Read Online The English Court: From The Wars Of The Roses To The Civil War Created By David Starkey Contained In Paperback

no fault of the writers or editor, I found myself more interested in the conclusions Starkey draws at the beginning of the book than with all of the detail the individual historians bring to bear in describing the court in each period.
All the writers demonstrate that politics could not be separated from the court and that each court was shaped by the personality of the ruling monarch.
Starkey draws out the patterns as he describes them in this quote:

“In the perspective of the whole book we can now classify

the political patterns on the same lines as the royal personalities.
The politics of distance were characterized by long ministerial tenures, stability, and the quiescence, even the elimination, of faction, The politics of participation, in contrast, were marked by the rapid rise and fall of councillors and favourites, repeated crises and more or less open faction war.
The final cause of this was the royal personality the efficient, the differing role of the Privy Chamber, The private apartments of a Henry VIII or a James I were both an alternative power centre to the Council Chamber and a hotbed of factional intrigue.
Councillors and courtiers vied for supremacy and insecurity became both a fact of life and an instrument of royal policy, None of this was true under Henry VII, Elizabeth I or Charles I, Then Chamberand Council went their separate ways while far from being a cockpit of faction the Privy Chamber became a barrier against it, ”David Robert Starkey, CBE, FSA is a British historian, a television and radio presenter, and a specialist in the Tudor period, .