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Chapter 3: History

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1485–1603

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about 16 min

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The Tudors: Six Wives, a New Church and the Armada

A king wanted a divorce, and to get it he gave his whole country a new church. His three children took the throne one after another, and the nation's religion swung back and forth with each of them: Protestant, then Catholic, then Protestant again. Finally, a queen who never married beat the most powerful fleet in Europe.

This is the story of the Tudors and their 118 years on the throne. The last chapter ended with Henry Tudor winning at Bosworth and becoming Henry VII. This chapter begins with him.

1. 1485Henry VII becomes king and the Tudor period begins
2. 1509Henry VIII becomes king; later he breaks with Rome and sets up the Church of England
3. 1547Edward VI becomes king at the age of 9; the Book of Common Prayer is written in his reign
4. 1553Mary I becomes queen and brings back the Catholic faith
5. 1558Elizabeth I becomes queen and restores the Church of England
6. 1560The Scottish Reformation: the Scottish Parliament ends the Pope's authority in Scotland
7. 1588England defeats the Spanish Armada
8. 1603Elizabeth I dies without children, and the Tudor period ends

Henry VII: the careful first Tudor king

After thirty years of the Wars of the Roses, Henry VII cared about two things above all: no more civil war, and a safe throne for himself.

His answer was to weaken the nobles and build up central government. The Wars of the Roses had been fought by great nobles with private armies of their own, so the weaker the nobles were, the safer the king felt. He was also very careful with money and saved up a large fortune for the Crown.

Henry VII went through the royal account books himself, writing his initials on page after page, and these books still survive today. Most of the money he saved was later spent by his big-spending son, Henry VIII.

Henry VIII: six wives and a new church

Henry VIII kept up his father's policy of strong central government. But he is best remembered for two things: splitting from the Church of Rome and having six wives.

1. Catherine of Aragon: a princess from Spain. Of all the children she had with Henry, only one lived: their daughter Mary. Once Catherine could no longer have children, Henry wanted a divorce.
2. Anne Boleyn: born in England. Her child with Henry was a daughter, Elizabeth. Many people in the country disliked her. She was charged with having affairs with other men and was put to death in the Tower of London.
3. Jane Seymour: at last gave Henry the son he longed for, Edward. Sadly, she died soon after giving birth.
4. Anne of Cleves: a princess from Germany. Henry married her to make a political alliance, and the marriage was quickly ended. Henry had chosen her after seeing a portrait of her by his court painter, Holbein, but he was disappointed when they actually met, and the marriage lasted only about six months. Anne wisely agreed to end it, and in return she got rich lands, a good income and the title of "the King's beloved sister". She outlived all the others and was the last of the six queens to die.
5. Catherine Howard: a cousin of Anne Boleyn. Like Anne, she was charged with having affairs, and she too was executed.
6. Catherine Parr: a widow whom Henry married near the end of his life. She lived longer than Henry and married again, but she died not long afterwards.

A new church so he could get divorced

Henry and his first wife Catherine had no son who survived, and he wanted to divorce her and marry someone else. But England was a Catholic country, and a divorce needed the permission of the Pope. The Pope said no.

So Henry cut England off from the Church of Rome and created the Church of England, where the king took the Pope's place. Now he appointed the bishops and set the rules for how people worshipped.

The Reformation: where Protestants came from

While Henry was quarrelling with the Pope, a much bigger change was sweeping across Europe: the Reformation. This was a movement that challenged the Pope's authority and many of the beliefs and customs of the Roman Catholic Church.

Its supporters were called Protestants, and they formed churches of their own. Protestants and Catholics differed in three big ways:

Reading the Bible in your own language, not in Latin

No praying to saints or at shrines (holy places)

Your own relationship with God matters more than obeying the Church

Wales and Ireland

Wales: formally joined to England

Henry VIII's stronger central government did not stop at England's borders: it reached into Wales and Ireland too. In his reign, Parliament passed laws known as the Act for the Government of Wales. They formally united Wales with England. From then on Wales had members in the House of Commons, and its courts and laws were reorganised.

The Tudors were Welsh themselves. The family came from Anglesey, an island off north Wales, and in 1485 Henry VII landed in south-west Wales and gathered soldiers as he marched towards Bosworth. So the family that tied Wales and England together was Welsh itself.

Ireland: Henry VIII becomes "King of Ireland"

At this time nearly everyone in Ireland was Catholic. Henry VII and Henry VIII pushed English control out beyond the Pale. Henry VIII also took the title King of Ireland. English laws were brought in, and local leaders had to obey the Lord Lieutenant, the king's governor in Dublin.

But the Reformation caused a backlash in Ireland. The English tried to force the Protestant religion on the Irish, and they also brought in English rules about who inherits land. The Irish chieftains (clan leaders) rose up, and years of brutal fighting followed.

Three children, three faiths

Henry VIII died in 1547. His three children came to the throne one after another, and with every new ruler the country's religion swung in a different direction.

Edward VI: the boy Protestant king

Jane Seymour's son Edward VI became king at the age of 9. He was a firm Protestant. During his reign the Church of England got its Book of Common Prayer, which set out the words to be said in church services. Some churches still use a version of it today.

Edward was never strong. He reigned for just over six years and died when he was only 15.

Edward was afraid his Catholic sister Mary would become queen, so just before he died he left the crown to his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey. She was queen for only nine days before crowds who supported Mary pushed her out, and she was executed the following year. Because her reign was so short, and many said it wasn't lawful, lots of lists of English monarchs leave her out.

Mary I: "Bloody Mary"

Next came Mary I, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. She was a devout Catholic. She took England back to the Catholic Church and persecuted Protestants (punished them cruelly for their faith). Nearly 300 people were burned to death, which is why she became known as "Bloody Mary". Her reign was short too: she died five years later.

Mary I married the Spanish prince Philip, who later became King Philip II of Spain, and while Mary was alive he even used the title King of England. Thirty years later, the man who sent the Armada to attack England was Elizabeth I's former brother-in-law.

Elizabeth I: the queen who found a balance

Mary's half-sister Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, became queen in 1558. She was a Protestant, and she made the Church of England the country's official church once again.

Her approach was clever. Everyone had to go to their local church, and the law fixed what services and prayers could be used. But she did not try to find out what people truly believed in private. In this way she steered a middle path between Catholics and the stricter Protestants, and kept England free of serious religious conflict. She never married.

1588: the Spanish Armada

In Elizabeth's time the English became more and more patriotic, which means proud of their country. English explorers set out to find new trade routes and tried to push into Spain's colonies in the Americas.

Catholic Spain had had enough. In 1588 King Philip II sent a huge fleet of warships, the Spanish Armada, to conquer England and bring back the Catholic faith. But the English beat it. The victory made Elizabeth I one of England's best-loved rulers ever.

In the summer of 1588 the Armada sailed into the English Channel in a crescent (a curved shape like a new moon). The English fleet came out of Plymouth and followed it, firing as it went. When the Armada dropped anchor off Calais in France, the English set fire to a few empty ships in the middle of the night and sent them drifting into the Spanish fleet. The Spanish ships cut their anchor ropes and scattered in panic, and the next day they were beaten at the Battle of Gravelines.

Then a south wind pushed what was left of the Armada northwards. The only way home was round the top of Scotland and down the west coast of Ireland. On the way it ran into storms, and many ships were smashed on the rocks.

The best-known legend says that when the Armada was spotted, Drake was playing bowls (a game where you roll heavy balls across a lawn) on the grass above the sea at Plymouth, and insisted on finishing his game. The story only appears in writing decades later, so most historians treat it as a legend. Still, the tide and the wind really did keep the English ships in harbour for a while, so he had a point.

Another famous line comes from the speech Elizabeth I made to her soldiers at Tilbury: she might have the body of a weak woman, but she had the heart of a king. She really did visit the army and speak to them, but the version we know was written down decades later, so nobody can be sure of her exact words.

Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hind

Among the leaders who beat the Armada was Sir Francis Drake. He helped to start England's long tradition as a great sea power. His ship, the Golden Hind, was among the earliest to sail right round the globe.

Drake sailed round the world between 1577 and 1580, the first English captain to do it. His ship began the voyage as the Pelican and was renamed the Golden Hind on the way, and when he got home Elizabeth I came on board and knighted him on the deck. Today a full-size copy of the Golden Hind sits on the south bank of the Thames in London, and you can go on board. To the Spanish, though, Drake was a pirate who kept robbing their ships.

Scotland: the Reformation and Mary, Queen of Scots

North of the border, Scotland was still a separate kingdom with its own rulers, and it had a Reformation of its own. It became Protestant too, but not in the same way as England. In 1560 the Scottish Parliament, where most members were Protestants, abolished the Pope's power in Scotland, and Catholic services were made illegal. The new Protestant Church of Scotland was led by people who had been elected to the job, and, unlike the Church of England, it was not a state church.

The leader of the Scottish Reformation was a preacher called John Knox. In 1558 he published a pamphlet attacking the very idea of women ruling countries, aimed at the Catholic queens of the time. Bad timing: that same year the Protestant Elizabeth I came to the throne, and she never liked Knox after that.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Scotland's queen at the time was Mary Stuart, usually known today as Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a Catholic. Her father died when she was just a week old, so she became queen as a baby. She spent most of her childhood in France.

Back in Scotland, rival groups fought for power around her. After her husband was murdered, many people thought she had a hand in it. She escaped to England, leaving the Scottish crown to her son, James VI, who was a Protestant.

Mary and Elizabeth I were cousins, and Mary expected help from her. Instead, Elizabeth feared that Mary had her eye on the English crown. She held Mary captive for 20 years, and in the end Mary was put to death for plotting against her.

The Elizabethan age: Shakespeare and the New World

Back in England, Elizabeth's reign is remembered for much more than a victory at sea. The greatest gift of the Elizabethan period to later generations was its poetry and drama, above all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was both a playwright (someone who writes plays) and an actor, and he wrote a great many plays and poems. He put important moments from history on stage, but he didn't write only about kings and queens: he was among the first playwrights to show ordinary English men and women. Many people think he is the greatest playwright who ever lived. He also left a deep mark on the English language and invented lots of words we still use today.

Among his best-known plays are Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shakespeare's acting company built the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames in London. In 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a cannon fired on stage as a special effect set light to the thatched roof (a roof made of dried straw or reeds), and the whole theatre burned down in less than an hour. According to a letter written at the time, nobody died; one man's trousers caught fire, and someone put the flames out with a bottle of ale. Today's Shakespeare's Globe is a copy, rebuilt in 1997 near the original site, and it was the first building in London allowed a thatched roof since the Great Fire of 1666.

Lines from his work are still quoted all the time, and the test may ask which lines come from Shakespeare:

The first colonies in America

It was also in this period that English settlers started colonising the east coast of America. Many more followed in the next century, and many of them were people who did not share the religious beliefs of the next two kings.

Because Elizabeth I never married, she was called "the Virgin Queen". In the 1580s the explorer Walter Raleigh sent people to the east coast of North America and named the land Virginia in her honour. One group of settlers built a colony on Roanoke Island, which later vanished without a trace and became known as the "Lost Colony". England's first settlement in America that lasted was Jamestown, founded in 1607, but that belongs to the next chapter.

Elizabeth I was the last of the Tudors. When she died in 1603, the crown passed to her relatives in Scotland, and a new royal family took over: the Stuarts.

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