Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England.

Linda Levy Peck's Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990; pp. xii + 319. [pounds]35) gives us a series of concentric studies of corruption and patronage, in the court, the county of Buckinghamshire, in the navy, in ideology, and in political language. She shows that it provided an acceptable language in which criticism of the Crown and its agents might be phrased, and therefore that a perception of corruption did a good deal to undermine the legitimacy of the regime. James's unwillingness to rescue ministers such as Bacon and Cranfield, who were accused of corruption, made the charge a very useful political tool. There is, of course, …