Intrigue and Treason: The Tudor Court, 1547–1558

Abstract

Intrigue and Treason: The Tudor Court, 1547–1558, by David Loades (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2004; pp. 326. £19.99). For many years historians treated the twelve years between the death of Henry VIII and the accession of Elizabeth I as the interval between the first and second acts of the Tudor drama. In his influential Penguin history, S.T. Bindoff labelled them ‘Left-turn and Right-about Face’, contradictory and brief digressions from a correct script. The last forty years, however, have seen a burgeoning of mid-Tudor studies, in part because the reigns of the Henrys and Elizabeth appeared too well-worked, but also because it was realised that intervals can produce significant changes in scenery. David Loades was one of the earliest and most significant scene shifters, and his oeuvre is now very considerable. Perhaps, one wonders initially with this latest book, an oeuvre too considerable. Readers will be surprised that for many of the expected episodes, it refers them to fuller accounts published previously. The reason for this, as Loades reveals in the last chapter, is narrowness of the definitions he is applying. Treason is defined as ‘in the normal sense, plotting the death or overthrow of the incumbent monarch’. Intrigue is restricted to intrigue at court. Thus aristocratic manoeuvres under Edward do not qualify because they owed nothing to the personal intervention of the king. Only limited attention is given to the machinations of Henry VIII's executors in the early months of Edward's reign and there is no mention of the desire of leading peers to get rid of Somerset long before the autumn of 1549. Instead, Somerset's fall is ascribed to his failure to act with restraint and discretion (p. 52) with no mention of the complaint that, following a coup in March 1547, he had felt himself freed of his earlier promise to act only with the majority consent of the council. As for what contemporaries had no doubt was treason—the Lady Jane Grey affair—this is described as ‘fought out partly in the council and partly in the country, and as a political entity the court was virtually in abeyance’. We are also told that ‘Northumberland and Mary were confronted with numerous protests and conspiracies, but none of these had either root or flower in the court’ and that ‘Mary's court seems to have been remarkably free from plotting and faction, and completely free from anything that could be called treason’. Under Elizabeth, the first court conspiracy was the attempt to remove Cecil in 1568–9 and the nearest thing to treason was the Ridolphi plot. In place of the attention to what others might have defined as treason and intrigue, Loades gives space to some issues generally passed over quickly. A welcome chapter called ‘Educating and entertaining a prince’ strengthens the case for seeing William Thomas as Edward's ‘politics tutor’ and provides a useful overview of the court revels provided for him, though more, perhaps, should have been made of Edward's physical activity. He could ride by the age of eight and the summer of 1552 was spent on what Edward bluntly described as ‘the killing of wild beasts’. Like his father he had non-literary interests too, such as music and geography. In dealing with Mary's reign, there is a convincing chapter on Philip and, as one might expect, a perceptive and generally sympathetic portrayal of Mary. Strangely, no comparative use appears to have been made of Pam Wright's work on Elizabeth's female court, nor, it seems of John Murphy's discussion of the fortunes of the privy chamber in the relevant years. Readers who have not read Loades's 1986 account are provided with a helpful appendix on the structure of the court (but ‘bouge of court’ is defined as dining rights rather than basic rations of bread, beer, light and firing), and a list of its principal officers from 1540 to at least the 1560s. Although entries are not always complete, the index is clear. Twelve quality plates are included, principally portraits, though several of those reproduced are way-off in date—Henry VIII (1536), Elizabeth (c. 1575), Philip II (c. 1580) and Cecil (post-1585). But despite merits the narrow definitions adopted here mean that we do not have a rounded study of mid-Tudor politics.