G. R. Elton

The Tudor constitution : documents and commentary

1. The crown 2. The council 3. The seals and the secretary 4. Financial administration 5. The ancient courts 6. Conciliar courts 7. Ecclesiastical courts 8. Parliament 9. The Church Local government List of books Glossary Index.

I. Henry VII: A Restatement

IN a vigorously argued paper, Mr J. P. Cooper has attacked my interpretation of Henry VIIs reign. 1 If the point at issue were only Mr Coopers view of my methods and scholarship—or, for that matter, my view of his—I should feel neither justified nor inclined to trouble anyone again with these problems. But Mr Cooper is almost as much concerned to prove Henry VII rapacious as he is sure that I am wrong; and the truth about Henry VIIs government deserves all the elucidation it may need. If, therefore, I reluctantly recur to an argument in which I have already had an extended say, it is because I believe Mr Cooper to be in error on a matter of first-rate importance; I hope to show that he has arrived at a mistaken view from partial, and partially misinterpreted, evidence. In a field in which things are far from clear or straightforward this is neither surprising nor shocking; it is more disconcerting to find that one who so readily chastises others for their supposed failings should himself be strangely inclined to inaccuracy in discussing other peoples views and even in transcribing documents. 2 A self-appointed hound of heaven ought to be more precise in his quest.

II. Henry VII: Rapacity And Remorse

In my England under the Tudors I took the liberty of advancing the view that Henry VII’s reputation for rapacity and extortion is probably not borne out by the facts and that his policy did not turn from just to unjust exactions. Though I knew, of course, that this opinion contradicted one held by many since Henry VII’s own time I did not imagine it to be provocative; I thought that the work of such scholars as Professors Thorne and Richardson, Miss Brodie and Mr Somerville, had shown the old notions to be quite as mistaken as I maintained. However, I have since discovered that I was too simple in that assumption; in particular, I have been challenged to say how I would dispose of the well-attested facts that Henry VII deteriorated in the second half of his reign into a grasping miser and that he showed deep remorse in his last weeks. The short answer is that I do not regard the first fact as attested at all and cannot believe that remorse in the face of death should be interpreted so trustingly. But, since the issue still appears to be in doubt, I should like to rehearse it here rather more thoroughly. I believe that this historical revision results from an important change in historical method which involves both a more critical attitude to the sources and a better understanding of that age in its own terms.

Schools and universities

The rapid developments in educational theory and practice witnessed in this period have deservedly attracted much notice. There was a significant increase in the amount of speculation on the aims and methods of teaching and a number of institutions were established which actively practised new principles. Consideration of the question is, however, far from simple. On the one hand it is necessary to define the nature of the programme of educational reform in order to estimate, if possible, the degree to which schools and universities genuinely displayed a fresh approach. On the other hand one must disentangle the movement for reform in teaching from the movement for reform in religion, for the latter had marked repercussions in this field, not only confusing the issue for contemporaries but bedevilling later interpretations of the subject with confessional prejudice. Was there an advance in education or a regression? Did, or did not, the Reformation compromise and frustrate the Renaissance? Even the value of a classical education, which was adopted so firmly at this time as an ideal of pedagogy that it lasted invincible for over three centuries, has lately been called in question. On one point fortunately there can be little doubt. The novel attitudes which obtruded in the sixteenth century were not victorious suddenly. They modified existing machinery only gradually, and for much of the time over most of Europe the educational facilities of the mid sixteenth century were what they had been for some centuries before. It is therefore necessary to begin by surveying the traditional structure of schools and universities.

The real Thomas More

How well do we really know Thomas More? Directed to one of the most familiar figures of the sixteenth century, the question must appear absurd. Even without the aid of stage and screen, surely everyone has a clear idea of Englands leading humanist, great wit, friend of Erasmus and other Continental humanists, author of Utopia , family man, man of convictions, ultimately martyr. The familiar Holbein portrait seems to sum it all up, as does at greater length the much admired biography of R. W. Chambers. Chambers, in fact, completed the picture when, to his own satisfaction and that of others, he disposed of ‘inconsistencies’ discerned by earlier observers between the cheerful reformer and ‘liberal’ of 1516 on the one hand, and the fierce opponent of Lutheran reform and savage polemicist of 1528–33 on the other. No mans personality in that age, not even King Henrys, seems more fully explored and more generally agreed than Mores.

Historical Dictionary of Tudor England, 1485-1603.

Preface Introduction by Sir Geoffrey Elton Historical Dictionary of Tudor England Chronology Bibliography Index

The Habsburg–Valois wars

God Almighty raised up these two great princes sworn enemies to one another, and emulous of one another’s greatness; an emulation that has cost the lives of two hundred thousand persons, and brought a million of families into utter ruin; when after all neither the one nor the other obtained any other advantage by the dispute than the bare repentance of having been the causers of so many miseries, and of the effusion of so much Christian blood. Many historians of the Habsburg–Valois wars have followed the broad outline of Blaise de Monluc’s retrospective assessment, fascinated by what appears at first glance to be a destructive and almost incomprehensible duel between two highly cultured Renaissance princes: the Habsburg Charles V, and the Valois Francis I. Yet the wars, which took place in an age that produced both Erasmus and Machiavelli, involved many Christian and Muslim powers. They continued after Charles and Francis were dead, and their repercussions were felt throughout the known world either directly – as participants or victims of the fighting – or indirectly, since the struggle consumed Christian resources and enabled the Ottoman state to expand. And while the conflict was extremely destructive, states and individuals – such as Monluc – participated in the wars because they also brought considerable benefits.

The Reformation, 1520-1559

Introduction to the second edition 1. The age of the reformation 2. Economic change 3. The reformation movements in Germany 4. The reformation in Zurich, Strassburg and Geneva 5. The anabaptists and the sects 6. The reformation in Scandinavia and the Baltic 7. Politics and the institutionalism of reform in Germany 8. Poland, Bohemia and Hungary 9. The reformation in France, 1515-59 10. The reformation in England 11. Italy and the papacy 12. The new orders 13. The empire of Charles V in Europe 14. The Habsburg-Valois wars 15. Intellectual tendencies 16. Schools and universities 17. Constitutional development and political thought in western Europe 18. Constitutional development and political thought in the Holy Roman Empire 19. Constitutional development and political thought in eastern Europe 20. Armies, navies and the art of war 21. The Ottoman empire, 1520-66 22. Russia, 1462-1584 23. The new world, 1521-80 24. Europe and the east Index.

The Rolls of Parliament, 1449–1547

The Roll of Parliament, supposedly the master record of that institution, actually occupied that place until some time in the sixteenth century. Yet it has never been systematically studied for the period after parliament had institutionally emerged in the middle of the fourteenth century. Since the rolls down to 1504 and for several of the parliaments of Henry VIII have been in print for some 200 years, their contents have been used often enough; but no one has subjected the originals to scrutiny, so that the documents themselves have not been made to tell what they can. This paper will consider the rolls for the years 1449–1547, the period covered by the extant early journals of the house of lords which have already been analysed. The manuscripts reveal that the print hides many interesting features, but since the texts as printed are sound enough it will at times be convenient to use them for purposes of reference.

England and the Continent in the Sixteenth Century

There are those who would deny a distinction between England and the continent of Europe, alleging that the island is in every respect—politically, socially, culturally—a part of Europe. This is an opinion that could be held only by those whose knowledge of the continent is derived from books and from visits, anyone who has actually ever lived there knows how fundamental those differences are. Or perhaps one should say, how fundamental they were; possibly they have in the last thirty years been disappearing together with an England that was real, and apparently unchangeable, at any rate down to 1939. It may also be argued that those differences have not always existed, time out of memory: medieval England, part of one European church, may have displayed more likeness to the rest of Christendom than difference. An island ruled for so many centuries by Danish, Norman and Angevin princes perhaps demands to be treated as part of those continental dominions. I am certainly familiar with arguments of this kind from historians concerned to understand the medieval English church or the Norman Conquest and its consequences. Yet even then there were real differences, and if the novel (and very persuasive) thesis that England never knew a ‘true’ peasantry survives detailed scrutiny those differences may well come to matter more throughout English history than any superficial resemblances in religion, in language, or in the social habits of the upper classes.