ABSTRACT
Supposed Anglo-Saxon precedents were used to support the argument that England had cleansed the Roman Catholic Church of the abuses introduced through centuries by papal power. To justify the Elizabethan church settlement, Parker became a major patron of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, collecting manuscripts, encouraging the study of the Anglo-Saxon language, and publishing texts. As yet, not all agreed that political liberty had been brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons, but the emphasis on Anglo-Saxons as particularly able Germans now became a commonplace in writings on English history. Coke was more peculiarly English in his arguments; he traced the history of the common law of England back before the coming of Anglo-Saxons to time immemorial. There were anti-Whigs, like Thomas Hobbes, who saw Anglo-Saxon society in truer light, and there were also the "Real Whigs" or "Commonwealth men," who believed that the struggles of the seventeenth century had failed to restore to England the liberties that had existed before the Norman Conquest.
