Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  Ranters Religious radicals emerging out of the toleration following the Civil Wars who believed that those in tune with God, who is pure good, can commit no sin. Many others at the time feared them and blamed them for all manner of debauchery, though their writings suggest mainly a rigorous questioning of then dominant Calvinist theology (see Puritans).

  Recusancy Failure to conform to the established church after the Reformation, notably refusal to attend Anglican church services; recusants were penalized £20 per month from 1581 Act.

  Regency Act, 1706 Statute of Parliament guaranteeing that that body would continue to sit for six months after the death of Queen Anne, the realm administered by a council ofregency to ensure the smooth accession of the elector of Hanover as king of England in keeping with the Act of Settlement, 1701. Its implementation in 1714 did precisely that.

  Ridolfi Plot Plot engineered in 1571 by Robert Ridolfi and supported by Philip II and the pope to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. Foiled by the government.

  Roundheads Cant name for Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars, it was a pejorative reference to London apprentices who protested the king’s policies in 1641. Apprentices, like all working people in England, tended, for practicality’s sake, to cut their hair short –hence "roundheads" –in contrast to courtiers who had the time and assistance of servants to dress long hair.

  Rump Parliament Popular nickname for the radical remnant of the Long Parliament which continued to sit after Pride’s Purge (see Long Parliament) in December 1648. The Rump was the effective legislature of the Commonwealth. It was dissolved by Cromwell in 1653, but briefly revived in 1659 -60 during the chaos leading to the Restoration

  Ryswick, Treaty of, 1697 Treaty ending the Nine Years’ War, by which Louis XIV recognized William III as the rightful king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, gave back European territory taken since 1678, and agreed to work out with William a partition of the Spanish Empire after the death of Carlos II.

  Settlement, Act of, 1701 Statute which established the Hanoverian succession after William III and Queen Anne. It passed over dozens of Catholic claimants in favor of the Protestant descendants of James I’s youngest daughter Elizabeth, namely Sophia, electress of Hanover, and her successor, Georg Ludwig. The act also restricted the power of future monarchs.

  Sheriff Originally the shire reeve, an unpaid officer of the Crown in the localities, responsible for collecting taxes, impaneling juries, and, early in the period, raising the militia.Considered an onerous office to be avoided if possible.

  Ship Money Tax levied on coastal counties to pay for ships to rid the sea of pirates and other threats. Charles I’s extension of the tax to the entire country in the 1630s to fund the whole Royal Navy was financially lucrative, but highly resented, leading to Hampden’s Case, which the king barely won. Abolished by the Long Parliament, 1641.

  Shrovetide The three days before Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent in the Church calendar. Prior to the Reformation in England, a time for confession and absolution.

  Solemn League and Covenant See Covenant, Solemn League and, 1643.

  Star Chamber The council acting as a court of law in matters involving riot and disorder. Its rules were few, its justice quick, which made it popular initially with the Crown and litigants. Its use to enforce Charles I’s program of “Thorough” in the 1630s led to its abolition in 1641.

  Statute Act of Parliament; that is, legislation passed by the Houses of Commons and Lords and approved by the monarch.

  Statutes of Praemunire, 1353, 1365, 1393 See Praemunire, Statutes of, 1353, 1365, 1393

  Suspending power The customary, if always controversial, right of English kings to suspend the operation of the laws in a time of national emergency. Condemned in the Declaration of Rights of 1689 and extinct thereafter.

  Test Acts, 1673, 1678 Statutes introduced in response to the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 requiring all civil officeholders and members of either house of Parliament to take communion in the Church of England and to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance and repudiating transubstantiation. These requirements “flushed out” many Catholics in government but were less effective against Dissenters because of the practice of occasional conformity.

  Tories English political party which arose in response to the Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s. The Tories began as a court party defending the hereditary succession in the person of James, duke of York. They favored the rights of the monarch and the Church of England. During the 1690s, as they became associated with Jacobitism and lost power, the Tories became more of a country party critical of the abuse of executive power.

  Treaties See first word of treaty (for example, Utrecht, Treaty of, 1713).

  Uniformity, Acts of, 1549, 1552, 1559, 1662 Statutes mandating attendance at church and the use of the English Book of Common Prayer in its services.

  Union, Acts of, 1536 with Wales, 1707 with Scotland Statutes uniting the country in question with England as one state with one Parliament and one executive. The 1707 Union created Great Britain.

  Utrecht, Treaty of, 1713 Treaty between Great Britain and France ending their hostilities in the War of the Spanish Succession. Britain acquired Gibraltar, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, territory in the Caribbean, the Asiento, Louis XIV’s recognition of the Protestant succession, and the promise that the crowns of France and Spain would never be united.

  Visitation Inspection of ritual, vestments, etc., of a parish or, more usually, a diocese by a bishop or his representative.

  Wardship As feudal lord, the king had the right to administer the estates of underage or female heirs of deceased vassals. Moreover, he often assumed lordship of estates whose previous owners had died without heirs. This allowed him to collect feudal dues through the Court of Wards until the abolition of these rights and this court in 1646.

  Welsh Marches Borderland area between Wales and England including counties of Shropshire, Hereford, Monmouth, Montgomery, Radnor, Flint.

  Whigs English political party which arose in response to the Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s. The Whigs began as a country party demanding the exclusion of the Catholic James, duke of York, from the throne, emphasizing the rights of Parliament and of Dissenters, and championing a Protestant (pro-Dutch) foreign policy. In the 1690s they became a party of government and grew less radical.

  Wyatt’s Rebellion Rebellion led in 1554 by Sir Thomas Wyatt against Mary I’s intended marriage to Philip, soon to be king of Spain. Mary’s fledgling army beat back the rebels, many of whom were executed.

  Select Bibliography

  Introduction

  Years ago, when the authors were themselves students, textbooks such as C. Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (London, 1961) and C. Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History, 1509–1660 (Oxford, 1971) opened their eyes to the excitement and worth of studying early modern England (even if the occasional reference puzzled those not actually reared in the United Kingdom). More recently, the authors first began teaching their own students about British history by assigning C. Roberts and D. Roberts, A History of England, vol. 1, Prehistory to 1714 (1st ed., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980; 4th ed., with D. R. Bisson, 2001) or L. B. Smith, This Realm of England, 1399–1688 (1st ed., Lexington, Mass., 1966; 8th ed., 2001). Such general surveys remain valuable syntheses of English history and we have learned much from them.

  But we recognize that those just beginning to study this period will turn to this bibliography to learn the latest word about a person, place, or event mentioned in this text or to prepare a report or paper on a more specific subject. Much recent scholarship in early modern British history is to be found in articles (now in print and online, depending on your library’s subscriptions) in journals such as Continuity and Change, English Historical Review, Historical Journal, History, Journal of British Studies, Past and Present, and Social History. Our companion volume, N. Key and R. Bucholz, eds., Sources and Debates in English
History, 1485–1714, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2009), includes references to specific articles and debates found in journals like these. Here, however, we list mainly books published in the last quarter-century. We deploy this somewhat arbitrary cut-off date in order to have room to note the many useful studies prepared recently for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, rather than the array of still excellent monographs from the 1960s and 1970s, many of which are referred to in the endnotes above. We cannot list all the works used in preparation of this text; after all, between us we have been reading in the history of this period for over a half-century. But we might single out a half-dozen general studies below which have been consistently valuable and seem particularly reliable, in particular Coward (The Stuart Age, 2003), Guy (1988), Hirst (1999), Holmes (1993), Hoppit (2000), Kishlansky (1996), Lockyer (2004), Palliser (1992), Sharpe (Early Modern England, 1997), Williams (1995), and Wrightson (2000).

  For additional works, we recommend consulting relevant chapters of Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates (above), Historical Abstracts online, or the Royal Historical Society Bibliography: The History of Britain, Ireland, and the British Overseas (http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/). We also provide a sampling of recent collections of printed and online sources from the period.

  General

  Cannon, J., ed. The Oxford Companion to British History, rev. ed. Oxford, 2002.

  Collinson, P., ed. The Sixteenth Century, 1485-1603. Oxford, 2002.

  Coward, B., ed. A Companion to Stuart Britain. Oxford, 2003.

  Davies, N. The Isles: A History. Oxford, 2000.

  Heal, F. and Holmes, C. The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700. Stanford, 1994.

  Hindle, S. The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640. Basingstoke, 2000.

  Inwood, S. A History of London. 1998.

  Laurence, A. Women in England, 1500–1760: A Social History. New York, 1994.

  Loades, D. M. Politics and Nation: England, 1450–1660, 5th ed. Oxford, 1999.

  Lockyer, R. Tudor and Stuart Britain, 1471–1714, 3rd ed. Harlow, 2004.

  Morrill, J., ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain. Oxford, 1996.

  O’Day, R. The Longman Companion to the Tudor Age. London, 1995.

  Sharpe, J. A. Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550–1760, 2nd ed. London, 1997.

  Tittler, R. and Jones, N., eds. A Companion to Tudor Britain. Oxford, 2004.

  Todd, M., ed. Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England. London, 1995.

  Wall, A. Power and Protest in England, 1525–1640. London, 2000.

  Worden, B., ed. Stuart England. Oxford, 1986.

  Wroughton, J. The Longman Companion to the Stuart Age, 1603–1714. London, 1997.

  Pre-Tudor (1400s–1485)

  Britnell, R. The Closing of the Middle Ages? England, 1471–1529. Oxford, 1997.

  Carpenter, C. The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437–1509. Cambridge, 1997.

  Griffiths, R. A. and Thomas, R. S. The Making of the Tudor Dynasty. Gloucester, 1985.

  Lander, J. R. Government and Community: England, 1450–1509. Cambridge, Mass., 1980.

  Pollard, A. J., ed. The Wars of the Roses. New York, 1995.

  Schama, S. A History of Britain, vol. 1, At the Edge of the World, 3500 B.C.–1603 A.D. London, 2000.

  Thomson, J. A. F. The Transformation of Medieval England, 1370–1529. London, 1983.

  See also Thurley (1993), below.

  Tudor (1485–1603)

  Biography

  Ackroyd, P. The Life of Sir Thomas More. New York, 1999.

  Chrimes, S. B. Henry VII. London, 1972; reprinted New Haven, 1999.

  Cunningham, S. Henry VII. London, 2007.

  Guy, J. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart. Boston, 2004.

  Gwyn, P. The King’s Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey. London, 1990.

  Haigh, C. Elizabeth I, 2nd ed. London, 1998.

  Ives, E. W. Anne Boleyn. Oxford, 1986.

  Kelsey, H. Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate. New Haven, 2000.

  Loades, D. M. Mary Tudor: A Life. Oxford, 1989.

  Lockyer, R. and Thrush, A. Henry VII, 3rd ed. London, 1997.

  MacCaffrey, W. Elizabeth I. London, 1993.

  MacCulloch, D. Thomas Cranmer. New Haven, 1996.

  MacCulloch, D. The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. New York, 2001.

  Marius, R. Thomas More: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass., 1984.

  Palmer, M. D. Henry VIII, 2nd ed. London, 1983.

  Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII. Berkeley, 1968.

  Starkey, D. Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne. New York, 2001.

  Sugden, J. Sir Francis Drake. New York, 1990.

  Political and Governmental

  Anglo, S. Images of Tudor Kingship. London, 1992.

  Bernard, G. W. Power and Politics in Tudor England. Aldershot, 2000.

  Braddick, M. J. The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714. Manchester, 1996.

  Brigden, S. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–1603. New York, 2002.

  Collinson, P., ed. The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603. Oxford, 2002.

  Dean, D. M. Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601. Cambridge, 1996.

  Ellis, S. G. Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State. Oxford, 1995.

  Elton, G. R. Reform and Reformation: England, 1509–1558. Cambridge, Mass., 1977.

  Elton, G. R. The Parliament of England, 1559–1581. Cambridge, 1986.

  Fletcher, A. and MacCulloch, D. Tudor Rebellions, 4th ed. London, 1997.

  Graves, M. A. R. The Tudor Parliaments: Crown, Lords and Commons, 1485–1603. London, 1985.

  Guy, J. Tudor England. Oxford, 1988.

  Guy, J., ed. The Tudor Monarchy. London, 1997.

  Kishlansky, M. Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1986.

  Levin, C. The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Philadelphia, 1994.

  Loach, J. and Tittler, R., eds. The Mid-Tudor Polity c.1540–1560. London, 1980.

  Loades, D. M. The Tudor Court. London, 1986.

  MacCulloch, D. The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy, and Piety. New York, 1995.

  McGurk, J. The Tudor Monarchies, 1485–1603. Cambridge, 1999.

  Nicholls, M. A History of the Modern British Isles, 1529–1603: The Two Kingdoms. Oxford, 1999.

  Starkey, D. The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics. London, 1985.

  Starkey, D., ed. The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War. London, 1987.

  Tittler, R. The Reign of Mary I, 2nd ed. London, 1991.

  Williams, P. The Tudor Regime. Oxford, 1979.

  Williams, P. The Later Tudors: England, 1547–1603. Oxford, 1995.

  See also Schama (2000).

  Religious and Intellectual

  G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church. New Haven, 2005.

  Brigden, S. London and the Reformation. Oxford, 1989.

  Coffey, J. Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689. London, 2000.

  Collinson, P. The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York, 1988.

  Dickens, A. G. The English Reformation, 2nd ed. London, 1989.

  Doran, S. and Durston, C. Princes, Pastors and People: The Church and Religion in England, 1529–1689. 2nd ed. London, 2003.

  Duffy, E. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580. New Haven, 1992.

  Duffy, E. The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. New Haven, 2000.

  Haigh, C. English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors. Oxford, 1993.

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sp; Heal, F. Reformation in Britain and Ireland. Oxford, 2003.

  Helgerson, R. Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England. Chicago, 1992.

  Loades, D., ed. John Foxe: An Historical Perspective. Aldershot, 1999.

  MacCulloch, D. The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603, 2nd ed. Basingstoke, 2001.

  Marshall, P. and Ryrie, A., eds. The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Cambridge, 2002.

  O’Day, R. Education and Society, 1500–1800: The Social Foundations of Education in Early Modern Britain. London, 1982.

  Prall, S. E. Church and State in Tudor and Stuart England. Arlington Heights, I11., 1993.

  Rex, R.. Henry VIII and the English Reformation. New York, 1993.

  Scarisbrick, J. J. The Reformation and the English People. Oxford, 1984.

  Shagan, E. Popular Politics and the English Reformation. Cambridge, 2003.

  Thomas, K. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York, 1971. (See also the reevaluation of Thomas’s work in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. J. Barry, M. Hester, and G. Roberts. Cambridge, 1996.)

  Watt, T. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640. Cambridge, 1991.

  See also Brigden (2000), Collinson (2002), Elton (1977), Fletcher and MacCulloch (1997), Guy (1988, 1997), MacCulloch (1995), Marius (1984), Tittler (1991), Wall (2000), and Williams (1995).

  Social and Cultural

  Amussen, S. D. An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England. Oxford, 1988.

  Appleby, A. B. Famine in Tudor and Stuart England. Liverpool, 1978.

  Barry, J., ed. The Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1530–1688. London, 1990.