John Heywood: Comedy and Survival in Tudor England

Abstract

context, Connolly refers to two sixteenth-century lawyers who each owned thirty to forty books (68; 127). Sometimes evidence of reading proves elusive, but she makes an important point in that “multiple absences may themselves be telling,” such as “[t]he lack of any Protestant-leaning comments or despoilations” (128) despite the risk posed by possessing material at odds with reformed theology. Another instance exists in the names of children erased from a genealogy kept in a book of hours, the resulting gaps striking and summed up poignantly: “T Robertes hath in all xxiiij chyldern wherof xviij ben decessed” (Cambridge University Library Ii.6.2, f.33r; Connolly pp. 168-69). The author charts a conservative course in her analysis, eschewing extrapolation and acknowledging when evidence of reception proves equivocal; even so, her rigorous study offers interesting clues as to how the middle-ranking gentry fared amid the rapid shifts in religious policy from one Tudor monarch to the next. Its value as a representative case study gains weight through the tenacious pursuit of archival records, which connect the Roberts family of Willesden with contemporary families in similar circumstances. Unfortunately, some proofreading mistakes escaped notice; there are a few transcription errors, too, but these are small quibbles for a monograph that makes an important contribution to reception studies. It is a feat of scholarship that few researchers could achieve. Connolly does so, masterfully.