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THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY MODERN THEORIES OF GOVERNANCE
emphasis did not fall on the “gemina persona” of the monarch but rather on the
anthropomorphic nature of the kingdom, which needs only one head, which
was obviously King James. It is worth paying attention to this line of thought
in Edward Forset’s wording:
Let vs imagine a bodie so monstrous, as whereunto two heads were at once affixed,
shall not that bodie receiue much damage by the diuision and confusion of those
two heads? must not the bodie in that case eithr be diuided by alootting of one
side to the one, and the other side to the other head? [...] What we as by fiction
doe imagine might be done in the naturall bodie: Man (that imagineth nothing
but euill) and therefore can produce more prodigious errours than nature in her
escapes hath euer patterned, hath indeed often brought to passé (though with most
cursed successe) in the bodie politique. Haue we not had within this one land of
England, the hideous Heptarchie of seuen heads at once? nay hath not the whole
Iland of Britania, being a bodie perfectly shaped, rounded, and bounded with an
inuironing sea, beene a long time thus disseuered, and disfigured by that vnluckie
dualitie the author of diuision? [...] Here I find the matter of Vnion to lye so full in
my way, that euen it stoppeth my passage, forcing me (notwithstanding the exact
handling thereof by others) to giue it some little touch by the addition of proofe
from these my comparisons also: for doubtlesse, if in the former times two heads
caused the diuiding and halfeing of the bodie; the same reason now requireth, that
this one so virtuous and powerfull head should reunite and draw againe into one,
the distracted and long repurgning parts.*”
Even King James applied rhetoric similar to the language found in legal treaties
in his speeches in which he referred to himself as the head and his people as the
body, by which rather obviously he merged the “King’s two bodies” theory with
the organic conception of state. As the aforementioned Albert Rolls argues,
when James regards himself as the head of a community which also contains
the body of the state, he rejects the notion that he is simply a member of the
body and subordinates the whole community to his leadership.
For James, the King is the embodiment of the state, and the king is the head of a
state which simultaneously contains that Body. James has discarded the distinction
between the king as head and the King as Body, and bypassed the whole problem
352 Edward Forset: A Comparative Discovrse of the Bodies Natvral and Politique. Wherein out of
the Principles of Nature, is set forth the true forme of a Commonweale, with the dutie of Subiects,
and the right of the Soueraigne: together with many good points of Politicall learning, mentioned
in a Briefe after the Preface, London, printed for Iohn Bill, 1606, 57-59.
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