Hi, I'm Peter Adams, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Keynes College London and the LMU in Munich.

Online at historyofilosophy.net. Today's episode with such perfection govern English political thought.

It's time that I corrected a misleading impression. In the episodes that have so far been devoted to political thought in 15th and 16th century Europe, I've devoted a lot of attention to fairly radical ideas from the breathtaking cynicism of Machiavelli to the theme of tyrannoside in the Huguenots and Scottish reformers.

This focus is certainly defensible, the most daring ideas tend to be the most interesting, and in this case they had plenty of long-term influence.

Just for example, Sam Adams, who was an agitator of the American Revolution before he was a brand of beer, wrote his master's thesis on the question whether one may rightfully resist a supreme magistrate to preserve the Commonwealth.

That's about as loud an echo of 16th century Protestant political theory as you could want.

But I don't want you to get the idea that most theorists of this period wanted to overturn the social and political order, or destabilize the monarchy.

Even so bold and author as Tindale, famous for his provocative English translation of the Bible, can be found saying that the king's supremacy is such that he can be judged by no man, but only by God.

So, for a more balanced understanding of political thought in the period, we also need to look at the more subtle and gradual shifts that occurred between the late medieval and early modern periods.

The 15th century tends to get skipped when writing the history of political philosophy, but it was actually an important transitional period.

Not least because it was at this time that Parliament started to be seen as a genuinely representative assembly rather than just a high court of nobles.

We even find the Parliament being compared to the ancient Roman Senate.

This was still far away from the Parliament that would fight a civil war against the king in the 17th century.

The 15th century idea was more that the Parliament would support and advise the king.

Still, the Parliament had a legitimacy of its own and could offer a check and counterweight to royal power.

This legitimacy was grounded in a concept that in fact goes back to the medieval period.

That society is made up of three estates, those who work, pray, and fight, meaning the warrior and ruling class or nobility, the clergy, and the so-called commons or commonality.

A separate house for the commons, which could introduce bells for consideration by the nobles and kings, had already been established in the 14th century.

This was of course still a very hierarchical system, dominated by the monarch and the nobility.

The existing order was taken to be good both because it was ordained by God and because it was natural.

That was a core message of numerous works written in the Tutor period on the topic of the commonwealth or common wheel,

a term that refers both to the body politic and the benefit that comes from its good order.

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