- Email: [email protected]
Political thought and tudor commonwealth: Deep structure, discourse and disguise,
History of European Ideas, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 407-415, 1994 Copyright @ 1994 Elswicr Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/94 $7.00+0.00
REVIEWS FA<=TION, FAlTH AND IDEOLOGY IN THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION Factional Politics and the English Reformation, 1520-1540, Joseph S. Block (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1993), Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 66, xi + 164 pp., $32.50. Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep Structure, Discourse and Disguise, Pau. A. Fideler and T.F. Mayer, eds (London: Routledge, 1992), x + 277 pp., $40.00. Political Protest and Prophecy under Henry VIII, Sharon L. Jansen (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), x + 170 pp., $29.50. GREG WALKER*
The precise relationship between politics and ideas; between the self-interested pursuit of power and place and religious conviction, has long troubled historians of the reign of Henry VIII, and of the early modern period generally. And similar historiographical debate surrounds the role played by political faction in the history of these years. The two issues are intimately connected. For the very notion of faction contains within itself an uncertainty about motivation. Were factions purely self-serving alliances of individuals united by bonds of family, region or clientage, aimed simply at securing ‘jobs (and lands) for the boys’ (and, far less frequently, for the girls)? Or were they groupings possessed of an ideological dimension, driven by a common commitment for (or against) religious reform, a particular foreign policy, or social issues? If the former is the case, the history of factional success and the history of politics can readily be separated. Who got the prime jobs at court or in the provinces did not necessarily greatly affect the course of royal policy. If the latter, then the two histories are really one history, and plotting the politics of place reveals the otherwise hidden struggles which drove events on the political stage. Joseph Block, reacting against the work of David Starkey, Eric Ives, and others,’ who have seen the reign of Henry VIII as dominated by faction but have down-played the religious element in the story, seeks to reinstate the ideological dimension to the history of faction. Thus he offers a narrative of the crucial years of the Henrician Reformation in which factional struggles are intimately connected to the course of religious change. Central to Block’s thesis is the claim that a factional alliance committed to reform grew up around the Boleyn family and (subsequently) Thomas Cromwell and drove through the religious changes of the 1530s. And it is this distinctly ideological cast to the Boleyn-Cromwell faction which gives it its interest, as the *Department LEl 7RH, U.K.
of English,
University
of Leicester, University
Road,
Leicester 407
REVIEWS FA<=TION, FAlTH AND IDEOLOGY IN THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION Factional Politics and the English Reformation, 1520-1540, Joseph S. Block (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1993), Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 66, xi + 164 pp., $32.50. Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep Structure, Discourse and Disguise, Pau. A. Fideler and T.F. Mayer, eds (London: Routledge, 1992), x + 277 pp., $40.00. Political Protest and Prophecy under Henry VIII, Sharon L. Jansen (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), x + 170 pp., $29.50. GREG WALKER*
The precise relationship between politics and ideas; between the self-interested pursuit of power and place and religious conviction, has long troubled historians of the reign of Henry VIII, and of the early modern period generally. And similar historiographical debate surrounds the role played by political faction in the history of these years. The two issues are intimately connected. For the very notion of faction contains within itself an uncertainty about motivation. Were factions purely self-serving alliances of individuals united by bonds of family, region or clientage, aimed simply at securing ‘jobs (and lands) for the boys’ (and, far less frequently, for the girls)? Or were they groupings possessed of an ideological dimension, driven by a common commitment for (or against) religious reform, a particular foreign policy, or social issues? If the former is the case, the history of factional success and the history of politics can readily be separated. Who got the prime jobs at court or in the provinces did not necessarily greatly affect the course of royal policy. If the latter, then the two histories are really one history, and plotting the politics of place reveals the otherwise hidden struggles which drove events on the political stage. Joseph Block, reacting against the work of David Starkey, Eric Ives, and others,’ who have seen the reign of Henry VIII as dominated by faction but have down-played the religious element in the story, seeks to reinstate the ideological dimension to the history of faction. Thus he offers a narrative of the crucial years of the Henrician Reformation in which factional struggles are intimately connected to the course of religious change. Central to Block’s thesis is the claim that a factional alliance committed to reform grew up around the Boleyn family and (subsequently) Thomas Cromwell and drove through the religious changes of the 1530s. And it is this distinctly ideological cast to the Boleyn-Cromwell faction which gives it its interest, as the *Department LEl 7RH, U.K.
of English,
University
of Leicester, University
Road,
Leicester 407