Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630. Michael Questier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. xviii + 500 pp. $45

• Published in: Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 306 - 307
• Main Author: Smuts, R. Malcolm
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Historians; Politics; Renaissance period; England; Scotland; United Kingdom > UK; Ireland
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2020.370
• ISSN: 0034-4338

The absence of any sustained historiographic discussion, beyond a generalized disapproval of Whig and Protestant bias and occasional pokes at historians with whom Questier disagrees, makes it difficult for readers to see precisely how his narrative differs from others produced after about 1980. [...]about 1567 Mary Stewart also seemed to be winning the dynastic contest with her English cousin, and even after that year—which Questier admits was disastrous for the Scottish queen—she often played the game of dynastic competition astutely. An unstated theme throughout the book seems to be the attractiveness, but also the intrinsic difficulty, of maintaining an ambiguous politique stance on religious issues for monarchs throughout the period, as they tried to navigate their way through often violent processes of confessional polarization that kept impinging on both domestic and international politics.