Henry VIII

John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.

This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

The Jewish community had been expelled from England in 1290 and was not readmitted until 1606, yet in the 1520s and 1530s Henry VIII initiated two important cultural exchanges with Venetian Jews. The first, Henry VIII’s consultation of Venetian rabbis about his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, is well known. The second was his invitation to the Venetian Jewish wind-instrument family, the Bassanos, to join his court in the 1530s. While the details of the event have been explored by scholars such as Roger Prior, David Lasocki, and Alessio Ruffatti, I propose that its significance has yet to be fully understood in its religious, political, cultural, and musical context.

In this paper, I consider the Bassanos’s move to England through the lens of an intriguing story of Jewish-Christian interfaith friendship in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, also known as the Book of Martyrs (1563). Stories of Jews are few and far between in Foxe’s compendium; stories that both encourage interfaith friendship and do not malign the Jew are all the more unusual. The story, which takes place in England in 1539, follows a Jewish child and a Christian child, “playfellow[s],” into a church and up to the altar. Set against the backdrop of transubstantiation, which, I argue, functions as an allegory for the Bassanos’ creative process, this story becomes a parable for the relationship between Henry VIII and the Bassanos, illuminating the musical, political, and religious significance of their partnership. Henry VIII, despite all his vain excesses, is identified with the Virgin Mary herself for his cultivation and protection of the arts and its creators. What kind of message could Henry VIII have sent by sidestepping religious differences and protocol in his desire to elevate the musical aspect of the court? Could his patronage of the Bassanos have been received as a message of tolerance, even if a self-serving one? I will analyze the story according to three senses of biblical exegesis—historical (literal), tropological (moral), and allegorical—in order to demonstrate how Foxe’s story became a parable for Henry VIII and the Bassanos.

Anne Askew is renowned as a Protestant martyr from Henrician England. She has been exalted in Reformation hagiography due to both her stern refusal to recant her beliefs and her fearless death on the pyres of Smithfield. However, this exaltation did not come about as a result of Anne fitting the Protestant mold of womanly obedience and virtue. In reality, while Anne embodied the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, she did so by disobeying holy scripture. This spirit, coupled with the biographical generalities surrounding Anne’s life, made her a perfect vehicle through which both Protestants and Catholics could further their respective religious agendas. By exemplifying certain aspects of Anne’s life as well as her work Examinations in order to foster a Protestant sense of English nationalism, Protestants like John Bale and John Foxe, portrayed her as a model of piety and virtue. In contrast, Catholics such as Robert Parsons used Anne’s scriptural disobedience to condemn her as a flippant blasphemer. However, the real Anne Askew was somewhere in the middle, between the virtuous wife and the heretical whore.

Svetost vašega življenja in vaša gorečnost za svete učenosti sta me tako ganili, da sem vam napisal nekaj o vzgoji krščanskih žena, zelo pomembni temi, ki pa je vendarle do sedaj med vso raznoliko množico učenjakov in pisateljev ni še nihče obravnaval. Kaj je namreč enako nujno kakor duhovno oblikovanje teh, ki so v vsakem življenjskem položaju naše nerazdružljive družice? Med dobrimi je naklonjenost trdna, med slabimi pa ni dolgotrajna. Aristotel ni zastonj govoril, da se tiste države, ki dajejo premalo poudarka pravilni vzgoji žensk, oropajo velikega deleža blagostanja: zdi se, da ni ničesar tako nadležnega, kakor imeti skupno življenje z nevzgojenim človekom, in kakor se to po pravici govori za državo, tako se celo bolj po pravici za posamezen dom.

This article examines the social significance of Real Tennis among the Western European nobility during its heyday of the sixteenth century. Underpinned theoretically by Norbert Elias’s seminal empirical work The Civilising Process, this article seeks to identify the societal preconditions for the emergence of Real Tennis, and provide explanations for its diffusion across Western Europe and subsequent boom in popularity among the nobility. A critique is offered of the current body of literature written on Real Tennis, with an aim to address a general lack of focus on the game’s ‘social’ elements and how their development is linked with structural changes to the game over the centuries. The article then goes on to examine the ways in which Real Tennis became a symbol of prestige and a tool for social mobility among the increasingly status-competitive royal court nobility. Played during royal festivals, the game provided opportunities for nobles to engage in conspicuous consumption through architectural, clothing and gambling displays; having an entourage in accompaniment to the noble players; and, through the style of play and behavioural control, exhibiting self-restraint and foresight. Overall, an attempt is made to apply Elias’s theoretical framework to aid our understanding of the development of Real Tennis, a game that has never been characterised by overt ‘violence’ of the kind examined previously by other sociologists employing an Eliasian framework.

While John Foxe’s sixteenth century Actes and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) is recognized as a foundational document for an emergent English national identity and a key record of early Protestant subjectivity, I argue that this document of historical progress actually recapitulates rather than discards earlier religious traditions. I demonstrate how The Book of Martyrs renovates the social and sacramental concept of the corpus mysticum, inherited from the Middle Ages, in specifically Protestant martyrological terms. Both textually and visually, Foxe’s work displaces sacramental theology from Eucharistic celebration to martyrological narrative in order to produce a reformed English corpus mysticum. To the extent that Foxe’s work pursues a political as well as theological agenda, this reading reveals how Tudor conceptions of the mystical body perpetuate a communitarian tradition formerly associated with the Catholic Mass.

We conclude our analysis by affirming our belief that the choir stalls in
King’s College Chapel in Cambridge are highly unlikely to have been
executed by a Spanish-influenced artist such as Felipe Bigarny. The theory that includes the intervention of a disciple of Berruguete may also be discarded. The stylistic and iconographic elements allow us to propose the workmanship of French (more precisely Norman) or Flemish artists who were following the precepts of Italians (mainly Rosso Fiorentino) working in Fontainebleau for Francis I. These artists were probably also in contact with those designing and carrying out the choir stalls in southeast France (Saint Bertrand de Comminges, Auch...) Precisely for this reason some Spanish sculpture carried out by French or Flemish artists (Juan de Juni, Guillén Doncel, Juan de Angés, Esteban Jamete…) has formal and iconographical elements that are close to those analysed in Cambridge.

‘Best loved of the King’: homosocial bonding and male friendships at the courts of Edward IV and Henry VIII


Homosocial bonding played a major role throughout the Middle Ages in the transfer of power and prestige between the king and his men at court. In particular the bond between knights at the courts of both Edward IV and Henry VIII was expressed as a form of ennobling love. Many of these ‘new men’ at the courts of Edward IV and Henry VIII were able to advance their status through homosocial relationships, which were clearly an important aspect of a man's identity as a courtly gentleman in this period. This paper examines and reflects on the representation of male friendships in the late Middle Ages, which has often failed to depict homosociality as anything other than a superficial interaction. Yet Edward IV and Henry VIII chose to prioritise these male friendships above their male-female relationships and they formed an emotional attachment to these men.

My analysis of Edward IV and Henry VIII’s relationship with these men focuses on one important setting that enabled them to develop a close homosocial bond with these knights: the medieval tournament. This paper argues that the primacy of Edward and Henry’s love for their chivalrous companions was displayed through a non-verbal form of interaction in the tiltyard. Though this was a public space, the close proximity and bodily contact experienced between king and knight signified the homosocial bonds of chivalry. It is the aim of this paper to demonstrate that the performance of chivalric masculinity was intimately bound up with the companionship of other men and that this desire to be included in the dominant male group led to the formation of strong emotional bonds between king and knight.

This paper focuses on a small group of armorers who worked for Henry VIII of England either in their homeland, the former Low Countries, or at his court, and it argues that the author of the king's spectacular horse bard of engraved and silvered steel was made by a previously unidentified master called Guillem Margot, one of the Hapsburg's favorite armorers in Brussels.

A pedagogical transcription of Richard Sampson's (attr.) motet in double canon, "Salve radix," written to celebrate the union of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon and the birth of their daughter, Mary.

For a video with recording accompanying the modern transcription with side-by-side animated original notated music see the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9wl1XqV6Nk

BL, King's MS. 9 is one of only three Books of Hours with a connection to Henry VIII's second wife, the controversial Anne Boleyn. This prayer book provides an intimate insight into Henry VIII's courtship of Anne, but its historical significance does not end here. It has been hitherto overlooked by historians that the BL, King's MS. 9 was also owned by one of Anne Boleyn's maids of honour, Elizabeth Holland, and her husband, Henry Reppes. This paper delves into this overlooked connection and provides information on Elizabeth Holland's royal service, marriage and tragic death.

The purpose of this thesis is to present and analyse statistical data of the religion of the
gentry and middling classes as reflected in 1997 wills between 1509 to 1553, during
the reign of Henry VIII and Edward VI. In addition to this, the effect of Lollardy, the
European Reformation and the attitude of the gentry and middling classes to the
English Reformation along with the religious and economic policies of Henry VIII and
Edward VI are analysed to provide an insight into changing religious beliefs. The
sample used in this thesis was collected from 19 different counties from The National
Archives, Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills in series PROB 11 to provide a
comprehensive regional analysis of the changing religious beliefs and attitudes of the
respective testators towards the English Reformation. This thesis argues that, from the
evidence of preambles and committals, Catholic England became a Protestant one by
1553.

Estratto contenente le note storiche e la trascrizione diplomatica della lettera indirizzata dai membri del Parlamento inglese a Clemente VII per sollecitare la dichiarazione di nullità del matrimonio fra Enrico VIII e Caterina d'Aragona. Lo studio inquadra storicamente la creazione del documento, che viene pubblicato in una nuova edizione diplomatica, completata dal profilo biografico di tutti i firmatari.

Despite its alternate universe, Thomas More’s masterpiece is of great historical value to understand the political climate of early modern England and Europe. Utopia reflects the growing affiliation of England with the emerging European Renaissance in two dimensions of international history: the new worlds of foreign diplomacy and of overseas discovery and exploration. Through Utopia, Thomas More first elaborated a critique of early modern European foreign policy under the literary veil of allegory and moved to suggest the solution of overseas exploration and colonization to the European monarchs’ ambitious policymaking. To demonstrate this assumption, the paper will follow the chronological narrative of Utopia by covering the first book’s dialogue on the ills of England in relation to More’s critique of Renaissance foreign policy, followed by the narrator’s depiction of Utopia in comparison to humanist ideals of the New World.

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation revolutionized not only theology and the church, but also law and the state.  This northern European reform movement, though divided into Lutheran, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Calvinist branches, collectively broke the international rule of the medieval Catholic Church and its canon law, and permanently splintered Western Christendom into competing nations and regions.  The Reformation also triggered a massive shift of power, property, and prerogative from the church to the state.  Protestant states now assumed jurisdiction over numerous subjects and persons previously governed by the medieval church, and they gave new legal form to Protestant teachings.  But these new Protestant laws also drew heavily on the medieval ius commune as well as on earlier biblical and Roman jurisprudence.  This chapter analyses the new legal syntheses that emerged in Protestant lands, with attention to the new laws of church-state relations, religious and civil freedom, marriage and family law, education law, social welfare law, and accompanying changes in legal and political philosophy.

Here is some work I did on the fascinating Thomas Stukeley - I was doing work on George Peele's Play The Battle of Alcazar (which is important and fascinating for a whole other set of reasons) and then this just grew (and grew!) out of that.

(Approved, Unpublished Masters Thesis.) The 16th century was one of rapid change for Ireland due to the encroaching control of the Tudors. Tudor policies rapidly changed the Gaelic way of life, sparking rebellion. These rebellions caused the Tudor government to look to other ways of subjecting the Irish, such as surrender and regrant. By focusing on one family, the O’Neills of Ulster, I propose to demonstrate that before surrender and regrant, the Gaelic lords were able to keep the English primarily located within the Pale.

The victory of the Earl of Richmond (the future Henry VII) over Richard III marked the beginning of the new era. The reign of the first member of the Tudor's dynasty was a transitional step between the Middle Ages and Early New Age. The crucial moment has allowed England to re-open to foreign artists who attached art of the country to European Renaissance culture.
Events of English history always had reflected on pages of manuscripts during the Middle Ages. In XVIth century portrait painting was also reflecting the sociopolitical life of the country. A great number of members of noble families died in the struggle for the throne. And when the Tudors took the power, they had to “tell things” about themselves and the portrait was perfect for this purpose.
Despite the many different circumstances, Henry VII obtained the English throne. That's why he tried to prove the legitimacy of his presence on the English throne all his life. The deification of the monarch was paralleled with attempts to describe his personal features. First mentioning about his appearance belongs to contemporaries like Polydore, Virgil and Bernard André. It is noteworthy that these descriptions are very reliable – we can verify this just by looking at the many portraits of the king.

Henry VIII is not now remembered for his military exploits, which were rather thin. However, it is important to examine the fact that this is how he wanted to be remembered, nonetheless. War with France was the established means by which a King of England could secure lasting renown. Henry V is the best example, thus he was a model for Henry VIII. This paper will reveal the continuing power of the medieval model of martial masculinity in the early sixteenth century as Henry VIII attempted to commemorate his status as a warrior king. This paper will also discuss Henry’s designs for a monumental effigy of him on horseback that would have immortalized his martial image and presented an idealised portrait of manhood for his posterity. Henry made powerful use of this tradition of visual representation of the royal person most famously commissioning portraits by Hans Holbein and one significant wall mural to commemorate the Tudor dynasty as he wanted it to be remembered. Finally, this paper will consider Henry’s public representation of chivalrous masculinity through his participation in tournaments, in which the king sought to establish himself as a legendary jouster. For Henry VIII wanted to be remembered as a military and chivalric hero, who had equalled and even surpassed the most virtuous deeds of the Lancastrians and Yorkists.

The reign of Henry VII, which began in 1485, was preceded by the short reigns of the uncrowned Edward V and of Richard III. The period of turmoil in the country did not contribute to the development of the portrait genre. The local English school of illuminated manuscripts fell into decay, and the Flemish city of Bruges became the main center of origin for most of the manuscripts in England.
The rise to power of Henry VII and the end of the War of Roses contributed to the cultural upsurge. However, after a relatively long period of instability, the new king needed to consolidate his position on the throne. For this purpose, many manuscripts were produced, which spoke about the rights of Henry to the English throne and his great ancestors, and created manuscripts on astrological topics, which predicted a long reign and prosperity of the monarch.
The article’s main objective is to show, using the example of illustrations of manuscripts, easel portraits, and written testimonies of contemporaries, how exactly the glorification of the power of Henry VII took place.

The role of the liturgy in establishing the iconographic nature of a saint was fundamental during the medieval period; to date, though, the liturgies of Thomas Becket have rarely been considered for their role in the creation of Thomas’ cult. While work by musicologists such as Andrew Hughes and Kay Brainerd Slocum, and literary scholar Sherry L. Reames has done much to establish the chronology of Thomas’ liturgies and the context of their creation, questions about the liturgies as texted, melodied, and performed statements of Becket’s sanctity remain. My thesis builds on that work while also developing its own methodological framework by locating the Becket liturgies within the political, cultural, and social histories of the institutions for which they were created. It begins with an overview of the sources, addressing their virtues and limitations (especially in terms of using manuscript sources that are not contemporaneous with composition date of the liturgies they represent), while also addressing how the interdisciplinary approach of the thesis - which incorporates analysis of textual, musical, and artistic sources - fits within current historiographical trends. The thesis emphasises performance practices at Canterbury itself and with the liturgy as a musical, audible practice, in turn, it engages with a wider range of sources, placing liturgical texts in dialogue with other non-musicological material. For example, it utilises architectural evidence at Canterbury in conjunction with chronicles and customaries to present an experiential history of Becket’s cult. Doing so will allow the exploration of the "dissemination" of liturgy beyond the textual and demonstrate how liturgy moved to new institutions already embedded with pre-set performative and spatial requirements that needed to be re-imagined in new spaces.
The thesis is divided into two parts. Part A (consisting of Chapters One and Two), discusses the creation of the offices for Becket’s passion and translation at Canterbury in
the years after his death. The first chapter explores how the office was composed in 1173 by Benedict of Peterborough (d. 1193), one of the feretrarians for Becket’s shrine, and how Benedict’s place at the heart of a network of early Becket hagiographers shaped the liturgy. It then examines how Benedict’s liturgy influenced the rebuilding of the east end of Canterbury Cathedral after the devastating fire in 1174, and how the internal politics of Christ Church meant that the enlarged Trinity Chapel was built to house Becket’s cult (and his liturgy). Chapter Two’s focus is the creation of the office for Becket’s Translation by the clerical familia of Archbishop Stephen Langton during the 1220s. It explains why Canterbury appears so prominently in that liturgy; namely, after years of wrangling with the monks over where Becket should be buried, Langton desired to reconcile with the community by indicating that Becket’s new shrine was to be his permanent home. Part B examines how Becket’s liturgies were spread beyond Canterbury and follows three lines of inquiry. Chapter Three explores how Becket’s liturgy was adapted, re-imagined, and re-compiled in new institutions that required something different to the original Canterbury plan. Such an aim will not be approached diachronically but will provide snapshots of how the process of adaptation occurred at different places across the centuries. Chapter Four surveys how Becket’s liturgies were utilised as the basis for new non-liturgical music, particularly in Parisian and English motets and conductuses of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-centuries. The final chapter explores how the Lancastrian dynasty used music to promote Becket as a symbol of England and of themselves, which was to imbue the Becket cult with new ideological undertones. The conclusion then takes a brief look at the end of the Becket cult during the reign of Henry VIII, and argues that long-standing tensions in Becket’s hagiography, beginning in the liturgies, ultimately meant he was replaced by Reformation martyrs in the Catholic imagination during the sixteenth century.

The aim of this thesis is to explore and uncover the strong presence chivalry had during the development of the early Tudor dynasty, particularly following the end of the Wars of the Roses and into the early modern era. It seeks to answer the questions of how prevalent the phenomena of chivalry and courtly love were during the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, as well as their importance in the political and dynastic foundations of the Tudor dynasty. Further, the work aims to examine what chivalry and courtly love reveals about gender, politics, and social dynamics during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. In the foundations of his reign, Henry VII craved dynastic stability, legitimacy, and monarchical power. In establishing his dynasty, Henry attempted to create a legacy that emphasised the conceptual ideals of
chivalry, and courtly love, as critical for strength, courtly performance and politics. The thesis will argue that
the early Tudor kings sought to drive cultural chivalric elements into the political, and dynastic foundations
of the early Tudor public sphere. It will explore how chivalric and courtly love ideals created a framework
for conversation and behaviour, gauging how gender roles were perceived and performed by courtiers during
the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Chivalry’s place in Tudor court culture has been considerably understated, discussed as a cultural undertone, and not properly contextualised. By focussing on this cultural ideal in early Tudor court life, the thesis will argue chivalric discourse was crucial to both kings and courtly
performance.

Livret recensant les articles publiés sur le blog Un Art Anglais ? à la suite du dossier automnal. Ce dossier retrace les grands thèmes de la production artistique anglaise au XVIème siècle et son affiliation au mouvement européen de la Renaissance.

Many scholars have highlighted the efforts made by Queen Isabella I of Castile to give her daughters an adequate
education. Meanwhile, the infantas accompanied their parents in court participating in the courtly
ceremonies, where they learned the womanly skills like spinning and sewing and, as a novelty in the Castilian court,
they were widely instructed in the Classics according to their mother’s wishes.
In the case of Catherine of Aragon, it seems like this educational programme was successful because humanists like
Juan Luis Vives and Erasmus of Rotterdam praised the Queen’s education that, according to Erasmus, surpassed
that of her husband, Henry VIII. Vives took his praise further in the prologue of his work The Education of the
Christian Woman that as we will see had a decisive impact in the education of women in England. The author compares
the Queen to Lucretia of whom Valerius Maximus had said “that by an error of Nature, in a woman’s body
she’s lucky to have a male’s spirit” in clear reference to Aristotelian ideas.
In this paper the influence of Catherine of Aragon will be confirmed in the recovery of the classical culture through
humanism in the Tudor court. Therefore, a list of twenty-two books that Queen Isabella I of Castile gave to her daughter
as she was leaving for England to marry the heir to the English throne, Arthur Tudor, will be presented. In a second
part, we will see how Catherine relied all her life on literature to justify her dynastic role in England. We will also stop
on how she contributed decisively to the consolidation of Mary Tudor’s candidacy for the English throne and how
she instigated the education of the young woman who would become the first Queen of England by her own right.

Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, was one of the prominent figures in English Reformation. As Queen, she used her power to bring about lasting change in England. She was able to influence the English people as well as Henry’s children – especially Edward and Elizabeth, the future monarchs. Katherine Parr was a role model in scholarly and women's communities. She gave a great importance to the learning of the Scriptures and she financed the translations into English of some texts she found interesting on a religious level (i.e. Paraphrase of the Gospels by Erasmus, a book which explains the Bible). Her conviction as a Protestant pushed her to write her confessions on her own religious experiences which, she hoped, would guide numbers of people into having the same beliefs as herself.
Katherine is known for her literary skills. She was an advocate of the “New Learning”, that is the learning of the most important languages at the time to understand religious texts: Latin, French and Italian. She found herself at the centre of a literary circle and she inspired, edited and circulated religious works among men and women sharing the same ideology. She even was one of only a dozen English women in a hundred-year period to publish not just one but two books and several prayers: Prayers or Meditations in 1545 and The Lamentation or Complaint of a Sinner in 1548. Katherine’s convictions can be applied to today’s Protestant faith and, as a contemporary scholar has declared, ‘her dedication to the cross of Christ is a theme that transcends a culture gap of nearly five centuries, and her fervent spirituality and passion demonstrate that the Reformation was not limited to the ivory tower, but played itself out in real and practical ways.’

At the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in Wales on the 2 February 1461, the eighteen year old Edward earl of March, proved himself to be a capable soldier, defeating a Lancastrian force. At the time Edward’s contemporaries did not doubt his military prowess, or great courage and hardiness. Thomas More wrote that: ‘in war, sharp and fierce; in the field, bold and hardy’. It was Edward’s decisive victory at Mortimer’s cross, which clearly demonstrated that he was the best general on the Yorkist side. Edward IV set a heroic example to his men of being fierce in battle and having proved his hegemonic masculinity, there could be no question regarding his ability to embody the warrior ideal.


In this paper, I argue that there was a strong identification between the warrior ethos and notions of manhood and kingship in the late medieval and early modern period. Edward IV and Henry VIII’s reigns brought a renewal of military activity as both sought to recuperate English chivalric masculinity, whilst they also celebrated the earlier achievements of the medieval warrior kings. Edward was a warrior king in the first instance because he had to be. Henry tried to be one. It becomes apparent in this paper that this was the sort of king that his subjects wanted too.


Significantly for Edward and Henry their nobles remained intrinsically warriors, as a result they were able to develop strong homosocial bonds with their men as they took personally to the battlefield unlike their predecessors. One important aspect that this paper also illustrates is that those men, who took a leading role in warfare tended to be the same men, who had dominated the tiltyard during the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VIII.

"This thesis considers a range of sixteenth-century literary texts in order to trace the evolution of the public image(s) of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (c.1470-1530), Henry VIII’s chief minister from 1515 until 1529.  The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate and explore the genesis and subsequent evolution of literary characterizations of Wolsey.  This process in turn reveals much about the individual authors, editors, and playwrights who generated these images; the readers and audiences who received them; and the social, political, and religious events to which they responded and with which they interacted.  Moreover, this thesis argues that through analyzing case studies (like Wolsey’s), we can better understand how sixteenth-century authors conceptualized and represented history itself, as well as the uses to which these histories might be put.  To explore this concept, this thesis creates a framework of ‘mimetic’, ‘poetic’, and ‘documentary’ representations of history to better distinguish how Tudor authors organized and created their respective histories.

In order to identify common themes and highlight evolving textual features, this thesis moves chronologically through a diverse corpus, looking at early satires in doggerel poetry and drama; biography and de casibus verse; Elizabethan historiographies (both religious and secular); and Jacobean drama.  This approach demonstrates how the public images of Tudor political figures were constructed in a web of interconnected texts, and how authors constructed and adapted representations of history over the course of the sixteenth century.  In addition, this thesis considers how characterizations of Wolsey in particular demonstrate the means by which a particular image could be adapted to interact with a rapidly changing public sphere."

In a previous book, Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon (Cascade Books, 2021), I analyzed, among other things, the religious environment of a Catholic community in Wallsend, a small town near Newcastle Upon Tyne in North East England, from around 1950 to around 1970. Many of the historical events and geographical circumstances that led to the particular religious environment in that time and place were only superficially explored in that book, due to the need to keep the study at a reasonable length and focused on its main subject. This separate short book can thus function as a background introduction to Sting and Religion, or as an entirely independent historical survey of, as its title says, religion in England from prehistoric times to the early 1980s, with a special emphasis, when relevant, on Catholicism, and the country’s North East.

This article investigates the deliberate use and manipulation of chivalric culture and iconography by James IV of Scotland to position the Stewart dynasty's claims to the English throne in contest with the concurrent consolidation of Tudor dynastic security. This resulted in a dialogue developing between the two kingdoms concerning the relationship between sovereignty, dynasty and chivalry. This article argues for a new approach to the study of chivalry, by considering it as a meaningful language in political communication. It finds that chivalry had a strong currency in diplomatic discourse and was used to transact political issues of sovereignty and dynasty.