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  • The Correspondence of Reginald Pole.Vol. 4 : A Biographical Companion:The British Isles
  • David Loades
The Correspondence of Reginald Pole, Vol. 4: A Biographical Companion: The British Isles. Edited by Thomas F. Mayer and Courtney B. Walters. [ St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2008. Pp. xxviii, 621. $144.95. ISBN 978-0-754-60329-0.)

Over the last six years, the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History series has published three volumes of Cardinal Reginald Pole's correspondence, edited by Thomas F. Mayer, who has now coedited this supplementary volume. The scholarly labor invested has been immense, and the result may be described as definitive. No serious student of Pole, or of the Reformation struggles more generally, can now afford to be without these collections. Two comments, however, are in order. First, it is suggested that a similar volume is planned to cover Pole's continental correspondents, as this covers only the British Isles, but that intention is not quite clear. Such a volume is needed. Second, there is no system of cross-referencing between these biographies and the letters themselves. This means that whereas it is straightforward to work from the letters to the biographies, it is impossible to do the reverse. Consequently, if the reader wishes to know how John Clement features in the letters, he or she must look in the index to volume 1.

There is considerable overlap with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and with Stanley Thomas Bindoff's volumes in the History of Parliament, but the approach is not entirely consistent. For Queen Elizabeth I, who is not an important figure in this context, the reader is simply referred to the ODNB,whereas both Queen Mary I and William Cecil have substantial independent entries. Where this work scores consistently is in the biographies of relatively obscure men, many of them clergy, who fall well below the radar of the ODNB. Even the identities of four distinct John Smiths are carefully sorted out. However, the style might best be described as cryptic. It is euphemistically called by the editors "telegraphese" (p. 3) and involves a heavy use of abbreviations, both for sources and for standard items, such as degrees and preferments. The volume starts with twenty-three pages of these abbreviations, and although they become familiar with use, the reader might well wish for rather more lucid prose.

However, this is a reference work, and no one will want to read it from cover to cover. Apart from the list of abbreviations, it starts with eleven pages on "How to Use This Volume," which is really an explanation of the methodology [End Page 836]used in its production. It includes nearly 1400 entries, arranged alphabetically. Each is set out chronologically, and they vary in length from few lines to four or five pages. Years of meticulous work have gone into the preparation of these biographies, and it is a pity that the introduction had to conclude with the section "Problems," which outlines the difficulties encountered in various archives, including the "obscene" cost of microfilm at the National Archives (p. 9).These are sadly familiar issues to scholars, and no excuses are needed for this admirable work. Through no fault of the editors, pages 421–52 have become displaced in production and now appear between pages 484–85. This is only a minor inconvenience in a work of this kind, but the reader needs to be aware of it.

David Loades
University of Sheffield

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