Tudor Times

This is really exciting, especially for the researchers among us!

According to the article linked below,

“The second of a four-part digital collection, State Papers Online Part II is among the most valuable and reliable resources for understanding Tudor and Stuart government and society. Included in this collection are the sixteenth-century Foreign, Scotland, Borders and Ireland Papers, as well as the Registers (‘minutes’) of the Privy Council, the monarch’s closest advisors. The great international themes – marriage contracts, wars and treaties, trade and commerce and, crucially, religion – play out in document after document. 

Facsimile images of the correspondence written and received by the ruling monarchs, as well as those of their courtiers, administrators, judges and clergy, bring to life the politics, diplomacy, culture and society of Tudor times. Researchers and students can now read in Elizabeth I’s own hand, her efforts to appease the Ottoman Sultan Murad III (“We beg that you will not … lose your respect for our good faith”).  Also revealed in this collection are Elizabeth’s views on her on/off engagement to the Duke of Anjou (“…if we only regarded our love to him we should readily assent to it”) and on Mary, Queen of Scots’ trial and execution ‘which cannot but be grievous to me.’”

Here’s the link to the article for more info.

Here is a link to the state papers themselves.