Clement Armstrong, c.1477-1536.
16th C London Grocer, purveyor of
building and decorative materials and occasional attendant in the royal court of
Henry VIII. Possibly a member of the entourage of Thomas Cromwell, the chief
minister in the 1530s. Amstrong wrote several religious pamphlets in
vigorous defense of the establishment of the Church of England with a strong
royal figurehead.
Amstrong is usually credited for writing two interesting
Tudor economics treatises - Treatise
concerning the Staple and How to reforme the Realme - both some time
around 1533 (according to Bindoff, 1944). Unsigned and unpublished, they
were discovered in manuscript form and published by Reinhald Pauli only in 1878.
A third manuscript (How the comen people...) was found among them, but
its attribution to Armstrong is less confident.
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Major Works of Clement Armstrong
- Clement Armstrong' sermons and declaracions agaynst popish ceremonies,
ms. 1530.
- [Anon.]
A Treatise
concerning the Staple and the Commodities of this Realm,
ms. c.1533 [pub. 1878, in R. Pauli, Drei volkswirthschaftliche
Denkschriften aus der Zeit Heinriches VIII von England; attrib. to
Armstrong]
- [Anon.] How
to reforme the Realme in settying them to worke and to restore Tillage,
ms. c.1533 [pub. 1878, in Pauli, ibid., attrib. to Armstrong]
- [Anon.]
How the
comen people may be set to worke an Order of the Comen Welth, ms. c.
1533 [pub. 1878, in Pauli, ibid attribution to Clement
Armstrong less certain than previous two.]
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Resources on Clement Armstrong
- "Clement Armstrong and His Treatises of the Commonweal", by S.T. Bindoff,
1944, Econ Hist Rev.
- "Clement
Armstrong and the Godly Commonwealth", by E.H. Shagan, in Marshall et
al., 2002, Beginnings of English Protestantism. [preview]
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All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca
