John Matusiak

In 1517, a certain Dr Beale, rector of St Mary Spitall in London, roused the capital’s mob by laying the blame for an increase in poverty squarely upon the shoulders of grasping foreigners. ‘God has given England to Englishmen,’ he fumed, ‘as birds would defend their nest, so ought Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal.’ But migration was not the only factor influencing Tudor attitudes to Europe. War, religion, commerce and dynastic security were all critical in linking England to developments abroad, in ways that remain strikingly relevant today.What were the forces that shaped the shifting perspectives of Tudor men and women and their rulers towards a continent at the crossroads? And what, in turn, were the responses of sixteenth-century Europeans to their counterparts across the Channel? The Tudors and Europe looks at a time when the very survival of England hung critically in the balance and asks if it has lessons for the present.

Much has been written about Charles I’s reign, about the brutal civil war into which his pursuit of unfettered power plunged the realm, and about the Commonwealth regime that followed his defeat and execution. His reign is one that shaped the future of the British monarchy, and his legacy still remains with us today.The Prisoner King provides an examination of the crucial period encompassing Charles I’s captivity after his surrender to the Scots at Newark in May 1646. Not only were the subsequent months before his trial a time when the human dimension of the king’s predicament assumed intensity, they were also a critical watershed when the entire nation stood at the most fateful of crossroads.For Charles himself – as subterfuge, espionage and assassination rumours escalated on all fronts, escape attempts foundered, and tensions with his absent wife mounted agonisingly – the test was supreme. Yet, in a painful passage involving both stubborn impenitence and uncommon fortitude in the face of ‘barbarous usage’ by his captors, the ‘Man of Blood’ would ultimately come to merit his unique place in history as England’s ‘martyr king’.