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against the Lincolnshire rebels in 1536. After the rebellion was over, Henry VIII ordered him to settle in Lincolnshire to keep the region in order and in 1538-39 gave him lands-in exchange for his East Anglian estates-which made him the greatest landowner in the county. Brandon's advancement was utterly dependent on royal favour, but king and courtier in combination achieved each his own ends. The same was true throughout Brandon's political career. Although a new nobleman, raised to the peerage by Henry VIII, he served the king in the traditional noble roles of courtier, councillor and, above all, military leader. In every war of the reign he was given the responsibility of high command; at the time of his death he was actually under orders to lead yet another army against France. He successfully negotiated the rapids of life at the top in Henry VIII's Court, at their worst for him for a few weeks in 1515, after his secret marriage to Henry's sister, and between 1529 and 1536, during the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn. He took care never to commit himself to any faction, trying to maintain friendly relations with all sides. Reputation meant more to him than the day-to-day involvement in politics, and he does not seem to have been particularly ambitious for power at the centre of government, although he was a councillor from early in the reign. Yet he gradually became more important as time went by, the last years of his life, when he was great master of the Household and a leading member of the Privy Council, being the busiest of all. He died at the height of his fame and was buried, at the king's insistence, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Charles Brandon is revealed as a much more significant character than is suggested by his usual image as the jouster and reveller at the young king's Court. His relationship to Henry VIII was the key to his success, but he does not emerge as simply a time-server, rather as a stabilising force in the mould of John Russell, later first earl of Bedford. Making excellent use of a wide range of primary sources, Dr. Gunn has reconstructed not only the shape of Brandon's career but also much of its detail, with information on his clients and servants, his lands and financial affairs which goes far to bridge the gap left by the absence of family papers. A case-study of one high nobleman in his individual circumstances, the book makes a valuable contribution to the wider debate on the role of the nobility in Tudor England. HELEN MILLER Bangor ANNE BOLEYN. By E. W. Ives. Blackwell, 1986. Pp. xiv, 451. £ 14.95. Paperback, 1988. £ 8.95. Queen Anne Boleyn was publicly beheaded in the Tower of London on 19 May 1536, four days after she had been found guilty of adultery, incest and high treason. By the standards of that age, she (and the five men executed as her reputed adulteros et concubinos) had a fair trial. How strong the case against her was we cannot tell because the depositions made by witnesses have not survived; perhaps that politically dangerous archive disappeared after the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558. Without the