Clifford S. L. Davies: The Tudors Then and Now
[Clifford S. L. Davies is an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and the author of Peace, Print and Protestantism, 1450–1558, first published in 1976.]
The Tudors” and “the Tudor Age” are among the staples of English history. How can we do without them? Not only are the monarchs themselves referred to, individually and collectively – in books, articles, plays, films, television series and exhibitions – by their patronymic, but their subjects become “Tudor men and women”. In fifty years of studying sixteenth-century England, it did not occur to me to question the convention. Nor, apparently, did it occur to other historians. But how much was the “Tudor” word used at the time? Did the monarchs from Henry VII to Elizabeth I think of themselves as a “Tudor dynasty”? Did their subjects think of themselves as “Tudor people” living in “Tudor England”?
In spite of “the linguistic turn”, historians cannot avoid some anachronistic use of terms. It is impossible to discuss, say, economic development meaningfully while only using language comprehensible to Shakespeare. But contemporary vocabulary imposed limitations on sixteenth-century people attempting to discuss economic affairs; their efforts to formulate even the straightforward connection between the quantity of money in circulation and price levels, for instance, were painfully slow. “Tudor” is a term too deeply entrenched to be banished from our vocabulary, but we should be aware that it, too, is an anachronism, creating a similar barrier to our understanding of contemporary thought...
Read entire article at Times Literary Supplement
The Tudors” and “the Tudor Age” are among the staples of English history. How can we do without them? Not only are the monarchs themselves referred to, individually and collectively – in books, articles, plays, films, television series and exhibitions – by their patronymic, but their subjects become “Tudor men and women”. In fifty years of studying sixteenth-century England, it did not occur to me to question the convention. Nor, apparently, did it occur to other historians. But how much was the “Tudor” word used at the time? Did the monarchs from Henry VII to Elizabeth I think of themselves as a “Tudor dynasty”? Did their subjects think of themselves as “Tudor people” living in “Tudor England”?
In spite of “the linguistic turn”, historians cannot avoid some anachronistic use of terms. It is impossible to discuss, say, economic development meaningfully while only using language comprehensible to Shakespeare. But contemporary vocabulary imposed limitations on sixteenth-century people attempting to discuss economic affairs; their efforts to formulate even the straightforward connection between the quantity of money in circulation and price levels, for instance, were painfully slow. “Tudor” is a term too deeply entrenched to be banished from our vocabulary, but we should be aware that it, too, is an anachronism, creating a similar barrier to our understanding of contemporary thought...