Early Tudor England Research Articles

Margaret McGlynn. The King's Felons: Church, State, and Criminal Confinement in Early Tudor England Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 400. $145.00 (cloth).

Margaret McGlynn. The King's Felons: Church, State, and Criminal Confinement in Early Tudor England Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 400. $145.00 (cloth).

The King's Felons: Church, State, and Criminal Confinement in Early Tudor England by Margaret McGlynn (review)

The King's Felons: Church, State, and Criminal Confinement in Early Tudor England by Margaret McGlynn (review)

Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. 161. $22.95 (paper).

Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. 161. $22.95 (paper). - Volume 62 Issue 2

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. Magic in History Sourcebooks. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. x + 162 pp. $22.95.

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. Magic in History Sourcebooks. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. x + 162 pp. $22.95.

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England by Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England by Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England , by Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright

The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England , by Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright

Klaassen, Frank, and Sharon Hubbs Wright, ed. and trans. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England.

Klaassen, Frank, and Sharon Hubbs Wright, ed. and trans. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England.

Thomas More and the Defence of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England

AbstractMuch has been written about Thomas More's alleged monastic vocation and spirituality, but rather less about his views on the religious orders of his day. This article argues that a consistent position towards contemporary English monasticism can be discerned across More's (highly varied) oeuvre and in his personal connections with religious houses. He was an enthusiastic supporter of strictly observant monasticism throughout his career, but seems to have looked much more critically upon other branches of the religious orders in early Tudor England (which comprised the large majority). This orientation was shared with some other English humanists, but clashed with the position of Erasmus who held no special regard for strictly observant monasteries. More's misgivings about general monastic standards in the realm held a wider significance, in view of his status as the most prolific and influential polemicist writing in support of the early Tudor church. The defence of the religious orders in the controversialist works that More wrote and oversaw in the later 1520s and early 1530s was distinctly lukewarm, and even at times evasive. Partly as a result, the mounting evangelical and anticlerical attacks on English monasteries in these years went largely unanswered.

Encountering the Word of God in Early Tudor England

Abstract The arrival in England of Tyndale’s New Testament in the 1520s is still widely heralded as a transformative moment. This article argues that the lingering effects of triumphalist Protestant rhetoric concerning the ‘Word of God’ have obscured the many other contexts in which it was possible for the laity to encounter the Bible in early Tudor England. They have also glossed over some of the difficulties of transmitting Scripture to a largely illiterate populace. Protestant insistence on the literal interpretation of vernacular Scripture should chiefly be seen as propaganda for the evangelical cause. Early Tudor print culture demonstrates that the reading of Scripture was understood as a complex process involving a spiritual encounter shaped by faith, imagination and emotion, not just a textual encounter. In practice, Tyndale and other reformers, no less than their more conservative opponents, taught the laity that the Bible needed to be ‘unlocked’ and explained. For the lay reader encountering works of religious devotion and instruction, the ways in which early Tudor print culture mediated the Bible remained heavily indebted to late medieval religious practice. This shaped the context in which the ‘Great Bible’ of 1539 was conceived and published and this first official English Bible should be recognised as a contested text, which in its final form may have been as much a reflection of late medieval attitudes as the achievement of English Protestants.

Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright, The Magic of the Rogues. Necromancers in Early Tudor England

Apres un volume consacre a deux manuscrits de magie copies au XVIe siecle, Frank Klaassen, accompagne cette fois de Sharon Hubbs Wright, poursuit le travail de fond entrepris ces dernieres annees sur les nombreuses sources relatives aux pratiques et a la culture magiques conservees en Angleterre, entre fin du Moyen Âge et premiere modernite. Dans le present opus, il s’agit de croiser autant que possible les sources de magie elles-memes – produites par des hommes lettres (de differents niveaux...

Wynkyn de Worde, Stephen Hawes, and the improvisation of genre in early sixteenth‐century English poetry

AbstractThe printing of the poems of the early Tudor poet Stephen Hawes (c.1474–before 1529) by the London printer Wynkyn de Worde (d. 1534/5) is the earliest example of the sustained publication of a contemporary English poet by a single printer. This article considers de Worde’s printing of Hawes, in a flurry around 1509 and then at intervals of more or less ten years until 1530, as part of a larger effort to establish a noncourt audience for contemporary English poetry with nevertheless courtly credentials. The paratexts with which de Worde frames Hawes’s verse – from woodcut illustrations, to the printing of the author’s name, to the citation of Hawes by other writers associated with de Worde – are examined as evidence for a growing tendency amongst London printers to provide opportunities for their readers to make imaginative crossreference between their varied literary output. They represent an alternative to the marketing of English literary texts primarily on the basis of authorship – what I describe as an ‘improvisation of literary genre’ by early Tudor England’s poets, printers, and readers.

Locus, Sanctus, et Virtus: Monastic Surnaming in Late Medieval and Early Tudor England Reviewed

This article examines the apparent practice among monks and regular canons in England before the Dissolution of dropping their family surnames on admission/profession, and adopting instead a new ‘monastic byname’, derived from a place name (toponym) or, by the late fifteenth century onwards, from a saint’s name (hagionym) or a virtue. The article begins by reviewing evidence that this onomastic practice existed and determining how widespread it was. The nature and distribution of the toponymic, hagionymic, and virtue bynames are then examined in turn. The article concludes by considering the underlying reason for the adoption of monastic bynames and argues that this practice served as a means of reflecting symbolically the new monk’s or canon’s separation from lay society, and from his family in particular, and his incorporation into the monastic community.

Perjury in Early Tudor England

The break with Rome was enforced through a nationwide programme of oath-taking. The Henrician regime resorted to oaths because they were already fundamental to the functioning of the polity. In the preceding half-century, activities as diverse as heresy prosecution, tax assessment and debt litigation depended upon oaths. Irrespective of their often mundane subject matter, oaths were held to be religious acts. Prolific oath-taking, however, led to frequent oath-breaking. Perjury was therefore a more pressing and broader concept than it is today. It was an offence against God, against oneself and against others. How this crime was prosecuted and punished sheds light on the intersection of religious doctrine, legal systems and social practice in pre-Reformation England. An analysis of perjury also draws attention to a jurisdictional shift that was underway before the Reformation. In 1485, church courts had exercised an extensive cognizance of perjury; by 1535, they no longer did. The most important factor contributing to this decline in ecclesiastical jurisdiction was the constraint imposed by common lawyers on what cases the church courts could hear. Common law defined the crime of perjury more narrowly than did canon law. Hence the contraction of the church's jurisdiction would alter how perjury was perceived.

England's Immigrants, 1330–1550: Aliens in Later Medieval and Early Tudor England

AbstractThis article, a revised and annotated version of a plenary lecture given at the North American Conference on British Studies meeting in October 2018, considers the place and significance of aliens in England's history between the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 and the arrival of the French and Dutch Protestants from the 1540s onward. It draws extensively on a new database of immigrants to England between 1330 and 1550, which itself relies principally on the remarkable records generated by a tax on aliens resident in England, collected at various points between 1440 and 1487. Aliens emerge as a significant element in English society—sometimes chastised, sometimes subject to violence and other abuse, but also recognized clearly for their contribution to the economy. If immigrants were sometimes seen as a potentially disruptive presence, they were also understood to be a natural and permanent part of the social order.

Increasing returns to scale in the towns of early Tudor England

Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is historical evidence for the presence of Smithian growth and agglomeration effects in English towns c.1450-1670, but seminal assessments deny the presence of agglomeration effects and productivity gains to Early Modern English towns. This study evaluates the presence of increasing returns to scale (IRS) in aggregate urban economic outputs—the empirical signature of feedbacks between Smithian growth and agglomeration effects—among the towns of 16th century England. To do so, we test a model from settlement scaling theory against the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy returns. Analysis of these data indicates that Tudor towns exhibited IRS—a finding that is robust to alternative interpretations of the data. IRS holds even for the smallest towns in our sample, suggesting the absence of town size thresholds for the emergence of agglomeration effects. Spatial patterning of scaling residuals further suggests regional demand-side interactions with Smithian-agglomeration feedbacks. These findings suggest the presence of agglomeration effects and Smithian growth in pre-industrial English towns. This begs us to reconsider the economic performance of Early Modern English towns, and suggests that the qualitative economic dynamics of contemporary cities may be applicable to premodern settlements in general.

Daring Dynasty: Custom, Conflict and Control in Early-Tudor England, by Mark R. Horowitz

Daring Dynasty: Custom, Conflict and Control in Early-Tudor England, by Mark R. Horowitz

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‘To Be Shut Up’: New Evidence for the Development of Quarantine Regulations in Early-Tudor England

Summary On 13 January 1518, a series of ordinances to regulate plague outbreaks were proclaimed in London. These have previously been thought to have been the first set of quarantine measures issued in England; part of an ambitious new social policy led by the King’s chief minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and intended to bring England in line with the leading Renaissance states in Europe. The discovery of two previously unknown documents from the archives of St George’s College, Windsor—which predate the London ordinances—requires a reconsideration of this narrative. The article argues that demands for plague quarantine regulations were driven primarily by Henry VIII’s personal and pronounced fear of infection and considers the factors that may have led to such a fear. In doing so, it introduces new evidence for the death of Henry’s grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, and explores the ways in which medical ideas travelled across Europe.

The Fray on the Meadow: Violence and a Moment of Government in Early Tudor England

The Fray on the Meadow: Violence and a Moment of Government in Early Tudor England

Alexandra Barratt,Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England.

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