Governing by Virtue: Lord Burghley and the Management of Elizabethan England

by Norman Jones

Overview

Managing early modern England was difficult because the state was weak. Although Queen Elizabeth was the supreme ruler, she had little bureaucracy, no standing army, and no police force. This meant that her chief manager, Lord Burghley, had to work with the gentlemen of the magisterial classes in order to keep the peace and defend the realm. He did this successfully by employing the shared value systems of the ruling classes, an improved information system, and gentle coercion.

Using Burghley's archive, Governing by Virtue explores how he ran a state whose employees were venal, who owned their jobs for life, or whose power derived from birth and possession, not allegiance, even during national crises like that of the Spanish Armada.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199593606
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2015
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Norman Jones studied under G. R. Elton, and his first book, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion 1559 (1982), won the Whitefield Prize from the Royal Historical Society. His other books include God and the Moneylenders: Usury and the Law in Early Modern England (1989); The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (1993), and The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (2002). He has co-edited a number of volumes with David Dean, Robert Tittler, Susan Doran, and Daniel Woolf. He has held a number of fellowships, including Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, where much of the work for this book was done.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Managing Elizabethan England2. Managing Virtuously3. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Manager4. Managing Locally5. Managing Through Perception6. Managing Up and Managing Down7. Managing Money8. Managing War9. Managing the Protestant State10. Conclusion: Managing within the PossibleBibliography

Editorial Reviews

"If one is looking for a fascinating, well-organized, and highly readable description of how England was governed during Queen Elizabeth I's more than 40 year reign, Norman Jones' Governing by Virtue is a study to take in hand...Jones' study is a perceptive discussion of three things: the fascinating Lord Burghley, England under an opinionated monarch, and the civic virtues of those at all levels, but especially the local, who proved essential for the stability of Elizabethan England"—Rudolph P. Almasy, Anglican and Episcopal History

From the Publisher