Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 > Status Update
Charlie Fenton
is on page 164 of 449
‘Though the new laws terrified, they were kept as a threat which was usually unfulfilled. In England, unlike the rest of Europe, torture was not used as an ordinary part of the legal process. Under the first Tudors, no judges were removed, and very few juries punished. Even packed juries sometimes acquitted. Yet people remembered the fear. Edward VI’s councillors denounced ‘the cruel and bloody laws’ of his father’
— Jun 25, 2018 07:08AM
Like flag
Charlie’s Previous Updates
Charlie Fenton
is on page 333 of 449
‘Yet adherence to Rome was a very costly choice. There was what Bishop Aylmer called ‘pecuniary pain’; the monthly recusancy fines of £20 for richer Catholics, who grew steadily poorer. Some suffered long imprisonment; what Sir Thomas Tresham called ‘the furnace of our many years’ adversity’. Nonconforming Catholics were excluded from Parliament, from office holding, and from university education.‘
— Jun 28, 2018 12:27PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 295 of 449
‘The population of England had expanded at a startling rate: perhaps by 1 per cent every year between 1576 and 1586, and by as much as 35 per cent during Elizabeth’s reign - from 3.3 million in 1571 to 4.15 million in 1603. The growth of London had been more spectacular still... by Elizabeth’s death the population of the growing metropolis, extending beyond its ancient walls, may had been as many as 200,000.‘
— Jun 27, 2018 04:48PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 270 of 449
‘Determining to be the Virgin Queen no longer, Elizabeth chose the worst suitor in Europe; the faithless, feckless Duke of Anjou, his reputation as blemished as his pock-marked face. The Catholic heir-presumptive to the French throne, half the Queen’s age - she was forty-five - was nowhere trusted; not in France, not in England.‘
— Jun 27, 2018 04:03PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 237 of 449
‘The rebellion of the northern earls was fateful for all English Catholics. When so few had answered the call to rise for the old faith, it seemed certain that if the Catholic Church were to be restored to England, it would not be by rebellion. Yet the crisis of 1569-70 transformed all those who thought of themselves as Catholics into potential enemies of the realm: traitors within.’
— Jun 26, 2018 04:15PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 209 of 449
The martyrs died because Mary, Pole and the bishops believed that heresy must be extirpated lest it ‘infect’ more; because ‘there is no kind of treason to be compared with theirs’. They died because some among the lay governors and the common people, hating their heresy, reported them, knowing the consequences. Above all they died because they would never recant.‘
— Jun 25, 2018 04:49PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 105 of 449
‘When the old guard among his councillors complained that the new king was too wedded to pleasure and urged that he attend Council meetings more often, Wolsey counselled the contrary. Here, for him, was the way to exceptional favour and power. Wolsey determined, according to his gentleman-usher George Cavendish, to show himself keenest ‘to advance the King’s only will and pleasure’’
— Jun 23, 2018 11:58AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 52 of 449
‘The first sacrament in the life of a Christian was baptism. Baptism was the rite that incorporated the newborn child into the Church and Christian society (Christendom), and it was a sacrament of faith. Without baptism there was no salvation, and the unbaptised child was consigned to limbo, forever denied heaven and the beatific vision. Every child was born innocent but with a proclivity to sin‘
— Jun 22, 2018 12:46PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 27 of 449
‘Henry was, from his accession, the greatest royal landowner since the Norman Conquest. He held five times more land than Henry VI had done and learnt from his predecessor’s disastrous example: what he gained he held, never alienating these vast possessions. To Henry came the duchy of Lancaster, the whole estates of the duchy of York and the Mortimer earldom of March.‘
— Jun 22, 2018 12:17PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 25 of 449
‘Richard’s supporters were in disarray, not knowing whether to resist or to make terms with the new order. Some fought on, some were imprisoned, some were executed, some fled, but most made peace. And still Henry felt acutely threatened and insecure. He would never be free from the fear that a challenger would arrive with a stronger claim to the allegiance owed to blood.’
— Jun 22, 2018 12:11PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 12 of 449
‘A quarter of the personal wealth of Leicestershire villagers in the early sixteenth century was held by 4 per cent of the people. Such inequalities were taken as part of the divine and natural order, which no one should question. As the first Tudor king passed by, the common people looked on, their lives affected more by the fecundity of the harvest, which happened to be good in 1485’
— Jun 22, 2018 08:54AM
