Monday, October 12, 2009

Question from Kaity - Tudor constitutional documents and heresy laws

Hi,
I am doing a project and was wondering if anyone knew anything about the Tudor Constitutional Documents.
I was really wondering about the medieval heresy laws that were re- introduced during Mary's reign and what exactly they were. I know about what they were but I am more interested if anyone knows anything about the wording or what the laws actually stated.

Thanks!

4 comments:

kb said...

Hi,

Look for a copy of G.R. Elton's "The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary", Cambridge University Press, 1960.

There might be something useful in "Tudor constitutional Documents A.D. 1485-1603 with an historical commentary" by Joseph Robson Tanner which is available on google books - although I haven't used this text so can not speak to its quality.

Other books which may be of interest....

"Crown and Parliament in Tudor-Stuart England: a documentary constitutional..." by Paul L. Hughes, Robert F. Fries; "The Mid-Tudor polity, c. 1540-1560" by Jennifer Loach, Robert Tittler; and "The English Reformation: religion and cultural adaptation" by Norman Leslie Jones


You might also want to look at books like "Crime in England 1550-1800" by J. S. Cockburn.

There are several more academic books on these subjects. Perhaps the best thing you can do is visit a nearby university library and sift through the table of contents and the index of several titles to identify sections of these books which speak to your project.

Kaity said...

- Thanks a heap- I have tried my school Library- but as I am only just in Senior school it is hard to find those kind of books! I have looked at The Tudor Constitution already but unfortunately the preview does not work up to the page that I need! Thank-you so much kb!

Marilyn R said...

The original legislation in the reign of Henry IV was De Haeretico Comburendo (on the burning of heretics), 1401.
It is Statutes of the Realm, 2:12S-28: 2 Henry IV
and the full text can be found at
http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/heretico.html

kb said...

Kaity -
Can your local public library get them for you on inter-library loan?

Is there a university nearby that you can visit? You can usually get guest privileges which would allow you into the library to study if not to actually check out books.