Tudors Quotes

“Yet the stomach for war breeds an appetite for money.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

“In the summer of that year two women were stripped and beaten with rods, their ears nailed to a wooden post, for having said that ‘queen Katherine is the true queen of England”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

“worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

“The credulity of crowds is never-ending.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

“you”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“for Rome.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“The Commons then made their customary request for freedom of speech as well as liberty from arrest. She granted the request with the significant comment that 'wit and speech were calculated to do harm, and their liberty of speech extended no further than "ay" or "no".”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

“One Irishman, Melaghin McCabb, boasted that he had dispatched eighty Spaniards with his gallowglass axe.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“The rise of the stricter forms of Protestantism had not yet inhibited the lavish materialism that seems to characterize Elizabethan society. This might be described as the first secular age.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“In previous times no flesh had ever been eaten on fish days; now the people of London scorned fish as a relic of papistry.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“So in the 1560s the monstrous carriage, as well as the queen’s marriage, was the talk of London.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“It may be noted, in parenthesis, that in this period the coach was introduced to England”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“This would be entirely consistent with a reformation that was less about the assertion of faith and principle than about the redistribution of power and wealth.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“In the medieval marriage service the wife had pledged to be ‘bonner and buxom in bed and in board’. This has the nice alliteration of an older language. Now both partners were asked to ‘love and to cherish’ ‘for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health’.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“1540 and 1547 prices rose by 46 per cent; in 1549 they had risen by another 11 per cent.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“but, for most, the practice of religion was determined by custom and regulated by authority.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“Her principal tutor, Roger Ascham, reported that at the age of sixteen ‘the constitution of her mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endowed with a masculine power of application.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“An Act was also passed ‘for the advancement of true religion, and abolishment of the contrary’; one more attempt to quell the religious dissension of the country. No plays or interludes could mention the Scriptures; no one could read from the Bible in an open assembly. Merchants and gentlemen might study it in the quietness of their homes ‘but no women, nor artificers, apprentices, journey-men, serving-men under the degree of yeomen; nor no husbandmen, or labourers, might read it’.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“The duke of Norfolk remarked to his chaplain, ‘You see, we have hindered priests from having wives.’ ‘And can your grace’, the chaplain replied, ‘prevent also men’s wives from having priests?”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“extirpate”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“The visitors then turned their attention to the universities, where it was decided that the learning of the scholastics and the medieval doctors should be abandoned in favour of the humanist learning approved by Erasmus and other reformers.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“A popular phrase of the time was that ‘these be no causes to die for’.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“That concept is more properly known as ‘caesaro-papism’; the king was now both Caesar and pope.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“importune”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“He had read the text in Leviticus that prohibited any man from marrying the widow of a dead brother.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“and conferred on Henry the title of Fidei Defensor, ‘Defender of the Faith’. It was not supposed to be inherited, but the royal family have used it ever since.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“caitiffs’.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“This was a serious matter. No one was permitted to engage in business with Hunne. He would be without company, because no one would wish to be seen with an excommunicate. He would also of course be assigned to the fires of damnation for eternity.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2

“The French king had three times as many subjects, and also triple the resources; the Spanish king possessed six times as many subjects, and five times the revenue.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Tudors: The History of England Volume 2