Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England, episode 291, Queen and Court.

For this week I thought we should have a bit of context why don't we?

Over the next many episodes, many many episodes, I'm going to wobble on about many things that get done, often from the top down.

They will have a deal of bottom up to at some point because it's always important to have a bottom in every podcast.

But as we talk about pretty councils and courts and the ticketing of necks of the Queen's squeeze,

it might be good to have some sort of idea about how things all hung together,

how all the political massinations and pursuit of power translated itself onto the road.

How did Elizabethan government work in outline?

How and where were decisions made and how much talk did it have? Did it basically work?

The government of England in two to times was like an oaker or like an onion, I might say, layer upon layer.

Although actually it's a lot more complicated than an onion, so forget that analogy, it's more like a matrix.

It relied on structures and hierarchies, bureaucracy sort of thing.

So we will talk constantly about the Queen, her court, the pretty council, and we'll spend much time in those structures.

But as we've talked about in the strand on social episodes, for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of time,

these institutions were a long way away, and the province of the very grand indeed.

However, that does not mean that Tudor government was arcane or distant, Ocontrere, Mombrave, Ocontrere.

It was ever present, close at hand, in the form of the parish, and particular, the law.

It's been effectively argued that the process of law with local tithing groups, grand jurors, local JPs, travelling-assised judges,

allowed Tudor communities to influence up the chain of command and play a direct role in the development of policy and the formation of the Tudor state,

not just to receive orders and control from on high.

Much government was deeply local, but it was connected to the centre.

Central institutions such as the Pravee council could do no more to implement its policies than communicate its demands through a stream of letters to local governments and magistrates.

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