Elizabethan

John Bossy has painstakingly reconstructed from clues and evidence, a hitherto untold story of intellectual intrigue, spying and double-cross in Elizabethan England.

Pious nobleman or calculating humbug - what is the true characterisation of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester? Simon Adams sifts the motives for the patronage given to some of Elizabeth's sternest religious critics by her favourite courtier.

Ian Seymour looks at the involvement of Elizabeth I's astrologer in matters of state, and his diplomatic intrigues on the Continent on the eve of the Armada.

In May of 1588, Spain's great Armada set sail, bent on the invasion and conquest of Elizabethan England. Simon Adams re-examines the strategic considerations that underpinned the actions of both England and Spain before and after the Armada.

'In the beginning, America was in the way'. Only slowly did 16th-century Englishmen turn from the chimera of a short-cut to Asia's riches to the vision of precious metals to be mined and colonies planted in the New World.

What was it really like to live in an English village at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign? To what extent was it a close-knit community? How deeply was it divided by wealth and religious belief? Was the village even an important part of the identity of its members? Susan Amussen addresses these questions in one village in East Anglia.

With government sponsorship and prodigious fieldwork, Elizabethan cartography reached heights unequalled elsewhere in Western Europe.

Christopher Haigh outlines the historiography of the reign of the first Elizabeth.

Understanding the reasons for the development of the poor-law, one of the most long-lasting of Elizabethan achievements.

Charles Seltman traces the idea of the ruler not only great but good—helper and protector of his subjects—back to Alexander of Macedon.