A spy on the payroll? William Herle and the mid Elizabethan polity (original) (raw)
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Parliamentary History, 2014
Dr Linda Clark, to whom the 11 essays in this book are offered with 'affection, respect and gratitude' by 12 of her friends and colleagues, continues to place a wide spectrum of historians and others in her debt. The four volumes of The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1386-1421, which she edited in 1993 with J.S. Roskell and Carole Rawcliffe (one of the writers in the present volume), set a benchmark for the study not only of the medieval English parliament but also of the social fabric of the counties and boroughs of England from which members of parliament were drawn. She assumed alone the task of editing what will surely prove to be even weightier volumes for the years 1422-1504; meanwhile, her unobtrusive effectiveness as editor is matched by a determination to place the scholarship of her collaborators at the heart of research and writing about 15th-century England. Thus, while half of the writers in this volume are Dr Clark's present or former colleagues in The History of Parliament Trust, others are based elsewhere, especially in London's historical circles. Indeed, the volume has a metropolitan air-to a large extent inevitable with its main focus on parliament-and so it is salutary to have an opening chapter (by A.J. Pollard) on 'The People and Parliament in Fifteenth-Century England' that examines 'popular engagement with Parliament' beyond 'the middling sort' who were MPs, even beyond those who took part in elections or presented petitions to parliament. This is a subject worth taking further − by identifying those whose opinions were specifically reflected in petitions, or considering the throngs which crowded meetings of parliament − in order to substantiate Professor Pollard's nice conclusion that 'some of the people for some of the time [were involved] in parliamentary affairs'. Several writers rely on readily-available and unpublished evidence from East Anglia or southeast England; occasionally one yearned to have one's eyes raised to wider horizons. Nevertheless, important themes are authoritatively examined that have broader resonance and reflect on the character of those who were members of parliament-the 'Personalities and Power' of the volume's title. Simon Payling's mastery of English land law, and its manipulation by the social class that provided MPs, reveals in his account of the disputed descent of Dodford Manor, near Northampton, the unedifying side of the traffic in entailed properties. If deception and fraud might mar the pursuit of property, just as striking is his conclusion that resort to law and influence might be more effective than violence or force of arms. This is a theme tellingly illustrated by the actions of a knight, Henry Inglose, who was variously MP for Suffolk and Norfolk in
History, 2014
Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature. By Larissa Tracy. D. S. Brewer. 2012. x + 325pp. £55.00. This wide-ranging work examines the notorious prevalence of torture and physical violence in medieval literature and provides convincing insights into its function as a rhetorical device. Tracy argues that the frequency of violent episodes in literature did not reflect, but rather critiqued, reality. In other words, descriptions of torture were used rhetorically to characterize an 'Other' and to distinguish the writers' and readers' own societies as places in which physical violence was looked upon with caution. Such an approach risks blinding us to the fact that torture did in fact take place in the Middle Ages, and that, whilst difficult to quantify, this clearly was an extremely violent period. Tracy largely avoids such a pitfall, and is well versed in the historiography, though the claim that this argument is an entirely revisionist one seems a little disingenuous: historians (for example, Claude Gauvard, Trevor Dean, Esther Cohen), and indeed literary scholars (R. Howard Bloch for example), have already acknowledged that medieval people were not mindlessly violent, but thought about, and discussed, violence in increasingly sophisticated ways. It is in this latter line of scholarship that the important contribution of the book lies-not to make any claims about actual levels of violence, nor to demonstrate that the English (who form the focus of the majority of the material) were straightforwardly opposed to the practice of torture. What Tracy very effectively demonstrates is that torture and brutality were highly charged issues which operated not just within the logic of the texts themselves, but evoked broader issues of proto-national identities, judicial critique and responses to changing mores. And it was precisely because people felt so ambivalent about the justifiability of physical violence that such rhetorical strategies were particularly effective. The comparative dimension of Tracy's work is extremely compelling. She ranges from English hagiography to Icelandic sagas, and some interesting commonalities arise in the use of torture as a literary device. Particularly useful is the analysis of the old French fabliaux (Simon Gaunt's work would have deserved a reference here) set beside analysis of Chaucer, with some subtle conclusions about the ways in which Chaucer adapted and mutated scenes of violence from the fabliaux. And the diachronic comparison implicit throughout bs_bs_banner Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400-650. By Thomas Green. Studies in the History of Lincolnshire 3. History of Lincolnshire Committee. 2012. xvi + 320pp. £29.95. Like the people they study, scholars of Anglo-Saxon England often have well-developed regional identities. Resident in Louth, Thomas Green stands in a long line of Anglo-Saxonists who have promoted the history of their region. He has two overlapping interests, fruitfully brought together here. The first is the interdisciplinary study of post-Roman Britain: research for his doctorate into the historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence for Lincolnshire 400-650 lies behind this book. The second is the relationship between post-Roman Britain and Arthurian legend: he has published articles on this issue and a book, Concepts of Arthur (Stroud: Tempus, 2007). His main arguments about Lincolnshire appeared in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), pp. 1-43, available from his website, www.arthuriana.co.uk. This well-researched and stimulating book presents a longer and betterillustrated argument with a gazetteer of fifth-to seventh-century cemeteries in Lincolnshire. A monograph on Lincolnshire 400-650 is justifiable on several grounds. Ongoing debates about the end of Roman Britain and the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms have produced competing models. A 'post-collapse resurgence' model argues for a collapse into small independent peoples and the gradual growth of kingdoms. An alternative model envisages that Late Roman city-territories and dioceses provided a basis for larger-scale peoples and polities. Within writing on post-Roman Britain, Lincolnshire has not received as much attention as some regions. Excellent work by Kevin Leahy has highlighted its interest as a case study: the Late British name for Lincoln served as a basis for the Anglo-Saxon polity that developed in the region; there is unusual evidence for post-Roman Christian continuity at Lincoln; and Lincolnshire has a rich body of 'British' material culture and a large number of 'Anglo-Saxon' cremation cemeteries. Using the Sites and Monuments Record and Portable Antiquities Scheme databases, Green has extended the known corpus of 'British' penannular brooches (from 11 to 23), 'British' hanging bowls (from 15 to 34), and 'Anglo-Saxon' cremation and inhumation cemeteries. Moreover, he has used this evidence to construct some novel hypotheses. Carefully clarifying previous arguments, Green makes a compelling case for a post-Roman British-speaking people and polity based on Lincoln, from which an Anglo-Saxon kingdom developed. From British *lindo, 'pool', developed the name of the Romano-British city and its surrounding territory Lindon/ *Lindocolonia, the post-Roman British people name *Lindes/ Linnuis, and the Old English people and kingdom names Lindissi/ Lindisfaran. Green shows that this is consistent with the evidence from St Paul-in-the-Bail, Lincoln, for a post-Roman church and cemetery; with the concentration of 'British' Class I penannular brooches, 'British' Type G penannular brooches and 'British' hanging bowls in Lincolnshire; and with the distribution of fifthto sixth-century 'Anglo-Saxon' cremation cemeteries, which avoid the region around Lincoln, forming a ring with a 15-20 mile radius. He notes that this British people and polity could have fought in the conflict between the Gododdin and their enemies in the sixth century: the Old Welsh poem Y MEDIEVAL 123
Mid-Tudor Foreign Policy and Diplomacy, 1547-63
S. Doran and G. Richardson (eds.), Tudor England and its Neighbours, Macmillan, Themes in Focus (Basingstoke, 2005), p.106-38., 2005
This study explores the development of a consciousness of decisions on foreign policy as a national, as opposed to a purely monarchical, concern during the intense crises of the mid-Tudor period.