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.
The Reviews below are books I particularly liked while serving on a book prize committee.
Books published in 2008
Carole Levin Dreaming the English Renaissance
In this book Levin provides an intriguing portal into the Early Modern English world view in her examination of the
power and influence of dreams. I should come out right now and say that I not only admire Levin’s work, but she is
also a close friend and my co-editor for the “Queenship and Power” book series for Palgrave Macmillan. So, let
me offer the measure of this book from the perspective of my students. Every other spring I teach “Introduction to
British Studies,” an interdisciplinary course in which we read and discuss works of history, literature, theatre, and
music. This last spring we read Peter Ackroyd’s Albion, my first book, The Lioness Roared, Shakespeare’s
Richard III, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and Peter Brown’s The Love You Make, an insider’s account of
the career of the Beatles. Getting students to discuss and analyze what they have read can often be difficult, but,
hands down, Dreaming excited my student’s imagination and stimulated discussion much more than the other
assigned works, as we collectively came to the conclusion that much of the providential world view of Early Modern
England is still quite with us today. This is the measure of this book that I offer here.
Frances E. Dolan Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy
Dolan pursues an ambitious agenda with this book, which opens and closes with a scathing critique of modern
American marriage. In between is a mostly fascinating discussion of the enormous influence that early modern
English conceptions of marriage have had on shaping our perceptions of what marriage means to us today. Dolan
has published much on the topic of marriage, and this book is, above all, an extremely thoughtful study, as she
points out that are actually a number of competing and contradictory conceptualizations of marriage at play both
then and now; the hierarchical, with the husband/father as head who is, theoretically, ‘the boss” the companionate,
in which two equal beings come together as one in love and companionship, and the contractual, in which two
interested parties come together to a create a mutually beneficial, symbiotic socio-economic relationship. All of
these types of marriage have their problems, and engender violence in specific ways. While most of the book
lends itself to her grand design, “in order to imagine, much less create, genuinely new social arrangements, we
have to let go of a past that still shapes our present,” the most compelling chapter is the last, a study of depictions
of marriage in novels about Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, which masterly demonstrates how works of fiction have
shaped our understanding of the power dynamics of marriage.
Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement
I should come right out and admit that I have never read a scholarly study of Franklin’s career prior to this book.
That said, I found this book both edifying and enjoyable. While I cannot comment on its place within the
historiography of eighteenth century American history, I can about its place in eighteenth century British history, or
the history of the Atlantic world, in which the histories of Britain and America are one, a concept Franklin himself
subscribed to over the course of his long and prolific career. Houston’s study clearly identifies Franklin as a first
rate Enlightenment thinker, in the same class as Locke, Hume, and the rest of the French philosophes. What
makes Franklin’s brand of Enlightenment thinking so palatable to a modern audience is the emphasis on the
utilitarian results of improvement, in which political economy was fused with the moral and ethical results of Franklin’
s unceasing efforts to make the Britain in which he lived in both prosperous and efficient.
Sarah Ellenzweig The Fringes of Belief
The subject matter easily transcends the conceptual category that Ellenzweig stakes out for her interpretive turf,
to provide an erudite commentary on the twisted path to modernity that occurred in what we call the early modern
epoch. This book could easily have been written in an off-putting esoteric fashion. Instead, the clarity of the
narrative is matched by the lucidity of the argument; I learned much about Rochester and Behn, while the final
chapter on Pope’s Essay On Man is a masterful conclusion to this work. After reading this book, I cannot help but
wonder how many thinkers and politicians in modern times have wrestled with the conceptual genie that is the utility
of belief as both a social and a political stabilizer, but chose to keep such thoughts to themselves.
Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment
In his 1963 opus, The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson acknowledged the historical force of
Methodism, with Marxian disgust and loathing. Feminist scholars have nailed him to the whipping post ever since,
in their own reworking of class formation. Mack takes a different route. Like Cox’s work on missionaries
(discussed below), Mack argues for the essential sincerity of religious belief as an agent of historical change, and
she lets her own cast of historical actors do the talking. This approach brings alive the age of Wesley. But in
addition to a brisk and compelling narrative, Mack integrates the methodologies of social and gender history to
manufacture a though provoking analysis that makes a powerful case for the rise of Methodism as part and parcel
of the process of modernization itself.” ((18) Methodism was superb at social control (indeed, this is Thompson’s
explanation for why Britain failed to have a continental style revolution during the processes of industrialization) but
Mack emphasizes the kind of individual control over emotion that empowers her subjects as both thinkers and
actors- the analogy of the actor on page 11 is especially apt!
Jeffrey Cox The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700
I really liked this book, for a number of highly subject reasons. When I think about what makes a good book, I
contemplate that ultimate test- what will my under graduates think if I assigned this text. I feel confident that this
book would be warmly received in my British Empire class; it is not esoteric in the slightest, yet it pulls together
strands of post colonial empire studies, women’s history and gender studies, and an obvious concern for the role
that religion played in the imperial enterprise. At the same time, it has a good beat, and you can dance to it. The
history of the Protestantism, in all of its doctrinal and institutional formulations, has always been central to a
comprehensive understanding of British history; most historian of Modern Britain will see the corollaries between
the metropole and the periphery in this study that restores the role of women and the colonized in the many
different ways that Christianity was transplanted in the imperial territories, which did much to contribute to that
reservoir of goodwill that still exists with the commonwealth that is absent in the post colonial territories of France,
Holland, and Belgium.
George Boulukos The Grateful Slave
This book comprises a well written and intriguing interdisciplinary study of the origins and evolution of racially
based conceptions of slavery in the early modern British Atlantic world. The author makes bold, sweeping claims
concerning his thesis, which is argued consistently throughout the text. The problem for me as a classically trained
historian (which is a quaint way of saying I can be, in some respects, “old-school”) is making the vital connection
between cause (works of literature creating the ‘trope” of the ‘grateful slave’) and effect (the ability to demonstrate
how these works of literature created social and cultural perceptions of slavery). The world that Boulukos creates
is fascinating, as he weaves economic theory and psychoanalysis into his narrative for added complexity.
Ultimately, this adds up to one big question- do we live in a Foucaldian world, or not? (I do believe this world
moved to Texas with the Bushes!)
Derek Neale The Masculine Self
This book represents a solid work of interdisciplinary research and interpretation. Gender is not just about
women; Neale goes boldly where no man (or woman) has gone before, to subject masculinity to the methodological
and interpretive modes of women’s history and gender studies. It is to his credit that, despite the abundance of
evidence examined, Neale does not make any far reaching claims concerning the role or the importance of
concepts of masculinity within the late medieval/early modern time frame that he examines. In fact, Neale seems
rather tentative in his conclusions at the end of the book. Nevertheless, this book makes a fine jumping off point
for future analyses of social constructions of the male gender in British history.
Colin C. Calloway White People, Indians, and Highlanders
This book was simply a fun read. Calloway demonstrates the extent and depth of the relationship between
Indians and Highlanders, making this book a thoughtful enterprise, as a seasoned scholar employed his intellect to
explore an obviously heartfelt historical journey that bridged the personal, the familial, and the professional. While
this is far from a book of original research, I learned much about Highlanders and Native Americans in an enlarged,
imperial British context.
Books published in 2007
The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England Robert Zaller
This mammoth sized book is about the dynamic force and mutability of ideological discourses, circulated among
elite literate society, and co-joined politically and religiously, that were relative to the concept of legitimacy over the
course of the dynamic and fateful century between the Reformation and Long Parliaments. Much like Peter
Ackroyd’s Albion, this is a book about ideas that deftly, and frequently spectacularly, showcases the author’s
ability to integrate a wide range of political and literary knowledge into a witty, highly readable discussion of the
changing conception of how and why kings and their counselors, ecclesiastical polities, and that representative
institution known as parliament, considered and explained their right to wield the power that they did within the
English kingdom. For Zaller, the book’s climax, saved for the final pages, describing the fusion of political and
sacred legitimacy that Parliament had obtained, after a century of talking about it, firmly marked the divide between
medieval and modern conceptions of legitimacy. If that isn’t going out with a bang, I don’t know what is!
Locating Privacy in Tudor England Lena Cowen Orlin
This highly readable book blazes an exciting new trail in sixteenth century British studies with this provocative study
of privacy. Orlin does not locate privacy nearly as much as she subjects to critical scrutiny earlier notions and
previous interpretations of this topic; in her own words, “rarely is change as rational, as responsive, as schematic,
and as evolutionary as it can be made to seem by abstract argument.” Using the painting of a mother and two
young sons that adorns the cover as both metaphor and qualitative example, Orlin’s narrative brings to life the
notion of familiar and corporate spaces, in painting and buildings, an impressive feat, in an analysis that entices
the reader to consider contemporary notions of what we today label privacy, which ultimately is rendered more by-
product that prime motivator, as the author concludes; “despite all the impediments that have been the subject of
this book, privacy sometimes happened.”
The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death Katherine L. French
Katherine French scores a major triumph with this work, a sequel to her earlier work on late medieval English
parishes. Highly readable, and chock full of anecdotal material, French takes her evidence and mines it to re-
imagine both the motivations and the benefits women derived from the work they performed on behalf of their local
parish. Her thesis: the increased scope for post-plague female agency grew right out of the “domestic” side of the
family division of labor; thought provoking and persuasive.
Hakluyt’s Promise Peter C. Mancall
This book does a terrific job of describing one particular 16th century modernizing trend, overseas exploration,
through the life and work of Richard Hakluyt, whose book, Principall Navigations, presaged both the commercial
and the religious imperatives of the British empire. Hakluyt is sort of like a 16th century version of the Venerable
Bede, as he vividly described a world he did not actually experience himself; despite several opportunities over the
course of his life, Hakluyt never crossed the ocean blue to the new world he was so adamant about colonizing.
Nevertheless, his writings, colored by his imagination, described the early efforts of English explorers; such as the
Cabots and Martin Frobisher, in their pursuit of an expanded role for a Protestant England in the brave new world
of the North Atlantic. Mancall effectively juxtaposes medieval notions (sea monsters!) with modern ones
(globalized commercial and evangelical possibilities!) to bring to life the Elizabethan England that laid the
groundwork for the Jacobean new world acquisitions.
.The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England ed. John F. McDiarmid
Patrick Collinson’s 1987 essay on this topic was memorable for the way it altered our conception of Tudor politics.
As contemporaries such as Thomas Smith and John Aylmer inform us, sixteenth century England possessed a
“mixed” constitution that provided the necessary brakes upon monarchical power that were deemed especially
necessary during the reigns of, as James I later put it, “minors, tyrants, or women or simple kings . . .” the
“monarchical republic” also included forms of local government, a crucial element in the relationship between the
core of royal government and the periphery of local administration: this group of essays by the cream of the crop
of current Anglo-American Tudor scholars (Ethan Shagan, Scott Lucas, Stephen Alford, Anne McLaren), explores,
refines, and questioned a number of jumping off points raised in Collinson’s original essay. While some of the
essays seem tangential, all are thoughtful and well-written; this volume will have both immediate and long lasting
impact.
Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society 1640-1700 Susan Dwer
Amussen
Amussen presents an impressive narrative here, using literary and cultural artifacts as the primary evidence for an
essentially material interpretation- the motivation here was wealth! Whether we Anglophones like it or not, Britain
presented the modernizing world of 17th century Europe with a rather horrifying model for justifying the means by
which imperial forms of wealth and power were created and perpetuated; Amussen does a superb job of describing
and integrating the combined economic, social, and gendered implications of this dynamic historical process. My
only reservation with this book is with some of the more far reaching claims; it is not at all clear how widespread
within British society was the impact of the importation of Africans and slavery, at least for the period covered by
the book. This is my only reservation, however, with an otherwise impressive book.
The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law and Economy in Late Medieval London Barbara Hanawalt
Barbara Hanwalt brings to life the bustling economic life of medieval London in this thoroughly researched and
insightful book. The city of London, like other chartered boroughs in England and on the continent, made its own
rules concerning the economic roles women were allowed to play. In Hanawalt’s analysis, London’s legal codes
offered significant protections for women’s inheritance rights, creating a horizontal distribution of capital assets that
was vital to the city’s economic growth, in marked contrast to the patrilineal systems that operated in much of
Europe during this time frame. This book bursts at the seams with anecdotal material, mostly derived from court
records, that describes women’s economic activities up and down the social ladder, from propertied serial
monogamists who racked up fortunes in dowers to bawdy entrepreneurs who sold everything from salted fish to
their own bodies in order to survive the mean streets of medieval London town. More descriptive than analytical,
Hanawalt banishes any notions of a medieval golden age for women; nonetheless she illustrates the art of the
possible in the myriad of arrangements that made up the household economies in London.
Restoration and Revolution in Britain Gary S. De Krey
This book makes a solid textbook for the study of Restoration Britain through the “Glorious” Revolution of
1688/89. Much like Ian Gentles' book on the earlier 17th century Civil War, De Krey’s Restoration and Revolution
is a thoroughly British affair, as is his emphasis on the importance of tri- kingdom religious heterogeneity on
political developments during this period of history. De Krey argues that the Restoration Crisis was the beginning
of modern British politics, which invigorated an already dynamic public sphere (a cursory discussion of Jurgen
Habermas, however, would have been helpful), while the Glorious Revolution was an “imperial” event, both
economically and ideologically, an interpretation pleasing to the ‘little whig’ who lives inside all of us British
scholars.
Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England Timothy Rosendale
In the introduction to this book, the author makes some rather far reaching claims on behalf of the historical
influence of the various editions of The Book of Common Prayer (or BCP). I admire the verve with which
Rosendale stakes this claim, and the cogent argument he puts forward to advance his argument. While his prose
can often be a touch esoteric (keep this in mind for undergraduates), Rosendale has a flair for style and argument
that punctuates his description of the BCP’s influence on an English Reformation that assumed a life of its own in
the breadth of its horizontal reach of its individualism, which the vertical thrust of royal and ecclesiastical hierarchy
could never fully control or contain, yet “the seemingly irreconcilable claims of early modern absolutism and
Protestant individualism were textually synthesized into productive new tensions.” Does this mean that Cranmer
was subversive? I was fascinated with how Rosendale injected discussions of Sidney and Shakespeare to buttress
his claims, but most importantly, I walked away with a greater and clearer understanding of the complicated
doctrines that defined the Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan churches. (The Neil Young reference also
identifies the author as one cool dude!)
Poets and Power From Chaucer to Wyatt Robert J. Meyer-Lee
As do historians, literary critics continue to search for the continuities and the ruptures between the late middle
ages and the early modern period, in this case, the influence through time of the archetypal 15th century poets,
John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve, both literary successors to Geoffrey Chaucer and clients of the Lancastrian
dynasty. As a non-specialist (I am a historian!) I am impressed by the interpretive gauntlet that Meyer-Lee has
thrown down concerning the wide ranging influence, through time, of Lydgate, whom Meyer-Lee considers to be
the unofficial poet laureate for the Lancastrian dynasty. What I found most fascinating (an instructive for my
current project!) was the discussion offered here on the intersection of poetry and politics, and the tension
between moral authority and the need to satisfy the politicized representational needs of royal patrons. I also liked
the provocative use of the verb deploy.
The Northern rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics, and Protest in Elizabethan England K.J. Kesselring
Kesselring has written a fine study of the 1569 rebellion of the “Northern Earls” which adds a new level of historical
agency to the “common” participants that redefines the nature of religious feeling and its relationship to political
processes. What is especially noteworthy here is how Kesselring attempts to revise earlier interpretations of the
revolt as elite driven, with support from below fueled by notions of magnate loyalty. Striking also is the image of
Elizabeth, her patience evaporated, wreaking bloody vengeance on the participants on a scale not seen in other
late medieval and early modern revolts.
Tyburn’s Martyrs: Executions in England 1675-1775 Andrea McKenzie
This book is not nearly as macabre as its title might suggest. It is well researched, and the anecdotal material is
particularly expressive, as McKenzie labors to convince the reader that this study of public executions has much to
inform us about social and cultural processes. It is thought provoking, as the author brings to life the last gasp of a
providential world view, suggesting different and unique ways to historically mark the transition from “early modern”
to “modern.”