In The Idea of History in Early Stuart England, D. R. Woolf asserts that with the exception of ecclesiastical historiography Tudor and early Stuart historical writing “reflects a conservative ideology of obedience, duty, and deference to social and political hierarchy.” Until at least the 1630s, he argues, English historians held “a relatively monochromatic, and almost universally shared, image of the national past.” Lest his views are mistaken for Tillyard's, Woolf adds that early Stuart political thinking did permit “a range of opinions on questions such as the relationship of monarch and law, of prince and parliament, and of church and state,” but that it did “without ever challenging assumptions about the need for political order, the importance of social hierarchy, and the dangers of rebellion” (xiv). Annabel Patterson's recent book on Holinshed, I think, presents an interesting challenge to Woolf's monochromatic picture of Stuart historiography, but, on the whole, we have to agree with Woolf that although historical writings and historical drama were subjected to government control (and therefore deemed potentially subversive), neither genre is generally known to have incited rebellion or called for radical changes in the monarchy. On the other hand, we should not be lulled into believing that “moderate dissent and subtle shadings in various historians' personal pictures of the past” constitutes anything less than the basis for the “truly dialectical, even confrontational” nature that comes to characterize historiography as we near the English Revolution (Woolf, Idea of History 33).