Tudor Politics

An attempt to put some of the politics back into our perception of the first Tudor king. This is a general study based on my PhD research. At its core is a study of how Henry VII survived incessant and unpredictable threats to his authority throughout his reign. The accession of his heir as undisputed king after many decades of serious political conflict within the ruling elites indicates the extent of Henry VII's hard-won achievement.

Between 1596 and 1601 John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635) travelled to Germany, Bohemia, Poland–Lithuania, Switzerland, and Italy. His accounts of the Empire and Bohemia are among the most detailed and best informed reports to have survived from the period, yet they are virtually unknown to modern scholarship. Furthermore, he was the author of the celebrated description of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, A Relation of the State of Polonia and the United Provinces of that Crown, Anno 1598. Based on new evidence, this article shows that John Peyton's travels in Central Europe formed part of Cecil's attempts to gather intelligence on Spanish diplomatic activity in the Empire and in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. I argue that Peyton was one of many contemporaries who left England on an Elizabethan Grand Tour; a peculiar mixture of visiting European countries for culture, education and intelligence. His writings, however, belong to the more sophisticated written achievements in Elizabethan intelligence gathering.

In life and in death, Anne Boleyn has always invited controversy. On the one hand, she was that 'godly lady and queen' under whom 'the religion of Christ most happily flourished'. But to her detractors, Anne was the very 'scandal of Christendom'. A prevailing view that commonly appears in both scholarly and popular texts is that Anne was either perceived in her time as a witch or was indeed a witch. However, this essay argues that such a perception is relatively recent-one created in the earlier part of the twentieth century, sustained by modern writers and historians, and in popular culture. It demonstrates that Anne was never regarded as such by her contemporaries or by those who were critical of her.

This paper scrutinises an early polemical tract  Simon Fish’s A Supplication of Beggars (c.1528/ 29)  to ascertain the ways in which political and religious arguments were being remodelled along pragmatic and executable lines to propose a new power equation, namely, absolutist monarchy. The shift involves a realignment of religious, regional and political allegiances along territorial lines and the emergence of the modern nation state.
Religious vindication takes a backseat as Fish promises actual worldly benefits to lure Henry VIII to overthrow papal rule. The secular and materialist ambience of this ‘religious’ tract marks a significant departure from the stylistic, narrative and rhetorical strategies of medieval tracts of similar import, which tended to locate their arguments within a predominantly theological framework. Fish comprehends the shifting priorities of a transitional age and moulds the opportune convergence of three separate interests into a single, mutually convenient focus - lay anti-clericalism; the heretics’ attempt to overthrow a repressive Church and Henry VIII’s growing impatience with the delay in his divorce.
Although ostensibly directed at the sovereign, Fish’s harangue has a dual audience in mind - the king and the people. Popular consent is manipulated in favour of a new hierarchic order that is apparently more homogenised. He plays upon the implicit notion of ‘commonwealth’  a notion crucial to Henry’s post-Reformation propaganda  to elicit mass support for the establishment of a new status quo. The ruler and the ruled constitute a democratic forum for joint action against the ‘wrongful’ usurpers of their ‘common wealth’. Burgeoning nationalistic rhetoric creates a space where Henry’s economic and religio-political aspirations merge with the image of a patriotic monarch fighting for ‘English’ honour and independence. More anti-clerical than heretical, Fish provides a tangible enemy (and a fortune ready for the taking) to facilitate reform. But by pointing to the ‘enemy within’, Fish splits the nationalist discourse down the middle, positing ‘true’ Englishmen against their renegade counterparts whose allegiance transgresses regional borders. He thus anticipates the ideological parameters of the absolutist nation state, its hegemonic control over people’s social, political and religious commitments, and its fractured rhetoric of inclusiveness well before the advent of the Henrician Reformation.
Fish’s polemical enterprise is an embryonic testimony to the massive re-organisation of human relations and power structures occurring at the time. The formerly ‘included’ and ‘empowered’ clergy are peripheralised as the threatening Other and attention is diverted from the emerging acquisitive forces precipitating inequality. More important, it offers the beleaguered populace the spurious satisfaction of belonging to a well-ordered polity and an equally false sense of empowerment at the expense of the hitherto powerful. However, the idea of social inversion implicit in the call for dismantling clerical hegemony could and did induce the lower orders to demand a transference of power beneficial to themselves, as the 1536 and 1549 rebellions testify. Also, Fish’s expertise in playing upon the king’s psyche denotes the growing confidence of the ‘citizen’ participating in national destiny and hints at a disturbingly unorthodox master-subject relationship.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love is the biography and select poetry of John Donne.

This publication is as much a stand-alone publication into the life of a Tudor Poet as it is, a part of a forthcoming book.

This book is exclusively digital and a prologue/chapter​ from the forthcoming book 'The Devil's Servant', the Dark Conjurer of Batcombe.

16th-century Ireland experienced revolutionary change, as the Tudor monarchy undertook comprehensive efforts at extending English political control throughout the island. These efforts, together with religious and legal reforms, met with a variety of responses from the native English and Gaelic communities, ranging from eager collaboration to stubborn resistance.
This book offers a fresh perspective on Tudor state formation in Ireland by exploring the interplay between the royal government and the lesser nobility of the English Pale during a formative period, from the ascendancy of local magnate the earl of Kildare in the later 15th century to the beginnings of an intensified extension of English authority under Sir Henry Sidney in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It argues that the default position of this regional frontier elite was loyalty and service to the monarch and to the monarch’s representative in Ireland – an attitude based on the peers’ traditions and identity, their locations close to the royal capital Dublin, and their relative economic and military frailties. None the less, the nobility of the English Pale did not evolve into a kind of ‘service nobility’ observable in parts of Britain and continental Europe, whereby aristocrats were co-opted by a combination of inducements and threats into the increasingly centralised and powerful Renaissance state. Rather, relations between Tudor government in Ireland and the Pale nobility were fragile and liable to acrimonious break-down; by the later 1560s the relationship between both groups was one of profound mutual distrust. This development, it is argued, was not caused by conflicting ideological dispositions, but instead was a function of the nobles’ comparative weakness and the dictatorial tendencies of Tudor government in Ireland, and forms part of a wider failure of Tudor policy towards Ireland. The fortunes of the nobility of the English Pale therefore demonstrate the complex and unpredictable nature of Tudor interventions in Ireland, and, more broadly, the variety of noble responses to state formation in early modern Europe.

This article investigates the deliberate use and manipulation of chivalric culture and iconography by James IV of Scotland to position the Stewart dynasty's claims to the English throne in contest with the concurrent consolidation of Tudor dynastic security. This resulted in a dialogue developing between the two kingdoms concerning the relationship between sovereignty, dynasty and chivalry. This article argues for a new approach to the study of chivalry, by considering it as a meaningful language in political communication. It finds that chivalry had a strong currency in diplomatic discourse and was used to transact political issues of sovereignty and dynasty.

This article is about Thomas Tusser in context. Critics often disparage Tusser's poetry, but we should take notice--his book of poetry went through more editions than any secular English poetry of the period! I argue that modern readers misunderstand the political and aesthetic project of Tusser's poetry, which harkens back to mid-Tudor populism more than Elizabethan courtly poetics.

Analysis of Gorboduc (Inner Temple, 1561-2) has long been focussed on the marital suitors to Queen Elizabeth I. This paper looks to resituate Gorboduc and the other Senecan-styled tragedies of the Inns of Court of the 1560s and 1570s within a framework established by the slightly earlier translations and productions of Seneca at the Universities. In this context the conflicting factions of the Elizabethan court at the beginning of her reign (and, as such, after Mary's) recommends a more religiously-aware political reading of Gorboduc than has previously be suggested.

Studies on the Genoese community in the Kingdom of Granada have mainly focused on activities carried out in the territory, and only rarely have individual biographies been reconstructed, largely due to the almost exclusive use of notarial deeds. The case of Francesco Grimaldi is unique for several reasons. He is mentioned in very different sources, including notarial deeds from Granada and Málaga, the Seal Register of Simancas and Granada, the Chancellery of Valladolid, the collected letters of the ambassador Fuensalida, and the private archive of the Grimaldo de Cáceres family, and this has made it possible to trace his presence and activities in Granada, the Court and England –where he played a key role in the
marriage between Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. It has also been possible to elucidate his business activities related to loans and rents, the circumstances of his marriage to Francisca de Caceres and
his acquisition of an important estate in the Kingdom of Granada.

Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection, by Martha Wolff, Susan Frances Jones, Richard G. Mann and Judith Berg Sobré, with contributions by Ilse Hecht, Peter Klein, Cynthia Kuniej Berry, and Larry Silver, Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 318-20

Following Henry’s VIII break with Rome, executed via Parliament, Parliament felt increasingly responsible for the common weal. The House of Commons in particular grew more and more confident when it came to criticizing the monarch, if it thought he or she acted against the common good. This is especially visible during the long reign of Elizabeth I. The Commons – and occasionally the Lords as well – criticized her lack of a successor, her marriage policy, her religious policy, and her course of action with regard to Mary Stuart among other things.
This essay analyses the different techniques of criticism used by both Houses of Parliament: There was open as well as hidden criticism in the debates on bills and taxes. Sometimes the approval of taxes was delayed in order to allow longer debates on controversial subjects. A central medium of criticism was the petition that directly addressed the monarch and asked for a certain course of action. Here criticism and praise were mingled in order to make the petition acceptable. Moreover, bills in itself could mean criticism, as for example the laws of high treason showed. Although they seemed to be aimed at enforcing the queen’s security, they directly contradicted her policy with regard to Mary Stuart. We have to look beyond these forms of criticism expressed in Parliament: Special sermons were held during the opening and closing of Parliament that could add to the general message from Parliament. Moreover, several members of the House of Commons participated in the plays of the Inns of Court occasionally performed at court before the queen. This means that parliamentary criticism has to be analysed within the wider context of early modern criticism of government which took place in different public spheres.

As the sixteenth century started in England, Henry VII might have thought that he was finally free from conspirators and plotters. After executing Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, Henry turned his attention to controlling another Yorkist noble - Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Suffolk responded by fleeing overseas and setting himself up as another rival to the Tudor crown. This essay investigates Henry VII's mishandling of Suffolk's status and personality. It shows how the earl's ineffective conspiracy generated unexpected consequences for the Tudor regime.

An attempt to present a holistic account of a peer from Tudor Meath, Jenico Preston, 3rd Viscount Gormanton. It uses the available evidence to offer a sketch of the ways in which Preston's personal, familial and local circumstances interacted with the greater political and military events of mid-sixteenth-century-Ireland which took place around him. It suggests that although the viscount can be seen as a typical 'Old English' failure, it is also possible to view him a successful Tudor peer who negotiated the turbulence of his era and left a stable inheritance to his successor.

Sheriffs were among the most important local office-holders in early modern England. They were generalist officers of the king responsible for executing legal process, holding local courts, empanelling juries, making arrests, executing criminals, collecting royal revenue, holding parliamentary elections, and many other vital duties. Although sheriffs have a cameo role in virtually every book about early modern England, the precise nature of their work has remained something of a mystery.

The Tudor Sheriff offers the first comprehensive analysis of the shrieval system between 1485 and 1603. It demonstrates that this system was not abandoned to decay in the Tudor period, but was effectively reformed to ensure its continued relevance. Jonathan McGovern shows that sheriffs were not in competition with other branches of local government, such as the Lords Lieutenant and justices of the peace, but rather cooperated effectively with them. Since the office of sheriff was closely related to every other branch of government, a study of the sheriff is also a study of English government at work.

L'on a coutume de voir dans le personnage d'Henri VIII le fondateur de l'anglicanisme, entendu comme une confession résolument protestante opposée au catholicisme. Pourtant, rien n'est plus erroné d'un point de vue historique. En se déclarant chef suprême de l'Église d'Angleterre et pape en son royaume, le souverain anglais ne fait qu'entamer une rupture purement institutionnelle avec le siège pontifical, sans pour autant rejeter la théologie et les dogmes catholiques romains. Un tel épisode incarne en réalité, en la poussant à l'extrême, une tendance des catholicismes nationaux, commune dans l'Europe du XVI e siècle, à revendiquer une autonomie voire une indépendance à l'égard de Rome et du pape. C'est ce mouvement que l'on appelle habituellement, dans le cas de la France, le gallicanisme.

With a few exceptions, it seems most people have some kind of trouble with their mother-in-law. In Tudor circles, discussions surrounding Margaret Beaufort usually solicit the customary comment that she was the mother-in-law from hell. Another frequent comment revolves around the postulation that Margaret worked her whole life to make her son Henry Tudor King of England. And it is largely believed that Margaret wrote the ordinances for court functions and etiquette. But does the historical record support these assumptions?

[Early modern counsel.] Royal counsel in Tudor England has been a central historiographical theme for over twenty years. This review offers a critical assessment of the state of the field. It appraises historical and literary scholarship on both the theory and practice of royal counsel. Among other themes, it discusses the concepts of evil counsel and arcana imperii. The review concludes by suggesting priorities for future enquiry, including the need to think more carefully about which areas of English government still required royal decision-making, and therefore counsel, in this period. The article also charts the rise of conciliar ‘government under the king but not by the king’ and shows that Tudor counsel often happened the wrong way around: the monarch advised the privy council on the direction of state policy. It calls for a new administrative history in early modern studies, with a renewed focus on institutions and their procedures, to complement existing strengths in the fields of political culture and political thought.

From the early thirteenth century to the present day, privy councillors have been required to swear an oath of office. This article demonstrates that at least four different council oaths were administered by chancery during the Tudor period, and that William Cecil drafted yet another revised oath in 1558, although this was never finished. The article compares the respective texts and explains the administrative and political reasons for each of the revisions. It goes on to examine evidence from these oaths that suggests developments in the conception of counsel in the sixteenth century. It concludes with transcriptions of the four operational oaths and the Cecilian draft.

Studies in the History of Christian Traditions is a peer-reviewed book series intended to encourage the study of continuities and discontinuities in the history of Christian thought through monographs dealing with single authors, movements and ideas.

Between Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s and Elizabeth I’s ascension in 1558, England had swung from staunch Protestantism to devout Catholicism. English identity shifted in so radical a way that understandings both of English monarchy and of the place of women in this traditionally-male space became fiercely oppositional. In 1558, immediately after the Protestant Elizabeth I’s ascension, Scottish reformer John Knox published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, to which English-Catholic aristocrat Henry Howard responded in 1590 with his as-of-yet-still-unpublished manuscript A Dutifull Defence of the Lawful Regiment of Women. These authors’ personal experiences of English queens regnant and their religious and political policies affected the perceptions of early modern gender roles presented in The First Blast and A Dutifull Defence, which allowed for their opposite stances. I argue that Knox and Howard hold oppositional views of English queenship because they respond to the same event – the role of women in the traditionally-male authoritative space of the English throne – but have vastly differing historical contexts which transcend their works. Knox’s opposition to English female rule denies England’s regal space to the Catholic Queen Regnant Mary I because Knox’s conception of England favours Protestantism and Protestant monarchy. He delegitimises female monarchy because he was responding to and was informed by political and religious events in which Mary persecuted Protestants. He consequently believed that women had no right to occupy the regal space of the English throne because his experience showed a queen regnant as a threat to English stability. Howard’s A Dutifull Defence, though, presents an English identity in which Catholics negotiate for mercy from the Elizabeth I, resulting in his self-preserving support for Elizabeth’s inhabitation of English royal space. He legitimises female rule because he holds a significantly different interpretation of queenship; as a Catholic attempting to prove his loyalty to the crown in Elizabethan England, Howard validates Elizabeth’s role as a woman in a traditionally-male royal space. I will shed light on how Knox and Howard’s experiences of queenship directly lead to their differing opinions on the role of women in the heretofore-male space of early modern England’s throne. Though Knox and Howard write on the subject of female occupation of male space in early modern England, both are implicitly influenced by their specific differing histories which transcend their present moments and deeply affect how they each respond to queens occupying England’s regal space.

Работа посвящена влиянию духовенства на работу
мировой комиссии в Англии эпохи Елизаветы. Представители духовенства с XV в. входили в состав мировых комиссий. Многие мировые судьи были связаны с представителями епископата родственными и клиентельными узами, занимали должности на службе у прелатов. Представители духовенства часто использовались для контроля за деятельностью магистратов, давали рекомендации по включению в состав мировой комиссии. В елизаветинскую эпоху, когда Корона не могла быть уверена в конфессиональной благонадежности мирян, представители протестантского духовенства служили агентами Короны и наиболее надежными в религиозном отношении магистратами.