Stater V. The Political History of Tudor and Stuart England: A Sourcebook
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THE POLITICAL HISTORY
OF TUDOR AND STUART ENGLAND
The Political History of Tudor and Stuart England draws together a fascinating
selection of sources to illuminate this turbulent era of English history. From
the bloody overthrow of Richard III in 1485 to the creation of a worldwide
imperial state under Queen Anne, these sources illustrate England’s difficult
transition from the medieval to the modern.
Divided into two parts, the first set of documents provides a political con-
text to help interpret the reformation, regicide and revolution which occurred
in tumultuous succession. The second set of documents is devoted to these
upheavals, and reveals the politics in action that shaped their course.
Covering a period characterized by conflict and division, this wide-ranging
single-volume collection presents the accounts of Yorkists and Lancastrians,
Protestants and Catholics, and Roundheads and Cavaliers side by side. The
Political History of Tudor and Stuart England provides a crucial opportunity for
students to examine the institutions and events that moulded English history
in the early modern era at first-hand.
Victor Stater is Professor of History at Louisiana State University. He is
author of Noble Government: The Stuart Lord Lieutenancy and the Transformation of
English Politics (1994) and Duke Hamilton Is Dead! A Story of Aristocratic Life and
Death in Stuart Britain (US 1999) published in the UK as High Life, Low
Morals (2000).
THE POLITICAL HISTORY
OF TUDOR AND
STUART ENGLAND
A Sourcebook
Victor Stater
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2002 Victor Stater
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0–415–20743–6 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–20744–4 (pbk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
ISBN 0-203-99540-6 Master e-book ISBN
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
PART I
Context 3
1 The Court and the Crown 5
Henry VII: An Ambassador’s Report in 1498 6
Elizabeth I in the Eyes of a Foreign Visitor, 1598 9
A Courtier on Queen Elizabeth’s Personality 11
‘The Best Master’: Sir Edward Hyde on Charles I 13
The Court Masque: William Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia
of 1640 15
Touching for the King’s Evil, 1662 20
The Monarch as Politician: Queen Anne in 1706 22
2 Central Government 27
Henry VIII and his Servants 28
The Elizabethan Privy Council 31
The ‘Sinews of Power’: The Treasury in 1705 35
3 The Law 40
Star Chamber under Henry VII 41
The Manor Court 45
Crime at the Assizes 49
4 Local Authority 53
Urban Government under Henry VII 54
The 1630 Book of Orders 57
5 Parliament 62
Queen and Commons: A Privy Councillor’s Speech 64
The Rules of the House 71
Whigs and Tories 73
6 The British Context 80
Governing Tudor Wales 81
Government and Rebellion in Elizabethan Ireland 83
The Scottish Privy Council at Work, 1617 85
PART II
Politics in Action 89
7 The Early Tudors 91
Lambert Simnel’s Imposture (1487) 91
The Henrician Reformation (1529–36) 96
The Revolt of the Commons (1549) 106
8 The Later Tudors 118
The Marian Martyrs (1553–8) 118
The Spanish Armada (1588) 124
9 The Early Stuarts and Civil War 130
The Gunpowder Plot (1605) 130
The Grand Remonstrance (1641) 135
The Answer to the Nineteen Propositions (1642) 140
Charles I’s Trial and Execution (1649) 143
10 Restoration to Revolution 149
The Restoration (1660) 149
The Revolution of 1688 154
The Anglo-Scottish Union (1707) 162
Sources 172
Index 175
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A historian’s work is grounded in, and bounded by, the sources available and with-
out them we would be authors of myth. But understanding history is not as
straightforward as it might appear – for it is not just the sum of countless docu-
ments, written, visual, and oral. It involves an act of interpretation: extracting
meaning from piles of paper, or ruined buildings or even the fairy tales passed
from one generation to another. Every historical document has a story to tell – let-
ters, diaries, and memoirs – even laundry lists reveal something about the time in
which they were produced. But no document reveals its secrets willingly – it must
be interrogated. Who wrote it? When, and why, was the document written? What
was the author’s perspective? An account of Henry VIII’s break with the Roman
Catholic church written by a committed Protestant, for example, would probably
look very different from that produced by a devout Catholic. How might an author’s
social status, or ethnicity, or gender affect his or her views? What can the form of
a particular document tell us? Down to the 1650s, for instance, the records of the
common law courts in England were kept in Norman French – a language that
existed only in the minds of lawyers and their clerks. Why was this so? Some would
argue that this peculiarity reveals something about the conservative nature of
English law. Others might claim that it reveals a self-interested determination on the
part of lawyers to mystify the public, making laymen dependent upon their exper-
tise. When the clerk of the Privy Council wrote up the minutes of its meetings, he
always began with a list of those who attended, noted in strict order of rank, from
the sovereign down to the untitled office holders and bureaucrats with council
seats. The attendance list of a particular meeting of the council might say impor-
tant things about the making of policy – who was present when a major decision
was taken, for example. But the form of the document itself reveals something
about the role of status and hierarchy in early modern England.
No single document ever tells the full story: it is often difficult to reconcile con-
flicting accounts or to fill in the blank spaces in the record. Readers must approach
the sources with a critical eye as well as an understanding of the context in which
those sources were produced. This collection focuses upon government and pol-
itics in early modern England – a period of rapid, and often violent, political
change. During these two centuries England travelled a path – one with more than
1
a few twists and turns – towards modernity. From Henry VIII, a survivor of the Wars
of the Roses, to Queen Anne, who presided over a cabinet of party politicians, a
great deal had happened. Reformation, regicide, restoration, and revolution came
in tumultuous succession, and sources concerned with each of those epochs are
included here. But the book also includes a variety of sources that will provide
readers with context – a background into which to fit the wider events of the
period. The English transition to modernity took place within an institutional frame-
work of crown, courts, and local government which shaped society’s attitudes
towards change, and which met – or failed to meet – the challenges change pre-
sented.
Anyone trying to select documents covering such a broad range of time and
events faces a daunting task. Unlike historians of the more remote past, the editor
has no shortage of documents from which to choose. Inevitably some things
receive short shrift in a short volume such as this. What I hope I have done is pro-
vide a useful sample of documents illustrating the most fascinating period of
English history.
Many people have contributed to the making of this volume: Tom Cogswell,
Peter Lake, and Mark Kishlansky all offered suggestions for documents to include.
I owe them a debt of gratitude, both for their help with this book and their past
kindnesses. Librarians at the Middleton Library of Louisiana State University were
always helpful in tracking down sources not in their collection, and pointing to
important items that were. I am also grateful to Heather Macallum, Victoria Peters,
Helen Brocklehurst, and Sunje Redies at Routledge for their encouragement and
patience. Suzanne Marchand provided her usual insight and support, and my
sons, Bertie and Henry, necessary distraction, for which I thank them all.
INTRODUCTION
2
Part I
CONTEXT