C.S.L. Davies: An Obituary

It is hard to imagine Oxford without Cliff Davies. Born in 1936, he studied at Wadham College, going on to research Tudor history under the great Lawrence Stone. After a stint teaching at Glasgow University, he then returned to Wadham as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History in 1963. He was still the college archivist when he died. He wrote one of the best works of historical synthesis available, Peace, Print and Protestantism, first published in 1977. A readable, scholarly work, it does not get the attention it deserves, partly owing to its unorthodox periodisation. Straddling the 15th and 16th centuries (its dates run 1450-1558), it also crossed the boundary between the Plantagenets and the dynasty we now call ‘the Tudors’.

His earlier work can still be read with much profit today. His study of Protector Somerset’s notorious ‘slavery act’ of 1547 (a piece of particular legislative savagery, which decreed that those refusing to work could be forced into slavery) is still the standard work. Things have moved on since his work on European peasant revolts, but his 1968 Past and Present article on the Pilgrimage of Grace, which argued for complex social causes, is a wonderful, thoughtful and sensible piece of analysis which – despite predating much of the best scholarship on the Pilgrimage – is still essential reading. Davies’s early 16th-century peasant was neither a mindless, materialist drone, nor a fully blown alehouse theologian. Instead he emphasised – rightly, surely – the very real fear they had of the despoliation of the traditional church.

Retirement did nothing to stem his scholarship, indeed, it brought him his most (in)famous discovery: that the dynasty we call ‘the Tudors’ was hardly ever, at the time, known by that name. It was never used in any official documentation and hardly even used in chronicles until the middle of Elizabeth I’s reign. In fact, the name was something of an embarrassment, as it was Welsh. It was used by Richard III and Perkin Warbeck, but not – generally – by Henry VII and certainly not by his successor. Naturally, then, Davies thought we should be sceptical of studies by the late Kevin Sharpe on ‘selling the Tudor monarchy’. There was not really any such monarchy to sell. Epithets like ‘the Tudor state’, or ‘the Tudor poor laws’ were necessary, perhaps, but they were misleading. We should avoid treating 1485 as a great watershed.

Another recent article saw him question the availability of political knowledge in the reign of Henry VII. The first Tudor monarch is often considered an effective propagandist, whose PR machine helped malign Richard III for posterity. But peoples’ actual understanding of politics, especially of Richard’s reign was extremely fuzzy and even the key chronicles of the day contain elementary factual errors. It was only when Polydore Vergil’s work was first printed in 1534 that a reasonable amount of recent historical knowledge became available. Perhaps, then, Henry’s greatest propaganda success was actually in obfuscation.

Davies’ later articles show all of the scholarship and rhetorical skill of his earlier ones. In fact, his writing had even – by then – developed an entertaining waspishness at times. In particular, he had a donnish scepticism of those whose attempts to popularise history caused them (allegedly) to compromise on scholarship. But among the great number of his former students I have met, I have never seen anything other than genuine fondness for him as a historian and a teacher. He will be greatly missed.