Beginning with the arrival of Henry Tudor and his army at Milford in 1485 and ending with the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, this is an account of an eventful and contradictory age. The author draws together all the strands of Tudor social life into a tapestry displaying every aspect of the times. He contrasts the life of palaces, grand tournaments and English drama with the harshness of peasant life, terrible roads, a vast underclass, the harsh treatment of heretics and traitors and the misery of the Plague.