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|Title:||Before the Black Legend: Sources of Anti-Spanish Sentiment in England, 1553-1558|
|Author(s):||Thomas, Joan Marie|
|Department / Program:||History|
|Degree Granting Institution:||University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|
|Abstract:||Although not in itself a historiographic study, this dissertation proceeds from a historiographic point of departure. An introduction reviews the peculiar manner in which elements of anti-Spanish sentiment recognizeable to the modern student as facets of the literary and historiographic prejudice known as the "Black Legend" were incorporated into the writings of English historians from the late 17th to the early 20th century. Beginning with the premise that such historians viewed opposition to Mary Tudor's Spanish marriage in 1553 as proof of the existence, in 16th-century England, of an established fund of hostility toward Spain, the initial chapter of the present work states the purpose of the thesis as that of examining those expressions of anti-Spanish sentiment that appeared during the Marian period. This reconsideration of evidence seeks to suggest that such anti-Spanish feeling as was present in England throughout these years was more diverse and less spontaneous in origin than early English historians have customarily asserted.
The body of the work consists of a chronologically arranged series of chapters analyzing the ways in which, in the course of the five years of Mary's reign, general English xenophobia began to focus, specifically, upon Spaniards as that group of foreigners seeming to pose an immediate threat to English autonomy.
On two occasions English dislike of the prospect of Spanish influence moved small groups of Mary's subjects to conspire to overthrow her regime. The present study assesses the extent to which elements of anti-Spanish sentiment spurred these conspirators to action. During the latter half of the Marian period, expressions of anti-Spanish sentiment derived, increasingly, from fears about the possibility of Philip's coronation in England. In successive chapters, this dissertation examines the manner in which the distrust and hostility which such fears produced eventually encompassed the courtiers' anxieties about Philip's possible influence upon government and patronage, and the confusedly articulated view, persistent among men outside court circles, that the presence of Philip and his Spaniards in the realm was synonymous with the threat of foreign invasion and domination.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.
|Date Available in IDEALS:||2014-12-15|