‘Duplex and reciprocal’ obligation: Calvin’s Case (1608) and the development of early modern English citizenship

Whether or not people in early modern England were citizens has often been analysed in terms of individuals’ participation in self-rule, neglecting the fact that citizenship is also a legal status. Citizenship as a legal status comprises rights, conferred through belonging to a polity, and enacted through participation. This article seeks to understand the extent to which the legal status of early modern English subjects was citizenlike through examining Calvin’s Case (1608) and its afterlife. The judgement in Calvin’s Case drew on established legal principles to construct a legal status for English subjects, wherein natural allegiance to the monarch conferred protection. This remains the basis of British citizenship today. The judgement itself was ambiguous, defining protection both as natural protection emanating from the monarch and legal protection, that is, rights enshrined in law. The use of the judgement in the debates of the 1640s and 1680s about subjects’ capacities to resist perceived monarchical overreach sheds important light on how English individuals understood their rights, the relationship of these rights to belonging and the limits of enacting these rights through participation.