Geoffrey Rudolph Elton

Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton (August 17, 1921 – December 3, 1994) was a pre-eminent British historian of the Tudor period.

Elton was born in Tübingen, Germany as Gottfried Rudolf Ehrenberg. His parents were the scholars Victor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea Sommer. In 1929, the Ehrenbergs moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia. In February 1939, the Jewish Ehrenbergs fled to Britain. Ehrenberg continued his education at a Methodist school in Wales called the Rydal School, starting in 1939. After only two years, Ehrenberg was working as a teacher at the Rydal School and achieved position of assistant master in Mathematics, History and German. While there, he took courses via correspondence at the University of London and graduated with a degree in Ancient History in 1943. Ehrenberg enlisted in the British Army in 1943. He spent his time in the Army in the Intelligence Corps and the East Surrey Regiment, serving with the 8th Army in Italy from 1944 to 1946. During this period, Ehrenberg anglized his name to Geoffrey Elton. After his discharge from the military, Elton studied early modern history at the University of London, graduating with an PhD in 1949. He took British citizenship in 1947.

He focused primarily on the life of Henry VIII but made significant contributions to the study of Queen Elizabeth I. Furthermore, Elton was an expert on the Reformation. Elton was most famous for arguing in his 1953 book The Tudor Revolution in Government that Thomas Cromwell (who was Elton's hero) was the author of modern, bureaucratic government in the place of medieval, household government. In essence, what Elton was arguing that before Cromwell, monarch and monarchy were inseparable, that the realm was essentially regarded as the King's private estate writ large and that most administration was done by the King's household servants rather separate state offices.

Cromwell, who was Henry VIII's chief minister 1532-40, introduced reforms into the administration that delineated the King's household from the state, and marked out the lines between the King and the Crown and between the King and nation. Most importantly, Cromwell in Elton's view replaced rule by the King's household servants with the modern bureaucratic state. In the Middle Ages, the Crown to be effective needed a strong king. If the King were a weak man, the result was the breakdown of the Crown's authority as what happened during the reign of Henry VI. Today, the modern bureaucratic state has such institutional strength if the leader should be weak, the state can continue to function. By master-minding these reforms which combined toughness with respect for the rule of law, Elton argued that Cromwell laid the foundations for England's future stability and success. Elton elaborated on these ideas in his 1955 masterpiece, the best-selling England under the Tudors.

Elton was a staunch conservative both in politics (he was an admirer of Thatcher and Churchill) and in historical methods. Elton was a fierce critic of Marxist historians whom he argued were presenting seriously flawed interpretations of the past. In particular, Elton was opposed to the idea that the English Civil War was caused by socio-economic changes in the 16th - 17th centuries, arguing instead that it was due largely to the incompetence of the Stuart kings . Elton was also famous for his role in the Carr-Elton debate when he defended the 19th century interpretation of traditional (also known as scientific history) a la Leopold von Ranke against Carr's views. Elton wrote his 1967 book The Practice of History largely in response to E. H. Carr's 1961 book What is History?.

Elton was a strong defender of the traditional methods of history and was appalled by postmodernism. Although ex-pupils of his such as John Guy claim he did embody a "revisionist streak", Elton saw the duty of historians as empirically gathering evidence and objectively analyzing what the evidence has to say. As a traditionalist, Elton placed great emphasis on the role of individuals in history instead of abstract, impersonal forces. For instance, his 1963 book Reformation Europe is in large part concerned with the duel between Martin Luther and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Elton objected to cross-disciplinary efforts such as efforts to combine history with anthropology or sociology. He saw political history as the best and most important kind of history. Elton had no use for those who seek history to make myths, create laws to explain the past and produce theories such as Marxism.

Elton taught at the University of Glasgow and from 1949 onwards at Clare College, Cambridge University and was the Regius professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988. He was knighted in 1986. Elton worked as publication secretary of the British Academy from 1981 to 1990 and served as the president of the Royal Historical Society from 1972 to 1976. He married a fellow historian, Sheila Lambert, in 1952. Elton was a superb literary craftsman, whose command and skill at English is all the more remarkable for someone who didn't learn English until he almost was in his twenties. Elton intensely identified himself with his adopted country, and this very much influenced his writings. As a scholar, he was popular with the students at Cambridge, but many of his colleagues disliked him. Elton was a very professional scholar and a formidable man with little time for those who failed to meet his exacting standards.

He was the uncle of the writer Ben Elton, and brother to the education researcher Lewis Elton.

Works

Geoffrey Elton wrote the influential collection, The Tudor Constitution. In it, he supported John Aylmer's basic conclusion that the Tudor constitution mirrored that of the mixed constitution of Sparta.

Annual bibliography of British and Irish history, Brighton, Sussex ^*:Harvester Press ; Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1976.
The body of the whole realm; Parliament and representation in medieval and Tudor England Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1969.
England, 1200-1640 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969
England Under The Tudors London:Methuen, 1955, revised edition 1974.
The English Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
English law in the sixteenth century : reform in an age of change London: Seldon Society, 1979
F.W. Maitland London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985.
Henry VIII; an essay in revision London: Historical Association by Routledge & K. Paul, 1962.
Modern Historians on British History, 1485-1945 An Critical Bibliography London, Methuen, 1970.
The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire : Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell, Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Political History: Principles and Practice, London: Penguin Press, 1970.
The Practice of History London: Fontana Press, 1967.
The Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Reformation Europe, 1517-1559 New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Reform and Reformation: England 1509-1558, London: Arnold, 1977.
Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Renaissance and Reformation, 1300-1640, edited by G.R. Elton New York: Macmillan 1968.
Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Star Chamber Stories London: Methuen, 1958.
Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews, 1946-1972, 4 volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974-1992.
The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, Cambridge University Press, 1960.
The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII, Cambridge University Press, 1953.
(co-written with Robert Fogel) Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983

Notes

See his essays 'The Stuart Century', 'A High Road to Civil War?' and 'The Unexplained Revolution' in G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Volume II (CUP, 1974).

References

Bradshaw, Brenden "The Tudor Commonwealth: Reform and Revision" pages 455-476 from Historical Journal, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1979.
Coleman, Christopher & Starkey, David (editors) Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government & Administration, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Cross, Claire, Loades, David & Scarisbrick, J.J (editors) Law and Government under the Tudors: Essays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge on the Occasion of his Retirement Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Guth, DeLloyd and McKenna, John (editors) Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G.R Elton from his American Friends, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Guy, John "The Tudor Commonwealth: Revising Thomas Cromwell" pages 681-685 from Historical Journal Volume 23, Issue 3, 1980.
Horowitz, M.R. "Which Road to the Past?" pages 5-10 from History Today, Volume 34, January 1984.
Jenkins, Keith `What is History?` From Carr to Elton to Rorty and White London: Routledge, 1995.
Kenyon, John The History Men, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983.
Kouri, E.I and Scott, Tom (editors) Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-fifth Birthday, London: Macmillan Press, 1986.
Schlatter, R. Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Slavin, Arthur "Telling the Story: G.R Elton and the Tudor Age" pages 151-169 from Sixteenth Century Journal, Volume 21, Issue 2, 1990.
Transcations of the Royal Historical Society pages 177-336, Volume 7, 1997.
Williams, Percy and Harriss, Gavin "A Revolution in Tudor History?" pages 3-58 from Past and Present, Volume 25, 1963.

External links

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Works

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References

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