Tudor & Stuart England.

Henry VII possessed only his ability and the ancient name and audacity of his Welsh ancestors. His grandfather had married the widow of Henry V, and his father had married Margaret Beaufort, who was descended illegitimately from Edward III. Henry's only claim to the throne was his victory at Bosworth and his subsequent success. The pragmatic Tudors gave England the government it wanted; with the exception of Mary I, they seldom tried to lead where their subjects were not ready to follow. Henry got rid of his Yorkist rivals, including some impostors. He married Elizabeth (1465-1503), Edward IV's daughter, and soon had a nursery full of babies, the only Tudor so blessed. He gained recognition abroad, from Spain in 1489 by the Treaty of Medina del Campo, and then from France, the Netherlands, and Scotland. He restored strong, efficient government, such as England had once enjoyed but lacked for many years. He promoted English trade, which he could tax, avoided foreign wars, and saved money. He became rich and powerful, commanding England's respect if not its love.

Ambitious and bold, Henry VIII was a vivid contrast to his careful, workaday father. Humanist scholars praised him; one of them, Thomas More, served in his government. In 1513 Henry won the Battle of the Spurs in France and beat the Scots at Flodden ( see Flodden Field). He exhausted his inherited wealth, but won fame and discovered the talents of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who as chancellor and archbishop of York dominated the years 1514-29. The blight on Henry's reign was his desire for a male heir. Although his wife, Catherine of Aragón, bore him six children, only one, later Mary I, survived infancy. Wanting a son, and smitten by the dark eyes of Anne Boleyn, Henry appealed to the pope for a divorce. When the all-capable Wolsey could not obtain it, Henry dismissed him and summoned the Reformation Parliament. The result was the Church of England, with Henry as supreme head, separate from Rome but otherwise Catholic. Anne Boleyn, whom Henry was now free to marry (1533), gave birth not to a son but to another daughter, Elizabeth. Anne soon lost the king's favor and was beheaded for alleged adultery. Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, died giving birth to Edward, his only surviving son. Three later wives, one of whom he divorced and another of whom was beheaded, had no children.

Thomas Cromwell, Henry's second administrative genius, oversaw the revolutionary changes of the 1530s: the break with Rome and dissolution of the monasteries, the new growth of Parliament, especially the House of Commons, and the creation out of the old King's Council of a new bureaucratic structure including the Privy Council and the prerogative courts, which were controlled by the Crown.

Under Edward VI, a minor dominated successively by Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, and John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, the English church became Protestant. Parliament's Acts of Uniformity enforced the Book of Common Prayer. When Edward died at the age of 16, Northumberland tried but failed to save Protestantism and himself by preventing the succession of the king's half sister, Mary. Mary I, the daughter of Catherine of Aragón, restored the Roman Catholic church and married her cousin, Philip II of Spain. Her burning of almost 300 Protestants made the people hate her and Rome, however, and her marriage led to war with France and the loss of Calais. When Bloody Mary, as she was known, died in November 1558, England rejoiced in the accession of her half sister Elizabeth.

Elizabeth I, one of England's greatest sovereigns, had her grandfather's frugality and care and her father's imperious manner and his ability to charm and overwhelm. She had a sense of what people wanted and would allow and had the judgment to pick able and devoted ministers.

Cooperating with Parliament, she settled the church in 1559 on a moderate course. She neutralized the Scottish threat by helping the Protestant and pro-English faction to win dominance there. She assisted the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands and encouraged English sailors to raid Spanish ships on the high seas. Her navy defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 and prevented the invasion of England. Ireland, increasingly rebellious and vulnerable as a possible point of foreign attack, was finally completely conquered in 1603. Elizabeth presided over England's rise to glory abroad and to prosperity and literary achievement at home, justifiably giving her name to England's golden age.

The Early Stuarts. The accession of James I, the son of Elizabeth's cousin, Mary, queen of Scots, united the crowns of England and Scotland. It also began a century of domestic conflict, due in part to the personalities of the Stuart kings, but more to the problems inherited from the previous reign. The Puritans, or extreme Protestants, who had already been restive under Elizabeth, grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Church of England, which they felt was still too Catholic. Religious unrest reached its height when the anti-Puritan William Laud became archbishop of Canterbury in the 1630s. The Gunpowder Plot, a Roman Catholic conspiracy to blow up Parliament in 1605, confirmed English fear of Rome. The major conflict was between king and Par liament, that is, between James's idea, passed on to his son, Charles I, of monarchy by divine right, and Parliament's insistence on its own independent rights. Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, after being dismissed by James for advocating an independent judiciary, backed Parliament's assertion of its right to impeach the king's ministers (1621) and helped produce the Petition of Right (q.v.) in 1628. The petition, like the Magna Charta, forced Charles I to admit limitations on his authority.

Charles attempted to rule without Parliament from 1629 to 1640. His efforts to obtain money without the aid of Parliament by all kinds of extraordinary levies became notorious. The measures by Laud and the Court of Star Chamber to restrain the Puritan press and pulpit, and the prosecution of Puritan leaders in 1637, led to an outcry against prerogative courts. Charles's attempts in 1637 to impose English-style worship in Scotland led to a rebellion, which in turn forced Charles to summon Parliament in 1640.

Last modified on: Thursday, September 4, 1997.