The Royal Prerogative: Suggested and Essential Readings on the Tudor/Stuart Monarchy
This list is entirely and utterly subjective, reflecting my own current research interests, personal
favorites, and books I have actually read from cover to cover, so to all those brilliant scholars out there
whose works are not on this list, please accept my sincere apologies. I preferred simply to write about
works I liked- those that have not impressed me, I remain silent upon. Please also bear in mind that
these mini-reviews of scholarly works are meant for a potentially wide-ranging cyber audience- this is
my vernacular, and not my scholarly voice! These are my initial entries: I will be writing more!
Tudor England John Guy (1988): Yes, I know it is a textbook, but it remains the best on the turbulent
English sixteenth century, particularly the examination of Elizabeth I. I still use it in my Tudor/Stuart class.
Guy’s prose is dense, compact, and provides both a crisp historical narrative and a late twentieth century
update on historiographical trends. I do not totally agree with all of Guy’s conclusions, particularly those
concerning the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, but I have great respect for his scholarship and ability to
write a dense narrative, and will always esteem this work.
The Tudor Revolution in Government G.R. Elton (1955): Half a century later, the thunderclap that this
book caused still reverberates down to our present day. Historians have been queuing up for decades to
pull out the sword of Elton’s stone, to revise, renounce, or attack this study of the achievements of
Thomas Cromwell, and the emergence of the Privy Council as an omni competent governing body. While
Elton himself later revised his more far reaching assertions, this book did for administrative history what
E. P. Thompson’s, The Making of the English Middle Class (1963) did for social history: create the
model for all who followed.
Henry VIII, J.J. Scarisbricke (1968): Nearly thirty years after its initial publication, this well written and
researched work remains definitive; no subsequent scholar has attempted such a full-scale political
narrative biography of this sort since. Today, more often than not (aside from popular biographers- the
leading queen of this genre is Alison Weir) the historical Henry is the subject of specialized topics
concerning his reign: religion and Reformation (G.W. Bernard), the role of the court (D.M. Loades, David
Starkey), or his wives (John Guy, David Starkey). With fresh new interpretations arriving almost daily for
Elizabeth I, and the recent work being done on Edward VI and Mary I, it might be time for Henry to
undergo a major historiographical overhaul.
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives (1986), and The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, Retha
Warnicke (1989): The closeness in time of the publication of these works spurred highly charged
debates between scholars. Both have much to recommend; both conceptualized Anne’s career as an
arc. I know it sounds like I am sitting on a fence here, but Ives’s work was so well researched and argued,
yet Warnicke asked that we refocus the way we perceive Anne Boleyn’s career; since reading this book, I
have subjected Chapuy’s imperial dispatches to the utmost of critical scrutiny. Read both of them- you
decide!
Edward VI: The Threshold of Power (1972) W.K. Jordan, and The King’s Council in the Reign of
Edward VI, Dale Hoak.(1986): Like Warnicke and Ives, this pairing is another “clash of the titans, ” as
these two works represent the poles of historical interpretation concerning the role of Edward VI in the
final years of his minority regime. Both works are well researched and argued, both came to entirely
different conclusions concerning this central question; for Hoak, Edward was the “articulate puppet”, while
Jordan saw a king on the “threshold of power.” Frankly, when one does archival research on Edward’s
literary remains, this “horse or cart” question becomes even more complicated and problematic. I
grapple with it now – look for my results in the forthcoming volume Woe to Thee O Land!: The Royal
Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England.
Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI, Stephen Alford (2002): Edward VI remains a
fascinating historical figure. This book forms part of a trinity of works issued in recent years (Jennifer
Loach’s posthumous biography was published in 1999, and Diarmaid Macculloch published The Boy
King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation in 2001). What impressed me most about Alford’s
book were the suggestions that Edward was in the middle of a gradual transition to majority rule, and that
the theoretical and structural modifications that a royal minority required helped pave the way for a
theoretical and structural model for the debut of female rule that immediately followed Edward VI’s death.
The Life and Reign of Mary Tudor (1978), and Mary Tudor: A Life (1989) D.M. Loades: With these two
works, Loades went where no previous Tudor era scholar has ventured to go- to comprehensively chart
the political, administrative, and religious history of Marian England, and recast the historical Mary as a
complex and hardworking regnant queen, who faced the worst possible social and economic conditions.
All of us Marian scholars tip our hats to his expertise, which reaches also in to the reigns of Edward VI
and Elizabeth I. Of course, feminist scholars (like myself) have been hard at work to reconsider some of
his conclusions, or those he failed to identify, but I see my own work as adding to, rather than detracting
from, Loades’s solid body of scholarly achievement.
The Heart and Stomach of a King, Carole Levin (1994): When this book was first published in 1994, it
rocked my doctoral student world, as I grasped for a dissertation topic. My dissertation (and subsequent
book) in some ways is “the heart and stomach of female kingship.” Levin eschewed a chronological
narrative to present a finely honed gender analysis that topically explored facets of Elizabeth I’s rule, with
startlingly original results. The utility of gender analysis in analyzing politicized female roles remains a
topic of debate, but whether you like it or not, Levin did expand the parameters of Elizabethan
historiography.
Monarchy and Matrimony, Susan Doran (1996): My only quibble with this otherwise splendid work is the
inescapable fact that, ultimately, Elizabeth did not marry. However much the “great dissembler” may have
discounted the sincerity of her marriage negotiations, Doran nevertheless presents a formidable case for
the argument that Elizabeth I got closer to the altar than previously assumed in conventional
historiography. Look also for Doran’s essay in her edited volume (with Glenn Richardson), Tudor
England and its Neighbors (2005), on the letters exchanged between Elizabeth I and James VI of
Scotland during the sixteen years between the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth’s own
death in 1603.