Politics and Political History in the Tudor Century

Abstract

. Recent writing on the Tudor century emphasizes the importance to the history of politics of the study of political processes. Tudor historians are, for the most part, less willing than hitherto to describe bureaucracies or institutions of government, and more concerned to present politics as something dynamic rather than static. Although their work remains rooted in the archives, Tudor specialists are increasingly receptive to the significance of ( for example) political language, iconography, and literature. This article examines a number of recent contributions, in the context of post-war Tudor historiography. It accepts that the insights of other disciplines can enhance the study of sixteenth-century politics, and welcomes the intellectual and cultural turn in recent writing, but maintains that Tudor culture is not always being reconstructed with the sensitivity it needs.In recent years, historians of early modern Britain have spent some time examining the state and nature of writing on the Tudor century. In his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge in , Patrick Collinson discussed a ' history with the politics put back ', but the sort of politics he discussed went well beyond the interests of other generations of sixteenth-century historians. Professor Collinson's history was a history of political process rather than of sovereign states, a discipline capable of dealing with ideas and ideologies as well as social and ecclesiastical preoccupations." More recently, John Guy has presented an agenda for a ' new political history ' of the sixteenth century, built in part on Professor Collinson's call for politics to be put back, but broader in focus, sensitive to the work of historians of political thought and the insights of writing which moves beyond a consideration of lowland England. Professor Guy emphasizes the importance of studying the interaction between people, institutions, and ideas ; of combining archival research with a sensitivity to literary and iconographical sources ; of recognizing political language, and in particular the vocabulary of counsel ; of understanding the impact of classical writing on sixteenthcentury notions of duty and service, and the effect this eventually had on concepts of the state ; and of the wider reach of the polity, in Ireland, Wales, and the borderlands of England.# This is, potentially, a huge undertaking based on an already substantial body of work -even a basic reading list would have to include studies by

Royal Counsel in Tudor England, 1485–1603

“…We know that monarchs continued to seek advice from unsworn acquaintances, such as courtiers and ambassadors, but did they treat this as seriously as deliberations of the privy council? 127 Ecclesiastical counsel, considered not as a 'language' but as a concrete phenomenon, is a particularly promising avenue for further research. Since preachers are counsel-givers by nature, bishops and court preachers could normally offer frank royal counsel without causing undue offence, as illustrated long before our period in the coronation services of Anglo-Saxon kings.…”