The preceding explorations suggest a few of the various depths of cultural field that one might consider in interrogating gender- and state-formation in early modern England. From contract law to court examination, from saint's life to sermon, the texts within these analyses illustrate some of the many constructions of English identity available in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Each refocuses our line of critical vision to consider different strategies and alternative authorities. Each extends our scope of understanding about the English state and its subjects. It is tempting and, I think, politically relevant, in positioning these various studies chronologically, to trace patterns of gender and state negotiation between them and to imagine cultural directives at work in the particularity of their shaping.

In one sense I can identify, as a result of these analyses, the formation of what appears to be a gendered conscience — a conscience consonant with first private and then public ideas of state citizenship. Certainly, in my opening exploration I see little evidence of this formulation. Askew, in resisting traditional authorities within the Henrician government, can only gesture toward a singular notion of conscience. She can claim a certainty of conviction via the self and establish her right to write only sporadically.