Historians of the Tudor period usually concern themselves with two types of protagonists: monarchs and administrators. The traditional historiographical centrality of each of these types has baked-in “proto-Whiggish” assumptions. Of late, the success of Hilary Mantel's novels and the ever-increasing centrality of the Reformation narrative have not mitigated these tendencies. In both royal biography and administrative history, the Tudor period continues to be presented more often than not as something like a correct step, a fortunate development, and a glorious achievement. There are, however, other ways of looking at the period that are less easy to annex to a “Whiggish” schema of fortunate steps, most notably, treatments of the lived experience of Tudor society as a whole. Our understanding of this topic has very recently been enhanced by Steven Gunn in The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII, the published version of his 2015 Ford Lectures, which gives attention to the matter of the social impact of war and war making on Tudor England.

Gunn's book is a work of English social history, but one in what might be described as a rather Oxonian tradition prioritizing social and administrative matters. Unlike the Wrightsonian model of social history, which tends to shun the regnal periodization favored by political historians in favor of the contemplation of topics and themes over the course of a longer, inter-dynastic “early modern” periodization from 1550 to 1688, Gunn's treatment is devoted to a period described as “the age of Henry VIII.” Nevertheless, there is a trans-regnal element here; Gunn's “age” often embraces the mid-Tudor period and the span of Elizabeth I's “first reign.” This approach has a logic to it, as the impact of the Henrician martial ethos and experience with its traditional chivalric and territorial concerns established long-enduring norms and expectations and indelibly marked a number of generations of Englishmen and women, as well as the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish.

Gunn organizes the book into eight thematic chapters. In the introductory chapter, he outlines his hope to outline what a history of England's engagement with war might look like if anything approaching the same attention were given to the subject as has been bestowed on the Henrician Reformation; indeed, Gunn's thematic split is explicitly modeled on various topics, approaches, and methodologies of Reformation historiography.

In chapter 1, “Wars and Rumours of Wars,” Gunn attempts to chart how Henry's wars were received among the English in the form of prognostications and through oral and printed news. In “Towns and Villages,” he examines the impact of war on urban society. Gunn is particularly inspired by the quality of work on parish and borough by Robert Tittler, Beat Kümin, and Steve Hindle, who chart how those units became integrated into the Tudor state, enforcing both the Reformation and social control. Gunn inquires, instead, about how these entities met military demands for money to buy armor, arms, gunpowder, and artillery over time, which was always a challenge, especially when the price of these items changed. Parishes and boroughs also had to shoulder the burden of maintaining beacons and billeting troops.

In “Noblemen and Gentlemen,” Gunn looks at the caste whose very business traditionally was fighting. Here Gunn provides a valuable overview of the way the Tudors “were dependent on some combination of indentures, private retinues, and wider affinities to harness the recruiting powers of the nobility and gentry” (56), though contractual arrangements with tenantry won out over any assumption that the correct feudal spirit would organically obtain. The costs involved were often punitive, although among those of gentle birth a growing specialization took place. Those who determined that leading men in war was their expertise did so; those who determined that being the backbone of county administration or proffering wise counsel was their expertise did so, too.

In the next chapter, “Trade and Tillage,” Gunn surveys the influence war economy played on imports, exports, and agricultural productivity. The moral of the story in Gunn's presentation is that someone somewhere is always making money—especially in times of war. Among those who made a killing during war were privateers and horse traders (aptly enough), and those who lost out were often merchants, fishermen, and farmers. War permitted gains for those who had been awarded government contracts, but, more generally, the impact of the debasement of the currency played havoc with the economy and polity as a whole. A chapter titled “Killing and Dying” aims to provide a survey of the impact of war on those in the face of battle. It covers preferred choices of weaponry and armor, the complexion of the militias recruited, and the differentiation between amateur and professional soldiers. Gunn also discusses morale, avoiding mutiny, masculinity, atrocity, and the experience of disease. In chapter 7, “Kings and Peoples,” Gunn seeks to find out how “the king's wars” affected perceptions of the monarch, dynastic interests, and English patriotism. Clearly many of the English identified with the Tudors’ martial actions, seeing them either as just wars to regain territory that rightfully belonged to the English crown or defensive actions to protect the realm, commensurate reprisals against rebels and, among certain propagandists, to safeguard true religion.

Gunn is remarkably successful in outlining a “history of war in the age of Henry VIII that [has] some of the range, richness and subtlety of the present historiography of the Reformation” (16). The mass of information he gathered is staggering, and it is buttressed by a firm scholarly structure. Gunn's bibliography gives some sense of the immensity of his labor. Very occasionally, however, Gunn's readable, almost breezy writing style and the density of data chafe against each other. Nevertheless, this book, like the lectures, is a triumph. Ironically, however, Gunn's success in outlining a wide-ranging, rich, and subtle survey of the English people at war in the age of Henry VIII may work against his stated aim to encourage further research in the topic. If Gunn, the pioneer, has, despite himself, done the job so authoritatively, if he has presented such an apparently total and encyclopedic account of the subject, where is the spur or provocation for future historians to scrutinize the subject further?