Conventional wisdom claims that the seventeenth century gave birth to the material and ideological forces that culminated in the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Not true, according to Neal Wood, who argues that much earlier reformers—Dudley, Starkey, Brinklow, Latimer, Crowley, Becon, Lever, and Thomas Smith, as well as the better-known More and Fortescue—laid the groundwork by fashioning an economic conception of the state in response to social, economic and political conditions of England. Wood's innovative study of these early Tudor thinkers, who upheld the status quo yet condemned widespread poverty and suffering, will interest historians, political scientists, and social and political theorists.

Neal Wood is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York University, Toronto. His books include Cicero's Social and Political Thought (1988), John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism (1984), and The Politics of Locke's Philosophy (1983), all published by California.

"Wood's account of the Tudor period seeks to bring the political turbulence and economic instability of the early part of the sixteenth century into relation with an emerging discourse on the state, its foundation and its tasks. . . . The argument is skillfully made."—Political Studies

"[A] clear and valuable piece of scholarship."—Canadian Journal of Political Science

"A comprehensive analysis of the early Tudor literature of social/political criticism."—Albion