Tudors and Stuarts
The Scotland of Queen Mary and the Religious Wars, 1513- 1638. By Agnes Mure Mackenzie. (Maclehose. 12s. 6d.) BOTH these books are examples of the. tendency which has much increased of late, to write history in more popular terms with an eye on the wider public. The first is by Dr. Conyers Read, one of the most distinguished of Elizabethan scholars, the author of the standard life of Sir Francis Walsing- ham, and of the Oxford Bibliography of the Tudor period. He says in his Preface : "I have spent a large part of my life in thinking and speaking and writing about Tudor history. This book represents my conclusions about the matter." It is indeed an extraordinarily Concise" summing-up of the main factors in our sixteenth-century history ; so carefully and judiciously done that not a sentence in the little volume is redundant, not a judgement of importance is it possible to take exception to. Dr. Read gives us the sense of English history in that critical age ; here, after all the controversies, you get in two hundred a.nd fifty pages what is the general opinion of the best authorities on the subject.
That is not to say that the book has not Dr. Read's own imprint upon it, or that there are not small points upon which one might differ. But these are very small ; for example, was Lady Jane Grey " lovely " ?--I should not have thought so ; and he seems to me to exaggerate a little the originality of Henry VII's conceptions of government—they were very much in the air at the time (witness Sir John Fortescue), and to make too complete a break with the past upon his accession—whereas . the Yorkists had been working, less effectively it is true, for similar ends. However, as regards the Reformation, he has the gist of the matter in a paragraph (p. 74) : "Pretty clearly he (Henry VIII) could 'not have carried through his religious programme if there had been general opposition—or even if there had not been general acquiescence." That knocks into a cocked hat the nonsense written by so many confessional writers who refuse to look out over their particular religious paddock, for fear they might see the plain facts that go against their pet convictions. Dr. Read is equally right about Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. His book may be recommended as the best short summary there is.
Miss-Mackerizie's book is also One that has a popular appeal, and is (partly in the nature of its subject) much more vividly and interestingly written. Indeed, if I may be allowed to be curmudgeonly, a:trifle too interestingly written ; for, for a serious historical work such as this is, such chapter-headings as "Adew, Farewell!. !" The Rough Wooing," "A Fugue of Regency," and so on, strike one as more in the manner of the female novelist than the serious historian. Yet the book is .serious history, of a most intricate and despairi4 "period. A mere Englishman ea' n never hope to master the complexities, the shifting sands of Scottish history. What a tangle of factions and faetion-flghts; Of -fetnia a1ConsiAracies, border-raids, -street:brawls, lintiniely ends of kings, racked minorities, treacheries and intolerable religioSities : one may well be thankful for the contparative simplicity and straight- forwardness of English history under our Henries and El izabeths. No wonder the Scots were glad to come in under the same umbrella at the end of it all ; the wonder of it is that they should have stayed out so long !
Miss Mackenzie has a great gift for historical portraiture : there are very attractive sketches, vivid, subtle and dis- cerning, of James V, Mary of Lorraine, Knox, James VI, the Melvilles and others. The brilliant Maitland of Lethington hardly has justice done to him however ; and it is a defect rather than a .recommendation that all Miss kackenzie's kings are handsoine, and her queens lovely. Was Mary Of Lorraine beautiful ? Was Marie Antoinette even ? I had never heard that Henrietta Maria was ; and Charles I was anything but handsome. There are more serious defects whenever Miss Mackenzie deals with the English side of her story; here her touch is altogether less sure, is-in parts uncon- vincing. Her appreciation of Elizabeth is defective ; she omits the extraordinarily important part 'played by the Cecils in bringing about the union of the two crowns—it was the culmination of Cecilean policy for over forty years ; it was, by the way, not Burghley but his son Robert who carried on the correspondence with .tames in the last years of Elizabeth (p. 253). One or two pages on the " victory " (!) of Scotland in 1603, with their reflections, would have been better omitted. But this is merely the reverse side of that Jove for Scotland which illuminates the whole book ; while an intimate knowledge of Scottish literature, and a felicitous gift of quotation, distinguish its 'writing. Miss Mackenzie says well : "One has also to remember, what is perhaps easier for the academic historian to forget, that the Bluebooks need interpreting by the ballads. . . ." A. L. ROWSE.
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