“The point of a very woman”: Gendering Destabilization in Edward Hall’s Union and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles

Abstract

Prior to the Reformation, humanist writers were already criticizing earlier chroniclers, particularly monks, for their annalistic tendencies, calling them backward and closed-minded: the Second Crowland Continuator, for instance, remarks that his predecessor was too intent upon “holy religion which usually ignores worldly matters.”¹ The religious conflicts of the sixteenth century only exacerbated these divisions, aligning Catholicism with, at best, backward thinking, and at worst, outright lies. The Protestant Reformation’s emphasis on the Bible as a text to be interpreted directly by the laity, rather than explained by the clergy, carried over to other texts as well, including historical accounts. Thomas Elyot, for instance, in The Boke Named the Governour (1531), defends historians against accusations of lying by pointing out that “[by] that same raison may they nat only condemne all holy scripture whiche contayneth thynges more wonderfull than any historien writeth but also exclude credulitie utterly from the company of man.”² By placing history and scripture on the same intellectual and epistemological level, post-Reformation writers and readers demonstrate a very different relationship with texts than their medieval forbears; however, as will be seen in this chapter, there are a number of aspects of medieval chronicling and historiography that do carry over that perceived divide, rendering it more blurred and permeable.