Susan Brigden. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603. New York: Viking, 2000. xiv + 434 pp. $25.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-670-89985-2.

Reviewed by Susan Wabuda (Department of History, Fordham University)
Published on H-Albion (April, 2003)

The Atlantic Tudors

The Atlantic Tudors

At least two generations of young minds were introduced to the tensions and challenges that characterized life in England during the sixteenth century in S. T. Bindoff's Tudor England (1950). Now his classic work has a worthy successor in Susan Brigden's New Worlds, Lost Worlds, which is the fifth volume in Penguin's new History of Britain series. In keeping with the noteworthy accomplishments of her monograph London and the Reformation (1989), which broke new ground when it gave equal weight to the influence of Catholicism (as well as evangelical and Protestant movements), New Worlds, Lost Worlds expands the expected historiographical approaches in welcome directions. Here the importance of Ireland, in its customs, politics and religious identity, are as much the focus of this book as is England. Scotland and Wales are also represented. And where Bindoff devoted a single chapter to English sea-faring and exploration, Brigden has incorporated many of the latest developments in Atlantic studies, so that the sea and the possibilities that it offered are abiding presences through her book. These are the Tudors of the Atlantic world.

Brigden presents the reader with narratives that are enviably clear. To cite chapter 6 as but one example, for the reigns of Edward VI and Mary Tudor, she moves briskly from the "Rough Wooing" of Scotland by the English in the mid-1540s, when the infant Mary Queen of Scots seemed likely to become Edward's bride; to the conspiracies that surrounded Henry VIII's death bed; to the machinations of the Protector Somerset; and then onward through Kett's Rebellion and other risings. The reader never loses the way as Brigden portrays how the Protector fell, and how Queen Jane was proclaimed and dispatched. Mary's shortcomings are neatly assessed, though Brigden concludes the chapter with the argument that the failures of her regime were as much the fault of her policies as they were of "disasters beyond human control" (p. 210). The traditions of medieval England are counted among the lost worlds of this book.

Brigden brings some wonderful moments to life. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was granted, and sold, "a vast paper empire" in the new world that stretched to some twenty million acres. He was last seen reciting appropriate verses from Sir Thomas More's Utopia as he sank off the coast of Newfoundland in 1583 (pp. 279-80). The youthful Thomas Cromwell memorized Erasmus's New Testament as he rode to Rome in 1517-18 (p. 92). Before she was celebrated for her virginity, Elizabeth was a dubious Diana the huntress, dallying with Robert Dudley in woodsy coverts as they chased stags (p. 225). And beyond august personages, the poor and poverty are inescapable presences in this book. The dislocations that accompanied the Reformation, which have also been explored recently in Eamon Duffy's superb Voices of Morebath (2001), helped to give rise to terrible privations. When harvests failed in the mid 1550s, the starving had only acorns to grind into meal (p. 211). During the "terrible year" of 1596-97 (p. 296), that saw the last famine in English history ("so far," Brigden reminds us bleakly), the poor succumbed to the diseases that shadow dearth. They fell prey to the "bloody flux" and bubonic plague. They wrestled with terrible anxieties, like the witch craze, that proved equally poisonous.

Brigden balances so many of the recent trends in the historical literature that I was sorry not to see more in her book about the latest developments concerning the effects of the Reformation upon gender and women. The position of women in the family and society needs more attention than Brigden could devote to it. Nor does she consider what opportunities Protestantism could offer to extend women's influence, which, despite "an overbearing patriarchy" could "nevertheless be immense" (p. 178). Surely the early symbol of female evangelism--the helpmeet of William Tyndale's godly ploughboy--was a woman spinning yarn with her distaff, and not weaving at a loom (as on pp. 90, 99).

Offer this book to readers who need an introduction to the people and the period. If you commend New Worlds, Lost Worlds to your students, the rising generation of young scholars should be off to an excellent start.

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Citation: Susan Wabuda. Review of Brigden, Susan, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. April, 2003.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7450

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