‘To Take the Sword is to Draw the Sword without the Authority of the Prince’: Obedience, Duty and Romans 13 During the 1549 Rebellions in England

Abstract

ABSTRACT The motivations behind the 1549 rebellions were born of socio-economic and religious concerns. However, some contemporary commentators identified another underlying factor: a failure to observe the precepts of Romans 13. The text demands that all subjects must obey the higher powers for fear of God’s wrath, and that rulers have a reciprocal duty to protect their subjects from evil. In their response to the rebellions, Thomas Cranmer, Robert Crowley, and Thomas Lever, amongst others, provided an exegesis of Romans 13 that refused to place the blame for the uprising at the door of the rebels alone. Instead, they recognized that the temporal and spiritual ministers were likewise guilty of failing to observe their divinely ordained duties. As a result, what these interpreters revealed was that all classes of society shared a responsibility for the rebellions of 1549 because all had equally failed to observe the commands of Romans 13.