Brigden - The New worlds, lost worlds: the rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF BRITAIN
GENERAL EDITOR: DAVID CANNADINE

NEW WORLDS, LOST WORLDS:
THE RULE OF THE TUDORS 14851603

[Brigden] has told her story with superb narrative flair, and has given her readers a vivid picture of beliefs and aspirations widely held among the Tudors subjects a brilliant work of chiaroscuro it will make a deep impression, and doubtless help to shape perceptions of the Tudor epoch for years to come Ralph Houlbrooke, The Times Literary Supplement

Susan Brigdens profound grasp of her period is here brought to life with a wealth of significant details, contemporary voices and her own apt commentaries and comparisons deserves to become a classic Jane Dunn, Literary Review

Brigdens final achievement is her evocation of Ireland Irelands troubles down the centuries always make heartrending reading: but here they have something of the power of a Greek tragedy Irish style Antonia Fraser, Sunday Times

A thoroughly convincing picture rich and thoroughly well informed. A distinguished book which will give a lot of pleasure Diarmaid MacCulloch

Admirable Brigden is just as concerned to examine the life of the ordinary people during this period. She chillingly recounts the lot of the poorest classes in the century that gave the world the phrase Poor Law, and the modern parallels are striking David McVey, Scotland on Sunday

Brigden has written a book which is not only in masterly control of its subject, but which is a thing of beauty and feeling New Worlds, Lost Worlds expresses on every page a sense of fascinated wonder We shall not have to hesitate any longer when asked, as we sometimes are, to recommend just one book on the history of our own country in the sixteenth century Patrick Collinson, London Review of Books

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Brigden is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford. She is the author of London and the Reformation.

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF BRITAIN

Published or forthcoming:

I : DAVID MATTINGLY An Imperial Possession: Roman Britain 100409

II : ROBERT FLEMING : Anglo-Saxon Britain: 4101066

III : DAVID CARPENTER The Struggle for Mastery in Britain: 10661284

IV : MIRI RUBIN Disputed Realms: Britain 13071485

V : SUSAN BRIGDEN New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 14851603

VI : MARK KISHLANSKY A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 16031714

VII : LINDA COLLEY A Wealth of Nations? Britain 17071815

VIII : DAVID CANNADINE The Contradictions of Progress: Britain 18001906

IX : PETER CLARKE Hope and Glory: Britain 19001990

SUSAN BRIGDEN

New Worlds, Lost Worlds

THE RULE OF THE TUDORS
14851603

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 2000

Published in Penguin Books 2001

Copyright Susan Brigden, 2000

All rights reserved

Title page illustration adapted from Miles Hogardes Mirroure of Myserie (1557/8?) perhaps intended as a New Years gift for Queen Mary, reproduced courtesy of the Huntington Library, California (HM121, fol. 6); The House of Tudor, after John Guys Tudor England (Oxford University Press); Henry Tudors March to Bosworth Field, after Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomass The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Sutton); Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Lordships in the Late Fifteenth Century and Sixteenth-Century Plantations in Ireland, after Moody et als A New History of Ireland (Oxford University Press); The Battle in the Narrow Seas, after Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada; A General Map after Humphrey Gilberts A Discourse of a Discovery for a New Passage to Cataia, in the British Museum (photo Photomas Index)

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-194154-7

For Jeremy

Contents

Prologue
NEW WORLDS , LOST WORLDS

1 Rather Feared than Loved
HENRY VII AND HIS DOMINIONS , 14851509

2 Family and Friends
RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN EARLY TUDOR ENGLAND

3 Ways to Reform
THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH

4 Imperium
HENRY VIII AND THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND , 150947

5 Bearing Rule
THE GOVERNORS AND THE GOVERNED

6 Rebuilding the Temple
THE REIGNS OF EDWARD VI (154753) AND MARY I (15538)

7 Perils many, great and imminent
THE CHALLENGE OF SECURING PEACE , 155870

8 Wars of Religion
CHURCHES MILITANT IN ENGLAND , IRELAND AND EUROPE , 157084

9 The Enterprise of England
NEW WORLD VENTURES AND THE COMING OF WAR WITH SPAIN IN THE 1580 S

10 The Theatre of Gods Judgements
ELIZABETHAN WORLD VIEWS

11 Court and Camp
THE LAST YEARS OF ELIZABETH S REIGN

Epilogue
LOST WORLDS , NEW WORLDS

List of Illustrations

Preface

First among the new worlds with which this book is concerned are the English Renaissance and Reformation. In offering an alternative path to salvation, the new religion broke the unity of Catholic Christendom and shattered a world of shared belief. For England, the lost worlds were those of past certainties, of traditional religion, and of all that was destroyed in the name of faith. People in the past thought differently. Almost no one doubted then that there was a God, that He intervened constantly in the world which He had made, and that He had purposes for His people. Yet despite this, religious conviction was not often manifested in lives of ceaseless devotion, spent in undeviating obedience to Christs Great Commandments. On the same page of a copy of Thomas Mores The Supplication of Souls (1529) two messages are written in the margin in contemporary hand, one an insult, the other a pious invocation:

Thomas is a knave, by God.

In the name of God, Amen.

Even in a religious age, Gods name could be invoked in different ways. Yet the old world was a society in which sanctions, worldly and otherworldly, were imposed upon those who did not give witness of their faith, and in which obedience to the Church and its teaching was a fundamental duty. At the Reformation, as individual conscience came to be asserted and the Churchs authority was shaken, the Christian was confronted by choices. This book concerns the making of those choices, and their consequences. With the Reformation came division. Wars of religion were fought throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. England and Ireland were deeply involved in them, but not always on the same side.