SOURCE: "Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580," in The Cambridge History of Political Thought: 1450-1700, edited by J. H. Burns with Mark Goldie, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 194-218.

In the following excerpt, Kingdon asserts that Knox and others whose arguments were based on Calvinism had little impact on Political thought in Europe.

Well before Calvin's death … one group of his followers developed a body of resistance theory. These were the English and Scottish Marian exiles, refugees from the England of Mary Tudor and the Scotland of Mary of Guise, resident in a number of Reformed cities on the continent, including Calvin's own Geneva. Like many ideological refugees before and since, these Marian exiles spent much of their time in conspiring against the government which had driven them out, in looking for ways to create a more congenial government that might make possible their return home. The Marian exile was...