Rastell's Pastyme of People: Monarchy and the Law in Early Modern Historiography

Abstract

The prevailing view among literary critics and historians is that early modern historiographers wrote conservative texts, monarchist in orientation, which unreflectively supported the legitimating myths of the Tudor dynasty.1 Even though Annabel Patterson overturned this model in Reading Holinshed’s “Chronicles” by providing copious evidence for reading the Chronicles as multivocal, ideologically capacious, and sympathetic to “instances of active social protest,” subsequent scholarship has, it seems, decided to remain unconvinced.2 In Engendering a Nation, Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin still maintain that early modern historiographers provided “a traditional rationale for newly acquired power and privilege. Invoking the legendary names of Brute and Arthur, Tudor historians produced fables of ancient descent and providential purpose to validate a new dynasty’s claim to the English throne.”3 And in Historiography and Ideolog y in Stuart Drama, Ivo Kamps continues in this vein, arguing that early modern historiography is essentially “orthodox” and that it never “called for radical changes in the monarchy.”4 This refusal to accept Patterson’s conclusions about historiography in general and the Chronicles in particular certainly demonstrates how at times, not even overwhelming evidence can displace a deeply entrenched