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This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century

Online ISBN:
9781781702031
Print ISBN:
9780719084423
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century

Published online:
19 July 2012
Published in print:
1 September 2011
Online ISBN:
9781781702031
Print ISBN:
9780719084423
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

This book is a response to a demand for a history which is no less social than political, investigating what it meant to be a citizen of England living through the 1570s and 1580s. It examines the growing conviction of ‘Englishness’ in the sixteenth century, through the rapidly developing English language; the reinforcement of cultural nationalism as a result of the Protestant Reformation; the national and international situation of England at a time of acute national catastrophe; and through Queen Elizabeth I, the last of her line, who remained unmarried throughout her reign, refusing to even discuss the succession to her throne. The book explores the conviction among leading Elizabethans that they were citizens and subjects, also responsible for the safety of their commonwealth. The tensions between this conviction, born from a childhood spent in the Renaissance classics and in the subjection to the Old Testament of the English Bible, and the dynastic claims of the Tudor monarchy, are all explored at length. Studies of a number of writers who fixed the image of sixteenth-century England for some time to come; Foxe, Camden and other pioneers of the discovery of England are also included.

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