MODULE 2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN XV-XX CENTURIES
LECTURE 1 ENGLAND DURING TUDOR TIMES
Plan:
1. Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII Tudor.
2. Edward VI and Mary Tudor.
3. England during Elizabeth I Tudor.
4. Development of Parliament.
5. Life in Towns and Country.
6. Language and Culture.
Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII Tudor
The century of Tudor rule (1485-1603) is often thought of as a most glorious period in English history. Henry VII built the foundations of a wealthy nation state and a powerful monarchy. His son, Henry VIII, kept a magnificent court, and made the Church in England truly English by breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, his daughter Elizabeth brought glory to the new state by defeating the powerful navy of Spain, the greatest European power of the time. During the Tudor age England experienced one of the greatest artistic periods in its history.
Henry VII is less well known than either Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. But he was more important in establishing the new monarchy than either of them. He had the same ideas and opinions as the growing classes of merchants and gentleman farmers, and he based the royal power on good business sense.
Henry VII firmly believed that war and glory were bad for business, and that business was good for the state. He avoided quarrels with Scotland and France. During the 15th century England’s trading position had been badly damaged.
Henry VII was fortunate. Many of the old nobility had died or been defeated in the recent wars, and their lands had gone to the king. This meant that Henry had more power and more money than earlier kings. In order to establish his authority he forbade anyone, except himself, to keep armed men. The king had to be respected, feared and obeyed.
Henry’s aim was to make the Crown financially independent, and the lands and the fines he took from the old nobility helped him do this. He never spent money unless he had to. He was careful to keep the friendship of the merchant and lesser gentry classes. Like him they wanted peace and prosperity. He created a new nobility from among them. The peaceful country that he left Henry VIII was a testimony to Henry VII’s ability and success.
Henry understood earlier than most people that England’s future wealth would depend on international trade. And in order to trade, Henry realized that England should have its own fleet of merchant ships and he spent a lot of money for that.
Henry VIII’s reign, who became the king after Henry VII, was to be most notable for the “break from Rome”, the nationalization of the English Church and the beginnings of the English Reformation. Henry VIII was quite unlike his father. He was cruel, wasteful with money, and interested in pleasing himself. He wanted to become an important person in European politics, but after Hundred Years War France was now more powerful than England, and Spain was even more powerful, because it was united with the Holy Roman Empire. Henry’s failure to gain an important position in European politics was a bitter disappointment. He spent so much on wars from which England had little to gain, that his father’s carefully saved money was soon gone. In this serious financial crisis, Henry needed money. One way of doing this was by reducing the amount of silver used in coins. It was a damaging policy, and the English coinage was reduced to a seventh of its value within twenty-five years.
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Henry VIII was always looking for new sources of money. His father had become powerful by taking over the nobles’ land, but the lands owned by the Church and the monasteries had not been touched. The Church was a huge landowner, and the monasteries were no longer important to economic and social growth in the way they had been two hundred years earlier. In fact they were unpopular because many monks no longer led a good religious life but lived in wealth and comfort.
In 1531 Henry persuaded the bishops to make him head of the Church in England, and this became law after Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Henry was now free to divorce Catherine and marry his new love, Anne Boleyn. He hoped she would give him a son to follow him on the throne.
He married Anne, had a daughter, Elizabeth, by her and bastardized Mary by the Act of Succession; and then, suspecting Anne of adultery, had her executed and declared his marriage to her void, thus bastardizing Elizabeth (1536); before marrying Jane Seymore and having a son, Edward (1537).
Like his father, Henry VIII governed England through his close advisers. But when he broke with Rome, he used Parliament to make the break legal. Through several Acts of Parliament between 1532 and 1536, England became politically a Protestant country, even though the popular religion was still Catholic.
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Once England had accepted the separation from Rome Henry took the English Reformation a step further. Between 1536 and 1539 - 560 monasteries and other religious houses were closed. Henry did this in order to make money, but he also wanted to be popular with the rising classes of landowners and merchants. He therefore gave or sold much of the monasteries’ lands to them. Many smaller landowners made their fortunes.
Meanwhile the monks and nuns were thrown out. Some were given small sums of money, but many were unable to find work and became wandering beggars. The dissolution of the monasteries was probably the greatest act of official destruction in the history of Britain.
Unlike his father, Henry VIII had spent much money on warships and guns, making English guns the best in Europe.
Henry VIII did not share his father’s love of Wales. He wanted the Welsh to become English. Between 1536 and 1543 Wales became joined to England under one administration. English law was now the only law for Wales. Local Welshmen were appointed as JPs, so that the Welsh gentry became part of the ruling English establishment. Those parts of Wales which had not been “shared” were now organized like English counties. Welshmen entered the English Parliament. English became the official language.
Henry VIII wanted to bring Ireland under his authority, as he had done with Wales. He tried to persuade the Irish parliament to recognize him as king of Ireland. Henry VIII failed to get what he wanted in Ireland. In fact he made things worse by bringing Irish nationalism and Catholicism together against English rule.
After Catherine of Aragon, Henry married five more times. His last wife outlived him, but by then two had been divorced, one had died in childbirth, and two more were executed. Henry was cruel and egoistic. For reasons of state he executed Thomas More, the leading humanist scholar of the day and, later, a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry dispensed with his two great ministers, Wolsey and Cromwell, without regret.
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Edward VI and Mary Tudor
The only son of Henry VIII, Edward became King Edward VI in 1547. He was only nine. The regency council set up by Henry before his death to rule during Edward’s minority was dominated by Protestants. They were keen Protestant reformers because they had benefited from the sale of monastery lands. Indeed, all the new landowners knew that they could only be sure of keeping their new lands if they made England truly Protestant.
Most English people still believed in the old Catholic religion. Less than half the English were Protestant by belief. In 1552 a new prayer book was introduced to make sure that all churches followed the new Protestant religion. Most people were not very happy with the new religion.
Edward was a sickly boy, and in 1552 it was clear that he would not live much longer. England was afraid of the succession of Edward’s half-sister, Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, who was an ardent Catholic. Regency council persuaded the king to name Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. She was the granddaughter of Henry VII. When Edward died in 1553 Jane was proclaimed queen, but she received any support, and Mary Tudor took the throne with little trouble. Lady Jane, an innocent and tragic figure, was executed.
Mary devoted herself to the restoration of the Catholic religion in England. It was not difficult to restore the old services and doctrines, but it was impossible for the Church to regain the property it had lost during the Reformation. A number of Protestants refused to change their religion, and those who openly defied Mary were executed. This harsh policy did not stamp out Protestantism, the Queen earned the title of “Bloody Mary”.
She was supported by the ordinary people, who were angered by the greed of the Protestant nobles. The marriage of a queen was therefore a difficult matter. If Mary married an Englishman she would be under the control of a man of lesser importance. If she married a foreigner it might place England under foreign control.
Mary, for political, religious and family reasons, chose to marry King Philip of Spain. Mary hoped that Philip would bring the resources of Spain to her aid in the difficult task of Catholicising England. Philip in turn looked for the support of English military and sea power. Philip had little liking for England and the English. They also disliked him and saw in the connection with Spain only trouble and expense.
Mary and Philip had no children and Mary was faced with the unpleasant fact that when she died she would be succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth. Mary was deeply suspicious of Elizabeth’s hasty conversion to Catholicism, and feared — as it turned out, with justification — that on her death Elizabeth, and England with her, would abandon Rome.
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