ABSTRACT
The element of peace in Tudor intellectual, cultural and political life has generally been given but cursory attention and then dismissed with the implication that it was an impractical aberration of Erasmian idealism which astute statesmen could readily perceive.1 For whatever serious consideration the ‘pacifists’ received at the time must have quickly dissipated after the failure of Wolsey’s transparent Universal Peace of 1518, and most assuredly once the French and Scottish wars were launched in the 1540s.
