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English exploration in North America before Jamestown has been relatively neglected, except for Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony. This study is a survey of the contacts which the Tudor English, 1497-1603, made with North American natives.John Cabot and his young sons reached North America in 1497. He or one of his successors took three American aborigines to England. Henry VII showed concern for natives of North America and suggested that his explorers make rules designed to protect the aborigines. Henry VIII helped finance voyages to America and indirectly laid foundations for later English discovery and colonization, but his son, Edward VI, and his daughter Mary were little interested in furthering English activities in North America.Elizabeth the Protestant was enthusiastic about America and about Christianizing its natives. She was unlucky in backing Thomas Stuckley in the early 1560'x, but involved herself extensively in the three voyages of Martin Frobisher in the late 1570's. These voyages turned into a wild gold chase but his expeditions returned with much information, not appreciated at the time, of the Arctic regions of North America and its people. The Eskimos captured five of Frobisher's men, whom he was never able to recover. The captain seized several natives and took them to England where they aroused much curiosity. The Privy Council gave Frobisher specific instructions concerning his future contacts with the welfare of the aborigines. A minister, who accompanied Frobisher's third expedition, was to remain a year with a company of 100, serve them and convert the Eskimos. This colony did not remain, however.Sir Francis Drake made his global circumnavigation during the years Frobisher sailed with his three expeditions. The son of an Anglican rector and avid Protestant, Drake obviously had a real Christian interest in the Indians whom he encountered, especially in Nova Albion or California. He hoped to establish colonies in the Western Hemisphere which would be missions to the pagans. These colonies and their Christian Indians were intended to counter Spanish activities in the New World.Early in the 1580's Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed with an expedition to Newfoundland. His. leading associate, the pro-Catholic Sir George Peckham, wrote a tract to promote this expedition which was the first to argue extensively that England should colonize in America in order to Christianize and civilize the Indians.Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, was long involved in colonization efforts, in Christianizing the Indians, and extending the English empire.Captain John Davis followed Martin Frobisher a decade later to the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. In the 1590'x, Davis wrote two books in which he praised the Eskimos as the most blessed of peoples, and asserted it was England's Christian responsibility to carry the Gospel to these pagans.The Reverend Richard Rakluyt was the younger cousin of the lawyer, Richard siakluyt; as leading geographers during Elizabethan times, they knew most of the great English captains and navigators. The minister was the compiler, editor and publisher of a mass of geographical information often described as the prose epic of the English nation.English Separatists during the 1590's made a colonizing thrust into the St. Lawrence Gulf, and after the turn of the century the English made two ploys into the New England area, where the Indians seemed friendly at first. In the south, one of the two voyages sent to look for the lost Roanoke Colony ended in tragedy just after Elizabeth died.By 1603 many of the Indians in the Chesapeake Bay and Roanoke areas were hostile to the English. Spaniards and Frenchmen, as well as Englishmen who had visited there earlier were in part responsible for this. Thus by the beginning of the Stuart period the English had secured a comprehensive knowledge of the eastern North American coast, but through their own efforts or those of others, had to some degree alienated its native inhabitants.

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This dissertation studies the office of the clerk of the Privy Council, including discussions of the office itself, and the nineteen men who held that office between its creation, in 1540, and 1603. The dual focus on the office and officers aims to provide greater understanding of both. Areas of study include the personal and professional backgrounds of the clerks, their careers, writings both political and personal, additional offices held and both social and financial concerns. This covers areas as diverse as knighthoods, land grants, election to the House of Commons, political treatises and university education. Additionally, the duties of the office, both standard and extraordinary, are discussed, as well as details regarding the creation and handling of the clerk’s primary concern, the Privy Council register. This includes details regarding signatures, meetings with ambassadors, examination of prisoners, Council meetings, salaries and fees, and attendance rotation. Ties between the clerks and clerkship and the Privy Council and its members are discussed throughout, as well as the role of patronage, education, foreign experience and personal motives. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of the clerks of the Privy Council and their office, knowing that one cannot be fully understood without the other.

The Elizabethan poor laws stand as a great work from a dynamic period. How and why they were formulated have been questions which historians have asked for centuries. The discussions of these questions have varied, depending on the personal values and biases which each historian brought to this study. It is generally agreed that a very important function of the historian is interpretation. The study of history is not only a study of the events, but a study of the historians and their differing interpretations of those events. In the past one hundred years, numerous historians have devoted themselves to studying the Elizabethan poor laws. Their interpretations varied considerably in some areas and very little in others. This essay examines some of those interpretations and attempts to find methodological and/or ideological differences which may account for the differing opinions. The study focuses upon four broad schools of historical thought-Whigs, legal historiains, economic historians, and social historians. The historians selected represent a wide range of interpretations. James A . Froude, C. J. Ribton-Turner, and George Nicholls represent the Whig interpretation. William Holdsworth and G. R. Elton represent the legal interpretation. William J. Ashley, R. H. Tawney, and Peter Ramsey were selected as the economic historians. E. M.Leonard, B. Kirkman Gray, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, A. L. Rowse, and W. K . Jordan are the social historians. Whig historians saw the poor laws as part of a continuing constitutional development. They interpreted them as representing the inevitable forward progress of the English system of government. Legal historians were concerned with the formulation of the law and with the machinery provided for its administration. Their interpretations focused on the law itself and its position in the legal system as a whole. Economic historians examined the factors behind the law and the economic factors in particular which they believed led to its passage. Thus, their interpretations centered upon discussions of the significance of such topics as enclosure, inflation, urbanization, and vagrancy. Social historians offered interpretations of the Elizabethan poor laws designed to explore the structural relationship between social classes.

Writing the history of Tudor women is a difficult task. "Women's lives from the 16th century can rarely be constructed except when these women have had influential connections with notable men.This is no less true for the court women of Tudor England than for other women of the time. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss some of the more memorable court women of Tudor England who served the queens of Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, 2 and to determine what impact, if any, they had on their contemporary times and to evaluate their roles in Tudor history.

In this thesis, the dissolution of the monasteries is treated as an event in the history of patronage relationships between the English crown and local patronage groups. In a comparative approach, the regions of East Anglia and Yorkshire are examined in search of patronage-related differences that help to explain the contrasts in regional political responses to the dissolutions. / The first section deals with aspects of patronage in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, exploring through test cases the normal patterns of patronage on monastic estates and the estates of lay landlords and the Crown. Normal durations in tenure, remuneration and networking patterns are explored, in order to show what expectations monastic servants would have held as to the effects of the dissolutions on the duration and value of their positions as well as the creative or destructive impact of the dissolutions on patronage networking. / The second section then analyzes patronage on the monastic estate under the management of the Court of Augmentations, following through in case studies the patronage impact of the sale of major blocks of monastic property to lay landlords in either region. The study finds that the northern region underwent more severe patronage dislocation than was the case in East Anglia, partly on account of long-term structural conditions and partly because of the differences in the more immediate political relations between the crown and elites in either region.

This thesis examines the relationship between the commemorative strategies of English noblemen in the period 1485-1572 and their identity both as individuals and as a social group. In particular, it will look at the Howard dukes of Norfolk in the context of their peers. The five chapters each address a different aspect of noble identity. The first two chapters deal with the importance of kinship and of status. The importance of kinship is evident across commemorative strategies from burial locations to the heraldry displayed at funerals to the references to ancestry in elegies. Having achieved a particular status, noblemen were defensive of their rank and the dues accorded to it. Funerals were designed to reflect social status and the choice of burial location could also indicate a concern with status. However, there was not always a correlation between the scale of commemoration and status. The third chapter examines the role that service to the Crown played in noble identity. Late medieval ideals of military service and a chivalric culture survived well in to the sixteenth century and traditional commemorative forms remained popular, even amongst noblemen newly ennobled from the ranks of the Tudor administration. Chapter four addresses the importance of local power to the nobility of the period. Burial and commemoration acted as a visible reminder of the social order and were of benefit in maintaining local stability. Noblemen could also use their death as a means of demonstrating good lordship through charity and hospitality. The final chapter examines the importance of religion to a nobleman's identity during a century of turbulent religious change. Studying commemorative strategies allows us to trace noble responses to religious change, the constraints on their public show of belief, and the ways in which they could express individuality.

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