Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners (25 page)

1. Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, with her second husband Adrian Stokes in 1559; painted by Hans Eworth (private collection)
   

1. The Countess of Shrewsbury, the formidable Bess of Hardwick (National Trust. Photo: Courtauld Institute)
   

1. The blue-stocking Mildred Cooke, who became William Cecil’s second wife (reproduced by courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury. Photo: National Portrait Gallery)
   

There's an enormous mass of published material on virtually every aspect of the Tudor century and for anyone wanting to embark on a detailed study, the OUP
Bibliography of British History - Tudor Period
, edited by Conyers Read, 1959, is an essential tool. Another, more portable but still very useful bibliography is
Tudor England
, edited by Mortimer Levine and published by the CUP for the Conference on British Studies in 1968.

The list which follows is obviously brief and is intended as no more than a guide to those printed sources and secondary works which I have found most helpful.

Two good general surveys are
The Elizabethan Woman: A Panorama of English Womanhood, 1540-1640
by Carroll Camden, 1952, and
Elizabethans at Home
, Lu E. Pearson, Stanford, 1957, both of which contain good bibliographies.
A Relation ... of the Island of England
, C. A. Sneyd, Camden Society, old series, XXXVII, 1847, and
England as Seen by Foreigners
, W. B. Rye, 1865, are interesting for an outside view of the English scene. For the educational revolution see
Vives and the Renascence Education of Women
, ed. Foster Watson, 1912. Vols. IV and V of John Leland's
De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea
(not all in Latin, despite its title) ed. Thomas Hearne, Oxford, 1715, give details of Lady Margaret Beaufort's ordinances and also a description of Margaret Tudor's betrothal. For a life of Lady Margaret herself, see
Lady Margaret, Mother of Henry VII
, E. M. G. Routh, 1925, and for her daughter-in-law
The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York with a Memoir
, N. H. Nicolas, 1830 (reissued in a limited facsimile edition in 1972).

There are antiquated but still perfectly useful biographies of the Princesses Margaret and Mary in
The Lives of the Princesses of England
, M. A. E. Green, 6 vols., 1849-55. A modern account is
The Sisters of Henry VIII
, Hester Chapman 1969.

Most of Henry VIII's wives have attracted the attention of biographers and Catherine of Aragon, Garrett Mattingly, 1942, is an outstanding example of everything a biography should be. Paul Friedmann's
Anne Boleyn - A Chapter of English History
, 2 vols., 1884, is still the classic work on Anne, but there have been two recent lives,
Anne Boleyn
by Marie Louise Bruce, 1972, and
Anne Boleyn
, Hester Chapman, 1974. There are no full-length modern lives of Jane Seymour or Anne of Cleves, but there's a section on Jane in
Ordeal by Ambition
, a general account of the Seymour family under the
Tudors
by William Seymour, 1972. For Katherine Howard see
A Tudor Tragedy
, Lacey Baldwin Smith, 1961, and for Katherine Parr,
Queen Katherine Parr
, Anthony Martienssen, 1973. There are biographies of all the queens in Agnes Strickland's
Lives of the Queens of England
, 8 vols., 1851. These are old-fashioned and not always entirely reliable but still well worth reading.

The Chronicle of Queen Jane
, J. G. Nichols, Camden Society, XLVIII, 1850, is a marvellous contemporary source and also contains a description of Mary's wedding to Philip of Spain. There are lives of Jane and her sisters in
The Lives of the Tudor Princesses
, Agnes Strickland, 1868. For a modern biography of Jane, see
Lady Jane Grey
, Hester Chapman, 1962, and for Katherine Grey,
Two Tudor Portraits
, Hester Chapman, 1960.

The most illuminating source material for Mary's life and reign are the despatches of Eustace Chapuys and Simon Renard in the
Calendar of State Papers
, Spanish, 13 vols., 1862-1954. Of the handful of modern lives,
Mary Tudor
by H. F. M. Prescott, revised edition, 1952, is first-rate and contains a helpful note on sources as well as a full bibliography.

Much of the material on the first twenty-five years of Elizabeth's life is printed in handy form in
The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth
, F. A. Mumby, 1909.
Queen Elizabeth I,
J. E. Neale's classic biography first published in 1934 and reprinted many times since, remains the best modern life, but
Elizabeth I: A study in power and intellect
, Paul Johnson, 1974, is excellent on the political side and Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins, 1958, probably the best of the more 'personal' accounts. For modern studies of the Queen's relationship with Robert Dudley, see
Elizabeth and Leicester
, Milton Waldman, 1944, and
Elizabeth and Leicester
, Elizabeth Jenkins, 1961. Other sources which give personal glimpses of the Queen are, among many,
The Progresses...of Queen Elizabeth
, J. Nichols, 3 vols., 1823; Nugae Antiquae by John Harington, ed. Thomas Park, 1804, and Andre de Maisse's Journal, trans. G. B. Harrison, 1931.

A Tudor Tapestry
, Derek Wilson, 1972, gives an interesting account of Anne Askew and
My Lady of Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby
, E. Read, New York, 1963, and the
Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby
, D. M. Meads, 1930, are both valuable for insights into religious life.