Politics, Law and Counsel in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Variorum Collected Studies Series)

This book investigates the norms and values of Tudor and early-Stuart politics, which are considered in the contexts of law and the Reformation, legal and administrative institutions, and classical and legal humanism. Main themes include 'imperial' monarchy and the theory of 'counsel', Parliament and the royal supremacy, conciliar politics and organization, the relationship of law and equity, and the jurisdictional rivalry between the courts of common law and canon law. The author argues that norms of Tudor England were sufficiently pluralist to satisfy both 'absolutist' and 'constitutionalist' aspirations, whereas by 1628 they proved no longer effective as a mechanism for the orderly conduct of politics. The clash between two conflicting sets of values was translated into a clash of ideologies. Cover Series Half Title Title Copyright Contents Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations I The Development of Equitable Jurisdictions, 1450-1550 II A Conciliar Court of Audit at Work in the Last Months of the Reign of Henry VII III Wolsey’s Star Chamber: A Study in Archival Reconstruction IV Wolsey, the Council and the Council Courts V Wolsey and the Parliament of 1523 VI Thomas More as Successor to Wolsey VII Henry VIII and the Praemunire Manoeuvres of 1530-1531 VIII Thomas More and Christopher St German: The Battle of the Books IX The Tudor Commonwealth: Revising Thomas Cromwell X The Privy Council: Revolution or Evolution? XI The King’s Council and Political Participation XII The Henrician Age XIII The Elizabethan Establishment and the Ecclesiastical Polity XIV The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England XV The Origins of the Petition of Right Reconsidered Index