Authority and accessibility combine to bring the history and the drama of Tudor England to life. Almost 900 engaging entries cover the life and times of Henry VIII, Mary I, Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, and much, much more. Written for high school students, college undergraduates, and public library patrons—indeed, for anyone interested in this important and colorful period—the three-volume Encyclopedia of Tudor England illuminates the era's most important people, events, ideas, movements, institutions, and publications. Concise, yet in-depth entries offer comprehensive coverage and an engaging mix of accessibility and authority. Chronologically, the encyclopedia spans the period from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. It also examines pre-Tudor people and topics that shaped the Tudor period, as well as individuals and events whose influence extended into the Jacobean period after 1603. Geographically, the encyclopedia covers England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and also Russia, Asia, America, and important states in continental Europe. Topics include: the English Reformation; the development of Parliament; the expansion of foreign trade; the beginnings of American exploration; the evolution of the nuclear family; and the flowering of English theater and poetry, culminating in the works of William Shakespeare.

A reconstruction of the life and works of a sixteenth-century minstrel, showing the tradition to be flourishing well into the Tudor period. Richard Sheale, a harper and balladeer from Tamworth, is virtually the only English minstrel whose life story is known to us in any detail. It had been thought that by the sixteenth century minstrels had generally been downgradedto the role of mere jesters. However, through a careful examination of the manuscript which Sheale almost certainly "wrote" (Bodleian Ashmole 48) and other records, the author argues that the oral tradition remained vibrant at this period, contrary to the common idea that print had by this stage destroyed traditional minstrelsy. The author shows that under the patronage of Edward Stanley, earl of Derby, and his son, from one of the most important aristocratic families in England, Sheale recited and collected ballads and travelled to and from London to market them. Amongst his repertoire was the famous Chevy Chase, which Sir Philip Sidney said moved his heart "more than witha trumpet". Sheale also composed his own verse, including a lament on being robbed of 60 on his way to London; the poem is reproduced in this volume. ANDREW TAYLOR lectures in the Department of English, University of Ottawa.

Bosworth stands alongside Naseby and Hastings as one of the three most iconic battles ever fought on English soil. The action on 22 August 1485 brought to an end the dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses and heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty. However, Bosworth was also the most famous lost battlefield in England. Between 2005 and 2010, the techniques of battlefield archaeology were used in a major research programme to locate the site. Bosworth 1485: a battlefield rediscovered is the result. Using data from historical documents, landscape archaeology, metal detecting survey, ballistics and scientific analysis, the volume explores each aspect of the investigation – from the size of the armies, their weaponry, and the battlefield terrain to exciting new evidence of the early use of artillery – in order to identify where and how the fighting took place. Bosworth 1485 provides a fascinating and intricately researched new perspective on the event which, perhaps more than any other, marked the transition between medieval and early modern England.

The English civil wars radically altered many aspects of mid-seventeenth century life, simultaneously creating a period of intense uncertainty and unheralded opportunity. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the printing and publishing industry, which between 1640 and 1660 produced a vast number of tracts and pamphlets on a bewildering variety of subjects. Many of these where of a highly political nature, the publication of which would have been unthinkable just a few years before. Whilst scholars have long recognised the importance of these publications, and have studied in depth what was written in them, much less work has been done on why they were produced. In this book Dr Peacey first highlights the different dynamics at work in the conception, publication and distribution of polemical works, and then pulls the strands together to study them against the wider political context. In so doing he provides a more complete understanding of the relationship between political events and literary and intellectual prose in an era of unrest and upheaval. By incorporating into the political history of the period some of the approaches utilized by scholars of book history, this study reveals the heightened importance of print in both the lives of members of the political nation and the minds of the political elite in the civil wars and Interregnum. Furthermore, it demonstrates both the existence and prevalence of print propaganda with which politicians became associated, and traces the processes by which it came to be produced, the means of detecting its existence, the ways in which politicians involved themselves in its production, the uses to which it was put, and the relationships between politicians and propagandists.

The first study of Restoration England from the point of view of both rulers and ruled, this volume offers a vital reappraisal of seventeenth century England. The civil wars had a traumatic effect on the English people: memories of bloodshed and destruction and the ultimate horror of the execution of Charles I continued to be invoked for decades afterwards. It is often argued that the political and religious fissures created by the wars divided English society irrevocably, as demonstrated by the later bitter conflict between the Whig and Tory parties. After the Civil Wars proposes instead that although there was political conflict, Charles II's reign was not a continuation of the divisions of the civil wars.

showing that contrary to the commonly held view that romances are representative of the "popular culture" of their day, in fact such texts appealed primarily to the gentry, England's elite landowners who lacked titles of nobility.

A compelling, authoritative account of the brilliant, conflicted, visionary world of Tudor England When Henry VII landed in a secluded bay in a far corner of Wales, it seemed inconceivable that this outsider could ever be king of England. Yet he and his descendants became some of England’s most unforgettable rulers, and gave their name to an age. The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603. In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In this comprehensive new history, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. We see a monarchy under strain, religion in crisis, a population contending with war, rebellion, plague, and poverty. Remarkable in its range and depth, Tudor England explores the many tensions of these turbulent years and presents a markedly different picture from the one we thought we knew.

When Shakespeare's John of Gaunt refers to England as 'this sceptred isle', he glosses over a fact of which Shakespeare's original audience would have been acutely conscious, which was that England was not an island at all, but had land borders with Scotland and Wales. Together with the narrow channels separating the British mainland from Ireland and the Continent, these were the focus of acute, if intermittent, unease during the early modern period. This book analyses works by not only Shakespeare but also his contemporaries to argue that many of the plays of Shakespeare's central period, from the second tetralogy to Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, engage with the idea of England's borders. But borders, it claims, are not only of geopolitical significance: in Shakespeare's imagination and indeed in that of his culture, eschatological overtones also accrue to the idea of the border. This is because the countries of the Celtic fringe were often discussed in terms of the supernatural and fairy lore and, in particular, the rivers which were often used as boundary markers were invested with heavily mythologized personae. Thus Hopkins shows that the idea of the border becomes a potent metaphor for exploring the spiritual uncertainties of the period, and for speculating on what happens in 'the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns'. At the same time, the idea that a thing can only really be defined in terms of what lies beyond it provides a sharply interrogating charge for Shakespeare's use of metatheatre and for his suggestions of a world beyond the confines of his plays.

This book is the first detailed study of Westminster politics in the 1660s for over twenty years, and the first ever in-depth study of the legislation of the 1660s. Dr Seaward shows how these drastic and dramatic events had changed perceptions and attitudes in British politics.