The Estates of the English Crown: 1558-1640.

This is a devastating book: fourteen essays by six scholars (six of them by the editor himself) take us into the mine field of the early modern English royal estate; and if some of the mines are exploded round us, we are led safely out again, with infinitely better understanding and the feeling that the claim that this is "the first full account of the largest estate in early modern England" is entirely justified. The overall theme is the way in which, despite all its efforts to improve the management of its estates and increase the revenue from them, the Crown moved almost inexorably from landlord to rentier. That process is analyzed through a combination of general and more detailed articles; and one of the most impressive things about the book is the way in which the picture is steadily and consistently built up through these different approaches, with admirable avoidance of more than a minimum of overlap. Hoyle himself contributes articles on Elizabethan tenures which sit with David Thomas's essay on leases, while Thomas and Hoyle come together to discuss general Elizabethan problems and Stuart efforts at reform; Hoyle's article on disafforestation and drainage is one of a very rewarding trio, the others being Joan Thirsk's splendid essay on projects and Peter Large's detailed analysis of the disafforestation of Feckenham; Madeleine Gray moves easily from discussion of the English Exchequer officials and the land market to an account of the effect of English policy on Wales, of which perhaps the most fascinating aspect is its sensitive comment on the changing attitude to gentility; and Graham Haslam considers first the Elizabethan Duchy of Cornwall, which suffered benign and then hostile neglect from a monarch with no heir, and goes on to show what interested Stuart heirs, Henry and then Charles, could achieve, ending with the thought-provoking comment that the latter's success may have created in the later Charles I the unfortunate belief that he could run his kingdom, as his Duchy, by remote control - a message which could equally be applied to his disastrous tampering with land tenures in his even more remote kingdom of Scotland.

There are few outright villains in this book, for all that "corruption" is a familiar concept in this period; if the Crown regularly lost out, so did at least some of those who might have benefited from "improvements," like the unfortunate Sir Allen Apsley, whose decision to accept the Forest of Galtres in settlement of the debt owed by Charles I brought him only further problems. Rather, well-intentioned efforts were frustrated by four things: the sheer scale of the estates, the remoteness of many of them which meant lack of detailed knowledge, the Crown's constant need for ready money which militated against long-term improvements, and understandable resistance by tenants to pay more for their lands. But a repeated theme is the failure of Elizabeth and Burghley; despite a last-ditch attempt by Hoyle in his conclusion to find some positive explanation for Elizabeth's neglect, he himself dates reform to the death of Burghley in 1598, rescues the reputation of the underrated Dorset who succeeded him and continued as Treasurer into James I's reign, and enhances that of Salisbury. Again and again the message is hammered home: Elizabeth added to the problems by inactivity; the Stuarts acted - increasingly unrealistically - but even by the time they began, it was already too late.

Hoyle refers to the "fearsome complexity" and "administrative sophistication" of the subject (4). The scholarship deployed here to deal with it is certainly sophisticated. It is even awesome.

Jenny Wormald ST. HILDA'S COLLEGE, OXFORD