ABSTRACT

A pervasive sense of something amiss in the commonwealth characterized the Tudor years. Combined with the state’s expanding pretensions in social and religious matters, this brought the government up against a variety of practical problems and challenges to its authority. In the process, confusions that inhered in the very notion of commonwealth became apparent. Was the commonwealth a moral community nourished by mutual regard, custom and traditional religion, or was it a civil body delimited by dynastic and constitutional claims and shaped by government initiatives? How was the commonwealth’s proper order affected by greed and over-reaching or by laziness and lack of deference? How was it endangered by injustice and imperial claims or by heresy and insurrection? These questions and their like required fresh thinking under the broad rubric of ‘political thought’. Nevertheless, Tudor political ideas and culture have received relatively little scrutiny for almost four decades.