Collection of 8 essays on aspects of Tudor government between 1540-1560.

Historians, like politicians, thrive in crises. Was there really a crisis in England between 1545 and 1565, or is this just a way of describing a period in history when a lot of interesting things where happening? In reality the twenty years from 1545 to 1565 contained no more elements of crisis than other comparable periods. There were crises: a brief, but serious collapse of the overseas cloth trade in 1551-52, and a confused royal succession in 1553. Inflation began to be a problem in about 1545, and remained so for the remainder of the century. The Church had already undergone a major revolution in the 1530s, and the mid-century period could be described as the 'search for a stable settlement', a search had succeeded by 1565. Indeed, the machinery of central and local government worked throughout this period, with only minor fluctuations in its efficiency and effectiveness. Although, therefore, there were crises within in the mid-Tudor period, there was no fundamental threat to the state or society Mary and Northumberland's achievements in particular have been much underrated as governors in order, originally, to magnify those of Elizabeth propaganda. DAVID LOADES rights the record and argues for the surprising stability of government during this period

Early Modern Kent offers an accessible but scholarly introduction to the country's history during a century of extraordinary change."--BOOK JACKET.

Covering a topic which features on all three exam board specifications, this new book for A2 level history students explores the turmoil that encompassed the reigns of Edwards VI and Mary – the mid-tudor period.

Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law was essentially the creation of the wider community, it challenges many current assumptions and opens new perspectives about how early-modern society should be understood. Its magisterial scope and lucid exposition will make it essential reading for those interested in subjects ranging from high politics and constitutional theory to the history of the family, as well as the history of law.

A history of political debate and theory in England (later Britain) between the English Reformation and French Revolution.

The Later Tudors, the second volume to be published in Oxford's authoritative series The New Oxford History of England, tells the story of England between the accession of Edward VI and the death of Elizabeth I. The second half of the sixteenth century was a period of intense conflict between the nations of Europe, and between competing Catholic and Protestant beliefs. These struggles produced acute anxiety in England, but the nation was saved from the disasters that befell her neighbors and, by the end of Elizabeth's reign, achieved a remarkable sense of political and religious identity. In this masterly and comprehensive study, Penry Williams explains how this process came about. He begins by weaving together the political, religious, and economic history of the nation, setting out the workings and development of the English state. Later chapters establish the broader perspective, with a thorough analysis of English society, family relations, and culture, focusing on the ways in which art and literature were used to uphold--and sometimes to subvert--the social and political order. The final chapter looks to Europe and across the seas at England's part in the shaping of the New World.

Michael Graves provides a clear summary of conflicting interpretations of Elizabethan parliaments and presents a new perspective, striking a balance between business and politics.

An alternative account of the so-called 'succession crisis' in the first decade of the reign of Elizabeth I.

Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558-1630 revisits what used to be regarded as an entirely 'mainstream' topic in the historiography of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - namely, the link between royal dynastic politics and the outcome of the process usually referred to as 'the Reformation'. As everyone knows, the principal mode of transacting so much of what constituted public political activity in the early modern period, and especially of securing something like political obedience if not exactly stability, was through the often distinctly un-modern management of the crown's dynastic rights, via the line of royal succession and in particular through matching into other royal and princely families. Dynastically, the states of Europe resembled a vast sexual chess board on which the trick was to preserve, advance, and then match (to advantage) one's own most powerful pieces. This process and practice were, obviously, not unique to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the changes in religion generated by the discontents of western Christendom in the Reformation period made dynastic politics ideologically fraught in a way which had not been the case previously, in that certain modes of religious thought were now taken to reflect on, critique, and hinder this mode of exercising monarchical authority, sometimes even to the extent of defining who had the right to be king or queen.