Tudor frontiers and noble power
Subtitle: the making of the British state
By: Steven G. Ellis.
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Oxford; Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Subjects: Tudor, House of.; Power (Social sciences) -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century.; Nobility -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century.; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1485-1603.
Description: This controversial book offers a novel perspective on Tudor government and British state formation. It argues that traditional studies focusing on lowland England as 'the normal context of government' exaggerate the regime's successes by marginalizing the borderlands. Frontiers were normal in early-modern Europe, however, and central to the problem of state formation.

Steve Ellis argues that England's peripheries were more extensive than the core and provide the real yardstick by which the effectiveness of government can be measured. He demonstrates their importance by means of a detailed comparative study of two marches - Cumbria and Ireland - and their ruling magnates.

He exposes the flaws in early Tudor policy - characterized by long periods of neglect, interspersed with sporadic attempts to adapt, at minimal cost, a centralized administrative system geared to lowland England for the government of outlying regions which had very different social structures.

Ellis analyses the 1534 crisis in crown - magnate relations, reassesses the resulting policy of centralization and uniformity, and identifies the central role of these developments in establishing a British pattern of state formation.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.