At the end of the 15th century the highlands were still only nominally under the rule of the crown.
The Tudors
Henry VII, founder of the new Monarchy, came to the throne in 1485. He made the monarchy strong; he brought stability to England; he earned the respect of his subjects. Henry was determined to make monarchy rich and strong. In the 24 years of his reign he only had to summon 7 parliaments. He developed the judicial authority of the royal council, in what came to be called the Court of Star Chamber.
The Tudors made little use of Parliament, which showed little independence. The direct power of the bourgeoisie was exercised much more forcibly by the citizens of London , whom the Tudors were careful to flatter. The day to day work of government fell upon the royal counselors. The feudal Great Council fell into the background. The working council remained, sometimes as a small body of the king's chosen advisers and sometimes as an assembly of the greater barons. In 1540 a Privy Council was formally constituted, consisting of the chief government officials, resembling the modern Cabinet except that it was responsible not to Parliament but the King, who was not, however bound to consult it or to take its advice. Closely attached to the Council were the Justices of the Peace which were not able to act politically in opposition to the Crown. The Justices were powerful because they represented a rising class and they had the support of the Council. They became virtually the executive part of the machine of government, an unpaid civil service.
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The royal line of the Tudors lasted from 1485 to 1603. one hundred and eighteen eventful years. They will be remembered for ‘the Tudor Rose’, ‘The six wives’, ‘St. Thomas More’, ‘the Queen’s pirates’, ‘the Invincible Armada’ and ‘Mock-Tudor houses’.
The great adventure started with an obscure family of Welsh gentry. Henry V, having won the Battle of Agincourt (1415 q.v.) and the heart of a French princess called Katherine of Valois, married her and had a weakly son, later to become, albeit briefly, Henry VI. The Wars of the Roses, chiefly fought between the great landowning barons to see who could drive the youngster off the throne and replace him with one of their own, were calamitous and noisy enough to conceal a vary dubious marriage connection between Owen Tudor and the widow of Henry V, who died no more than fifteen months after marrying his French princess. Perhaps no one noticed that a royal princess, Henry V’s queen, had as a widow formed an attachment with her wardrobe master. Nor did people notice that Owen Tudor was illegitimate.
As the Wars of the Roses toiled on poor Owen Tudor got caught in them and he had his head cut off after taking part in the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross (1461), but not before he had made Katherine pregnant.
The son was called Edmund (1430 – 1456) and because of his mother’s bloodlines he had somehow become Earl of Richmond. Not only that; he managed to marry into the Beaufort family, descended from Edward III. But the Beauforts were illegitimate too, descended from three bastards fathered by John of Gaunt on his mistress Swynford before his last inconvenient wife died and he could marry her. These children had been made legitimate in 1407, but with the exclusion of any right to the throne.The exclusion hardly affected the three because each did well. Thomas became Duke of Exeter, John, Lord High Admiral and Earl of Somerset, and Henry was Bishop of Winchester until he was made a Cardinal. In the Wars of the Roses the York side showed they had no love for the Beauforts. All three of the Earl of Someset’s grandsons were killed in battle or executed. The male line was thus ended, but a niece, Margaret, daughter of John, Duke of Somerset, married Edmund Tudor. No obscure family could have been more upwardly mobile. Edmund was the son of Owen.
Edmund and Margaret had a son, not at all sickly, who became a celebrated soldier and Earl of Pembroke. His claim to the throne became more acceptable to the commons after the death of Henry VI’s son Edward of Lancaster in yet another battle of the Wars of the Roses. Chroniclers of the time said that it was Richard of York himself who cut the young man’s throat, and Shakespeare says the same thing.
As we all know, Richard was a younger brother of the Yorkist King Edward IV, and he eventually became King Richard III (q.v.) after a series of questionable manoeuvres. Losing the support of great barons like Buckingham, Stanley and Northumberland, Richard was himself defeated in a red sea of carnage at Bosworth Field (1485). Now can you guess who became King?
Henry VII was that celebrated soldier called Henry who through his mother was an illegitimate descendent of John of Gaunt. His father was Edmund Tudor, and his claim to the throne was to say the least tenuous, but his forces won Bosworth and by right of victory he was chosen as King. The Tudor dynasty swept down on England.
Once crowned, Henry showed his consummate but ultimately sinister skills by marrying Elizabeth of York, the Yorkist heiress, and they had eight children: four survived. He also set up a secret intelligence service in England, and hounded out and had killed almost all surviving members of the Yorkist clan. His son Arthur (another sickly one) was married to Catherine of Aragon, herself a princess, and promptly died, leaving Henry VII no option but to marry her off to the younger brother – a promising tennis player and musician – the future Henry VIII (q.v.).
The appallingly bloodthirsty and expensive reign of the monster Henry VIII has been detailed by hundreds of historians and novelists, as well as in articles on this website. He cost England more money than it had, and married six times striving to have a male heir. He did have one, but Edward VI died in his youth, so his sister Mary Tudor became queen after a typically brief episode in Tudor politics in which a teenage female pawn (and her teenage husband) were sacrificed by among others, Northumberland and Suffolk.
Mary Tudor (Mary I) died after a short but distressing reign (specially distressing for Protestants), during which she got married to the King of Spain (who didn’t like her), and lost the port of Calais for the English. She was succeeded by the only Tudor worth anything – Elizabeth I; but ‘Gloriana’ never married, though she enjoyed numerous affairs with gentlemen who usually ended up minus a head. Thus was ended the House of Tudor.
The Reformation in England
The medieval Papacy was a centralized organization which succeeded in establishing a highly profitable monopoly in the grace of God. With the coming of centralized nation states it was bound to lead to a general conflict, for the breaking of the papal monopoly was a necessary step in the creation of the absolute monarchies. The antagonism to the papal monopoly expressed itself in varying ways. The greatest powers, France and Spain never broke with the Papacy. It was the poorer and more backward states, Scotland, the Scandinavian countries which were forced into open revolt and in most of these countries the Reformation had assumed democratic forms.
Midway between these extremes in power and wealth stood England. Three strands can be separated out in the steps made by Henry VIII towards freeing England from papal control:
The I was to break with Rome involving the cessation of the large revenue paid to the Popes;
The II was the confiscation of the property of the church of England itself; and
ТЬё III was the victory of the body of theological dogma known as Protestantism
Henry VIII in 1531 declared himself head of the church. Protestantism was the body of ideas inspiring the popular mass movement, and, since the Reformation in England began from above, it made slow progress at first. The majority of the people remained Catholic in belief.
For 7 years – 1529 to 1536 – the Reformation Parliament sat, passing a series of Acts which cut off the church of England from Rome and brought it under the control of the State." The church was subordinated and confined to its own limited sphere. In 1536 the direct attack on the monasteries began. The monks were too isolated to resist.
Protestants made the Bible the textbook of their party and its study the center of their practice.
So affairs stood at the death of Henry in 1547. 1) The break with Rome was complete. 2) The appropriation of Church property was partially carried out. 3) The Protestant section of the population was still a minority but a minority whose desires coincided precisely with the natural course of historical development.
The Counter-reformation
When Henry died, his 9 year-old son Edward became king of England (1547). A new Prayer Book was issued in 1549. There was a general plundering of the parish churches.
When Edward died in 1553, the throne was taken by Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII.
After Mary's death her half-sister Elizabeth took the throne (1558) and at the beginning of her reign she indicated that the Catholic service was not to her liking. In the Elizabethan settlement Protestantism assumed the form most compatible with the monarchy and with the system of local government created by the Tudors.
Serious opposition to her settlement came from the Puritans. These were Protestants who wished to "purify" the church of all Roman Catholic ideas. Elizabeth would make no concessions on their issues.
Elizabeth's foreign policy was that of friendship toward France, Spain's great revival in Europe.
Elizabeth's government instituted 2 social measures of great importance. In 1563 the Statute of Artificers made masters responsible for the welfare and education of their apprentices for a period of 7 years.
The Poor Laws of 1597 and 1601 obliged the parishers to provide for the sick and unemployed.
Elizabeth's reign saw the founding of many grammar schools, hospitals. Her reign was fraught with religious tensions of economic problems, but the achievements of a religious settlement which avoided warfare were considerable. Her own talents, intelligence and charm were responsible for the success of her monarchy.
Oxford and Cambridge universities were great centers of classical and theological study. (Cambridge inclined to Puritanism).
Elizabeth's reign coincided with a highly productive phase in English literature, which was to continue throughout James II's reign.
Edmund Spenser, for example, wrote the lyric poem "The Fairie "Queene" in honour of Elizabeth. In the theatres plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Ben Jonson were performed by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), dominated the theatre. Though little is known about his life, he received the patronage of both Elizabeth's and James I.
Elizabeth' reign produced a crop of adventurers, who continued the exploration of the New World.
1540-Privy Council was formally constituted
1529 to 1536 – the Reformation Parliament sat
