Civilizing Northumberland: Representations of Englishness in the Tudor State

Abstract

Taking Northumberland as a case study, this paper explores the wider implications of the Tudor strategy of reform by centralization, uniformity, and cultural imperialism. It reappraises the notion that the growth of centralized government at the expense of regional magnates was unambiguously a form of modernization; and argues that the essential character of the Tudor state and the radical nature of Tudor reform have been obscured by the historians’ practice of viewing developments in terms of the rise of the nation.