The historiography of Tudor economic legislation has been preoccupied with two questions: firstly whether any consistent economic planning, or simply expedient reactions to various problems, can be discerned in Elizabethan policy; and secondly whether and to what extent policy was imposed “from above” by William Cecil and the privy council, or influenced “from below” by local and factional lobbying. Since the 1980s the research of Geoffrey Elton and his successors has extended our understanding of Tudor parliaments; yet the standard accounts of Elizabethan policy-making have on the whole paid insufficient attention to contemporaries’ perceptions and interpretations of economic change, upon which their suggested solutions and arguments for reform were based. As several studies of particular policies have shown, such as Norman Jones’ analysis of usury statutes, and Paul Fideler’s work on poor relief, the evolution of economic policy in sixteenth-century England can fruitfully be approached by cutting through the rhetoric of preambles and policy statements, and by focusing on the strategies of persuasion underlying debates in Parliament and beyond.

As with earlier review articles, there is the problem of deciding what to focus on, with the accompanying issue of choice and subjectivity. The last arises from the continuing breadth of the subject, particularly the wide definition of political culture and process. As before, it is helpful to begin with Continental scholarship, which is apt to be neglected. There has been a welcome increase in interest in British history in both France and Germany. The former can be approached through Histoires d’Outre-Manche: Tendances recentes de l’Historiographie Britannique (Paris, 2001).

Addressing the clergy of his diocese in 1831, Bishop John Kaye of Lincoln spoke frankly. “We cannot be surprised at being told,” he said, “as we often are, that the days [of the established church] are already numbered, and that it is destined to sink…before the irresistible force of public opinion.” A similar warning appeared a few years earlier when, in his provocative little book Church Reform, Edward Berens urged the Church to acknowledge public opinion before it lost the public altogether.

The body of recent historical explorations of Englishness and Britishness can seem practically interminable. To some, this work is more a cause than a product of the dynamic underlying recent constitutional changes in the United Kingdom. Linda Colley, in particular, is singled out for vituperation by right-wing commentators for an alleged attempt to depict the United Kingdom as “an artificial creation, built from opposition to Frenchmen and Catholics and lacking any form of coherent cultural core,” thus preparing the ground for its wilful destruction by the Blair government. Yet others have suggested that Colley overstated the hegemony of the idea of Britishness among the nations of the United Kingdom. It is contended that British identity penetrated in England to a unique degree, a process which has produced long-term imbalance and instability in the United Kingdom. Tom Nairn thus blamed English arrogance for this instability. For other commentators the historical absence of a tangible demand for English self-government is to be problematized and regarded as an indication of “backwardness.” As Bernard Crick wrote: “England is the problem. Because English nationalism is suppressed and not explicit, it is soured, not wholly in control of its own reactions and is difficult to deal with by the other nations.”