Treason In Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia PDF
Preview Treason In Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia
TREASON IN TUDOR ENGLAND Politics and Paranoia LACEY BALDWIN SMITH This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446475072 www.randomhouse.co.uk Published by Pimlico 2006 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Copyright © Lacey Baldwin Smith 1986 Lacey Baldwin Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1986 Pimlico edition 2006 Pimlico Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA Random House Australia (Pty) Limited 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, New South Wales 2061, Australia Random House New Zealand Limited 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand Random House South Africa (Pty) Limited Isle of Houghton, Corner of Boundary Road & Carse O’Gowrie, Houghton 2198, South Africa Random House UK Limited Reg. No. 954009 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1844135519 ISBN 9781844135516 (from Jan 2007) CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication About the Author In Thanks I. ‘Treason Doth Never Prosper’ II. ‘The Black Poison of Suspect’ III. ‘The Agreement of Its Minds’ IV. Tudor Cosmology and Commonality V. ‘The World is Queasy’ VI. A ‘Wonder to Behold’ VII. ‘Win the Queen’ VIII. ‘If You Have Any Enemies’ IX. ‘Give Losers Leave to Talk’ Notes Bibliography To Jean Without whose devotion, critical sense and manifold skills, this book would neither have been conceived nor completed PIMLICO 738 TREASON IN TUDOR ENGLAND Lacey Baldwin Smith was Professor of English History at Northwestern University, Illinois. The recipient of M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University, he has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of London and a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. IN THANKS Scholarship, almost by definition, is a collective enterprise: the product of ideas gleaned from a host of unlikely sources, tested upon a myriad of long-suffering friends, and nurtured in a very special environment. I am grateful to my colleagues in the History Department who individually and collectively have supplied — sometimes knowingly, sometimes inadvertently — that intellectual atmosphere and challenge which are the indispensable conditions for scholarship. And I am indebted to Northwestern’s College of Arts and Sciences and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous support. June 1985 L.B.S. I ‘TREASON DOTH NEVER PROSPER’ Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Sir John Harington, Epigrams Sir John Harington’s terse lines not only contain a grim-fisted truth — success writes its own history and imposes upon sedition a self-fulfilling dynamism whereby treason, by definition, is branded failure — but the rhyme also goes to the core of the Tudor political mentality and poses a question that has baffled historians over the centuries. Why did traitors indulge in a variety of sedition so unbelievably bungling and self-defeating in character that it is difficult to believe they were totally sane or that their treason, as perceived by the government, actually existed at all? If sedition had been nothing more than an occasional aberration upon the normal graph of Tudor political activity, the question might not be worth the asking. The century, however, was a veritable graveyard of unsuccessful intrigues, machinations, complots, and conspiracies. The grisly skulls decorating London Bridge and the mutilated corpses displayed throughout the kingdom were evidence enough that men risked their lives for reasons noble and ignoble, and that they knew the unpleasant consequences of failure. ‘To confess the truth’, sighed one observer in 1541, ‘it is now no novelty among us
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