The Reform of the Laws of England, 1640–1660

Abstract

The judicious Hooker, in sonorous phrases, vouched for a Tudor system of statecraft that won wide allegiance to the Crown, the Church, and the Law. "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; all with uniform consent admire her as the mother of their peace and joy." With Hooker marched Sir Thomas Smith, and the two doughty champions of the harmonious and decently reasonable middle way have been given an honoured place in history. Few would challenge their right to stand as typical Elizabethan apologists, dedicated to the principles of law and degree and duty. The fact is, however, that the close and continued admiration and study of the golden age of Elizabeth has made inevitable the discovery of numberless contrasts between the rule of the Tudors and the sad destruction born of the Stuarts. These contrasts have been so frequently made and multiplied that the shaping spirit of the historians' imagination threatens at once to create and to destroy: to create a Tudor utopia that never existed; to destroy, in part at least, our ability to sense the temper of the last decades of the sixteenth century.