John Stow's abridged chronicles present a short, simplified version of English history that formed an important component of sixteenth-century popular culture. The author was a citizen historian, a self-educated man, whose social status placed him outside the gentry, and a scholar who was closer to medieval traditions than to the New Learning associated with Renaissance humanism. Stow and his chronicles therefore stand apart from the university-educated intellectual elite whose writings shaped the high culture of Elizabethan England. His abridged chronicles, based on his larger Annales of England, offered readers of lower social and economic status a more affordable national history than was available in the larger quarto volumes. This essay considers the character of abridged chronicles, examines Stow's interpretation of a variety of significant topics from the Norman Conquest to the death of Henry VIII, and argues that Stow's work offers valuable insights into the historical understanding of ordinary men and women.

For centuries John Stow, identified in the Dictionary of National Biography as a “chronicler and antiquary,” lived in the shadow of more illustrious contemporaries. Shakespeare preferred Raphael Holinshed's chronicle to Stow's Annales of England as the source for his history plays while William Camden was a scholar of vastly greater erudition to whom the DNB assigned the higher status of “historian.” In contrast to the glittering literati of Elizabethan England, Stow is usually cast in gray, a worthy man of negligible learning who through a lifetime of hard work produced books that were generally accurate but dull.

Long ago, in an ambitious and valuable study, Sidney Painter sought to trace the progress of incomes from the estates of lay baronies between 1086 and 1350. While Painter suggested that some of the nominal growth in baronial incomes he found represented a real increase, especially before 1250, he was astute enough to realise that at least most of the nominal growth had probably arisen from price increases. Since Painter wrote, opinions about the success or otherwise of estate management in outpacing or at least matching rises in prices during the period of the “long thirteenth century” have differed considerably, from the decidedly optimistic to the somewhat pessimistic.

This is certainly an important question. If the fortunes of landlords cannot tell us directly about the fortunes of peasants, they can, in conjunction with a view of the progress of the economy as a whole, throw some light on the relationship between the two groups. Dealing largely with the aggregates of the incomes of entire honours, as Painter did, is a pragmatic and useful approach. However, it does have the disadvantage of conflating two questions: the success or failure of a family or institution in preserving or increasing its estates, and their success or otherwise in preserving or increasing the real profits of individual holdings.

In Tudor Prelates and Politics, Lacey Baldwin Smith wrote sympathetically of the dilemma faced by the conservative bishops who saw control over the Church of England slip from their grasp after the accession of Edward VI in 1547, but he gave less attention to the reforming bishops who worked to advance the Protestant cause. At the beginning of the new reign the episcopal bench, according to Smith's calculations, included twelve conservatives, seven reformers, and seven whose religious orientation could not be determined (see Table 1). The ranks of the conservatives were thinned as a consequence of the deprivation of Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Edmund Bonner of London, Nicholas Heath of Worcester, George Day of Chichester, and Cuthbert Tunstall of Durham. On the other hand, eight new bishops were appointed between 1547 and 1553. These new men together with the Henrician reformers, of whom Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was most important, had responsibility for leading the church during the period which saw the most extensive changes of the Reformation era. This essay examines the careers of the newly-appointed reforming bishops and attempts to assess their achievements and failures as they worked to create a reformed church in England.

The first of the eight new bishops appointed during the reign of Edward VI was Nicholas Ridley, who was named Bishop of Rochester in 1547 and translated to London in 1550. In 1548 Robert Ferrar became Bishop of St. David's in Wales. No new episcopal appointments occurred in 1549, but during the following year John Ponet succeeded Ridley at Rochester while John Hooper took the see of Gloucester.

In 1097, King William Rufus of England was engaged in a campaign to conquer the county of Maine. When he succeeded in capturing Count Elias of Maine, the count begged Rufus to allow him to serve the Anglo-Norman king as count of Maine, and to participate in his inner council. Moved by his chivalrous instincts, Rufus agreed. But the king's chief advisor, Count Robert of Meulan, counselled that to admit a conquered enemy to one's innermost council only invited perfidy and rebellion, and gave him means to do greater injury. Rufus immediately changed his mind and assumed the governance of Maine himself.

Orderic Vitalis reports this event with some ambiguity, approving of the wisdom of Robert's advice, but mourning Rufus's abandonment of traditional chivalrous behavior. He attributes to Count Robert motives of preserving his own position as chief advisor to the king, rather than notions of service or loyalty. Such motives of self-interest would be consistent with traditional baronial practices. But the advice was sensible and practical, and clearly to the king's advantage in an objective, political sense, despite Orderic's fondness for Count Elias. It is an early example of a change taking place in Anglo-Norman politics—a change of which Robert of Meulan appears to have been the architect.

The constitutional arrangement of December 1135, under which Stephen of Blois won England with the support of the Londoners and of the administration at Winchester, with unction from the archbishop of Canterbury, and with recognition from the pope, did not prevail, as all know. Eighteen years later, the Treaty of Winchester legitimized the dynastic transfer from the house of Blois to the house of Anjou. By its very nature, the treaty constituted an endorsement of the Angevin rebellion against King Stephen. In the theory and mechanisms by which it provided a legal basis for the ultimate transfer of government to Henry Fitz Empress, Winchester relied upon certain crucial ideas and institutions: hereditary succession; the church as a guarantor of social and political order; the legal force of conciliar decisions; and the bonds created by fealty and homage. Such notions are supported in one way or another in the writings of men who observed Siephen's passage from dynastic victory to defeat. These commentators are thus an important gauge of the constitutional thought of Stephen's reign and of the early part of Henry II's, particularly for the right of rebellion, and they provide a context for appreciating the constitutional settlement which terminated Stephen's reign. The literary style of these observers is also worth notice for its effect on the historiography of Stephen's reign, chiefly in its contribution to the hard-to-eradicate image of this nineteen-year period as “the anarchy.”

The Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History published for 1991, contains 393 items in section G, “Britain 1714-1815,” a section that excludes works devoted to “long periods” that also cover the period. Of those 393, twenty were in Ga “General,” thirty-six in Gb, “Politics,” eight in Gc “Constitution, Administration and Law,” thirty-two in Gd “External Affairs” and thirty-seven in Ge “Religion.” Though politics is in theory restricted to Gb, in practice it overlaps with these other categories, and, indeed, in part, with the categories Economic Affairs, Social Structure and Population, Naval and Military, and Intellectual and Cultural. Restricting, however, the survey to Gb, the figures for 1988, 1989 and 1990 respectively were fifty-six, fifty-two and fifty-four. It is thus clear that while political history no longer dominates eighteenth-century historiography as it once did, there is still a formidable quantity of it produced. This is not a situation to be regretted, but it does emphasize the subjectivity of any assessment of recent work and of current problems. Such a situation, however, is not simply a question of problems derived from quantity, for any attempt to produce an historiographical account focusing on earlier scholarship would itself encounter many difficulties. The absence of consensus among modern scholars extends to their assessment of historiographical trends. This was demonstrated clearly by Jonathan Clark in 1986. Having, the previous year, in his English Society 1688-1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985), asserted the strength of conservatism and religious identity and the marginality of reform and radicalism in eighteenth-century England, he offered, inter alia, in his Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1986), a combative interpretation of the methodology and historiography of the period.

On 29 August 1070, the Norman monk, Lanfranc, was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury despite having recoiled at the prospect when informed of his appointment earlier that year. His alleged reluctance to undertake the business of the English Church is well known and accepted by Anglo-Norman historians. And the account that his compliance was forced only through the united persuasion of the king, the queen, his former abbot, Herluin of Bee, and the papal legate, Erminfrid of Sion, adds an element of unparalleled sincerity to his resolve. More than two years after his consecration, Lanfranc wrote a letter to Pope Alexander II reasserting his initial aversion to taking office: the foreign tongue and barbarous English inhabitants presented a greater challenge than he, personally unworthy and waning in vigor, wished to endure. Lanfranc then asked the pope to relieve him of his burdensome episcopal duties so he might return to the monastic life.

Modern historians have equated this petition with his initial unwillingness to take office and have tacitly appended it to those humble actions usually associated with a monk bishop. Frank Barlow writes that Lanfranc had “suffered bitterly when he first went to England.” He infers from the resignation letter that all of the archbishop's passions “were diverted into conventional monastic virtues.” And Margaret Gibson advises that “No assessment of Lanfranc … can or should stray far from Lanfranc the monk.” Lanfranc had hesitated and been reluctant to accept Canterbury; therefore, the implication is that in 1072 he humbly wished to shed the office he had been compelled to enter.

The recent publication by Cambridge University Press of the third volume of G.R. Elton's collected papers and reviews nearly coincided with two other events: the appearance of a florilegium entitled Tudor Rule and Revolution and presented to him on his sixtieth birthday, and the announcement of his appointment as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge where he has been a Fellow of Clare and a mainstay of the University Department of History for three decades. During that time his work has ranged over the whole territory of the historian. Witness the scores of papers in a set of three fat volumes that is a selection and also the seventeen other published volumes of original work mainly based on archives, large narrative histories, and also books on the study and teaching of history. His major contributions also include the annual bibliography he has edited since 1977 as well as various series of monographs and archival indices which in themselves have been a major source of encouragement to the work of other scholars.

But G.R. Elton has not gathered flowers and tributes and honors because he is an industry in himself—a veritable Krupp among historians. It is rather the quality of his achievement that has been celebrated since the publication of The Tudor Revolution in Government in 1953. Once the radical theses of that book had been incorporated into the text England Under the Tudors (1955), the importance of his work has never been in doubt. Subsequent debates in Past and Present and other journals, with Oxford medievalists and London Elizabethans, showed the impact of his main ideas.

Historians examining the critical response to Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire have remained largely true to the presentation Gibbon himself laid down in his Memoirs: the primary focus is on the first volume of 1776 and the storm provoked by chapters fifteen and sixteen on the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. But publication of Gibbon's Vindication in 1779 neither marked the final crushing of his opponents, nor did it close down controversy: it merely led the troops of the orthodox to regroup. The appearance of volumes two and three in 1781, then volumes four to six in 1788, once again brought them out into the field, and their writings and critical preoccupations deserve serious attention. It is all too easy to overlook the high standard of Anglican apologetics throughout the eighteenth century and, indeed, the continuing role of the clergy as the guardians of the state's intellectual inheritance, especially its distinctively Christian character.