kingship elected by divine right, not by the authority of Rome. David's repeated forbearance of
revenge against Saul and recognition of
Saul's divine election as the "Lord's anointed," on the
other hand, became --
especially in England --
a typological precedent which could be used to
restrain and warn against the dangers of rebellion or regicide. As early as Cranmer's 1547 Homily
on Obedience, the English theory of non-resistance is modeled on David "who was many tymes
most cruelly and wrongfully persecuted of kyng Saul & his people yet he never resisted” (Riiii).
Episodes from I Samuel 24 and 26 in which David refrains from violence against Saul are cited as
prescriptive models which "geveth a general rule and lesson, to all subiects in the world, not to
resist their leige lord & king, not to take a sweard by their private aucthoritie, against their king,
gods anointed" (Si). The English monarch, being like Saul, "the Lord's anointed,” deserves the
same absolute respect, even in trying circumstances, which David owed to Saul.
Such a doctrine assumed even greater importance during the final decades of the Tudor
monarchy. The Papacy regarded Elizabeth I, whose father had executed Catharine of Aragon in
order to marry her Protestant mother, as a new "whore of Babylon.” In 1570, Elizabeth's twelfth
year on the throne, Pope Pius V issued a Papal Bull offering dispensation to any Catholic daring
enough to make attempt against her life. A series of regicidal plots followed. Only after the 1587
execution of the Scots Queen, Elizabeth's own cousin Mary Stuart, was her reign secured, and
even then the price of security was high. When MacDuff, in the "Scottish play,” laments that
"most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope' the Lord's anointed Temple and stolen thence the life
of the building” (2.3.67-68), he voices the sentiment of moral outrage felt by many Catholics over
the judicial execution of the mother of the future King of England. That Catholic plots regularly
involved a plan to murder Elizabeth and restore the Catholic monarchy under Mary's auspices
might not have justified the execution, but it does show how morally treacherous and perplexing
the political realities of the era were.
The central role played by the narrative of conflict between David and Saul in the Tudor
ideology of theocratic rule and non-resistance is underscored in the anonymous 1570 Homilie
Against Disobedience and Wylful Rebellion (STC 13679.2), issued in response to the threat of
rebellion by the Northern Lords. It was in such a context, perhaps shortly after joining his
beloved elder friend Thomas Radcliffe, the 3rd
Earl of Sussex¹, in the 1570 expedition to put
down the Scots rebellion (Ward 35-48), that Oxford read and marked the books of I and II Samuel
in his 1569-70 Geneva Bible. The question of David's non-resistance to Saul was apparently
1
Ward describes Oxford as being "for the next thirteen years…the staunchest supporter Sussex possessed at Court. He was to Sussex
what Philip Sidney was to the Earl of Leicester” (48). As Lord Chamberlain of her Majesty's Household, Sussex was of course the
patron and administrative power behind the royal troop known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men from 1569 up until his death in 1583
(Chambers II 92-96), at which time it became known as the Queen's Men and passed under the administrative supervision of some
unknown person.
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