Aysha Pollnitz's rich first book, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain shows that disputes about liberal arts education go back a long way. She explores how the Erasmian humanist program of education that young royals received in early modern England shaped their understandings of kingship. Pollnitz argues that as humanist tutors taught princes the bonae litterae, they worked to discourage their pupils from over-mighty monarchy and needless warfare, and directed their attention from the sword to the pen. She also shows that English princes often hijacked their liberal arts education for their own ends and that their training in rhetoric, biblical interpretation, and moral philosophy did not limit their power but rather gave them the skills and confidence to assert royal supremacy.

Pollnitz presents a longue durée history of English princes’ education from Henry VIII to Charles I and engages broadly with scholarship on early modern humanist education, studies of early modern theories of kingship, and discussions about the influence of English monarchs’ piety on their subjects. While her book contributes to a broad range of scholarly conversations, her argument is tightly focused on the specifics of young princes’ educational experiences, and it is grounded in her careful analysis of their tutelage. It is in Pollnitz's close readings of primary documents that her study is most revealing and persuasive. She examines the lives and political affiliations of tutors, records of princes’ curricula, and princes’ commonplace books, annotated texts, and school exercises. She then uses these sources to recontextualize and offer fresh analyses of royals’ later writings. In comparing princes’ early schooling to their later works, she is able to track how the particular educational experiences that princes received, or in some cases failed to receive, shaped their thinking about kingship. Pollnitz also demonstrates how the lessons learned by one young royal could reverberate in later generations; monarchs’ recollections and opinions of their own schooling affected the kind of schooling they arranged for their heirs.

In chapters 1–4 she focuses primarily on the education of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Pollnitz argues that Henry VIII was the first king to be educated according to Erasmus’ curriculum, which encouraged rulers to cultivate peace and to follow Christ's example of humble leadership. Henry's early penchant for war, as demonstrated in his wars with France, suggested he had not learned the lessons of his Erasmian education, but in the 1530s Henry and Thomas Cromwell did begin to find Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince and Paraphrases on the New Testament to be useful. In a cruel irony, though, they used Erasmus’ writings not to avoid over-mighty monarchy but rather to justify the king's royal authority over the English church. Moreover, when it came time for Henry to arrange the schooling of Edward VI, he chose a humanist education for his son so that Edward would, like him, be able to govern both the state and the church.

In chapter 5 Pollnitz offers a fascinating interlude on the education of early modern British queens, exploring the schooling, first, of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her daughter Elizabeth and, then, of Jane Grey and Elizabeth and Mary Tudor. It argues that while such women had some introduction to the bonae litterae, their education was unequal to the education of their male peers because it was designed to position them for good marriages or to protect their families in the case of a failure of primogeniture. Women focused on different genres than did their male peers—the familial epistle, the prayer, and the translation—and their education, more than that of male princes, was governed by the principles of filial loyalty and piety. For those women who did ascend to the throne, this “feminized” training caused them to adopt different approaches to religious leadership. For example, Pollnitz says, because Elizabeth I was not taught to engage in religious controversy, she refrained from participating in religious arguments during her reign and instead fostered her subjects’ spirituality by writing in the devotional genres with which she was more familiar.

In the final two chapters Pollnitz turns to the education of James VI and I and Charles I. In chapter 6 she focuses on James’ resistance to his tutor George Buchanan, who sought to limit royal authority even more than earlier humanist tutors had. James was frustrated by these constraints and consequently used the rhetorical and interpretative skills he had learned from Buchanan to challenge Buchanan's theories of kingship and to advance his own theory of divine-right kingship. In chapter 7 she then considers how James shaped Charles I's education and, in turn, how Charles’ schooling influenced his reign. In Basilicon doron (1599), James outlined for both of his sons a program of education that de-emphasized abstract intellectual and moral principles and instead presented practical strategies for managing religious and political dissent. This practical education, coupled with Charles’ own lack of interest in his studies, kept the young prince from mastering the art of argumentation. Then in the 1610s, when concerns began to emerge that Charles had been too influenced by Scottish Calvinism, James sought to reeducate his son with his Meditation on the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew (1619), which stressed the importance of ritual and ceremony in fostering sacred kingship. Charles was powerfully moved by his father's Meditation and dutifully absorbed its lessons. Ultimately, Pollnitz argues that James’ interventions in Charles’ schooling shaped Charles’ later reign by leading him to avoid contentious polemic and to use cultural and literary forms to display his royal authority instead.

Princely Education in Early Modern Britain is a richly textured book, and Pollnitz's attention to detail, illuminating analysis, and chronological range will make it a valuable addition to the early modern historian's library. The book is also beautifully written, and the lucid and engaging writing will make it a joy to read.