Treason In Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia

326 Pages·2011·2.08 MB·English

by  Smith

TREASON IN TUDOR ENGLAND
Politics and Paranoia
LACEY BALDWIN SMITH
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,
transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any
way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed
under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly
permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of
this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and
those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446475072
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Pimlico 2006
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Lacey Baldwin Smith 1986
Lacey Baldwin Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1986
Pimlico edition 2006
Pimlico
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Random House Australia (Pty) Limited
20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney,
New South Wales 2061, Australia
Random House New Zealand Limited
18 Poland Road, Glenfield,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
Random House South Africa (Pty) Limited
Isle of Houghton, Corner of Boundary Road & Carse O’Gowrie,
Houghton 2198, South Africa
Random House UK Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1844135519
ISBN 9781844135516 (from Jan 2007)
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
In Thanks
I. ‘Treason Doth Never Prosper’
II. ‘The Black Poison of Suspect’
III. ‘The Agreement of Its Minds’
IV. Tudor Cosmology and Commonality
V. ‘The World is Queasy’
VI. A ‘Wonder to Behold’
VII. ‘Win the Queen’
VIII. ‘If You Have Any Enemies’
IX. ‘Give Losers Leave to Talk’

Notes
Bibliography
To Jean
Without whose devotion, critical sense and manifold skills, this book
would neither have been conceived nor completed
PIMLICO
738
TREASON IN TUDOR ENGLAND

Lacey Baldwin Smith was Professor of English History at Northwestern
University, Illinois. The recipient of M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton
University, he has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior
Fulbright Fellow at the University of London and a Senior Fellow of the
National Endowment for the Humanities.
IN THANKS
Scholarship, almost by definition, is a collective enterprise: the product of ideas
gleaned from a host of unlikely sources, tested upon a myriad of long-suffering
friends, and nurtured in a very special environment. I am grateful to my
colleagues in the History Department who individually and collectively have
supplied — sometimes knowingly, sometimes inadvertently — that intellectual
atmosphere and challenge which are the indispensable conditions for
scholarship. And I am indebted to Northwestern’s College of Arts and Sciences
and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous support.
June 1985 L.B.S.
I
‘TREASON DOTH NEVER PROSPER’

Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Sir John Harington, Epigrams

Sir John Harington’s terse lines not only contain a grim-fisted truth — success
writes its own history and imposes upon sedition a self-fulfilling dynamism
whereby treason, by definition, is branded failure — but the rhyme also goes to
the core of the Tudor political mentality and poses a question that has baffled
historians over the centuries. Why did traitors indulge in a variety of sedition so
unbelievably bungling and self-defeating in character that it is difficult to believe
they were totally sane or that their treason, as perceived by the government,
actually existed at all? If sedition had been nothing more than an occasional
aberration upon the normal graph of Tudor political activity, the question might
not be worth the asking. The century, however, was a veritable graveyard of
unsuccessful intrigues, machinations, complots, and conspiracies. The grisly
skulls decorating London Bridge and the mutilated corpses displayed throughout
the kingdom were evidence enough that men risked their lives for reasons noble
and ignoble, and that they knew the unpleasant consequences of failure. ‘To
confess the truth’, sighed one observer in 1541, ‘it is now no novelty among us