Although achieving notoriety as the persecutor of protestants, Mary I of England had to contend with personal, religious and dynastic stress. Her mother, Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, fell from grace while Mary was young, and her own future seemed bleak. This work provides the full personal and political story behind the queen.

The life of Elizabeth I, who reigned over Shakespeare's England and defeated the Spanish Armada, was an extraordinary one. She faced major religious and political problems at home and abroad for much of her reign. Written by a leading Tudor expert, this biography looks behind the public life at the private woman.

Product Description: With Elizabeth and Henry VIII dominant, the Tudor world still captures the popular imagination today.  Yet how did the court change from Henry's ruggedly masculine environment to Elizabeth's feminine world? This book meticulously analyses events from the school room of Edward, through Mary and Philip's reign and right through to the era of  Elizabeth's loving virgin circle...read more

Product Description: John Foxe is chiefly remembered as an historian and propagandist of the English Reformation. However, thanks partly to his exile (1554-59) and partly to his network of friends among the continental reformers, both his general intention and his Latin works were widely known...read more

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'A masterful attempt to describe the historical secondary literature of the British Isles -- from prehistory to the present day -- the set is comprised of substantial essays of 1,000 to 3,000 words each on a wide array of subjects -- all written by pre-eminent scholars in language accessible to beginning students and advanced researchers. Each listed essay title is given a thorough annotation.'--'The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year,' American Libraries, May 2004.

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Product Description: Recreating the dramatic events and personalities of Mary and Elizabeth's reigns, this book uses the words of their contemporaries as witnesses to an extraordinary period of history in the making. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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This ambitious new study looks at England's rise as a great maritime power during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Loades considers the development of Tudor maritime policy and shows how there was a crucial "turning point" when English government began to take a proactive role in the commercial fortunes of the country. He also shows how England's accelerating seapower was made possible by commercial changes in Europe. The study considers other important themes including: *The Maritime revolution 1550-1558 *The Commonwealth and Naval Policy *The Restoration Navy *Later 17th Century Colonial Expansion (view table of contents)

Product Description: This political narrative of the rise and fall of the Tudor monarchy examines the relationship between the crown and the aristocracy. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This political narrative of the rise and fall of the Tudor monarchy examines the relationship between the crown and the aristocracy. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This is a wide-ranging and authoritative review of the reception in England and other countries of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of the English Martyrs from the time of its original publication between 1563 and 1583, up to the nineteenth century...read more

Product Description: This book examines the structures of power and jurisdiction that operated in Tudor England. It explains what the institutions of central government were designed to do, and how they related to each other. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: England was the most centralised state in medieval Europe. The Tudors built on this situation to reduce still further the provincial power of the nobility, and to eliminate the remaining jurisdictional franchises. But sixteenth century England was not monolithic, nor homogeneous...read more

Product Description: This text argues for the surprising stability of government during the period between 1545 and 1565. There were crises - a confused royal succession, economic problems, the search for Church settlement - but there was not a fundamental threat to the state or society...read more

Product Description: The pace and extent of England's conversion to protestantism between 1530 and 1570 is a subject of lively controversy among historians. In this study the reader is guided through the interpretations of rival scholars, and the complex events of those years...read more

Mary Tudor has variously been portrayed as a saintly and long-suffering woman who became a bigoted and incompetent queen, praised by historians for her personal qualities but condemned for her policies, and today best remembered as "Bloody Mary". This book, by a leading historian of the period, reassesses her life and reign. The daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Mary was the heir to the throne until the age of 17. As the Princess of Wales, Mary's childhood was a solitary one, spent in her own household, often away from both of her parents. This book examines the political circumstances in which Mary grew up, especially her role in international diplomacy. From the age of four she was used as a matrimonial pawn, betrothed successively to the Dauphin of France, James IV of Scotland and to her cousin, the Emperor Charles V. David Loades shows how Mary's upbringing and education had ill-equipped her for the events which were to confront her. After her displacement in the succession by her half sister, Elizabeth, she was unable to find the emotional support which she craved for when her childhood security had been destroyed, and her cousin Charles and his family became the chief focus of her loyalties. Although separated from Catherine, she clung to her maternal religion. She became an increasingly fervent Catholic, seeking spiritual solace in the mass, and supporting the Catholic rebellions of Edward's reign. The author argues that to Mary the extermination of protestant heresy was a moral imperative rather than a political expedient. As queen, and freed from many of the constraints that had been placed upon her over the previous 20 years, Mary was unable to reappraise her position, depending on her ministers and consort's judgement on the many matters which she did not consider fit for woman's judgement. Mary's own policies were dictated by long established loyalties and animosities. The picture that emerges from David Loades' biography is of an honest yet difficult and politically naive woman who converted her own prejudices into the public policy of the crown. With the changing circumstances of Elizabeth's reign, there was a conspicuous lack of political commitment to what Mary had represented.

Product Description: Beginning with Constantine, the originator of political Christianity, the book proceeds by way of Anselm's concept of the City of God, and John of Salisbury's developing awareness of national identity, to the clearer context of the nation state; the English and Polish experiences are contrasted...read more