Judith Richards

MARY TUDOR AS ‘SOLE QUENE’?: GENDERING TUDOR MONARCHY

Although Mary Tudor had reigned for five years before her, Elizabeth Tudors reign has often been treated as if it raised issues of English female monarchy de novo . The argument of this paper is that the study of Marys reign is important in its own right, as well as a necessary introduction for any wider study of English female monarchy. It was during Marys reign that the accommodations consequent upon the occupation of the traditionally male monarchy by the first female occupant were devised. Those strategies subsequently defined central symbolic forms of Elizabeths reign and shaped their readings. Moreover, the shifts in ritual and representations during the first queens reign made to accommodate that other novelty, a king as consort, throw considerable light on the underlying political assumptions of the times, as well as the more gendered aspects of constitutional theory.

Love and a Female Monarch: The Case of Elizabeth Tudor

Much of the importance of what we call “political ideas” lies precisely in their being political-operative and effective to the extent that they are deployed in actual situations, in the relationships that are characteristic and constitutive of concrete political system. It is a commonplace of Tudor history that one distinctive feature of the reign of Elizabeth Tudor was the panache with which she wooed her English subjects. Such activity has been treated much more as an aspect of her “instinct for romantic leadership,” much less as a subject for serious historical study. This article sets out to redress that dismissive stance and argues that the language and processes of her “wooing” encapsulated an intersection of humanist beliefs and Tudor policy, with serious political purposes and significant political implications. Since the 1960s, a new orthodoxy in the study of political thought has stressed the importance of paying attention to the audiences for whom, and the contexts within which, particular political ideas were expressed, but there has been little effect of this trend on Tudor political studies. Historians have paid only passing attention to whole new genres of Tudor political discourse, let alone to the increasing Tudor range of strategies for presenting fundamental political propositions to an ever-widening audience. The introduction of print, the polemical function of Tudor homilies, Tudor royal proclamations, and court-sponsored political pamphlets all carried important messages. Such evolving forms contained within them implied redefinitions of relationships between subject and monarch. The reign of Henry VIII reflected the evolution of a qualitatively new concept of the sovereign monarch, drawing on an increasingly unqualified doctrine of allegiance.

Winstanley: A Case for the Man as He Said He Was

The publication of Christopher Hills Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings was an exciting event for students of mid-seventeenth-century England. It provides a readily available edition of Winstanleys most important writings. To these Hill offers a compelling introduction which has much to stimulate and interest, but in his interpretation of Winstanley there are also invitations to misunderstanding. Ultimately, Hills interest in Winstanley arises from his perception of the seventeenth-century writer as ‘modern’ and, if another recent article is any guide, this continues to be the common factor for studies of Winstanley. It is the purpose of this article to argue that this ‘modern’ view of Winstanley misconstrues his intellectual sources and historical significance by minimising the part theology played in his theories of social and moral change. The result of such a view is to misrepresent Winstanleys meaning, and his relationship to his contemporary world.

INTENTIONS AND CONVENTIONS: A CRITIQUE OF QUENTIN SKINNER'S METHOD FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

This paper plays critic to Quentin Skinners much tougher role as methodological innovator in the practice of the history of ideas. It argues that the continuing centrality of intentions in Skinners proposals as illustrated in his historical examples results in descriptions which are too often unproven or unproveable or unenlightening or wrong. Serious doubts are raised about the theoretical propriety of Skinners doctrine of intentions as a key to the proper understanding of historical texts, and the legitimacy of the explanatory power Skinner attributes to his imputed intentions is disputed.

A “Radical” Problem: The Poor and the English Reformers in the Mid-Seventeenth Century

Debates about poverty in mid-seventeenth-century England have, for some years, been a staple of historical studies. In our own time, where the numbers of the dispossessed continue to challenge the success of current modes of social and economic organization, such an interest is understandable and to be welcomed. But the relevance of studies of past problems and solutions and their applicability to present purposes is more complex than is usually recognized. The immediate benefit of studying discussions for change in mid-seventeenth-century England is that they provide an unusual insight into how members of that society conceived of it. In particular, their observations about the problems of poverty and the role of the poor offer us an understanding of the perceived social structure, the ethical bases for social differentiation, and the degree to which the future could be envisioned as differing from the past or present. Such understandings of proposed social change are invaluable for historians wishing to grasp the underlying assumptions on which past thought and action was predicated. Past proposals for social reform, however, have also been the focus of a significantly different enquiry by historians. In order to render those past programs more comprehensible (and more directly “relevant”) to modern readers, they are often placed on a “conservative” versus “radical” continuum, one end of which has sometimes been marked “extreme left wing.” This article argues that any such classification inevitably leads to misunderstandings of the authors and of their programs and, consequently, misrepresents both to the present.

Gender Difference and Tudor Monarchy: The Significance of Queen Mary I

The long absence of queens regnant in England owed little to any principled opposition to female rule. Even in France the fourteenth-century appeal to Salic law owed more to pragmatic politics than to systemic hostility to queens. Although there were no clear-cut barriers to female accession, Mary Tudor, Englands first Queen Regnant was undoubtedly more acceptable because she came to the throne a mature woman, with an impeccable sexual reputation. Her accession was also made easier by Henry VIIIs extended use of statute law; in turn she eased the path to the throne for the younger and allegedly more disreputable Elizabeth.

Dangerous talk: Scandalous, seditious, and treasonable speech in pre-modern England [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Dangerous talk: Scandalous, seditious, and treasonable speech in pre-modern England, by Cressy, David, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, cloth, pp. xiii, 374, R.R.P. 25.00 pounds, ISBN 9780199564804.