The aristocratic house of Howard is among the oldest in the United Kingdom and it remains the leading Catholic family in England. The Duke of Norfolk is one of the Great Officers of State and, as Earl Marshal, is responsible for organizing august events, including coronations and the opening of Parliament. For studies of the sixteenth century, the most prominent members of the family are Anne Boleyn and her cousin Katherine Howard, who were Henry VIII's executed wives. Their uncle, who first pushed them toward marriage with the king and then disavowed them as they went to the block, was the redoubtable Thomas Howard, the third duke. His grandson, the fourth duke, was beheaded in 1572 following accusations that he had plotted to elope with Mary, Queen of Scots, to gain the English throne. Despite the family's prominence, many aspects of the Howards’ influence in the sixteenth century have yet to be sufficiently explained. Thus Gender, Family, and Politics brings some of the other, lesser-known figures into context. Clark is the author of an important recent article that appeared in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History on the elaborate tombs that Agnes, the wife of the second duke, built in the parish church of St. Mary's next to her residence near Lambeth Palace that commemorated members of the Howard family and defined how later generations would perceive them. Anne Boleyn's mother was buried there.

Among Clark's central questions is to what extent the Howard women supported their family's dynastic ambitions. She asks in what ways they were able to challenge the authority of their husbands and fathers. Clark shows that the array of possibilities for great ladies was larger than has often been thought. Her second chapter, on material culture and patronage, might be read alongside Linda Levy Peck's recent Women of Fortune: Money, Marriage and Murder in Early Modern England, which examines the lives of great titled women into the seventeenth century. Some ladies invested in silver. Others, like the third duke's second wife, Elizabeth, backed the wrong side in Henry's dynastic stakes—she embroidered Katherine of Aragon's insignia on her bedding as a type of material and political resistance. Both books show that great ladies often did not remarry following their husbands’ deaths, for in widowhood they were better able to exercise agency over their own lives.

Among the women Clark discusses is the third duke's daughter Mary, the widowed bride of Henry's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. She had to fight hard to obtain her jointure after her husband's untimely death in 1536 because her marriage had never been consummated, and therefore Henry begrudged the annuity that had been promised to her. Clark shows that Mary, running against the grain of her family, was a staunch patron of evangelical preachers and authors in the reign of Edward VI. Writing about married women, who were disadvantaged under the laws of the time, can offer special challenges. Clark helpfully identifies her subjects with a string of their natal and married names, which looks a little awkward on the page but is useful in guiding the reader through the stories of her subjects’ lives.

This is Nicola Clark's first book and it has a first book's problems. Some of the chapters could have been extended. Some of the books cited in the notes do not appear in the bibliography. For the chapter on religion, one might observe that a friar is not a monk. But these are quibbles. Gender, Family, and Politics is a welcome addition to the field.