LAW AND GOVERNMENT UNDER THE TUDORS SIR GEOFFREY ELTON LAW AND GOVERNMENT UNDER THE TUDORS ESSAYS PRESENTED TO SIR GEOFFREY ELTON REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT EDITED BY CLAIRE CROSS DAVID LOADES AND J. J. SCARISBRICK The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of hooks was granted by Henry VUI in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1988 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1988 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Law and government under the Tudors: essays presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, on the occasion of his retirement / edited by M.C. Cross. D.M. Loades, J.J. Scarisbrick. p. cm. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0 52133510 8 1. Law - Great Britain - History and criticism. 2. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1485-1603. 3. Elton, G. R. (Geoffrey Rudolph). I. Elton, G. R. (Geoffrey Rudolph) II. Cross, M. C. (M. Claire). III. Loades, D. M. IV. Scarisbrick, J. J. KD606.L38 1988 349.42'09-dcl9 [344.2009] 87-27215 CIP ISBN 0 52133510 8 hardback' ISBN 0 52189363 1 paperback Contents List of contributors page vii Preface ix Abbreviations xviii Wolsey and the Parliament of 1523 1 JOHN GUY The Act of Appeals and the English reformation 19 GRAHAM NICHOLSON Thomas Cromwell and the 'brethren' 31 SUSAN BRIGDEN Henry VIII and the dissolution of the Secular Colleges 51 J. J. SCARISBRICK God's law and man's: Stephen Gardiner and the problem of loyalty 67 REX POGSON Bondmen under the Tudors 91 DlARMAID MACCULLOCH Wales and England after the Tudor 'union': Crown, principality and parliament, 1543-1624 111 PETER ROBERTS Robe and sword in the conquest of Ireland 139 BRENDAN BRADSHAW The principal secretaries in the reign of Edward VI: reflections on their office and archive 163 C. S. KNIGHTON Philip II and the government of England 177 DAVID LOADES Sin and society: the northern high commission and the northern gentry in the reign of Elizabeth I 195 CLAIRE CROSS The crown, the gentry and London: the enforcement of proclamation, 1596-1640 211 FELICITY HEAL Taxation and the political limits of the Tudor state 227 ROGER SCHOFIELD Bibliography of the writings of G. R. Elton, 1946—1986 257 Index 265 Contributors BRENDAN BRADSHAW Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Queens' College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in History SUSAN BRIGDEN Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Modern History CLAIRE CROSS Professor of History, University of York JOHN GUY Reader in British History, University of Bristol FELICITY HEAL Fellow and Tutor in History at Jesus College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Modern History C. S. KNIGHTON is editing the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series (i 547-1580) for the Public Record Office DAVID LOADES Professor of History and Head of the Department of History at the University College of North Wales, Bangor DlARMAID MACCULLOCH Lecturer in Church History at the Wesley College, Bristol GRAHAM NICHOLSON Head of Cultural Services for Stockport Metropolitan Borough REX POGSON Headmaster of Lawrence Sheriff School, Rugby PETER ROBERTS Lecturer in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury J. J. SCARISBRICK Professor of History at the University of Warwick ROGER SCHOFIELD Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Director of the ESRC Cam- bridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure vu Preface And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teache The six hundred years separating Chaucer's model Oxford clerk from the scholar celebrated in this volume emphasises a constant in university life, the importance of teaching, and particularly teaching by example. In The Practice of History, Geoffrey Elton wrote I put a lot of weight on teaching, ... in my view the supervisor of research students should work very hard ... The collection of essays which follows is, above all else, a tribute to Geoffrey Elton's supreme skill and success as a supervisor of research, and a measure of the extent to which he has consistently followed his own precept. All the thirteen contributors studied for, and obtained, the degree of Ph.D under his guidance between 1956 and 1978. They do not constitute a majority of such successful students, and certainly not a complete list of those who have subsequently pursued academic careers. These essays are rather the work of a coherent group of scholars, linked together not only by a common supervisor, but also by a common interest in the politics and administration of Tudor England. They are also linked together by nationality. This is a British tribute. Geoffrey's American friends and pupils presented him with Tudor Rule and Revolution in 1983, and a similar offering with a European orientation is in hand.* So the editors of this volume make no apology for having confined their scope to scholars living and working in Britain, a country which Geoffrey Elton has made peculiarly his own since adopting it from his native Germany in 1935- There seem to have been a number of reasons for his remarkable success as a supervisor. One of these has been a warmth and consistency of friendship, which has extended to many of us over the years, and has brought the pupils of pupils to the second and third generation up the stairs to the familiar rooms in Clare College - and more recently to the less familiar eyrie in West Road. Another has been the very high degree of professionalism which he has brought to an aspect of academic life which was traditionally undervalued in * Published since this Preface was written as Politics and Society in Reformation Europe, ed. E. Koori and T. Scott, (London, 1987). ix x Preface the Cambridge to which he came in 1949. Research students in the humani- ties were still comparatively rare at that time, and often left very much to their own devices. But even in the days before the formation of his graduate seminar, Geoffrey Elton's guidance was precise and sensitive, consistently finding the right balance between his own knowledge and his students' ambitions. This is still a rare skill among senior academics, in spite of the great proliferation of higher degree candidates which has taken place over the last thirty years, and if more had been prompted to follow his example we might have heard fewer complaints about the lamentable completion-rate of theses in the humanities. A third reason has been the fact that he has always taken research itself very seriously, and has always been an archive rather than a library man. His students have been encouraged, or rather required, to embrace his own extremely rigorous methods of search and analysis, and to apply those techniques in ways appropriate to their own investigations. Research, however, is not an end in itself, or an excuse for building up a school of disciples. The object of research is to uncover the evidence of the past, and nobody has been more explicit than Geoffrey Elton in discussing the nature of that evidence, or its role in the creation of interpretative history. The historian must not go against the first condition of his calling; his knowledge of the past is governed by the evidence of that past, and that evidence must be criticised and interpreted by the canons of historical scholarship.1 First and foremost among those canons must be a true understanding of the purposes for which the evidence studied was originally created. Writs, proclamations and statutes, for example, although equally expressions of public authority varied considerably in their methods of application and cannot be used indiscriminately to answer the same questions. The first task of the historian, therefore, is to approach his evidence with an open mind, and then to follow where it leads. In his first inaugural lecture, delivered in Cambridge in 1968, Geoffrey Elton pursued a sustained attack on R. H. Tawney, whom he accused of*... the fatal propensity to fit a selection from a great mass of material into a predetermined framework ... confirming present-based prejudices and attitudes from an investigation of the past.. .'2 - in other words, of misusing evidence to create myth rather than history. Throughout his career, Geoffrey Elton has pursued his vision of historical truth and objectivity with consistency and passion. The whole justification for the historian's craft, and his value to an open society is embraced in that vision. The primary purpose of the historian is not to purvey information but to educate the critical faculties: ... to discover the truth as best he can, to convey that truth as honestly as he can, in order both to make the truth known, and to enable man, by learning and knowing the truth, to distinguish the right from the wrong reason .. .3 1 The Practice of History (Glasgow, 1969), pp.