he period from the end of the Wars of the Roses to the so-called Glorious Revolution was one of political, religious, and cultural conflict in Britain, culminating in civil war, the execution of a king, and the later restoration of his son. Loyalty to the Monarchy, edited by Matthew Ward and Matthew Hefferan, explores "how the concept of loyalty to the monarchy in England and Scotland was encouraged, expressed and challenged in such a turbulent period" (2). The strengths of the collection show

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... learly from the beginning; it covers an impressive range of topics, localities, and chronology on the theme of loyalty and how it is expressed. Sovereigns expected loyalty from their subjects, but in times of war, when rulers changed their alliances or when the rulers themselves were changed, that loyalty could prove disastrous to their subjects. Each of the sections addresses the wars that the English (or Scottish) fought over the course of about two centuries. The rhetoric of loyalty and the performance thereof were key to survival in these years. The chapters explore performances of loyalty by subjects as well as how the sovereign extracted that loyalty. Beginning in the fifteenth century, Emma Levitt's chapter on Edward IV's skilled use of the Order of the Garter to bind his nobility to him aptly demonstrates how medieval chivalric standards could be used as rhetorical weapons. Wesley Corrêa analyses the underlying rhetoric of political performances. These performances were used as a tool to manage public opinion and to control the imagined dialogue, inherent which within Yorkist and early Tudor propaganda, that a king had with his subjects. The rhetoric of loyalty, not to an individual (namely James III of Scotland), but to the monarchy as an institution, is the subject of Callum Watson's chapter, where he analyses Blind Hary's The Wallace. Building on the idea of how subjects could demonstrate loyalty not to an individual ruler but to the crown instead, Simon Lambe incorporates the history of the Paulet family into the wider discussion in the volume. The Paulets prized flexibility as a key family virtue, which allowed them to bend religious performances to suit the ever-changing Henrician Church, rather than break (their necks) in observance of conservative principles. As Lambe argues, this flexibility allowed them to rise steadily at court. Some individuals, less pragmatic than the Paulets, counselled their sovereign using book dedications, as Valerie Schutte explores. The volatile political climate of the 1530s comes through in her chapter as she demonstrates how authors changed their dedication practices over the course of Henry VIII's reign. Initially, authors used dedications to elicit Henry's patronage or favour, but "after the break with Rome, book dedicators shifted their strategies from being loyal to themselves, to being more overtly loyal to either their religious position or to the crown so as not to be suspected of hostility towards Henry and his new policies" (118). The next section of the collection treats the reign of Elizabeth I through to the beginnings of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Thematically, while rhetoric and performance are still important, the chapters in this section analyse the legal obligations of T