Author: Edward Kirsch

Dr. Michell DiMeo’s book is the first comprehensive, book-length biography of Lady Ranelagh and one that demonstrates that she was far more than merely the great “Father of Modern Chemistry” Robert Boyle’s supportive sister and hostess “who may have been present but not intellectually engaged,” as characterized by Stephen Shapin and some other historians. (3, 168) Rather, Dr. DiMeo shows that not only did she “help shape some of [Boyle’s] philosophical publications and collaborate with his experimentation with chemical medicine, but she was also an intellectual authority in her own right, composing her own theological and political treatises and corresponding with an intellectual network comprising the most influential men and women of her time” – an important network she introduced her younger, teenage brother to in 1644 after he finished his Grand Tour. Moreover, she was an adept lobbyist for variety of causes including liberty of religious conscience, conversion of native Americans and Irish Catholics, and a respected ethical adviser, medical practitioner, and tester of medical recipes in her own right. (3, 184, 193)

The structure of Dr. DiMeo’s history of Lady Ranelagh’s intellectual life, one inextricably intertwined with Robert Boyle’s, is chronological beginning in chapter one with her birth to a wealthy, connected, leading Anglo-Irish family in Ireland in 1615 and ending in chapter seven with her death in London in 1691.  The second chapter sets forth several of the overarching themes of the book and explores her deep involvement with the Hartlib circle in London and her rising status as the “incomparable” Lady Ranelagh as she became known to contemporaries.  This chapter and the introduction also address the limitations of the surviving sources for documenting the life of an intellectual woman in the seventeenth century and Dr. DiMeo’s efforts to overcome them. (10, 203)

Lady Ranelagh became one of the central members of the vibrant Hartlib correspondence circle “which began in London in 1641 and centered on Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Jan Amos Kominski,” and included John Milton, Henry Oldenberg, and numerous prominent intellectuals in England and on the continent. (44) Dr. DiMeo summaries Evan Bourke’s quantitative network visualization analysis to demonstrate that Lady Ranelagh was “a central correspondent within this international circle” as demonstrated by a “betweenness” measure that ranked her sixth of 766 correspondents showing how important she was in connecting people including her famous younger brother who benefited enormously from her connections and intellectual guidance throughout his life. (45-46, Ahnert at 12)

DiMeo emphasizes that Lady Ranelagh followed the contemporary social convention of women “chos[ing] to disseminate their writings primarily via manuscript coteries and networks instead of print publications,” which at the time was still considered a “more elite method” of publication and more consistent with the piety, charity, and dignity expected of seventeenth century elite women. Recent historians have established how effectively women used the Republic of Letters “as tools to exert agency in a number of spheres” which DiMeo also demonstrates in this work.

Lady Ranelagh’s reliance on the genres of manuscript circulation and letter circulation along with long-standing collection practices of archivists and historians to undervalue collections of female documents create challenges in reconstructing Lady Ranelagh’s life, as well as those of other women. (202) Dr. DiMeo adroitly uses her finely honed skills as an archivist and historian to piece together the details of Lady Ranelagh’s life by plumbing the archives and writings of male family members and friends, including her famous brother, the digitized Hartlib papers, and a host of her influential male correspondents including Samuel Hartlib, William Penn, Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, and others. (2, 202) Dr. DiMeo is highly successful in this endeavor to uncover and interpret the scattered sources and has deep experience for the task as she was Director of the Othmer Library at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, and also managed the Hagley Heritage Curators program and Manuscripts and Archives department at the Hagley Museum and Library. She holds a PhD in English and History from the University of Warwick, a Certificate in the Curation and Management of Digital Assets from the University of Maryland, and possesses deep experience with digital archives.  Dr. DiMeo’s research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of early modern science and medicine, with particular interests in domestic science, medical remedies, and women practitioners. Consistent with these interests, in this history, she explores Lady Ranelagh’s important contributions to the emerging fields of chemical medicine and empirical science as well as the challenges facing intellectual women generally in the seventeenth century.

Dr. DiMeo shows the depth of Lady Ranelagh’s influence on Robert Boyle’s work. For example, she argues that Lady “Ranelagh’s own expertise in writing, trading, and testing medical recipes must be seen as a contribution to Boyle’s evolving thoughts on” medicine. Thus, Lady Ranelagh’s influence is seen in Boyle’s important publication in 1685 of Specifick Medicines in which he views “recipes as experiments to test philosophical theories and principles” which is reflective of his partnership with his sister as to medical matters and the empirical practices both were engaged in. (184) Dr. DiMeo shows that Lady Ranelagh often “shaped the works of her brother prior to publication” and “offered critical appraisal and encouragement,” for example, for his critic of Aristotelian modes of inquiry embodied in his The Origin of Forms and Qualities published in 1666. (133, 189)

Dr. DiMeo also places Lady Ranelagh’s experiences and accomplishments in the context of the history of science. She notes that the founding of the Royal Society in London in 1660, with a formal charter following in 1662, is often viewed by historians of science as a “turning point” when science became “institutionalized.” (123-24) Londa Schiebinger and feminist historians have argued the founding of Royal societies is also the turning point when women were excluded from natural science as the Societies did not admit women and emphasized print publications to their further detriment. (124) Dr. DiMeo argues instead “the decreased diversity among experimenters took place over a much longer period, and was not directly related to the founding of the Royal Society.” (125) She argues persuasively that women, such as Lady Ranelagh continued “preparing medicines, perfecting chemical techniques, writing about and debating the latest philosophies” often through letters and with the household as a primary local for learning. (125) Four members of Ranelagh’s Hartlib circle were founding fellows of the Royal Society, including her younger brother Robert Boyle, and other friends and correspondents later joined including her close friend Henry Oldenburg who managed its journal, and her son Richard Jones who became a member in 1663. (124) Dr. DiMeo concludes that she maintained close connections to the fellows of the Royal Society and “though she was not a part of the Royal Society, Ranelagh assertively engaged with other political causes and intellectual projects throughout the restoration, demonstrating that she was not the silent victim excluded from creating new knowledge and shaping public opinion.” (127)

Dr. DiMeo’s biography is deeply researched and readable and should appeal to both specialists and the general reader. Dr. DiMeo convincingly demonstrates that Lady Ranelagh merited the honorific “incomparable” bestowed upon her by contemporaries as despite her gender precluding her from attending university or joining the Royal Society, Lady Ranelagh built an impressive network through which she “participated in controversial political cases, influenced decision makers, shaped the publications of male contemporaries, and wrote her own pieces that circulated widely in manuscript.” (203) The book contributes to the history of science and gender by demonstrating how women “could leverage social status and piety to gain the respect of others and shape the public sphere” including chemical medicine and other disciplines despite their exclusion from the Royal Society and reluctance to risk their reputations through print media.

Richard Blakemore and Elaine Murphy’s, The British Civil Wars at Sea: 1638-1653 continues a trend to revise the existing historiography of early modern British sea power by moving away from the traditional view involving “momentous swings between success,” such as the purported triumphs of the Elizabethan navy, and failure as epitomized by purported Stuart navy stasis, and a nationalist view of “an inexorable but sometimes interrupted progress toward a nineteenth-century apogee” of global British naval power. (3, 29) The authors instead focus on the neglected story of the intense interaction between land and naval forces during the British Civil Wars and how that “internecine strife . . spurred on efforts to expand and improve naval forces,” sometimes fitfully and gradually, such that by the 1653 the new ships, organization, dockyards, and most crucially the “’fiscal naval state’” enabled the Commonwealth navy to extend its reach globally and “place pressure on foreign powers such as the Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese” navies in a manner unthinkable in the 1630s as demonstrated by British naval impotency against the Dutch and Admiral Maarten Tromp in 1639 during the Battle of Scheveningen. (3-4, 177)

Dr. Elaine Murphy is a professor at the University of Plymouth and has published extensively on British naval history. She characterizes this book as the “first comprehensive study of this period at sea.” (YouTube interview) The authors establish three main objectives at the outset of the work. The first is “to provide an overview of the war at sea” during the British civil wars “that takes into account the wider nature of the conflict within the British Isles,” to include interconnected warfare in England, Ireland and Scotland where naval forces of each belligerent transported materials and troops, blockaded ports, relieved sieges, raided commerce and took prizes, and made substantial investments in maritime forces. (174) The authors claim to fill a “scholarly gap” as most histories of the British Civil War have focused almost exclusively on land warfare. (3) In addition, their other objectives are to “assess the impact of maritime activity on the course of the wars; and to understand the consequences of the civil wars for wider British naval and imperial history.” (174) The authors accomplish all three of their primary objectives in this readable and deeply researched book.

The first chapter sets the stage for understanding the role of naval forces in the British Civil Wars with a highly readable account of the nature and limitations of early modern naval warfare such as its extensive reliance on private initiative in the form of commerce raiding, privateers issued letters of marque and reprisal, piracy, tactics, the development of fast frigates, the growth of state navies, and the constant challenge of financing a navy. This financial challenge is epitomized in the 1630s by the perennial royal demand for Ship Money imposed across the land that ultimately created divisive constitutional issues that played a role in undermining the reign of Charles I. (13-15, 30-31) The authors develop the important point that early modern naval power must be viewed as “’maritime potential’” which considers both the steady expansion of British merchant fleets during the period as well as naval developments, because as emphasized throughout the book, merchant ships were most often armed and contributed to the war efforts of all belligerents through a war of attrition. Hugo Grotius and John Selden’s competing concepts of maritime sovereignty are also introduced which support the authors’ later arguments that Charles I, the parliamentarians and Commonwealth all sought to stridently exercise such maritime sovereignty as characterized in these emerging concepts of international law. (24-25, 31)

The second chapter conveys how in 1642 Parliament wrest control of the bulk of the navy Charles I had built with his controversial Ship Money often with the active support of not only senior officers, but also junior officers such as pursers, surgeons, gunners, boatswain mates, and even common seamen. The authors maintain, for example, that the Earl of Warwick who assumed command for parliament, was not only supported by most naval captains, but also was popular among seamen and “the decision of these sailors to support Warwick secured the control of most of the royal fleet for parliament, even before the civil war in England had begun in earnest.” (50, 53) In fact, sailors seized control of two ships from captains who were hesitant to side with Parliament at the outset of the Civil Wars. (51) This discussion of the agency of sailors and the extensive discussion of the mutiny of 1648 in Chapter 6 are based in part on the authors’ prior research in the social history of seamen. Dr. Blakemore has frequently published, while a professor at the University of Reading, on the social history of British sailors during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and his prior work is cited to support the discussion of the 1648 mutiny for example. (e.g., 140, n.74) Similarly, Dr. Murphy’s current social history research focuses on the experiences of women with the Royal Navy in the 17th Century.

The authors adeptly frame the naval engagements of the Civil War by noting that the defection of the standing navy to Parliament forced the royalists, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters to build naval forces, and organizations nearly from scratch which meant there would be no dramatic set piece, large scale naval engagements; rather, the war at sea would be characterized by commerce raiding, protection of sea lines of communication, the transport of military resources from the continent, and the support of coastal garrisons against sieges by naval supply which was often decisive in such as in Drogheda, Limerick and other ports. (56)

The structure of the book is largely chronological in chapters 3-4 and 6-7 with a focus on tracing the origin, development, and engagement of the better documented naval forces of Parliament with descriptions of the engagements and challenges of the opposing naval forces interspersed. However, Chapter 5 departs somewhat from this chronological approach to describe in detail the resourcefulness of the “Royalist, Confederate, and Scottish Naval Efforts, 1642-1653” as the chapter title announces. This chapter and the continuation of these concepts elsewhere are one of the more original achievements and strengths of the book. The authors painstakingly reconstruct the capabilities, engagements, organization, leadership, and impact of the navies of the royalist, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters based on scarce and scattered primary source material and often unpublished work. This was a difficult task as the records of these navies for the most part have not survived so their story had to be piecemeal assembled from hostile parliamentarian sources, depositions in prize cases, and other sources. (108) The authors note that these forces were never able to seriously threaten parliamentary naval power; however, they inflicted considerable damage on commerce, and just as importantly forced Parliament to “develop and deploy substantial resources to eliminate the danger they posed,” and in particular protect London’s crucial trade which was the engine needed to finance the war at sea and on land. (84, 128)

In sum, Blakemore and Murphy provide a readable and comprehensive survey of the naval dimension of the British Civil Wars and the often effective naval efforts of royalist, confederate and Scottish naval forces – both topics have often been omitted from other histories. Further, they painstakingly piece together disparate sources to paint a vivid picture of the royalist, confederate, and covenanter navies. Moreover, they provide useful Appendices, an extensive bibliography, and robust citations enabling others to build on this foundational work to further advance the field.

Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 652 pages. Reviewed by : Edward Kirsch

Peter Marshall’s Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation is a thoroughly researched history of the Reformation in England that argues the often violent seesawing changes of the English Reformation “were indeed principally about religion” and emphatically not “merely a convenient covering” for disputes over “political power, social domination or economic assets” as asserted by some prior historians. Rather, he argues “religion was interwoven inextricably into the fabric of virtually all other abstractions from the messy interplay of human existence: society, politics, culture, gender, art, literature, economy.” (xi) Peter Marshall is an accomplished Reformation historian and professor at the University of Warwick and well suited to drive this theme home. He won the 2018 Wolfson History Prize for this book – his tenth book on the English Reformation. The Prize is awarded by a panel of leading historians annually for one work published in the United Kingdom reflecting excellence in the writing of history for the general public. Marshall was a good choice for the award. Marshall’s history is accessible to the general reader and engaging as it brings to life the theological disputes and political machinations that comprised the English Reformation with the personal stories of both elites and common English people, vividly bringing forth the humanity of these believers – each of them heretics to others.

Marshall adeptly distills social history and weaves it into a chronological history of the English Reformation that extends from the late medieval period through the reign of Elizabeth I. He makes extensive use of the work of Eamon Duffy to follow the responses of common people to the often inconsistent changes in theology, ritual, law, and practices imposed by the different monarchs and religious elites over a sixty year span. He recounts, for example, that at Morebath in Devon during the 1554 Marion Restoration of Catholic ritual, the church wardens, common parishioners, and Vicar Christopher Trychay worked together to rapidly restore the infrastructure of Catholic worship despite limited means. Morebath parishioners returned precious items hidden from the “iconoclastic storm” of Edward VI’s reign such as images of the Virgin Mary, figures from the old dismantled Rood, and Catholic books. Marshall notes that the “compliance rate” for restoration of ritual objects in parishes across England was “strikingly high” indicating that “many [religious objects] were hidden rather than destroyed in Edward’s reign.” (380)

Structurally, the book is divided into four parts. The extensive Part One entitled “Reformations before Reformation” (119 pages in length) is a strength. Here Marshall argues late Medieval Christianity was a “remarkably dynamic and diverse” world with religious leaders, Lollards, Erasmus, and Christian humanists actively criticizing and seeking to reform the Church which “makes later developments seem, if not predictable, then at least explicable.” (xvii, 119) He concludes the “wellsprings of the Reformation movement” came “from deep within the devotional core of medieval Christianity” rather than merely pent-up resentments against immoral priests, indulgences, and other such issues as portrayed in other histories. (149)

In Part II, entitled “Separations,” Marshall describes how Henry VIII’s obsession in securing papal approval of an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon combined with the “seemingly unconnected” protests of Luther against papal authority and ultimately opened a pandora’s box of “instability and incoherence” dubbed the “Henrician Reformation” by historians. (xvii) Marshall shows that although the Henrician Reformation was top-down and state imposed, common people and parish priests were far from passive in response. These responses ranged from unauthorized preaching of rival theologies to the massive movement known as the Pilgrimage of Grace which mobilized some 50,000 adherents of traditional religion and “wrested a third of the kingdom from the royal grasp.” (253)

Throughout the work, Marshall’s lively storytelling is not hindered by his relatively concise discussions of theology as with some other histories because he typically features anecdotes in which leading protagonists such as Thomas More and William Tyndale, for example, engage in disputes, in one case over Tyndale’s vernacular translation of the Bible, to illustrate theological points. (132-134, 201-202)

In a theme carried throughout the work, Marshall argues the firestorm unleashed by Henry VIII in banning the rosary, lighting of candles, prayers for the dead, pilgrimages and other rituals, and the dissolution of the monasteries served to change the meaning of “religion” itself. As he put it: “what once had been an inherited stake in the ritual life of the community was becoming – for some – an alternative, ideological marker of individual and group identity.” (266) Henry was creating “New Christianities” as the title of Part III of the book suggests as more people read the vernacular Bible and engaged with theology. More and more common people, radical preachers, and others chose increasingly to fashion their “religion” and teach it, rather than merely receive it from authorities whether as royal fiat or medieval Catholic tradition. (270)

In Part III, Marshall discusses developments under the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. Marshall characterizes 1548, the second year of Edward VI’s reign, as the “tipping point” when England was divided from the Catholic church as a zealous minority embarked on “a festival of destruction” to destroy all religious images, altars, and other infrastructure, altering not only the aesthetics but also imposing a “devotional revolution.” (310, 315) Marshall observes that by late 1553, “Mary’s government had restored the religious settlement of Henry VIII and more, to widespread if far from universal satisfaction.” (366) Further, far from being the “rather stupid” political neophyte described by Geoffrey Elton, Mary could be pragmatic and intelligent, for example, wisely refraining from reclaiming monastic properties for the Catholic church despite the urging of the Pope and Cardinal Pole. (366, 389, Samson 5)

Marshall’s treatment of Mary I’s rise to power is consistent with that of Alexander Samson’s later book Mary and Phillip published in 2021. Both author’s portray an often cunning Mary Tudor who executed a plan for acquiring power and “slipped the net” of Northumberland to raise her forces, belying the notion that she was both uneducated and unprepared as argued by an older generation of historians. (357, Samson 28-32) Both authors note that Mary was sensitive to her subject’s concerns from the outset and ensured her husband Phillip’s “inherent Englishness was a theme of the triumphal royal entry into London.” (377) Both authors also place Mary I in the vanguard of the counterreformation. For example, she ordered the establishment of seminaries to educate boys, especially the poor, to improve the quality of parish priests. Marshall underscores that this reform was subsequently adopted by the Council of Trent “in what is widely considered its most significant reforming measure.” (401, Samson 9)

In Part IV, “Unattainable Prize,” Marshall examines developments under Elizabeth I’s reign. He argues that by 1559 Elizabeth’s government had largely restored the Edwardian church; however, “a watershed had been reached.” (434) Elizabeth viewed this as the end point of the Reformation while the reforming clergy and many lay Protestants saw it as an ongoing process toward perfection in which much remained to be done. (434-435) Puritans, Presbyterians and radical reformers consistently pressed Elizabeth I for further reforms that she largely resisted. Marshall describes Elizabeth as “a Nicodemite queen . . . willing to reign as a queen of Nicodemites. (449) However, the battles over vestments in 1565-67 and other disputes between the Queen and Protestant clergy revealed many of her subjects refused the Nicodemite path resulting in the emergence of Puritan and Presbyterian movements. (476) Marshall concludes that although England was majority Catholic at the time of Mary I’s reign, by the 1580s “quietly conformist Protestants were very likely in the majority in most” of England. (543)

Michelle Beer, Queenship of the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2018.

Reviewed by Edward Kirsch

Michelle Beer’s history is focused on the nature, power, and expectations of queenship in early modern Europe and Catherine of Aragon’s and Margaret Tudor’s deliberate, most often astute, performances of this role. Beer shows that these two queens purposefully performed their roles of queenship in nuanced ways that utilized material culture, court life, entertainments, pilgrimages, their piety, patronage, and above all their partnership with their husband kings to influence events and legitimize their respective dynasties and their personal queenships. (22) Beer’s history is not chronological. Rather, she juxtaposes the reigns of Catherine and Margaret around common themes, roughly one per chapter, to reveal similarities and differences. The work departs from most prior histories by studying Catherine’s reign on its own terms rather than as an aside to Henry VIII’s “Great Matter” in which she has been reduced to “the themes of dutiful wife, pious Catholic, and wronged woman.” Similarly, Beer focuses on Margaret’s role as queen rather than her regency for her son James V which is the focus of most histories according to Beer. (19-21)

Beer encountered difficulties in following their lives through archives in which the relevant records are fragmentary and “often subsumed within the records of the king and his court” or have simply not survived. (22) She does a remarkable job of piecing together their achievements, concerns and follies by assembling fragments of evidence from a wide range of sources including the king’s accounts, dispatches of ambassadors, gift records, the National Archives at Kew, Calendar of State Papers relating to Spain and Venice, and other sources.

In the first chapter, Beer argues that Elizabeth of York, Margaret’s mother and Catherine’s mother-in-law, provided a model for queenship, piety, Renaissance magnificence, and an exemplar for how queens should participate in the life of the court. (24-25) In Chapter two, Beer discusses how Catherine and Margaret “used their agency and superior social status compared to the men around them in order to maintain royal dignity and their own authority,” particularly when faced with challenges. (45) Beer’s analysis stands in contrast to that of historians that have disparaged Margaret, for example, as “frivolous” because of her frequent pleading with her brother Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey for funds to purchase sumptuous clothing after she fled Scotland in secret in 1515 with few of her possessions. (56) Such criticisms, Beer maintains, reflect a failure to understand that “clothing was self-performance that could carry multiple types of meaning – legitimacy, political relevance, dynastic loyalty” that was essential to the honor of the queen and the king’s honor as well. (69) Henry VIII grasped that “magnificence” was an important “humanist virtue” for renaissance royalty to display and promptly financed her wardrobe.

Beer is a good storyteller. She argues that Catherine cleverly used her own clothing and that of her retinue to subtly express her opposition to the pending Anglo-French alliance at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. (60) Catherine made her views known while remaining loyal to Henry by deliberately wearing, and requiring her retinue to wear, elements of Spanish fashion in dress such as Spanish sleeves, Spanish hairstyles, and Spanish dynastic symbols in addition to English symbols during the jousts, feasts and other public events. (67-68) As noted by Samson, Catherine’s daughter Mary showed similar understanding of the legitimating power and messaging inherent in magnificent clothing by ensuring Phillip II dressed in the English manner during their wedding. (Samson, 110-111)

In chapters three and four, Beer focuses on both queens’ close relationships with their respective kings and their roles as royal hostesses in displays of magnificence, relaxing court pastimes, and diplomatic discussions, and as the prime audience for the court’s chivalrous displays, which taken together supported their informal role in dispensing patronage. (71) Beer emphasizes that in the lavish courtly pageants, tournaments, processions, and tradition of New Year’s gift giving “the queen and her ladies were . . . the center of attention, the axis around which chivalric events revolved” and the dramatic focus of the performance of these active and competitive kings. (81) Their partnership with the king was publicly demonstrated by these events, underscoring their soft power to influence the king’s patronage. Beer underscores that aside from the King, Catherine had her own ability to bestow patronage relating to her dower estates, as well as arrange elite marriages. (103) A queen’s hospitality was recognized as an important “humanist virtue” by Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier (1528). In their outer chambers, diplomatic dialogue was exchanged along with witty conversation during informal past times such as musical performances, card playing, chess, and dancing. (88) Performing their roles as distinguished, honorable hostesses solidified their relationships with the center of power for the elite to witness. (96)

In Chapter five, Beer analyzes how Catherine and Margaret used public performances of piety including almsgiving, pilgrimages, processions to mass, and the ritual of Royal Maundy, to fulfill queenly duties before God, connect with elites and the common people, and set a moral example for their people. Beer notes that prior historians have largely ignored how their “piety informed their queenship.” (124) Beer describes the Royal Maundy ritual on Holy Thursday as the most important annual almsgiving event and a powerful ritual that bathed queens in “sacerdotal power.” In addition to a public mass and almsgiving, the ritual included the queen and king performing the pedilavium in which the king washed the feet of poor men and the queen washed the feet of poor women. This powerful ritual invoked images of Christ washing the feet of the apostles during the Last Supper. (134) Beer notes that Mary I practiced the Royal Maundy and Elizabeth I used this ritual as “part of a deliberate strategy” to legitimate female rule by claiming “sacred status for the monarchy.” (135) Rituals such as Royal Maundy and Queen Catherine’s joint coronation in which she was “anointed with holy oil,” as well as the commonplace association of queens with the Virgin Mary, gave these astute pious queens an aura of “quasi-sacerdotal status.” (126)

Beer’s analysis of “receiver’s accounts” indicates Catherine gave a minimum of “between £160 and £190 a year from 1525 to 1530” in alms, while Margaret’s cannot be established. (130) This pious giving had the intended effect. Even John Foxe had to admit Catherine was popular. Henry VII and Anne Boleyn understood that Catherine’s displays of public piety were a source of her moral authority. Beer observes, for example, that in 1534 Henry precluded Catherine “from holding her Maundy while she was under house arrest.” (136) Further, Anne Boleyn tried to stop Catherine’s almsgiving because she understood “’the alms she has been accustomed to give have attracted the love of the people.’” Both Catherine and Margaret made public pilgrimages to shrines, particularly those associated with child birth, which provided interaction with the public along their leisurely route and served their political and spiritual purposes. (143)

In sum, Beer’s work is well researched, a great read, and accessible to a general audience. Yet it is also an excellent monograph for both professional historians researching the expectations, challenges, and strategies exercised by these astute queens in performing their role of queenship.

Alexander Samson, Mary and Phillip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. 279 pp. $39 paperback ISBN 9781526160249.

Reviewed by Edward Kirsch

Alexander Samson’s Mary and Phillip falls within a revisionist trend that emerged over the past several decades that reassesses the traditional narrative of Mary I’s brief reign which the author argues was unjustifiably and unfavorably colored by the anti-Catholic, anti-papal, religious and political propaganda of her own age, authored and promoted by radical Protestant exiles, that resulted in the epitaph “Bloody” Mary, which was not applied until 1658. (9) Samson argues these negative anti-Catholic narratives were used, alongside the “Black Legend” of Spain, to rationalize the British Empire’s displacement of Spanish colonial power and frame the Reformation as a national liberation movement well into the twentieth century. (1, 3) Samson argues convincingly against the commonplace that Mary was an unstable, dour, “tragic”, “desolate” figure in a failed marriage who was ineffective as a ruler and whose brief reign was a regrettable “’barren interruption’” in Britain’s destiny to lead the Protestant world. (4, quoting Harbison (1970), 6) These images persist in popular culture today and the author argues they are unsupported.

The book is not a comprehensive biography of Mary; rather, it addresses these negative historical interpretations and tropes by “foregrounding” alternative narratives that cast Mary in a positive light. In the first Chapter, “Prenuptial,” Samson demonstrates that Mary was shrewd and prepared to take power and was far from the “rather stupid” political neophyte described by Geoffrey Elton. (5) Rather, she cultivated local alliances such that within hours of confirming Edward VI’s death, she was sending circular letters to mobilize the nobles and gentry in the areas where she had large landholdings demanding she be proclaimed queen. She quickly mobilized supporting forces among Catholic sympathizers, but also among many Protestants and urban elites which resulted in the Privy Council backing her and Northumberland’s arrest and execution. (28-29, 33) Samson argues far from being imposed on a reluctant populace, “the return of traditional [Catholic] religion was joyfully celebrated” with the ringing of bells, processions of the rosary and images of the Virgin in London. (34)

The second chapter, “Contracting Matrimony,” focuses on the strategic considerations underlying the marriage contract, also an international treaty, by which Mary and Phillip were married, and the Hapsburg Empire and England allied. Samson deftly uses contemporaneous Spanish and English sources to reveal the parties’ strategic goals and counter long-standing arguments that the marriage undermined English sovereignty due to the anomaly of a female ruler, and that Phillip was reluctant to marry. He notes the terms of the treaty, negotiated by Mary and Stephen Gardiner for the English, included measures to “safeguard English sovereignty” beginning with the recitation that Phillip would be an English “’subject,’” and therefore incongruently “subordinate to his wife as queen,” notwithstanding the social and legal inequality of husband and wife in the period. (67-68) The treaty also sought to preclude Phillip from developing an independent power base in England by precluding him from “independent powers of patronage with English royal lands, income, or appointments,” and from “’innovation’” in the laws and customs of England. (68, 72) The treaty also contemplated Phillip merely “’adyd[ing]’” the queen in “’administration.’” and precluded him from interfering in the succession upon Mary’s death, a provision he subsequently honored. (68, 73)

Throughout the work, Samson adroitly weaves together contemporaneous narratives by Spanish and English sources to buttress his arguments. (34) The author is a “Reader” in Early Modern Studies at University College London who has conducted significant research in the early colonial history of the Americas, the reign of Mary I, and Anglo-Spanish intercultural interactions. He teaches courses in Spanish drama and history and is fluent in Spanish. Thus, his work foregrounds Spanish original sources that have often been overlooked by other historians.

In the third chapter, Samson analyzes contemporaneous representations of Wyatt’s revolt by the conspirators as an anti-Spanish, patriotic revolt to prevent Spanish domination, and the Marion reply that the conspirators were motivated primarily by religion. Samson concedes historians are divided on the conspirator’s motives, notwithstanding Protestant propaganda claiming a nationalist motivation, and concludes that whether motived by hatred of Spain or Catholicism, such sentiments were not widely held as evidenced by the limited support for the revolt. (90-91) Returning to this theme in chapter 7, Samson argues that England was not “inexorably xenophobic” which is an assertion employed by historians of an earlier generation to assert Phillip II was unacceptable to the English people, resulting in the failure of the co-monarchy. (137) Samson argues convincingly that the acerbic “propaganda of evangelical Marian exiles” circulated principally among literate elites and did not result in widespread “Hispanophobia” until the era of the Spanish Armada. (222)

Samson’s view is consistent with Immigrant England which concludes England was not xenophobic during the period. Omrod demonstrates that violence against aliens was rare and most often led by London merchants resentful of competition from foreigners – a conclusion shared with Samson. (Omrod, 117) Both authors view the cause of events such as the 1517 Evil May Day riots as rooted in economic rivalry and conclude the presence of Spaniards in England was small and did not engender hatred. (140, 143, 257) These conclusions are significant because purported English xenophobia and hostility to Spain underlie traditional arguments that the marriage was foisted upon a reluctant English people, inevitably resulting in the failure of the marriage, co-monarchy, and alliance, which Samson disputes. (137-39)

In chapters 4 and 5, Samson explores the co-monarchy’s messaging and how the wedding ceremony, and the couple’s entry into London were staged to placate the English populace by reinforcing the Queen’s precedence, memorialized in both the marriage treaty and an Act of Parliament. Mary’s primacy was underscored by the couple’s choice of dress, and positioning in relation to each other. (116) During the wedding and entry, Mary occupied the position on the right associated with the dominant male, while Phillip was to her the left in the traditional position of a Queen consort. (110-11) Further, Phillip was dressed in English style, and with the Order of the Garter given him by Mary. Samson asserts the monarchs were aware of the gender inversion embodied in these symbols and hoped the symbols would buttress Phillip’s acceptance in England and assuage fears of a loss of sovereignty. (111) Samson argues Phillip, far from being loathed, was greeted with enthusiasm upon his entry into London with the foreign merchant community assuming a large role in funding and planning the welcoming pageants in anticipation of enhanced trade. The Hanse merchants, for example, financed a triumphal arch that emphasized the alliance secured by the marriage treaty which promised closer ties between London and its most important trading partner – the low countries. (129)

Samson argues convincingly that despite gender expectations, Mary was an able and engaged monarch “perfectly capable of following her own counsel and refusing to do [Phillip’s] bidding” by, for example, declining to enter the war with France for two years until the Stafford Raid. (175) He shows Mary was deeply involved in establishing a more humanist English Catholic restoration that “absorbed” positive aspects of reform including a focus on clerical education, evangelism, theological reform, and spirituality, while downplaying the miracles, saints, relics, and shrines of the pre-Henrician Catholic church. (185) In sum, far from a failure, Samson’s Mary set a precedent for ably exercising both queenly and kingly power and established an “iconography of female power to legitimate” female rule, both of which benefited her half-sister, Elizabeth upon her accession. (7, 186-88)

I concur with Mathew’s and Emily’s implicit assessments that Immigrant England is a foundational text for historians studying English economic and social history during the period 1300 to 1550. As they note, the work makes excellent use of a rare, relatively robust, untapped database of contemporaneous records that includes alien subsidy (poll tax) records and letters of denization, supplemented by contemporaneous statutes, and other materials. As Emily notes, the underlying database is publicly available and the authors invite the community to build on their research, which Berry does. Accordingly, it is useful that the authors were are clear as to methodologies used to assess the data, for example associating high status with the ability of immigrants to pay for denizenship (26, 138), and the limitations of the data sets, for example where they deduce the numbers of immigrants in England. (Chapter 3) As Emily notes, the authors succinctly sketched background information on the “golden age of the English laborer,” Black Death, terminology (Chapter 1), guilds, English common law and other items to make their analysis of social and economic conditions meaningful to the general reader.  However, the work is clearly intended for a scholarly audience, and presumes some prior knowledge of regimes and events such as the Hundred Years War, Henry’s VIII’s excursion in Boulogne, Phillip the Good etc. (140) A strong argument, noted by Mathew, is violence against aliens was relatively rare and motivated by economic pressures rather than xenophobia. (chapter 10) The authors convincingly argue the “alien problem” in the latter fifteenth century was “invented and managed by Londoners,” especially the Guilds and often met by the central government’s “gesture politics”. (31-36). Chapter 6 is insightful with a focus on the high skills, new products, and technologies immigrants brought into fashion and other industries, and the “pull factors” drawing them to England. Berry’s article builds on this work and examines the acceptance of alien Goldsmiths.