Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (88 page)

20
That is, native Welsh law did not distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate heirs. This led to tensions and violence over disputed lands.

21
The quote is from Guy,
Tudor England
, p. 358.

22
Specifically, this 1536 statute forbade bequeathing of land by will and guaranteed that a person having use of a piece of land was its legal owner. This meant that landowners (“users”) were now liable for certain fees and taxes which had previously been avoidable thanks to the fiction that the “user” was not the legal owner. Landowners resented elimination of this legal loophole.

3 Reformations and Counter-Reformations, 1536–1558

1
N. Harpsfield, A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce Between Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon (Camden Society, London, 1878), p. 297.

2
Throughout the following chapter, the word “Catholic” refers to the doctrine, traditions, clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church. Other Catholic or Orthodox traditions were nonexistent among the native population of sixteenth-century England. “Protestant” will refer to the beliefs or persons of those who advocated reform of Christian doctrine, practice, or structure and rejected the authority of the pope to accomplish it.

3
This had been sanctioned by parliamentary acts in 1536 and 1544.

4
Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 9: 18–21, quoted in P. Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995), p. 36.

5
J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It (1721), 2, pt. ii: 352, quoted in Williams, The Later Tudors, p. 48.

6
Lawrence Humphrey, quoted in C. S. L. Davies,
Peace, Print and Protestantism, 1450–1558
(London, 1977), p. 281.

7
She would be known as “Queen Mary” throughout her reign. She only came to be known as “Mary I” upon the accession of Mary II in 1689.

8
Quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors,
p. 104.

9
Quoted in
D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors, 1547–1603, 2nd ed. (London, 1992), p. 381.

10
Quoted from the 1563 title-page of
Acts and Monuments.

11
J. Foxe,
The Acts and Monuments of John
Foxe,
ed. S. Reed Cattley (London, 1839), 8: 88–90.

12
Quoted in
The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes,
ed. Elizabeth, Lady Longford (Oxford, 1989), p. 231.

4 The Elizabethan Settlement and its Challenges, 1558–1585

1
During her reign she was known simply as “Queen Elizabeth.” She only acquired her distinguishing Roman numeral after the accession of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.

2
Armigil Waad (ca. 1510–68), a former clerk of the Privy Council, quoted in P. Williams,
The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603
(Oxford, 1995), p. 229.

3
“Regiment” here means “government” rather than a crack troop of female fighters.

4
Quoted in C. Haigh,
Elizabeth I,
2nd ed. (London, 1998), p. 13.

5
Attributed to Elizabeth in Haigh,
Elizabeth I,
p. 18.

6
Quoted in Haigh,
Elizabeth I
, p. 24.

7
Quoted in
A. G. R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England, 1529–1660 (London, 1984), p. 121.

8
Francis Bacon, quoted in Haigh,
Elizabeth I,
p. 42.

9
See C. Russell “The Reformation and the Creation of the Church of England, 1500— 1640” in
The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain,
ed. J. Morrill (Oxford, 1996), p. 280.

10
Quoted in Haigh,
Elizabeth I
, p. 22.

11
The booty was worth twice that amount, but Drake split it with a French privateer who helped in the capture.

12
Her previous husband, the earl of Bothwell, had escaped to the continent and was languishing in a Danish prison. The pope would formalize their divorce in 1570.

5 The Elizabethan Triumph and Unsettlement, 1585–1603

1
“Elizabeth’s Tilbury Speech,” in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
6th ed. (New York, 1993), 1: 999. In fact, she would fail abysmally to keep the latter promise: see P. Williams,
The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603
(Oxford, 1995), p. 324.

2
Quoted in M. Nicholls, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1529–1603: The Two Kingdoms (Oxford, 1999), p. 273.

3
Not to be confused with the later Nine Years’ War, 1688-97 which pitted England, Scotland, Ireland and the Grand Alliance under the leadership of Willim III against Louis XIV’s France. See chap. 10.

4
E. Spenser, “A View of the Present State of Ireland” (ca. 1596, pub. 1633), quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors
, p. 296.

5
Quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors,
p. 380.

6
In 1576 the Commons themselves sent Wentworth to the Tower – an indication that most members were far more conservative and respectful of the queen’s sensibilities than Mr. Wentworth.

7
Quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors,
p. 360.

8
Quoted in J. Guy,
Tudor England
(Oxford, 1988), p. 400.

9
Elizabeth’s “Golden Speech,” November 30, 1601, quoted in J. E. Neale,
Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584–1601
(London, 1953), pp. 388–91.

10
Quotations from Guy,
Tudor England,
pp. 445–6, upon which this paragraph is based.

6 Merrie Olde England?, ca. 1603

1
Below, the terms “aristocracy” and “aristocrat” will refer to the landed nobility and gentry together.

2
See L. Stone,
The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641
(Oxford, 1965); L. Stone, “Social Mobility in England, 1500–1700,”
Past and Present
33 (1966): 16–55.

3
The debate, which began with R. H. Tawney in 1941, is well summarized in L. Stone,
Social Change and Revolution in England, 1540–1640
(1965). See, now, F. Heal and C. Holmes,
The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700
(Stanford, 1994), esp. chap. 3.

4
Quoted in
D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors, 1547–1603, 2nd ed. (London, 1992), p. 82.

5
Stone, “Social Mobility,” p. 24. For more conservative estimates, see J. Guy,
Tudor England
(Oxford, 1988), pp. 47–8; P. Williams,
The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603
(Oxford, 1995), p. 203; and Palliser,
Age of Elizabeth,
pp. 81–3. For a more expansive one, A. Woolrych,
Britain in Revolution 1625—1660
(Oxford, 2002), pp. 11–12.

6
Quoted in K. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, 2000), p. 49.

7
Quoted in A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, 1995), p. 9.

8
Quoted in Palliser,
Age of Elizabeth,
p. 77.

9
Heal and Holmes, Gentry in England and Wales, p. 255.

10
Arranged marriages of children, as opposed to adolescents, were extremely rare.

11
William Harrison, quoted in K. Wrightson,
English Society, 1580–1680
(New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1982), p. 19.

12
However, if one survived childhood, one stood an excellent chance of living through what we would, today, call middle age: that is, a person who lived to 30 years was likely to live another 30 or more.

13
Essex Record Office, Maldon Borough, D/B3/3/397/18, cited in P. Fumerton,
Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England
(Chicago, 2006), p. 1.

14
Quoted in A. Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth-Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (New York, 1970), p. 165.

15
See L. Stone,
The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800
(London, 1977); R. A. Houlbrooke,
The English Family, 1450–1700
(London, 1984); L. Pollock,
Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900
(Cambridge, 1983); and Wrightson,
English Society,
chap. 4.

16
Quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors
, p. 507.

17
Such registers record marriage dates and baptismal dates. When a baptism occurred significantly less than eight months after marriage, it is safe to conclude that intimate relations had begun before the date of the ceremony.

18
Quoted in Williams,
The Later Tudors
, p. 503.

19
Quoted in Fletcher,
Gender, Sex and Subordination,
p. 194.

20
Quoted in Wrightson,
Earthly Necessities,
p. 45; J. A. Sharpe,
Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550–1760,
2nd ed. (London, 1997), p. 69.

21
This paragraph follows Williams,
The Later Tudors
, pp. 206–7.