Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government

There has never been any doubt that Tudor monarchs used royal proclamations to announce their decisions and govern the realm. Until recently, however, few of these documents have been available in print; analysis of their scope, purpose and power has had to rely on the list of bare abstracts prepared by R. R. Steele for the Bibliotheca Lindesiana This situation has now been remedied by the devoted labours of two American scholars who are planning to provide full transcripts of all Tudor proclamations and have so far published the first volume, covering the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII and Edward VI. Since this review of their work will in part be critical, it must first be stressed that the debt under which they have placed all students of the period is very great. The mere fact that a large amount of record material is here made easily accessible must cause rejoicing, and the importance of these documents – the importance, especially, of being able to study the precise wording of nearly 400 orders of the central government – becomes very clear in the act of reading them. Professors Hughes and Larkin have made possible a quite new and immeasurably more accurate study of one of the central problems of Tudor rule; they have provided material for important revisions in constitutional, administrative and economic history; and they have done so, on the whole, with commendable precision and lack of preconceived ideas.