Clifford S. L. Davie: We are wrong to talk about 'the Tudors' – after all, Tudor England hardly knew the name itself
[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.
The “Tudor” name made an unlikely journey from the fastnesses of Anglesey into English high political discourse. About 1430, Queen Catherine, the still young widow of Henry V (she was born in 1401), born a French princess, married a member of her household, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. (The “Tudors” could equally well have been the “Merediths”.) The marriage was an embarrassment to the council which ruled in the name of her young son, Henry VI, and it was kept quiet, but nobody seems to have queried its legitimacy. In 1452 Henry VI made his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor Earls of Richmond and Pembroke respectively, and arranged Edmund’s marriage to Lady Margaret Beaufort, only child and heiress to John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Edmund died shortly after, leaving his thirteen-year-old bride to give birth to a son Henry, immediately styled Earl of Richmond from birth.
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.
The “Tudor” name made an unlikely journey from the fastnesses of Anglesey into English high political discourse. About 1430, Queen Catherine, the still young widow of Henry V (she was born in 1401), born a French princess, married a member of her household, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. (The “Tudors” could equally well have been the “Merediths”.) The marriage was an embarrassment to the council which ruled in the name of her young son, Henry VI, and it was kept quiet, but nobody seems to have queried its legitimacy. In 1452 Henry VI made his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor Earls of Richmond and Pembroke respectively, and arranged Edmund’s marriage to Lady Margaret Beaufort, only child and heiress to John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Edmund died shortly after, leaving his thirteen-year-old bride to give birth to a son Henry, immediately styled Earl of Richmond from birth.