History

The Tudors
The Birth of the nation state

The century of Tudor rule
1485-1603
 Glorious Times of the Tudor age

• Henry VII
• Built the foundation of a wealthy nation state and a powerful monarchy
Henry VIII
• - Kept a magnificent court
• - Made the Church truly English by breaking from the Roman Catholic
Church
Elizabeth I
• Defeated the powerful navy of Spain
 Less Glorious Times of the Tudor age

Henry VIII
• Wasted the wealth saved by his father
• Elizabeth I
• - Weakened the quality of government by selling official posts
• - The laws and actions of the parliament were often cruel in effect
The new monarchy

Henry VII
• Established the new monarchy and based the royal power on good business
sense
• Avoided quarrels either with Scotland in the north, or France in the south
• In 1485 , he made an important trade agreement with the Netherlands which
allowed English trade to grow again
• Got more power and money than earlier kings , established his authority and
forbade anyone, except himself, to keep armed men
• Used the ``Court of Star Chamber``, traditionally the king’s council
chamber, to deal with lawless nobles.
• Encouraged the use of heavy fines as punishment and raised taxes for wars
which he then did not fight.
• He made a new nobility out of merchants and lesser gentry classes who
became his statesmen
• After his death in 1509 he left behind the huge total of 2 million pounds,
about fifteen years’ worth of income.
• The only thing he spent money freely was the building ships for a merchant
fleet.
Henry VIII
• Was cruel, wasteful with money, and interested in pleasing himself
• Wanted to keep the balance between two powerful giants – France and Spain
( united with the Holly Roman Empire)
The Reformation
• Disliked the power of the Catholic Church in England, because it worked
against his authority and the taxes he paid to the Church reduced his income
• In 1531 Henry persuaded the bishops to make him head of the Church in
England, and this became the law after Parliament passed the Act of
Supremacy in 1534.
• Henry broke with Rome and used the Parliament to make the break legal
• Through several Acts of Parliament between 1532 – 1536 England became
politically a Protestant country, even though the popular religion was still
Catholic.
New Monarchy
• After separation from Rome, Thomas Cromwell became the king’s chief
minister
• Henry and Cromwell did careful survey of the Church property and closed
560 monasteries during 1536-1539.
• Henry gave those lands to the landowners and merchants.
• Landless nuns and monks were given small sums of money but many were
unable to find jobs and became wandering beggars
• Henry remained loyal to the Catholic religion. He made alliance with
Charles V of Spain against France
Henry VIII
• Died in 1547
• He had six fives and 3 children
• - Mary, the eldest, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon
• - Elizabeth, the daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, whom he
executed because she was unfaithful
• - Edward, the son of Jane Seymour, the only wife Henry really loved , but
who died because of giving a birth to a child
The Protestant – Catholic Struggle

During Edward VI reign
• The new nobility created by the Tudors were mostly protestant reformers
and wanted England to become truly protestant in order to maintain their
lands.
• Most English people still believed in Catholic religion.
In 1552 a new prayer book was introduced to make sure that churches
followed the new Protestant religion. But in some places it turned into trouble.
Mary took the throne after Edward died, aged sixteen, in 1553
For political, religious and family reasons, Mary chose to marry King Philip of
Spain, which was unfortunate choice. People disliked her marriage but parliament
agreed to accept Philip as the king only during Mary’s lifetime.
During Mary’s five-year reign, many protestants were burnt.
Only the knowledge that she was dying prevented the popular rebellion. Mary
died in 1558.
Elizabeth I
Unlike Mary, she was more protestant. Elizabeth wanted to find agreement
between those two religious directions an d in 1559 Protestantism became closer to
the Catholic religion.
Elizabeth made the Church part of the state machine.
During her reign people were forced to go to the church on Sundays and if they
didn’t do this they were fined.
Elizabeth arranged sermons to be used in churches. This book taught people that
rebellion against the Crown was a sin against God.
Both the French and Spanish Kings wanted to marry Elizabeth and join England
to their own country. But the example of Mary’s unfortunate marriage made
Elizabeth to avoid the marriage.
Catholic nobles wanted to replace Elizabeth by the queen of Scotland who was
catholic.
Mary was close relative to Elizabeth and when she escaped from rebelled Scottish
nobles, Elizabeth kept her in England almost as prisoner.
Soon Elizabeth became aware that some nobles wanted Mary to become the queen
of England.
First she kept Mary as a prisoner but when Mary announced Philip, king of Spain
as her heir, and Philip started invading England, Elizabeth executed Mary.
The Catholic plots and invasions made English people believe by 1585 that to be a
Catholic was to be an enemy to England and the hatred of everything being
Catholic became an important political force.
Topic 2
England and her Neighbors
The new foreign policy
During the Tudor period, from 1485 until 1603, English foreign policy
changed several times.
• Henry VII had been careful to remain friendly with neighboring countries
• Henry VII, had recognized the importance of trade and had built a large fleet
of merchant ships
• Henry VIII, had been more ambitious, hoping to play an important part in
European politics
• Henry VIII, had spent money on warships and guns, making English guns
the best in Europe
• Mary allied England to Spain by her marriage
• Elizabeth and her advisers considered trade the most important foreign
policy matter
• For them whichever country was England’s greatest trade rival was also its
greatest enemy
• Elizabeth’s foreign policy encouraged merchant expansion
• Elizabeth correctly recognized Spain as her main trade rival and enemy and
helped the Dutch Protestants by allowing their ships to use English harbors
to attack Spanish ships
• In 1585, Elizabeth helped Dutch rebels with money and soldiers against
Spain. It was almost an open declaration of war on Spain.
• During Elizabeth reign Spain refused to allow England to trade freely with
Spanish American colonies.
• The “sea dogs” (John Hawkins, Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher), who
were traders and pirates at the same time had Elizabeth support to build
English sea trade and to interrupt Spain’s.
• King of Spain, Philip II ( husband of Mary I) decided to conquer England in
1587 in order to defeat the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands.
• Philip II built a great fleet of ships, an “Armada", to move his army across
the English Channel from the Netherlands. But in 1587 Francis Drake
attacked and destroyed part of this fleet in Cadiz harbor.
• Armada was again defeated when it reached England in summer 1588
• Peace was only made with Spain once Elizabeth was dead.
The new trading empire

Elizabeth followed two policies:
• She encouraged English sailors like John Hawkins and Francis Drake to
continue to attack and destroy Spanish ships bringing gold, silver and other
treasures back from the newly discovered continent of America.
• She also encouraged English traders to settle abroad and to create colonies.
This second policy led direct to Britain’s colonial empire of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
The First English colonist - Sir Walter Raleigh

• He was the first English colonists sailed to America towards the end of the
century and brought tobacco back to England
• The settlers tried without success to start profitable colonies in Virginia,
which was named after Elizabeth, the “virgin" unmarried queen.
English colonist - John Hawkins

• England also began selling West African slaves to work for the Spanish in
America and John Hawkins was the first who carried his first slave cargo in
1562.
• By 1650 slavery had become an important trade, bringing wealth particularly
to Bristol in southwest England
Charter Companies
A number of these companies were established during Elizabeth’s reign
1. The Eastland Company to trade with Scandinavia and the Baltic (1579)
2. The Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire (1581)
3. The Africa Company to trade in slaves (1588)
4. The East India Company to trade with India (1600)
The East India Company
• The East India Company was established mainly because the Dutch
controlled the entire spice trade with the East Indies (Indonesia).
• The English were determined to have a share in this rich trade
• However, the East India Company did begin to operate in India, Persia and
even in Japan, where it had a trading station from 1613 — 23.
• The quarrel over spices was England’s first difficulty with the Dutch.
• Before the end of the seventeenth century trading competition with the
Dutch had led to three wars.
Wales
The Tudors did their best to bring Wales, Ireland and Scotland under English
control
• Henry VII was half Welsh and his eldest son Arthur was Prince of Wales
• Henry VIII wanted the Welsh to become English
• From 1535 the English put pressure on the Welsh to use an English system
of names by preventing Welsh names being used in law courts and on
official papers
• By 1750 the use of Welsh names had almost disappeared
• Between 1536 and 1543 Wales became joined to England under one
administration and English law was now the only law for Wales
• Welshmen entered the English parliament. English became the only official
language.
• Only poets and singers continued to use it.
• Henry VIII gave permission for a Welsh Bible to be printed, which became
the basis on which the Welsh language survived.
Ireland
• Henry VIII persuaded the Irish parliament to recognize him as king
of Ireland
• Henry also tried to make the Irish accept his English Church
Reformation, but failed.
• The Tudors fought four wars during the period to make the Irish
accept their authority and their religion
• In the end they destroyed the old Gaelic way of life and introduced
English government
Scotland and England

• The Scottish kings usually avoided war with England, knowing how weak
was Scottish economy and society
• Scots made peace treaty with Henry VII by the marriage between James VI
and Henry’s daughter Margaret
• Henry VIII still wanted Scotland to accept his authority.
• In 1513 his army destroyed the Scottish army at Flodden.
• The Scottish monarch had to find a balance between these England and
France to keep both his nobles and his neighbors happy
• Henry hoped to marry his son Edward to the baby Queen of Scots, Mary,
and in this way join the two countries together under an English king.
• An agreement was reached in 1543.
• A new Scottish parliament turned down the marriage agreement
• Rather than give little Mary to the English, the Scots sent her to France,
where she married the French king’s son in 1558
• For the next two years English soldiers punished them by burning and
destroying the houses of southern Scotland
Mary Queen of Scots and the Scottish Reformation

• Mary returned to Scotland as both queen and widow in 1561.
• She was Catholic, but during her time in France Scotland had become
officially and popularly Protestant.
• Protestant Scottish “Kirk” - the Church in Scotland
• The new Kirk was a far more democratic organization than the English
Church, because it had no bishops and was governed by a General
Assembly.
• The new Kirk in Scotland disliked Mary and her French Catholicism
• Mary was soon married again, to Lord Darnley, a ‘Scottish Catholic’
• Later she allowed herself to agree to her husband’s murder and married the
murderer, Bothwell.
• Mary found herself at war with her Scottish opponents, and was soon
captured and imprisoned.
• In 1568 she escaped to England, where she was held by Elizabeth for
nineteen years before she was finally executed.
A Scottish king for England
• Mary’s son, James VI, started to rule Scotland at the age of twelve in 1578
and expected to inherit the English throne after Elizabeth’s death
• Early in his reign, in the last years of the sixteenth century, he rebuilt the
authority of the Scottish Crown brought the Catholic and Protestant nobles
and also the Kirk more or less under royal control
• James VI gained the English throne when Elizabeth died in 1603 at the
unusually old age of 70
• The fact that England accepted him suggests that its leading statesmen had
confidence in James’s skills

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History

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The Tudors

The Birth of the nation state

 Glorious Times of the Tudor age

 Less Glorious Times of the Tudor age

The new monarchy

The Protestant – Catholic Struggle

The new trading empire

The First English colonist - Sir Walter Raleigh

English colonist - John Hawkins

Scotland and England

Mary Queen of Scots and the Scottish Reformation

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