The Tudor Revolution In Government: Administrative Changes In The Reign Of Henry Viii
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
In the crucible of Tudor England, a quiet but seismic transformation reshaped the very architecture of royal power — and G. R. Elton's landmark study stands as the definitive account of how it happened. The Tudor Revolution in Government argues that the reign of Henry VIII witnessed not merely a change of personnel at court, but a fundamental modernisation of the English state: the replacement of a medieval, household-based administration with a structured, bureaucratic system of governance that would define England for centuries to come. At the heart of this revolution stands Thomas Cromwell, Henry's formidable minister, whose administrative genius Elton credits with engineering a permanent shift from personal monarchy to impersonal government. Elton writes with the precision of a master archivist and the authority of a scholar who spent a career immersed in Tudor primary sources, presenting a thesis that proved both enormously influential and gloriously controversial among historians. The work single-handedly redirected the course of Tudor studies, provoking decades of debate about the nature of Cromwellian reform and the very definition of a revolution. Published in 1953 by Cambridge University Press, this is a book that does not merely chronicle constitutional change — it demands that readers reconsider what power, administration, and modernity truly meant in sixteenth-century England.
Author: G. R. Elton
Format: Hardback
Published: 1953, Cambridge University Press
Genre: British & Irish history
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
In the crucible of Tudor England, a quiet but seismic transformation reshaped the very architecture of royal power — and G. R. Elton's landmark study stands as the definitive account of how it happened. The Tudor Revolution in Government argues that the reign of Henry VIII witnessed not merely a change of personnel at court, but a fundamental modernisation of the English state: the replacement of a medieval, household-based administration with a structured, bureaucratic system of governance that would define England for centuries to come. At the heart of this revolution stands Thomas Cromwell, Henry's formidable minister, whose administrative genius Elton credits with engineering a permanent shift from personal monarchy to impersonal government. Elton writes with the precision of a master archivist and the authority of a scholar who spent a career immersed in Tudor primary sources, presenting a thesis that proved both enormously influential and gloriously controversial among historians. The work single-handedly redirected the course of Tudor studies, provoking decades of debate about the nature of Cromwellian reform and the very definition of a revolution. Published in 1953 by Cambridge University Press, this is a book that does not merely chronicle constitutional change — it demands that readers reconsider what power, administration, and modernity truly meant in sixteenth-century England.