From the end of the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, writes Penry Williams, State Lotteries were a regular feature of English government finance first introduced by Queen Elizabeth I.
Penry Williams describes how, in February 1601, Essex and his discontented faction at court attempted a coup which ended in dismal failure.
As the second Elizabethan age closes in disillusionment, Penry Williams reconsiders whether the first deserved the same fate.
The accession of Henry Tudor to the throne of England in 1485, the Crown had been fought over by the great magnates. When Elizabeth I died 118 years later, the Crown was master over them via the Court with the gentry its willing accomplices. Penry Williams examines the means by which the Tudors achieved this political dominance.
