In 1987 David Loades published the best institutional survey of the Tudor court. This book serves a different function by synthesizing much recent work and drawing on original research to provide a fresh narrative of mid-Tudor politics from a court-centered perspective. Despite his title Loades begins in 1540, with a survey of the factional battles and deadly intrigues of Henry VIII's last years. These pitted a conservative group of privy councillors against reformists based in the Privy Chamber, who had the support of Queen Katherine Parr and the rising warrior aristocrats, Thomas and Edward Seymour and John Dudley. Loades argues that the factional battle “reflected different aspects of the King's personality” (16), which is why he never allowed the conservatives to destroy their opponents but instead ended up “effectively running two sorts of government, one through his council and his institutions and offices of state, the other through his Privy Chamber” (19).

The reformist courtiers triumphed at the very end of Henry's reign and the start of his son’s, consolidating their control over both the Council and the Privy Chamber. But a new fissure soon appeared when Thomas Seymour, who was acutely jealous of his brother's preeminence as Protector, employed a groom of the Privy Chamber named John Fowler to win the young king's support for his marriage to Katherine Parr, which the Council would otherwise have opposed. Seymour also used Fowler to slip extra pocket money to Edward, in an effort to curry favor. The Council finally removed Seymour through an act of attainder, but new conflicts soon developed between the Protector and other members of the ruling group. Edward's education had meanwhile continued under Protestant humanist tutors. Although Somerset never showed much interest, after 1549 Warwick did, assigning a protégé, William Thomas, to teach the king about practical politics. Thomas, who had studied Machiavelli, encouraged his royal pupil to begin drafting secret policy memoranda. Edward's notorious “Device for the Succession,” which later provided the basis for the attempt to place Jane Gray on the throne, probably originated as one of these exercises.

After defeating the attempt to displace her, Mary had little choice but to retain many of her half-brother's councillors, as the only group of seasoned politicians available. But she also appointed members of her own household and affinity to the Council, all of them ardent Catholics suspicious of the Edwardian group, along with two aging conservatives of Henry's reign, Norfolk and Gardiner. The “natural fault lines” on this Council soon became evident in conflicts over policy. The roughly forty grooms and gentlemen of Edward's Privy Chamber were replaced by a staff of about twenty women, whose gender prevented them from meddling in policy issues, although they did influence the distribution of patronage. Loades describes the intrigues that formed both within and beyond the court over the queen's marriage and the jealousies and conflicts that followed the arrival of Philip and his Spanish attendants. He credits Philip with playing a pragmatic role, by restraining his servants in their quarrels with the English, persuading the pope to accept the loss of church lands in return for England's return to the Catholic fold, and attempting unsuccessfully to discourage executions of Protestants for heresy, as counterproductive severity. Philip also protected Elizabeth after it became clear that Mary was unlikely to produce an heir. But his main concerns were European, and his success in drawing England into his war against France, despite the opposition of most of the Council, proved disastrous. A chapter on the formation of a new court and Council at the start of Elizabeth's reign and a conclusion summing up the main arguments round out the study.

The model of the court Loades employs, with its stress on the Privy Chamber and Privy Council, is anchored in the work of Tudor historians, especially David Starkey. Specialists on other European courts have sometimes favored a different paradigm, most systematically developed in Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles (Cambridge, 2003), by treating courts as polycentric institutions, comprising not only rulers’ households but the satellite establishments of other members of the royal family and great nobles drawn into the ruler's service. Employing Duindam's model might have altered the narrative and might have given more weight to Somerset's household Edward and those of Mary and Elizabeth as focal points of opposition and intrigue, as well as seedbeds of later developments. But Loades has unquestionably shown the value of using a deeper knowledge of the court to restructure the narrative of high politics.