Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:38:06.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Communis Hostis Omnium”: The Smerwick Massacre (1580) and the Law of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

D. Alan Orr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the brutal massacre of up to six hundred Spanish and Italian papal troops on the order of the English Lord Deputy Arthur Grey, 14th Baron de Wilton (1536–1593), at Dún An Óir (Forto del Oro), Smerwick, County Kerry, on 10 November 1580. The article investigates the relationship between the religious and juridical rationales for the massacre, shedding new light on the broader relationship between the early modern law of nations, Protestantism, and what Brendan Bradshaw has characterized as “catastrophic violence” in the Elizabethan military conquest of Ireland. While Vincent Carey has emphasized the virulently anti-Catholic character of Grey's rationales for the massacre, my argument instead emphasizes the role of the received laws of nations and of war in justifying Grey's actions both to Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and to the English public, from the period immediately following the massacre until the writing of Edmund Spenser's pro-Grey apologetic, A View of the Present State of Ireland (ca. 1596). On this view, the papal troops at Smerwick were considered brigands, pirates, or, in Marcus Tullius Cicero's words, “communis hostis omnium”—a common enemy to all—and enjoyed no standing as lawful enemies under the law of nations. In the sixteenth century, the established law of nations was hardly a seamless web but manifested significant cleavages and fissures allowing for the construction of localized spheres of legal exception in which the ordinary rules of warfare did not apply, thus providing a convenient juridical rationale for atrocity.

Type
Original Manuscript
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 473 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The exact number of victims varies according to the sources, but most accounts put it between five hundred and six hundred, including the Irish present in the fort. O'Rahilly, Alfred, “The Massacre at Smerwick (1580),” Journal of the Cork Historical Archaeological Society 42, no. 195 (January–June 1937): 1–15Google Scholar, 65–83, at 71.

2 Spenser, Edmund, A View of the Present State of Ireland, ed. Renwick, W. L. (Oxford, 1970), 107Google Scholar. The manuscript, composed ca. 1596, was first published in 1633.

3 Although Spenser is now generally regarded as having written of A View of the Present State of Ireland, his authorship has not always been universally accepted. See Brink, Jean R., “Constructing the View of the Present State of Ireland,” Spenser Studies 11 (January 1994): 203–27Google Scholar; Brink, Jean R., “Publishing Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland: From Matthew Lownes and Thomas Man (1598) to James Ware (1633),” Spenser Studies 29 (January 2014): 295–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Carey, Vincent, “Atrocity and History: Grey, Spenser, and the Slaughter at Smerwick,” in The Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland, ed. Edwards, David, Lenihan, Pádraig, and Tait, Clodagh (Dublin, 2007), 79–94Google Scholar; see also Ford, Alan, “Apocalyptic Ireland, 1580–1641,” Irish Theological Quarterly 78, no. 2 (May 2013): 123–48Google Scholar. For a recent opposing view, see O'Hara, David, “Political Obedience and the State: Elizabethan News Pamphlets and Rebellion in Ireland,” Media History 21, no. 2 (April 2015): 123–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 79.

6 Carey, 87–94.

7 Bradshaw, Brendan, “Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland,” Irish Historical Studies 36, no. 104 (November 1989): 329–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 338–39; recently reprinted in Bradshaw, Brendan, “And so Began the Irish Nation”: Nationality, National Conscience, and Nationalism in Pre-Modern Ireland (Aldershot, 2015), 7–32Google Scholar.

8 Canino, Catherine G., “Reconstructing Lord Grey's Reputation: A New View of the View,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 87.

10 The most notoriously brutal examples of this doctrine in practice were the sacks of Magdeburg (1631) and Drogheda (1649). See Keen, M. H., The Laws of War in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1965), 121–23Google Scholar; Parker, Geoffrey, “Early Modern Europe,” in The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, ed. Howard, Michael, Andreopoulos, George J., and Shulman, Mark R. (New Haven, 1994), 40–58Google Scholar, at 48–51; Parker, Geoffrey, “The Etiquette of Atrocity: The Laws of War in Early Modern Europe,” in Parker, Geoffrey, Success Is Never Final: Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2002), 143–168Google Scholar, at 155–59; Donagan, Barbara, “Codes of Conduct in the English Civil War,” Past and Present 118, no. 1 (February 1988): 65–95Google Scholar, at 79–80; Donagan, Barbara, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (October 1994): 1137–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1144, 1149; Siochrú, Micheál Ó, “Atrocity, Codes of Conduct, and the Irish in the British Civil Wars, 1641–53,” Past and Present 195, no. 1 (May 2007): 55–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 76–77; Lesaffer, Randall, “Siege Warfare in the Early Modern Age: A Study on the Customary Laws of War,” in The Nature of Customary Law: Legal, Historical, and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Perreau-Saussine, Amanda and Bernard, James Murphy (Cambridge, 2009), 176–202Google Scholar, at 177–78, 180–83.

11 Kilroy, Gerard, “‘Paths Coincident’: The Parallel Lives of Dr. Nicholas Sander and Edmund Campion, S.J.,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 4 (July 2014): 520–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 537.

12 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, Marcus Tullius Ciceroes Thre Bokes of Duties to Marcus his Sonne, Turned out of Latine into English, by Nicholas Grimalde, trans. Grimald, Nicholas, 2nd ed. (London, 1556)Google Scholar; all citations in this article are to this contemporary translation. For the challenges facing Cicero's early English translators, see Cummings, Robert, “Classical Moralists and Philosophers,” in The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 2, 1550–1660, ed. Braden, Gordon, Cummings, Robert, and Gillespie, Stuart (Oxford, 2010), 371–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 379–84.

13 Cicero, Thre Bokes, fol. 148r.

14 Cicero, fols. 148v–149r.

15 Cicero, fol. 149r.

16 Cicero, fols. 151v–152r; Heller-Roazen, Daniel, The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations (New York, 2009), 16Google Scholar.

17 Gould, Harry D., “Cicero's Ghost: Rethinking the Social Construction of Piracy,” in Maritime Piracy and the Construction of Global Governance, ed. Struett, Michael J., Carlson, Jon D., and Nance, Mark T. (New York, 2013), 23–46Google Scholar, at 27–30; Rubin, Alfred P., The Law of Piracy (Newport, 1988), 10–11Google Scholar.

18 Heller-Roazen, Enemy of All, 50–55; Gould, “Cicero's Ghost,” 29; Rubin, Law of Piracy, 7–8.

19 Rubin, Law of Piracy, 10, 54.

20 Heller-Roazen, Enemy of All, 104–9; Gould, “Cicero's Ghost,” 44n. Belli's treatise appeared in 1563, Ayala's shortly after the Smerwick massacre in 1582, and Gentili's first volume of his work on the law of war in 1588. Belli, Pierino, A Treatise on Military Matters and Warfare in Eleven Parts, trans. Nutting, Herbert C., vol. 2, The Translation (1936; repr., Delhi, 2017), 88Google Scholar; Gentili, Alberico, Three Books on the Law of War, trans. Rolfe, John C., Introduction by Phillipson, Coleman, vol. 2, The Translation of the Edition of 1612 (1936; repr., Buffalo, 1995), 22Google Scholar; Bde Ayala, althazar, Three Books on the Law of War, trans. Bate, John Pawley, vol. 2, The Translation (Baltimore, 1912), 59Google Scholar. For Gentili, see following note.

21 Schröder, Peter, “Vitoria, Gentili, Bodin: Sovereignty and the Law of Nations,” in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire, ed. Kingsbury, Benedict and Straumann, Benjamin (Oxford, 2011), 163–86Google Scholar, at 78; see also Schröder, Peter, Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, 1598–1713 (Cambridge, 2017), 36–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Hume, Martin A. S., Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, vol. 3, Elizabeth 1580–86 (London, 1896), 69–70Google Scholar.

23 Ellis, Steven G., Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (Harlow, 1998), 312Google Scholar; Hayes-McCoy, G. A., “The Completion of the Tudor Conquest and the Advance of the Counter-Reformation, 1571–1603,” in A New History of Ireland, ed. Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., and Byrne, F. J., vol. 3, Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (1976; repr., Oxford, 2009), 94–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 105.

24 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 312; Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 528.

25 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 312; Hayes-McCoy, “Tudor Conquest,” 106; Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 527.

26 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 313; Hayes-McCoy, “Tudor Conquest,” 106; Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 527–28.

27 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 313–14; Hayes-McCoy, “Tudor Conquest,” 107.

28 For the “Gaelic dimension” of the Baltinglass rebellion, see Maginn, Christopher, “The Baltinglass Rebellion: English Dissent or Gaelic Uprising?,” Historical Journal, 47, no. 2 (June 2004): 205–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Hadfield, Spenser, 156; Maginn, “Baltinglass Rebellion,” 218.

30 Hadfield, Spenser, 157; Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 533; Maginn, “Baltinglass Rebellion,” 218–20.

31 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 314.

32 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 83–84, 88. A map illustrating the siege, reproduced here, is preserved in The National Archives at Kew (hereafter TNA), TNA MPF/1/75. Another map can be found at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and is reproduced in Hadfield, Spenser, 162.

33 O'Rahilly, “Massacre at Smerwick,” 9; Glasgow, Tom Jr. and Salisbury, W., “Elizabethan Ships Pictured on Smerwick Map, 1580: Background, Authentication, and Evaluation,” Mariners Mirror 52, no. 2 (May 1966): 157–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 161–62; Martin, Colin and Parker, Geoffrey, The Spanish Armada, rev. ed. (Manchester, 1999), 68Google Scholar.

34 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 89; Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 314.

35 Hadfield, Spenser, 156.

36 Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 533.

37 Grey's account to Elizabeth in Spenser's formal italic hand is preserved in State Papers, Ireland, at TNA, SP 63/78/32. All references in this article are to the TNA document, although this text has been transcribed and printed in Spenser, Edmund, Selected Letters and Other Papers, ed. Burlinson, Christopher and Zurcher, Andrew (Oxford, 2009), 13–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Justin Samuel Ewald Smith, “‘The Sword and the Law’: Elizabethan Soldiers’ Perceptions and Practice of the Laws of Armed Conflict, 1569–1587” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2017).

39 For Spenser's hand, see Burlinson, Christopher and Zurcher, Andrew, “‘Secretarie to Lord Grey Lord Deputie Here’: Edmund Spenser's Irish Papers,” Library 6, no. 1 (March 2005): 30–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 37–40.

40 TNA, SP 63/78/32.

41 TNA, SP 63/78/32.

42 TNA, SP 63/78/32.

43 TNA, SP 63/78/32.

44 Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason,” 1150.

45 Raphael Holinshed, The Second Volume of Chronicles: Conteining the Description, Inhabitation, and Troublesome Estate; first collected by Raphaell Holinshed; and now newlie recognised, augmented and continued from the Death of King Henrie the eight vntil this present time for Sir Iohn Perot, Knight; Lord Deputie; as appeareth by the Supplie beginning pag. 109 &c. (London, 1586), sig. Q2r; Edwards, David, “Tudor Ireland: Anglicization, Mass Killing, and Security,” in The Routledge History of Genocide, ed. Carmichael, Cathie and Maguire, Richard C. (Abingdon, 2015), 23–37Google Scholar, at 32.

46 TNA, SP 63/78/32. Accounts vary as to the number of prisoners spared, but Grey put it at twenty in his report to Walsingham. O'Rahilly, “Massacre at Smerwick,” 72–73; Grey to Walsingham, reprinted in Sir Hennessy, John Pope, Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland (London, 1883)Google Scholar, appendix, 210.

47 TNA, SP 63/78/32.

48 O'Rahilly, “Massacre at Smerwick,” 66–67, 70; Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 85; Hennessy, Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland, 210.

49 TNA, SP 63/78/32; Cary, “Atrocity and History,” 88; Hennessy, Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland, 208–9.

50 Hennessy, Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland, 211.

51 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 91; O'Hara, “Political Obedience and the State,” 127–30.

52 A. M. [Anthony Munday], The True Reporte of the Prosperous Successe which God gaue vnto our English Soldiours against the Forreine Bands of our Romaine Enemies, lately ariued (but soone inough to theyr cost) in Ireland, in the Yeare 1580 (London, 1581), sig. A3r.

53 Hume, Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs 3:69–70.

54 Holinshed, Second Volume of Chronicles, sig. Q2r.

55 Ford, Alan, “James Ussher and the Creation of an Irish Protestant Identity,” in British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533–1707, ed. Bradshaw, Brendan and Roberts, Peter (Cambridge, 1998), 185–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 189.

56 For a fuller discussion of this bull's constitutional significance, see Murray, James, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, 2009), 214–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Kingdon, Robert M., ed., The Execution of Justice in England by William Cecil and A True, Sincere, and Modest Defense of English Catholics by William Allen (Ithaca, 1965), 183Google Scholar.

58 Elton, G. R., The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1982), 427Google Scholar; Guy, John, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 277Google Scholar; Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 259–60Google Scholar.

59 Hadfield, Spenser, 170–71.

60 Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, 107.

61 Spenser, 107–8.

62 Schröder, Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, chap. 1; Vadi, “Dawn of International Law,” 148.

63 Hadfield, Spenser, 170.

64 The best recent treatments of Essex are Hammer, Paul E. J., The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Gajda, Alexandra, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the legacy of Sidney and Essex as icons of Protestant civic militarism, see Hunt, William, “Civic Chivalry and the English Civil War,” in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Grafton, Anthony and Blair, Ann (Philadelphia, 1990), 204–37Google Scholar, at 220–21, 232–33.

65 Womersly, David, “Sir Henry Savile's Translation of Tacitus and the Political Interpretation of Elizabethan Texts,” Review of English Studies 42, no. 167 (August, 1991): 313–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smuts, Malcolm, “Court-Centered Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians, c. 1590–1630,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Lake, Peter and Sharpe, Kevin (Stanford, 1993), 21–43Google Scholar; Hammer, Paul E. J., “The Uses of Scholarship: The Secretariat of Robert Devereaux, Second Earl of Essex, c. 1585–1601,” English Historical Review 109, no. 430 (February 1994): 26–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kewes, Paulina, “Henry Savile's Tacitus and Politics of Roman History in Late Elizabethan England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 74, no. 4 (December 2011): 515–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gajda, Alexandra, “The Earl of Essex and ‘Politic History,’” in Essex: The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier, ed. Connolly, Annaliese and Hopkins, Lisa (Manchester, 2013), 237–59Google Scholar.

66 Hadfield, Spenser, 396. For Spenser's exposure to this intellectual milieu, see also Hadfield, Andrew, “Spenser, Ireland, and Sixteenth Century Political Theory,” Modern Language Review 89, no. 1 (January 1994): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hadfield, Andrew, “Tacitus and the Reform of Ireland in the 1590s,” in Early Modern Civil Discourses, ed. Richards, Jennifer (Basingstoke, 2003), 115–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carroll, Clare, “The Janus Face of Machiavelli: Adapting The Prince and the Discourses in Early Modern Ireland,” in Carroll, Clare, Circe's Cup: Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Ireland (Notre Dame, 2001), 91–103Google Scholar.

67 Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, 79–80.

68 For the notion of Elizabeth's “second reign,” see Guy, John, “The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth?,” in The Reign of Elizabeth: Court of and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. Guy, John (Cambridge, 1995), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gajda, Alexandra “Political Culture in the 1590s: The ‘Second Reign of Elizabeth,’” History Compass 8, no. 1 (January 2010): 88–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 1999), 17Google Scholar; Craigwood, Joanna, “Gentili, Sidney, and the Poetics of Embassy,” in Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture, ed. Adams, Robyn and Cox, Rosanna (Basingstoke, 2011), 82–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 85; Ross, Charles, “Motives for English Exploration,” Sidney Journal 26, no. 1 (January 2008): 69–82Google Scholar, at 75; Scattola, Merio, “Alberico Gentili (1552–1608),” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, ed. Fassbender, Bardo and Peters, Anne (Oxford, 2012), 1092–97Google Scholar, at 1092–1093; Vadi, Valentia, “At the Dawn of International Law: Alberico Gentili,” North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation 40, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 135–69Google Scholar, at 139–40.

70 Hadfield, Andrew, Spenser: A Life (Oxford, 2012), 154Google Scholar.

71 Craigwood, “Poetics of Embassy,” 86–87.

72 Craigwood, 87.

73 Warren, Christopher N., Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580–1680 (Oxford, 2015), 35–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Rapple, Rory, Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture: Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 (Cambridge, 2009), 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 2.

75 Book 1 was initially published in 1588, and books 2 and 3 in 1589, with all three books reissued together in 1598 and 1612. Rubin, Law of Piracy, 20; Coleman Phillipson, Introduction to Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 9a–52a, at 14a.

76 Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, 239–40.

77 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 15–16.

78 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 22

79 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 22.

80 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 22.

81 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 25.

82 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 423. In practice, the exclusion of pirates and brigands from this arrangement was not as cut and dried as the treatise literature might suggest. For example, Lauren Benton has noted that Gentili himself was, in his later career as an advocate for Spanish mercantile interests in the English Court of Admiralty, “not always consistent in his approach to piracy,” even arguing for the recognition of the Barbary states as “polities inside the Ottoman Empire.” Benton, Lauren, “Toward a New Legal History of Piracy: Maritime Legalities and the Myth of Universal Jurisdiction,” International Journal of Maritime History 23, no. 1 (June 2011): 225–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 229.

83 Schröder, “Sovereignty and the Law of Nations,” 164.

84 Cromartie, Alan, “War, Sovereignty, and Civilization from Bodin to Rawls,” in Liberal Wars: Anglo-American, Strategy, Ideology and Practice, ed. Cromartie, Alan (Abingdon and New York, 2015), 107–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 110.

85 Maginn has noted that, unlike Baltinglass, Sander, and Fitzmaurice, Counterreformation ideology had yet to establish any significant influence over the native Irish, and their willing participation in the second Desmond Revolt stemmed more from traditional grievances against the Dublin administration. Maginn, “Baltinglass Rebellion,” passim.

86 Lesaffer, Randall, “The Classical Law of Nations (1500–1800),” in Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law, ed. Orakhelashvili, Alexander (Cheltenham, 2011), 408–40Google Scholar, at 410–13.

87 Schröder, Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, 19; Kempe, Michael, “‘Even in the Remotest Corners of the World’: Globalized Piracy and International Law,” Journal of Global History 5, no. 3 (November 2010): 353–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 358.

88 Schröder, Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, 19.

89 Gentili, Three Books on The Law of War, 15–16.

90 The argument here is greatly indebted to Schröder, Trust in Early Modern International Political Thought, chap. 1.

91 Carey, “Atrocity and History,” 86; O'Rahilly, “Massacre at Smerwick,” 67; Orr, D. Alan, “Protestant Military Humanism in Early Stuart Ireland,” Historical Journal 62, no. 1 (March 2019): 77–99Google Scholar.

92 Smith, “The Sword and the Law,” 189.

93 TNA, SP 63/78/32; Martin and Parker, Spanish Armada, 216, 223.

94 Vermeir, René, “The Ransoming of Prisoners Taken from the Armada, 1589–90,” Notes and Queries 62, no. 1 (March 2015): 59–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Smuts, Malcolm, “Organized Violence in the Elizabethan Monarchical Republic,” History 99, no. 336 (July 2014): 418–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Bingham's conduct in Connaught, see also Rapple, Martial Power, chap. 7.

96 Bradshaw, “Nationalism and Historical Scholarship,” 339. For a more recent discussion of the issue, see Rapple, Rory, “Writing about Violence in the Tudor Kingdoms,” Historical Journal 54, no. 3 (September 2011): 829–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.