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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
READING over Elton's work afresh now, sadly, there will be no more, prompts a series of reflections. It is a great body of writing both in quality and quantity: but it is extremely narrow. Elton wrote about a remarkably short time range to which he repeatedly returned. He had little patience with Wolsey, no great interest in the history of the 1540s or 1550s and his excursion into the history of Elizabeth's earlier parliaments was not one which evidently brought him much pleasure. His first book established the reputation of Thomas Cromwell: one of his last pieces of writing considered how much or how little his view of Cromwell had changed, and the very last piece to be published was a defence of Cromwel from modern claims of corruption. It is hard to think of another major historian who has made so good a living from so short a temporal span. It is also striking how little of Elton's output is actually about politics: he was essentially a student of institutions and even ideas rather than of the interaction of men. His later interest in the law seems almost a rejection of politics.
1 Tudor Revolution: Thomas Cromwell (1991); ‘How corrupt was Thomas Cromwell?’, Historical Journal [hereafter HJ], 36 (1993)Google Scholar.
2 Collinson, P., Tudor England Revisited (Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, sixth annual Bindoff lecture, 1995), 22Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Steve Hindle for telling me of this and Professor Collinson for kindly sending me a copy. And I remain happy to be counted amongst Professor Collinson's friends (p. 3).
3 When I remarked on this to my student Nigel Morgan, he immediately made the comparison with another, slightly older, emigree, Nikolaus Pevsner. Quite.
4 Collinson, P., ‘Cranbrook and the Fletchers: Popular and Unpopular Religion in the Kentish Weald’, in Reformation Principle and Practice, ed. Brooks, P. N. (1980)Google Scholar.
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6 ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’, Studies 3 (36); English, 120 n. 9.
7 In another paper at the conference, Lewis Elton held that The English was one of Elton's most personal and heartfelt books so we must treat it seriously.
8 Indeed, the illustrations are never referred to in the text: but they are of place and so quite alien to the approach of the text. Elton, in short, wrote an unillustrated book. The publishers' picture searcher did the rest, as indeed he acknowledges in the foreword.
9 ‘Taxation’ Studies 3, which was followed by a critique by Dr Harriss and further articles by Dr Alsop and Dr Harriss. Hoyle, R. W. ‘Crown, Parliament and Taxation in Sixteenth-Century England’, English Historical Review [hereafter EHR] 109 (1994)Google Scholar, is merely the latest (and doubtless not the last).
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22 This is not merely a matter which affects the financial organs of government. Who, in 1537, would have supposed that the Councils in the North and Wales would survive until after 1640?
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44 For these, see Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, ch. 2, and a forthcoming paper of mine, ‘Political Society and the Failure of the Subsidy in Tudor England’.
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46 For the income from the 1523 subsidy, Hoyle, ‘War and Public Finance’, the figure being taken from Dr R. S. Schofield's unpublished thesis. The only available figures for the value of Elizabethan subsidies derive ultimately from a Jacobean compilation which gives consolidated figures for the subsidies and fifteenths granted statute by statute, Public Record Office, SP14/37 no. 38. The figures given here deduct the fifteenth at a rate of £29,000. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, table 5.2 after Phelps Brown and Hopkins.
47 1524–5, figures taken from Sheail, J., ‘The Regional Distribution of Wealth in England as Indicated in the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy Returns’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1967)Google Scholar, those for 1601 calculated from Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, app. 3.
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59 For a discussion of the educative value of the preambles, Hoyle, ‘Crown, Parliament and Taxation’.
60 I intend to discuss this in the forthcoming paper, ‘Political Society and the Failure of the Subsidy in Tudor England’.
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62 Although the significance of this should not be over stressed. Land sales from the reign amounted to only 27 per cent of income from taxation making the point that even a failing taxation system could produce much more for the crown than a resort to capital sales.
63 That is that power flowed back to the parish or village community. For this approach, see Dyer, C., ‘Taxation and Communities in Late Medieval England’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. Britnell, R. and Hatcher, J. (1996)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Prof. Dyer for sending me a copy of his paper.
64 Hoyle, , ‘Crown, Parliament and Taxation’, 1178–9Google Scholar.
65 His concluding remarks to the preface of England, 1200–1640 (1968).