J. L. McIntosh’s study of the households of the Tudor princesses Mary and Elizabeth addresses the relationship between property and power, arguing that heading their own households enabled the two women to acquire political and economic power. Rather than emphasizing their anomalous position as (potential) heirs to the throne, McIntosh stresses their similarities to other female property holders of the time. Although the broad framework of the argument will thus be familiar to many readers aware of recent scholarship emphasizing the economic and political power of elite women in the early modern period, McIntosh’s reading of Mary and Elizabeth’s shifting political fortunes through the lens of householding provides a useful addition to our understanding of the royal family during the Reformation.

McIntosh identifies three key areas in which the household helped create and sustain the princesses’ political power. First, the household functioned as a site of material display, demonstrating their high status; second, the household as “corporate body” of servants and other retainers created a strong sense of loyalty toward each princess; and third, the household as physical property served both an economic and a strategic function (through the rents manors provided and the bases they became during succession crises). According to McIntosh, these functions of the household were crucial in establishing Mary and Elizabeth as important political players and ultimately enabled them to accede to the throne, despite the obstacles created by religious conflict and a deeply patriarchal society. Many of her claims rely on speculation about motives and behaviors, based on readings of documents such as household accounts or state papers, but she paints a convincing picture of the princesses and their households as important agents in the political machinations of the period.

McIntosh points out that Mary and Elizabeth were unusual in heading their own households throughout much of their lives; traditionally, royal women were supported by their fathers or brothers rather than running their own establishments. Yet, McIntosh also emphasizes the differences between the two princesses, using the size, wealth, and cultures of their households to demonstrate their changing status as well as their different interests. For instance, she uses the properties they were given after Henry VIII’s death to demonstrate the relative political status of the two women. Mary received the first grant in May 1547, and the £3,800 income generated by her properties was well above the £3,000 Henry had intended. (McIntosh also argues that although official documents presented the grants as fulfilling Henry’s will, he had meant them to receive cash rather than land.) Moreover, these lands were concentrated in southeast England and contained valuable manors, creating an important base of economic and political power that translated into a military advantage during the succession crisis of 1553. In contrast, Elizabeth’s lands—not granted until March 1550—provided only a little over £3,000 annually and were much more scattered, with few really valuable manors. McIntosh argues that these differences—which violated Henry’s expressed intention to treat both daughters equally—reflected the relatively weak position of Elizabeth, who was still a minor, and Mary’s strength as next in line to the throne.

As part of the Gutenberg-e series, this work has been published in both print and online versions; a note before the title page of the book indicates that it is only “a partial representation” of the “multimedia work of scholarship” that is From Heads of Household to Heads of State. Despite this claim, however, the project clearly began as a traditional dissertation, and the reader who relies solely on the hard copy will miss very little. The online version includes two maps not presented in the printed copy, and some of the wording is different. Most noticeably, appendix B in the print version is dropped altogether from the online version, a sensible decision since it largely repeats the ideas in appendix A. But little else distinguishes the online version. Footnotes are hyperlinked to the main text, and the notes contain a few other links to additional material, such as portraits of Elizabeth and Edward (chap. 1 nn. 184–85). Of this relatively small number of additional links, some are already broken (e.g., chap. 4 n. 39). Within the main text, there are also occasional links taking the reader to additional information in another part of the book. These cause some confusion, since there is no way of telling where one arrives in the online text. Chapter titles appear only at the top of each page and vanish as the reader scrolls down; along with the absence of page numbers, this makes it extremely difficult to keep track of one’s location. The online version is used to justify the absence of a print index, but there is no online index either, and the search function in the online version is almost useless. A search for a name might provide several hits, but each one links to a chapter rather than to a specific location within the chapter. A reader seeking that information would need to open up the pdf version of the chapter and then search again for the specific term—hardly an efficient method or a meaningful substitute for a proper index.

None of these problems is McIntosh’s fault, of course, but it is a shame that resources were devoted to adding the fairly small number of enhancements to the online version rather than to more careful editing, from which the book would have benefited. The writing can be extremely repetitive, and there are grammatical and typographical errors throughout as well as other frustrating mistakes. Most obvious is the fact that one appendix (D in the print version, C online) reproduces almost verbatim several pages of the main text (34–36; chap. 1, pars. 63–70). Such faults distract from what is otherwise a useful and largely convincing argument.