional obedience might be somewhat overstated.
In sum, British Political Thought, 1500-1660 is an excellent work of history, replete with further resources for those who wish to go deeper into any particular figure or issue. Burgess has done tremendous work here, and I commend it to any who are looking for a good introduction to the topic.
Notes
- For a first step in this task, see The Editors, “A Synopsis of Anglican Political Thought,” The North American Anglican, 17 October 2025, https://northamanglican.com/a-synopsis-of-anglican-political-thought/, and The Editors, “Primary Sources in Anglican Political Thought,” The North American Anglican, 17 October 2025, https://northamanglican.com/primary-sources-in-anglican-political-thought/. ↑
