ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the most important part of Thomas Starkey's relationship with the body social was not about which estate was present or absent, nor about whether he at times endorsed the principles of that model. Rather, it considers his entire text and considers that he saw the estates and their social norms as dysfunctional, making the notion of an interdependent social body, as Thomas More had hinted a dubious proposition. In reality, Starkey described contradictions and conflicts in the model that made it virtually inoperative. Starkey's Dialogue is an important text because, like Sir Thomas Elyot and Richard Morison, its ambiguities underline early Tudor tensions between the body social and social humanist positions. Starkey's description of the body politic, while calling upon the body social's theory of interdependence, was above all informed by demographic and economic phenomena and material facts. In some respects, Starkey might be considered a proto-Malthusian.
