The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII

Steven Gunn’s latest book, The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII, is based on the James Ford Lectures in British History that he delivered at Oxford in 2015. This new work also picks up on some of the themes outlined in Gunn’s 2007 book War, State and Society in England and the Netherlands 1477-1599 (with David Grummitt & Hans Cools, Oxford University Press), relating to the impact of warfare on the early Tudor state. Gunn’s basic thesis in his new book is that, in focusing on the Henrician Reformation, historians have neglected the equally transformative effects of war. This work’s focus is the one hundred years following 1475 when first Edward IV, and then Henry VII, renewed hostilities with France; Henry VIII continued these hostilities alongside his efforts to subdue both Scotland and Ireland. Henry VIII’s son Edward VI continued his father’s fights, and finally Mary I and Elizabeth I engaged in further—largely fruitless—campaigns in France. Gunn estimates that the English crown was engaged in war for more than half of this period, with profound effects on the formation of the English state as wartime expenditure. Moreover, taxation increased exponentially, military recruitment shifted from the “quasi-feudal” retinue system to one akin to national conscription, and England felt the effects of the continental “military revolution.”  

This is a remarkable, richly-documented study that makes as much use of parish archives, churchwardens’ accounts, and gentry collections as it does of state papers, official warrants, and musters. The result is a exceptionally comprehensive overview of the experience of war at every level in Tudor society. In some respects it is, perhaps, too comprehensive, given that the breadth of coverage crowds out topics one would love to have seen more discussion in depth. In a fascinating chapter on “Killing and dying,” for example, Gunn engages with the “Face of Battle” approach, which has been so richly documented by historians of the Hundred Years War, including Michael K. Jones. But apart from the odd, tantalizing aside this is not developed. It would have been highly instructive to find out more about those noblemen who were accused of the cardinal sin in the chivalric ethos—cowardice in battle—like John Brydges, who had a neighbor hauled before Star Chamber and made to recant accusing him of cowardice at Boulogne; or on the impact of the shift from recruitment by retinue to conscription on the morale and “small group identity” so valued in military establishments. Gunn knows these sources better than anyone, and elsewhere he has written very revealingly about Tudor chivalry; so it is a pity he does not feel he has the space to pursue such themes here.  

That aside, this is a very good book, displaying all the virtues one associates with Gunn’s work. There is a willingness to tackle big questions; incredibly-thorough and detailed research—his endnotes add half as much again to the length of the main text; and balanced and far-reaching conclusions. His basic premise, that war in this period was as transformative as religious reformation, is thoroughly vindicated. England may not have experienced as thorough a “military revolution” as some of the continental monarchies, largely because that it did not require the extensive bastion-building programs, as did Italy or the Netherlands; and its countryside was never devastated in the manner common in the continental war zones. Yet, in other respects, England experienced the same stresses and strains. These stimulated the development of borough and parish-level government, and contributed to a burgeoning sense of “English” identity.  

However, elsewhere its impact was often very damaging. Gunn reruns the K.B. McFarlane/Michael Postan debate on the profit and loss experienced during the Hundred Years’ War and concludes that, for the most part, without the chevauchees, the ransoms of Edward III, and the occupation of Normandy by Henry V, England experienced loss. There were trade disruptions, the proceeds of the monasteries were largely channelled into unproductive expenditures, and the wartime debasements of the 1540s and 1550s were disastrous.  

Gunn has interesting things to say about most of the aspects of early Tudor government and society. The one area he barely touches on, however, is religion, and for a journal largely devoted to religious studies this is, perhaps, a curious choice for review. However, for the reader interested in what was happening in England during the era of religious reformation, The English People in the Age of Henry VIII offers a very important and original perspective.  

Richard Cust is professor of early modern history at the University of Birmingham.  

Richard Cust

Date Of Review:

February 22, 2020