ABSTRACT
Of all the periods of English history, the Tudor age seemed once the best known and most firmly settled. On the basis of traditions formulated in the nineteenth century, A.F.Pollard (with assistance) had built up a seemingly unshakable orthodoxy according to which the restoration of royal power by Henry VII was completed by his son (Reformation) and then exploited by Elizabeth. The century presented the picture of a coherent age, growingly ‘modern’, separated precisely from the Middle Ages by the phenomena of humanism and protestantism, and already consciously looking ahead to the distant end of empire. No doubt there were details to be learned and filled in, but the master plan was thought complete and beyond change. Today, little of it survives and debate rules everything. Recognition has grown that the date 1485 really means very little; research on topics of intellectual and economic history, tackling questions of which the previous generation had not even been aware, has done much to dissolve certainties; but it is interesting to note that the revision really started at the point where Pollard seemed best armoured-in the analysis of policy, government and administration. Fortunately, the revisionist interpretation has not ossified into a new orthodoxy; much further work is in the pipe-line, and this can be only an interim report.
