Tudor England: A History

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There can never be a definitive history of Tudor England. The debates about religion, government and society still rage unabated as they have done for much of the past 500 years. I suppose, ignoring for a moment the Horrible Histories nature of the period, this is why the reigns of the Tudor monarchs continue to have such a hold over our imagination in a way that the Plantagenets and Stuarts do not. Folger Theatre reopens this fall, with the rest of the building to follow in 2024. Learn about the building renovation and start planning your visit. Selling the Tudor Monarchy is a huge achievement. It is not without its problems, but it is also an important, thought-provoking and richly rewarding book which should be required reading for every early modern scholar. Its eagerness to engage with the central questions of historical method, its passionate insistence on an interdisciplinary approach, its vast scope and its grand ideas are a great addition to the scholarship of the Tudor period. It will be even more interesting to see Sharpe take the same approach to the 17th century, which is arguably in even greater need of this treatment than the Tudor era. We look forward to the next two volumes. BOGAEV: Right. You say that 95% of the people lived in villages. But then you had London, this amazingly mutating city. It just had tremendous turnover and it depended on immigrants, you write, to keep the city alive. That they needed, I think you said, 4,000 new arrivals each year to sustain population with so many people dying of, what? Plague and overcrowding and poor sanitation? This ‘dialogue’ was growing rapidly in scope and intensity during this period. Sharpe notes the proliferation of images, particularly during Elizabeth’s reign, partly encouraged by technological advances in printing or portraiture, partly a response to a growing market economy. He argues for the emergence of a Tudor ‘public sphere’, suggesting that a unique concern with art, spectacle and display gave the early modern era a concern with ‘the theatricalization of regality’ which would be lost after 1688, and not resurface until the Victorian age. Yet this was not a ‘public sphere’ formed in opposition to the state; rather it was an outgrowth from the state. Opposition to a monarch was more likely to appropriate official imagery than destroy or repudiate it. Critics of Henry VIII could take his self-presentation as the Old Testament King David and instead of David’s piety, regality and musicianship read instead a message about his sins, especially his adultery, and the disaster which followed from it. For Sharpe, it was the Henrician Reformation that gave birth to the ‘public sphere’ in England, and in his view ‘we can be in no doubt that Henry VIII and his successors discerned a public sphere which was far removed from the passive subjects discussed by Habermas’. Not so much print and coffee-houses here, as a hugely important oral culture, public debate and participation alongside an emerging ‘consumer culture’.

There are good grammar schools, many of which were founded in the late medieval period, and a great many more are founded in the 16th century. They do say that the proportion of grammar schools per head of population is not equaled again until, I think, the 19th century. was a crucial year in the story of the House of Tudor. It marked the moment when the crown passed from Queen Mary to her formidable younger sister Elizabeth. It also was the year when the long history of Catholicism in England came to an end. To learn much more about all of this, Violet travelled to Oxford, to meet Dr Lucy Wooding, the author of Tudor England: A History. *** [ About our format ] *** This is a brilliantly researched and well written book. Anecdotes and details are illuminating and serve to illustrate a point whether it is about Tudor monarchs or the beliefs and fears that motivated ordinary people. Scene One: 17 November 1558, London. In the early morning, Mary I lies dying at St James Palace. By evening, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, has also died – a momentous day for Catholicism in England.Yeah, there’s not quite so much drama in Henry VII, [who] does well. And in fact, that figure at the end of Richard III, you know, Henry of Richmond appearing, he’s a curiously unsatisfactory character. Mary’s reign was eventful, but it also turned out to be short. In 1558, aged just forty-two, she died. This event moved the English nation into a new and uncertain era. Mary’s successor was her younger half-sister Elizabeth. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the direction the new queen would take England in. Just one thing was plain. By 1558 the young Elizabeth was known to be clever and single-minded. These were qualities that, over the course of her long reign, would turn out to be crucial. BOGAEV: Does it shed light on a play like the Taming of the Shrew? I mean, how did audiences of the day interpret the ending of the play? For instance, Kate’s big marriage speech. BOGAEV: We were just talking about Jane Anger on this show, and that’s who I’m thinking of as you speak.

Christopher Dyer, A Country Merchant 1495–1520: Trading and farming at the end of the middle ages (Oxford, 2012), 27. It’s been a good long time since a book season featured a whopping-big general-purpose history of the Tudor era. The last was probably G. J. Meyer’s The Tudors, and Lucy Wooding’s new book, Tudor England, new from Yale University Press, is twice as long, seeks to tell the story of England from 1485 to 1603, and brandishes its modernity on its calling card. “In the last fifty years or so, we have seen significant advances in historical writing,” Wooding writes. “Anthropology, sociology and the history of race have provided important fresh perspectives. Women’s history, gender history and ‘history from below’ have transformed our view of society, popular culture and the political process, while the study of mentalites has added a kind of ‘history from within’.” I think it’s encouraging to see the first two female heads of state. I think, you know, our fascination with Mary and Elizabeth is deserved. They did an extraordinary job against, you know, some obstacles.Lucy Wooding is the Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford University. Her book Tudor England: A History is published by Yale University Press. BOGAEV: Well, Henry VIII of course had plenty of drama, and he is such a towering figure in popular culture even now. What’s most misunderstood or misrepresented about him? You write, he wasn’t a libidinous predator. But you’ve got to remember that for the first sort of 20 years of his reign, he is very popular and very successful, I think, in the eyes of his subjects, and does a pretty good job of creating an image of the Renaissance prince who is godly, who is artistic, musical, who is good at the arts of war. He rises to playing that role and does so to good effect, I think. Become a Teacher Member Get full access to the latest resources and ongoing professional development BOGAEV: Great. And we’re going to get into some of the details that you give that are fascinating about the people at the bottom all throughout Tudor society. But as you say, this was such a complicated period and England was so politically unstable. You had, Scotland was hostile territory, and Ireland a big political problem, and Wales, the separate country, and the Cornish spoke another language. Why was Tudor England, as you put it, so preoccupied with its own historical past?