San Antonio College Library

"This is a study of rural social structure in the English county of Essex between 1350 and 1525. It seeks to understand how, in the population collapse after the Black Death (1348-1349), a particular economic environment affected ordinary people's lives in the areas of migration, marriage and employment, and also contributed to patterns of religious nonconformity, agrarian riots and unrest, and even rural housing. The period under scrutiny is often...

Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price. Employing a vast array of historical characters, and a story overflowing with incident, the author turns Tudor England into a compelling piece of fiction. Mantel re-creates an era when the personal and political...

Policy and Police, first published in 1972, has since acquired classic status in the literature on the government of sixteenth-century England. The book examines what actually happened during Henry VIII�s break with Rome, the widespread resistance which necessitated constant vigilance on the part of the government, and the role of Thomas Cromwell, whose surviving correspondence permits a detailed insight both into the purposes of government and...

Thomas Cromwell is a brutal blacksmith's son who rises from the ashes of personal disaster and deftly picks his way through a court where 'man is wolf to man.' King Henry VIII is obsessed with protecting the Tudor dynasty by securing his succession with a male heir to the throne. Told from Cromwell's perspective, "Wolf Hall" follows the complex machinations and back room dealings of this pragmatic and accomplished power broker who must serve king...

A duel biography of Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, spanning the events and personalities of Henry VIII's reign down to Cromwell's dramatic fall in 1540.