Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age Read Online Free Page A

the acquisitive selfishness of the age. At the end of the changes by which Henry VIII set up the omnipotent state, the poor were the sufferers. Without Parliament Henry could hardly have forced his reforms upon the country. He bought the goodwill of the propertied classes who sat in Parliament by allowing them the spoils of the Church and the countryside. The powerful centralized State was born at the expense of rural depopulation and misery; this rising gentry prospered at the expense of the peasant. The bankruptcy of the arable farmer, the decay of villages, the notable increase in crime and vagrancy were the price exacted from the countryside to make Henry the supreme head of the State. It was no accident that the champions of the poor were the greatest opponents of Henry’s State and his extreme pretensions. The opposition of Sir Thomas More, ‘the best friend the poor e’er had’, is well known; but the Protestant Latimer also defended the poor and criticized the Tudor theory of majesty. The Dialogue by Thomas Starkey stated that the rule of one man was the ‘gate to all tyranny’ and condemned the English kings who ‘judged all things pertaining to our realm to hang only upon their will and fantasy’.
    But the opposition made little noise. The poor had no voice, and their champions were either silenced or went unheeded. The Tudor revolution in the State had been so successful with the influential parts of society that hardly anyone questioned the royal claim to absolute power. The young Edward VI, in his Discourse about the Reformation of Many Abuses , expressed the conventional opinion when he wrote that not less royal authority, but more was needed for good order and peace in the land. He thought England could thrive only if a paternal crown kept each citizen in his or her appointed place working industriously for the good of the State.
    That, too, was the opinion of Elizabeth, though she was never so innocent as to set it down and give her enemies a club to beather. Reformed by the prudence of Henry VII and the national fervour of Henry VIII, England had won a place in the world. It was Elizabeth’s hard task to prove the reputation of an independent, Protestant island against the enmity of the powerful continental kingdoms. The practice of her ancestors was the only light she needed to guide her on this perilous way. From her grandfather she learnt caution and practicality, and from her father a profound understanding of the mind and the heart of her people.
    She began with the typical Tudor advantages of natural ability trained by a rigorous education. Since the succession was a preoccupation of the Tudor dynasty, and since no one knew where fate might place the crown, all the Tudor children were educated up to the standard of the Renaissance prince. It was said of Elizabeth that ‘her sweet tongue could speak distinctively Greek, Latin, Tuscan, Spanish, French, and Dutch’. Bacon wrote after her death, when there was no longer any reason for flattery, that all her life she set aside certain hours for study. She regarded even the dangers of her early life as a lesson in the arts of government. The execution of her mother Anne Boleyn and her own consequent disfavour, her trials in the reign of her Catholic sister, taught her both the wilful power of the sovereign and also the need for cunning, dissembling and political flexibility. She was prepared to rule, and the wasteful, destructive years of Mary’s reign gave her, on accession, the unlimited goodwill of the country.
Lady, this long space
Have I loved thy grace,
More than I durst well say;
Hoping, at the last,
When all storms were past,
For to see this joyful day.
    That, in the words of the ballad, was the popular sentiment on her coronation. No one knew better than she the value of popularity. She was an adept publicist; by means of pageants, visitations and ‘progresses’ she kept herself in the eye of the people. Her regal presence and her wit