TUDORS - OXFORD

• Act of Attainder


  declared a landowner guilty of rebelling against a monarch
• Amicable Grant


  ordered by Wolsey in 1525 to raise more money for war
• annates


  revenue paid to the Pope by a bishop or other cleric on his appointment, collected in England and sent to Rome; also known as the 'First Fruits' (primitive in Latin)
• anticlericalism


  opposition to the Church's role in political and other non-religious matters
• benefactor


  a person who makes a charitable donation (to the church)
• bond


  a legal document which bound an individual to another to perform an action or forfeit a specified sum of money if they failed to do so
• bourgeoisie


  middle-class residents of towns and cities
• bull


  a letter or formal declaration issued by the Pope
• bureaucrat


  an official in a government department, in particular, one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of the people's needs
• Calvinism


  ideas on Church doctrine and organisation put forward in Geneva by the French reformer, John Calvin
• caste


  a class or group of people who inherit exclusive privileges or are perceived as socially distinct
• Catholic reformation


  the attempts of the Catholic Church across Europe to reform itself
• chamber


  the private areas of the Court; also a key department for the efficient collection of royal revenues
• chancery


  The main court of equity in the kingdom
• chantries


  chapels where Masses for the souls of the dead took place
• chivalrous


  gallant, or courteous; a code of conduct associated historically with the dutiful behaviour of medieval knights
• common rights


  denotes the legal right of tenants to use common land, e.g. keeping animals; the exact nature of these rights varied from place to place
• Corpus Christi


  literally meaning the 'body of Christ'. a feast of the Catholic Church which celebrates the 'blessed sacrament
• courtier


  a person who attends a royal court as a companion or adviser to the monarch
• diocese


  an area under the pastoral care of a bishop in the Christian Church
• Duchy of Lancaster


  a significant body of property, mostly but not exclusively situated in Lancashire, which personally belonged to the king but was formally the territory of the duke
• elites


  select groups that are superior in terms of ability, birth or qualities to the rest of a group or society
• Erasmianism


  the body of ideas associated with Erasmus and his followers
• Erastian


  the view that the State should have authority over the Church
• extort


  obtained by force, threats, or other unfair means
• extraordinary revenue


  money raised by the king from additional sources as one-off payments when he faced an emergency or an unforeseeable expense of government; this could be made up of parliamentary grants, loans clerical taxes
• feudal aid


  a right by which the Crown could impose a tax on their tenants for the knighting of the eldest son, the marriage of the eldest daughter or to ransom a lord
• feudal sytem


  the medieval system by which society was structured depending on relationships in which land was held in return for some form of service
• fifteenths and tenths


  standard form of taxation, calculated in the 14th century, paid by towns and boroughs to the Crown
• Gothic


  the style of architecture prevalent in Western Europe in the 12th-16th centuries, characterised by pointed arches and large windows
• grace


  the pure state a soul needed to be in to enter heaven
• grazing rights


  a legal term referring to the right of a user to allow their livestock to feed (graze) in a given area
• Groom of the stool


  the most intimate of an English monarch's courtiers, who became a man in whom much confidence was placed a royal secrets were shared as a matter of course
• guilds and confraternities


  voluntary associations of individuals created to promote works of Christian charity or devotion
• Hanseatic League


  a group of free cities originating in the 13th century, which came together to form a commercial union with the intention of controlling trade in the Baltic Sea; the league dominated commercial activity in Northern Europe from the 13th-15th century
• heir presumptive


  the person who is first in line of succession but whose position could be displaced by a new heir with a better claim
• heresy


  the denial of the validity of the key doctrines of the Church
• homily


  a published reading which could be substituted for a sermon produced by a clergymen
• household government


  medieval system of governance where the head of the household, invariably an adult male, had authority over the property, labour, and mobility of everyone living on his land
• huguenot


  term used in the 16th and 17th centuries to denote French Protestants