Figgis again: “when all reservations have been made, there can be little doubt that it is right to treat the growth of political ideas, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as a branch of ecclesiastical history. With a few exceptions religion or the interests of some religious body gave the motive for the political thought of the period; to protect the faith, or to defend the Church, or to secure the Reform, or to punish idolatry, or to stop the rebellion against the ancient order of Christendom, or to win at least the right of a religious society to exist; this was the ground which justified resistance to tyrants and the murder of kings; or on the other hand exalted the Divinely given authority of the civil rulers.”

These centuries were still medieval in the sense that political theory was a branch of theology.