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1 - Constructing the reign of Edward VI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2009

Stephen Alford
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

If no man had written the goodnesse of noble Augustus, nor the pitie of mercifull Trajan, how shoulde their successours have folowed ther steppes in vertue and princely qualities: on the contrarie parte, if the crueltie of Nero, the ungracious life of Caligula had not beene put in remembrance, young Princes and fraile governors might likewise have fallen in a like pit, but by redyng their vices and seyng their mischeveous ende, thei bee compelled to leave their evill waies, and embrace the good qualities of notable princes and prudent governours: Thus, writyng is the keye to enduce vertue, and represse vice, Thus memorie maketh menne ded many a thousande yere still to live as though thei were present: Thus Fame triumpheth upon death, and renoune upon Oblivion, and all by reason of writyng and historie.

For Edward Hall, in the dedication of the first edition of The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (1548) to Edward VI, historical writing was a critical point of contact between the past and the present, an active dialogue between princes and governors living and dead, and a mirror for the successes and the failures of historical actors. History was live; it was neither antiseptically academic (Hall himself could be called a journalist as well as a chronicler) nor necessarily rooted in what a modern historian would recognize as ‘historical fact’.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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