Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/289

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 281 He reveals, however, an extraordinary conception of historical proof when he cites some cases in the dependencies in the nineteenth century and urges that they throw valuable light upon the origin of parliamentary privilege in England. Finally it must be added that Dr. Wittke's book shows many signs of haste. It has been inadequately revised, and the index is too meagre to be of much use. J. E. NEALE. Tudor Ideals. By LEWIS EINSTEIN. (London : Bell, 1921.) NINETEEN years ago Mr. Einstein published his illuminating book, The Italian Renaissance in England, and this book he meant to serve as an introduction to a future history of English sixteenth-century ideals. This magnum opus, we regretfully observe, is not to be, for a diplomatic career spent mainly in distant parts has interfered with its pursuit. Instead of writing history, the author has been engaged in making history. His book, he confesses, has another aim to justify the apology for its appearance. Dimly conscious as we are of the significance of the currents which are now carrying us forward, it is impossible not to realize that the great war has marked the end of an epoch, and that we stand to-day at the threshold of a new era toward which we are both groping and drifting. . . . Our era presents a curious resemblance to the age which forms the subject of this study. Its setting is different, its direction is opposite, but in many respects it is not unlike. Approaching the history of Tudor ideals in true historical spirit, the author sets himself to teach what forms these ideals assumed, whence they were derived, and how they came to be what they were. True, there is some overlapping in the different chapters, and here and there the chapters incline to be sketchy. At the same time Mr. Einstein has studied his fascinating subject so thoroughly that he almost makes us believe that it is easy. He sets forth the attitude of the people to the Crown, to the individual, to conceptions of life and thought, and to all that tended to the enrichment of life in luminous fashion, and his setting forth furnishes many a clue to the interpretation of the past, and to the tendencies of political thought in the present. The book, too, is carefully founded upon documents. Seldom, indeed, can we find fault with it, though we are surprised to find quoted the letter supposed to have been written by Elizabeth to the bishop of Ely : Proud Prelate. You know what you were before I made you what you are. Obey me instantly, or I will unfrock you, by God. It is, of course, an eighteenth-century forgery. In his able analysis of the theory of majesty Mr. Einstein points out that in spite of the boast that Englishmen, unlike men of Europe, were not slaves, there was a new spirit of servility hitherto unknown in royal annals. Marillac, the French ambassador, remarked that Henry VIII had become a ' statue for idolatry '. Nor was this servility confined to dignitaries of the church. Members of the family of Henry VIII knelt before him in accordance with an etiquette which decreed that no one must speak to him 'but in adoration and kneeling'. Naturally Elizabeth expected all at court to fall on their knees before her. Details like these