The year 1485 marked the end of the Wars of the Roses and the beginning of a new era when Henry VII defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. This victory established the House of Tudor, a dynasty that would rule England and Wales for 118 years until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Henry VII, the founder of this house, was not a traditional king but a man who had to fight for his crown and spent the majority of his reign stabilizing a fractured economy. He created a new system of royal finance that served as the foundation of the modern English revenue system, tripling the crown's income and achieving a balanced budget. His fiscal policies were viewed as oppressive by the wealthy, who were forced to abide by decisions of his special royal council, the Court of Star Chamber. This court allowed English laws to be manipulated to the king's advantage to avoid feudal anarchy. Henry returned lands that had been distributed to the nobility during prior reigns and brought the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster under royal control, generating significant funds for the crown. He transitioned from the Plantagenets policy of acquiring and holding French territories to a more strategic, defensive anglocentric approach, establishing an alliance with Spain through the marriage of his son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon. This marriage propelled England to the forefront of European politics and played a role in the success of the Protestant Reformation that would follow.
Henry VIII And The Church Break
Henry VIII, energetic, militaristic, and headstrong, remains one of the most visible kings of England, primarily because of his six marriages, all of which were designed to produce a male heir, and his heavy retribution in executing many top officials and aristocrats. The main policy development was Henry's taking full control of the Church of England, which followed from his break from Rome caused by the refusal of Pope Clement VII to grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry thereby introduced a very mild variation of the Protestant Reformation, rejecting the Pope as the head of the Church in England and insisting that national sovereignty required the Absolute supremacy of the king. He worked closely with Parliament in passing a series of laws that implemented the break, with the decisive moves coming with the Act of Supremacy in 1534 that made the king the protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of England. The laws of treason were greatly strengthened so that verbal dissent alone was treasonous, and some short-lived popular rebellions were quickly suppressed. The highly visible main refusals came from Bishop Fisher and Chancellor Thomas More, both of whom were executed. Among the senior aristocrats, trouble came from the Pole family, which supported Reginald Pole in exile in continental Europe. Henry destroyed the rest of the family, executing its leaders and seizing all its property. The second stage involved the seizure of the monasteries, which were closed, the monks and nuns were pensioned off, and the valuable lands were sold to friends of the King, thereby producing a large, wealthy, gentry class that supported Henry. In terms of theology and ritual there was little change, as Henry wanted to keep most elements of Catholicism and detested the heresies of Martin Luther and the other reformers.
Between 1515 and 1529, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey would be the most powerful man in England except, possibly, for the king. Operating with the firm support of the king and with special powers over the church given by the Pope, Wolsey dominated civic affairs, administration, the law, the church, and foreign policy. He was amazingly energetic and far-reaching. In terms of achievements, he built a great fortune for himself and was a major benefactor of arts, humanities, and education. Wolsey loved to display his wealth, eating well, dressing magnificently, processing through the streets of London pompously, and building two great palaces, York Place in London and Hampton Court up the Thames Valley, which outshone anything in the King's possession. He projected numerous reforms, but in the end English government had not changed much. For all the promise, there was very little achievement of note. From the king's perspective, his greatest failure was an inability to get a divorce when Henry VIII needed a new wife to give him a son who would be the undisputed heir to the throne. Historians agree that Wolsey was a disappointment. In the end, he conspired with Henry's enemies and died of natural causes before he could be beheaded. Thomas Cromwell, who was Henry VIII's chief minister from 1532 to 1540, not only removed control of the Church of England from the hands of the Pope but transformed England with an unprecedented modern, bureaucratic government. Cromwell replaced medieval government-as-household-management, introducing reforms into the administration that delineated the King's household from the state and created a modern administration. He injected Tudor power into the darker corners of the realm and radically altered the role of the Parliament of England. This transition happened in the 1530s, and must be regarded as part of a planned revolution. Before Cromwell, the realm could be viewed as the King's private estate writ
Cardinal Wolsey And Thomas Cromwell
large, where most administration was done by the King's household servants rather than separate state offices. By masterminding these reforms, Cromwell laid the foundations of England's future stability and success. Cromwell's luck ran out when he picked the wrong bride for the King; he was beheaded for treason. More recently, historians have emphasized that the king and others played powerful roles as well.
The king had an annual income of about £100,000, but he needed much more in order to suppress rebellions and finance his foreign adventures. In 1533, for example, military expenditures on the northern border cost £25,000, while the 1534 rebellion in Ireland cost £38,000. Suppressing the Pilgrimage of Grace cost £50,000, and the king's new palaces were expensive. Meanwhile, customs revenue was slipping. The Church had an annual revenue of about £300,000; a new tax of 10% was imposed which brought in about £30,000. To get even larger sums it was proposed to seize the lands owned by monasteries, some of which the monks farmed and most of which was leased to local gentry. Taking ownership meant the rents went to the king. Selling the land to the gentry at a bargain price brought in £1 million in one-time revenue and gave the gentry a stake in the administration. The clerical payments from First Fruits and Tenths, which previously went to the pope, now went to the king. Altogether, between 1536 and Henry's death, his government collected £1.3 million; this huge influx of money caused Cromwell to change the Crown's financial system to manage the money. He created a new department of state and a new official to collect the proceeds of the dissolution and the First Fruits and Tenths. The Court of Augmentations and number of departments meant a growing number of officials, which made the management of revenue a major activity. Cromwell's new system was highly efficient with far less corruption or secret payoffs or bribery than before. Its drawback was the multiplication of departments whose sole unifying agent was Cromwell; his fall caused confusion and uncertainty; the solution was even greater reliance on bureaucratic institutions and the new Privy Council. In dramatic contrast to his father, Henry VIII spent heavily, in terms of military operations in Britain and
The Dissolution Of Monasteries
in France, and in building a great network of palaces. How to pay for it remained a serious issue. The growing number of departments meant many new salaried bureaucrats. There were further financial and administrative difficulties in 1540, 1558, aggravated by war, debasement, corruption, and inefficiency, which were mainly caused by Somerset.
The short reign of Edward VI marked the triumph of Protestantism in England. Somerset, the elder brother of the late Queen Jane Seymour and uncle to King Edward VI, had a successful military career. When the boy king was crowned, Somerset became Lord Protector of the realm and in effect ruled England from 1547 to 1549. Seymour led expensive, inconclusive wars with Scotland. His religious policies angered Catholics. Purgatory was rejected so there was no more need for prayers to saints, relics, and statues, nor for masses for the dead. Some 2400 permanent endowments called chantries had been established that supported thousands of priests who celebrated masses for the dead, or operated schools or hospitals in order to earn grace for the soul in purgatory. The endowments were seized in 1547. By autumn 1549, his costly wars had lost momentum, the crown faced financial ruin, and riots and rebellions had broken out around the country. He was overthrown by his former ally John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Dudley by contrast moved quickly after taking over an almost bankrupt administration in 1549. Working with his top aide William Cecil, Dudley ended the costly wars with France and Scotland and tackled finances in ways that led to some economic recovery. To prevent further uprisings he introduced countrywide policing, appointed Lords Lieutenants who were in close contact with London, and set up what amounted to a standing national army. Working closely with Thomas Cramner, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dudley pursued an aggressively Protestant religious policy. They promoted radical reformers to high Church positions, with the Catholic bishops under attack. The use of the Book of Common Prayer became law in 1549; prayers were to be in English not Latin. The Mass was no longer to be celebrated, and preaching became the centerpiece of church services. Purgatory, Protestantism declared, was a Catholic superstition that
Edward And The Protestant Crusade
falsified the Scriptures. Prayers for the dead were useless because no one was actually in Purgatory. It followed that prayers to saints, veneration of relics, and adoration of statues were all useless superstitions that had to end. For centuries devout Englishman had created endowments called chantries designed as good works that generated grace to help them get out of purgatory after they died. Many chantries were altars or chapels inside churches, or endowments that supported thousands of priests who said Masses for the dead. In addition there were many schools and hospitals established as good works. In 1547 a new law closed down 2,374 chantries and seized their assets. Although the Act required the money to go to charitable ends and the public good, most of it appears to have gone to friends of the Court. The new Protestant orthodoxy for the Church of England was expressed in the Forty-Two Articles of Faith in 1553. But when the king suddenly died, Dudley's last-minute efforts to make his daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey the new sovereign failed after only nine days of her reign. Queen Mary took over and had him beheaded and had Jane Grey beheaded after Thomas Wyatt's Protestant rebellion against the marriage of the queen and Philip II of Spain less than a year later.
Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon, the first wife, and she closely identified with her Catholic, Spanish heritage. She was next in line for the throne. However, in 1553 as Edward VI lay dying, he and the Duke of Northumberland plotted to make his first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, the new monarch. Northumberland wanted to keep control of the government and promote Protestantism. Edward signed a devise to alter the succession, but that was not legal, for only Parliament could amend its own acts. Edward's Privy Council kept his death secret for three days to install Lady Jane, but Northumberland had neglected to take control of Princess Mary. She fled and organized a band of supporters, who proclaimed her Queen across the country. The Privy Council abandoned Northumberland and proclaimed Mary to be the sovereign after nine days of the pretended Jane Grey. Queen Mary imprisoned Lady Jane and executed Northumberland. Mary is remembered for her vigorous efforts to restore Roman Catholicism after Edward's short-lived crusade to minimize Catholicism in England. Protestant historians have long denigrated her reign, emphasizing that in just five years she burned several hundred Protestants at the stake in the Marian persecutions. However, a historiographical revisionism since the 1980s has to some degree improved her reputation among scholars. Haigh concluded that the last years of Mary's reign were not a gruesome preparation for Protestant victory, but a continuing consolidation of Catholic strength. Catholic historians, such as John Lingard, argued Mary's policies failed not because they were wrong but because she had too short a reign to establish them. In other countries, the Catholic Counter-Reformation was spearheaded by Jesuit missionaries; Mary's chief religious advisor, Cardinal Pole, refused to allow the Jesuits in England. Spain was widely seen as the enemy, and her marriage to King Philip II of Spain was deeply
Mary And The Marian Persecutions
unpopular, even though he had practically no role in English government and they had no children. The military loss of Calais to France was a bitter humiliation to English pride. Failed harvests increased public discontent. Although Mary's rule was ultimately ineffectual and unpopular, her innovations regarding fiscal reform, naval expansion, and colonial exploration were later lauded as Elizabethan accomplishments.
Historians often depict Elizabeth's reign as the golden age in English history in terms of political, social, and cultural development, and in comparison with Continental Europe. Calling her Gloriana and using the symbol of Britannia starting in 1572, marked the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over the hated and feared Spanish. Elizabeth's reign marks the decisive turning point in English religious history, as a predominantly Catholic nation at the beginning of her reign was predominantly Protestant by the end. Although Elizabeth executed 250 Catholic priests, she also executed some extreme Puritans, and on the whole she sought a moderately conservative position that mixed Royal control of the church with no people role, combined with predominantly Catholic ritual, and a predominantly Calvinist theology. Just three years into the troubled later years, England faced an attack by a formidable adversary, the Spanish Armada. Despite being greatly outnumbered, the English Navy was able to successfully defeat the Spanish, causing them to retreat. The result was a boost at home. Elizabeth remained a strong leader, but almost all of her earlier advisers had died or retired. Robert Cecil took over the role of leading advisor long held by his father Lord Burghley. Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was her most prominent general, a role previously held by his stepfather Robert Dudley, who was the love of Elizabeth's life, and the adventurer/historian Sir Walter Raleigh was a new face on the scene. The three new men formed a triangle of interlocking and opposing forces that was hard to break into. The first vacancy came in 1601, when Devereux was executed for attempting to take the Queen prisoner and seize power. After Elizabeth died the new king kept on Cecil as his chief advisor and beheaded Raleigh. The cultural achievements of the Elizabethan era
Elizabeth And The Golden Age
have long attracted scholars, and since the 1960s they have conducted intensive research on the social history of England. Main subjects within Tudor social history includes courtship and marriage, the food they consumed, and the clothes they wore. Such research has debunked the common misconception that Tudor elites were unclean. While Elizabethans still adhered to Humorism, people were aware of taking care of their cleanliness, numerous writers of the period penned daily cleaning regimes and medical texts. Baths were taken to purify the body, and oral hygiene was practiced. While plague was relatively common, no fewer than 23 medical treatises were written on the subject, along with hundreds of recipes for medicines. British historian Miranda Kaufmann researched the lives of 10 of the around 360 recorded persons of Black African heritage, the majority of whom lived out their lives as free persons, living in England or otherwise a part of Tudor English society between 1500 and 1640, showing some of the first recorded evidence of Black British people after the Roman period. Jews, mainly Marranos from Portugal or Spain fleeing persecution from the Inquisition began developing a small community in London during this time period. Notably, this was not the first written record of Jews in England which begins around the 1070s, but it was a new wave of migration and community development in England. Hector Nunez and Roderigo Lopez were both Jews and leading physicians during 1570s and 1580s Elizabethan England. Lopez's believed involvement in a plot to poison Elizabeth I may have had a long-running effect on shaping antisemitic views in the United Kingdom. The first written records of the Romani people in Scotland begin in 1505 and in England around 1513 or 1514. First believed to come from little Egypt, an English exonym given to an area around part of the Peloponnese peninsula in what is now modern-day Greece, the people were first called Egyptians in literature and from which the word Gypsy is derived. Discriminatory laws were passed in response to their arrival, including the Egyptians Act 1530 and the Egyptians Act 1554. In music, William Byrd was an influential Elizabethan composer, mainly known for religious music. John Bull was a leading organist and John Dowland excelled in lute compositions. The English Madrigal School flourished, influenced by Italian models, producing popular a cappella compositions. Many foreign-trained artists contributed to Tudor Art while working for the court, such as Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger and John de Critz the Elder. While Lucas Horenbout and his sister Susannah worked for Henry VIII, Lucas would go on to influence Hans Holbein the Younger, the era's greatest portraitist. Also Levina Teerlinc, a miniaturist who worked in the court later taught Nicholas Hilliard, who became the top limner of the period. Scientific progress was driven not only by universities or royal patronage, but also by craftsmen, merchants, and adventurers, marking a shift toward practical knowledge and exploration, exemplified by Francis Drake's circumnavigation around the world or Frobisher and Gilbert's attempt to cross the Northwest Passage. Major figures of the period who advanced practical knowledge include Francis Bacon, John Dee, Thomas Digges, and Thomas Harriot.