jats:titleAbstract</jats:title> jats:pOn 14 April 1622, John Knight, a theology student at Broadgates Hall, Oxford, delivered a Palm Sunday sermon before his University. In it, Knight defended the thesis that subjects defending themselves on grounds of religion would be justified in taking up arms against their sovereign. This study reconstructs the content of, political context for, and reaction to Knight’s sermon. In establishing the importance for Knight’s sermon of non-English authorities, above all the authoritative Palatine theologian David Pareus and the Lausanne theologian Guillaume Du Buc (Bucanus), it demonstrates that justifications of armed resistance to sovereign powers were widely known in pre-civil war England, but that their expression in English was effectively controlled.</jats:p>