Governing by Virtue: Lord Burghley and the Management of Elizabethan England
Norman Jones
Abstract
Managing early modern England was difficult because the state was weak. Although Queen Elizabeth was the supreme ruler, she had little bureaucracy, no standing army, and no police force. This meant that her chief manager, Lord Burghley, had to work with the gentlemen of the magisterial classes in order to keep the peace and defend the realm on her behalf. He did it successfully through using the shared value systems of the ruling classes, an improved information system, coercion, and mutual self-interest. He governed by leveraging the virtues of a ruling class trained to believe in their God-g ... More
Keywords: Lord Burghley, William Cecil, virtue, honor, management, wards, taxation, religion, defense, justice
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 | Print ISBN-13: 9780199593606 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593606.001.0001 |
