Chapter 39 - Joanne Paul with Valerie Schutte

The Tudor Monarchy of Counsel and the Growth of Reason of State

There is a curious paradox in scholarly understandings of counsel during the Tudor period. On the one hand, political counsel is widely recognised to have been one of the central, if not the central, political concern of the Tudor period. On the other hand, the two longest-reigning and best-known monarchs of the period, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, have a reputation – then and now – for being notoriously difficult to counsel, for refusing advice or being offended by the presentation of it. To add further complexity, both Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth were products of a humanist education which stressed the importance of counsel to a monarch, and went to great lengths to appear as if they were recipients of educated advice. This chapter provides an outline of the discourse of counsel during the Tudor ‘monarchy of counsel’, before examining in particular the fundamental shift from a ‘humanist’ discourse of counsel in the early decades of the sixteenth century to a ‘Machiavellian’ discourse from the middle of the century. It ends by examining how this latter vocabulary became the foundation of the Reason of State tradition, which emphasises the prioritization of the ‘interest’ of the state, often over more moral or religious considerations, a topic often overlooked in studies of Elizabethan politics.

By Joanne Paul with Valerie Schutte

Joanne Paul

Joanne Paul is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Sussex and has published widely on humanism and politics in 16th-century England. Her book, Thomas More, was published by Polity in 2016 and she has upcoming book projects with Palgrave, Cambridge University Press and Penguin. She has also published in Renaissance Quarterly, Hobbes Studies, Renaissance Studies and in other journals, volumes and magazines.

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Related Chapters

Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña: The “Wise King” topos in context: Royal Literacy and Political Theology in Medieval Western Europe (c.1000-1200) (See Chapter 3)

Mikolaj Getka-Kenig: In Pursuit of Social Allies: Royal Residences and Political Legitimacy in Post-Revolutionary Europe, 1804-1830 (See Chapter 22)

Susan Broomhall: Ruling Emotions: Affective and Emotional Strategies of Power and Authority among Early Modern European Monarchies (See Chapter 40)