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looked among the women. 33 In his  First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women , published at the same time, Knox made a slightly more measured case. His would allow women who had been directly chosen by God to “bear rule”—but as governors, not kings. In the  Blast  he excoriated female rule by identifying and aligning three “mischievous Maries”: Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, and Mary’s mother Mary of Guise, regent in Scotland whilst her daughter lived in France. These latter day Athalias reveled in “cruelty, falsehood, pride, covetousness, deceit, and oppression.” He exempted Elizabeth from his strictures, however. She was instead “Debora,” one of the godly women whom God occasionally advanced to power to confound the expectations of worldly men. But Knox insisted that none, not even the biblical Deborah herself, might claim the authority to rule over men on the basis of inherent entitlement and worried lest Elizabeth’s example fatally undermine this crucial distinction. In a letter to William Cecil written after Elizabeth’s accession, he reminded him of the danger. At Mary’s death, he admitted, godly Englishmen had had no alternative but to allow Elizabeth to gain power. But Cecil and his fellows must now beware lest, “in establishing one who is indeed godly and profitable to her country,...[you] give interest, and title, to many who would bring their country into bondage and slavery.” 34 In 1559, the issue had political as well as theological immediacy. With two of the three Maries dead, the woman both men clearly had in mind was Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots and, to contemporaries, “the French queen” through her marriage to the French king Francis II. 35
    How then to legitimate Elizabeth as a female ruler, without giving title to her fellow queen, cousin, and presumptive heir? Once Francis II’s death sent Mary back to Scotland, the problem changed form, without losing any of its urgency. It became even more urgent once she gave birth to a son, the future James I of England, in 1566. 36 One way forward was to personalize the anti-Marian critique by concentrating the attack on Mary Tudor’s monarchical legitimacy. This had the twofold advantage of allowing Elizabeth’s personal strengths to be highlighted, in what we might call bipartisan terms, while downplaying the vexatious issue of legitimate birth. Depicting Mary as Catholic and “foreign,” voluntarily ceding control of the English nation to her masterful husband, underscored Elizabeth’s status as a true “mere English ” queen, ordained by God to preserve the imperial crown. 37 At the same time, drawing attention to traits shared by the two Maries worked to disallow Mary Stuart’s claim to the English throne. For committed Protestants, this was particularly important during the period, which lasted until the 1580s, when Elizabeth did not allow hostility to that claim or to Mary’s person to be overtly expressed. 38 The message conveyed by this play of oppositions was a simple one: only God’s favor preserved the English nation. His favor was signified by His manifest approval of Elizabeth’s rule. Only her queenship prevented the restoration of the tyranny and cruelty of Mary I’s reign, at the hands of a woman who would stop at nothing to succeed her as Mary II.
    John Aylmer’s  Harborowe for Faithful and True Subjects,  written in 1558 to respond to Knox’s  Blast , announced this new direction. In Mary I’s reign the realm was put to a “sore plunge through her wilfulness,” because “she would show herself a loving worm and an obedient wife [to Philip], rather than a careful governess.” Elizabeth, in contrast, “walketh wisely in the steps of Him that hath called her...represent[ing] a lively image in her mortality of his incomparable and infinite majesty.” 39 Englishmen must commit themselves absolutely to Elizabeth, “God’s chosen instrument,” if the English race and