Queens and Controversy: John Knox and The Monstrous Regiment of Women

Abstract

This uncompromising assessment of a woman’s right to govern serves as both thesis and refrain in The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, written by the Protestant reformer John Knox.1 The publication of this vitriolic pamphlet was precipitated by the political situation in mid-sixteenth-century England and Scotland. Both countries were ruled by women in 1558, the year Knox issued his “blast” against their “monstrous regiment.” In Scotland, the infant Mary Stuart had become queen regnant in 1542, when her father, King James V, died just a few days after she was born. James Hamilton, earl of Arran, was the first governor of Scotland during the queen’s minority, but in 1554 he had been replaced by Mary’s mother, Marie of Guise, who was confirmed as queen regent. In England, meanwhile, yet another Mary had also become queen; in 1553, following the death of her half brother Edward VI, Mary Tudor, the eldest of Henry VIII’s three children, succeeded to the throne, becoming the first queen regnant in England.2