EMH EarlyModernHistory

I spent the latter part of yesterday evening watching Diarmaid MacCulloch's BBC4 television programme (first broadcast in 2013) on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the second of King Henry VIII's great ministers and the architect of the English Reformation. It was an extremely skilful presentation of the case for Thomas Cromwell as an evangelical statesman capable of untying the Gordian knot of the divorce of the King from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and overseeing the dissolution of the monasteries. One of the appeals of the programme was its skilful editing and the flawless delivery of MacCulloch's commentary. But there was no reference to the earlier argument advanced by the late G.R.Elton for a Tudor Revolution in Government apart from a very oblique reference to the future constitutional implications of the passage of the 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals.

  The De Veres – Lecture by Christopher Thompson Chris Thompson giving his lecture from the lectern in St Mary’s Church, Wivenhoe The following is the text of a Lecture given by Christopher Thompson on Friday 11th October, 2013 in St Mary’s Church, Wivenhoe to 120 people. Christopher Thompson is a Senior Research Fellow of the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham. He is also a founder member of the Wivenhoe History Group which is committed to conducting research into different aspects of Wivenhoe’s rich past. WIVENHOE HALL, THE DE VERES AND THE WARS OF THE ROSES The de Vere family The de Vere family probably originated from Ver in Normandy. Aubrey de Vere was one of the beneficiaries of the Norman Conquest, although whether he fought at the battle of Hastings in 1066 is not certain. Twenty years later, he held nineteen manors, eight of them in Essex which remained the core of the family’s landed estate for the centuries to come. His namesakes and successors...