Monarchs and Main Events, 1485-1660

361: England 1485-1660

2013

Monarchs and main events, 1485-1660

•Tudors: 1485-1603

•Henry VII (1485-1509): (1) reduced power of nobles; (2) built up royal finances.

•Henry VIII (1509-47): (1) 6 wives; Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn; (2) Reformation 1529-36; pope (unable to grant divorce; Charles V) loses power; church subordinated to crown; (3) Dissolution of the Monasteries 1536-40; (4) use of printed propaganda.

The Tudor Rose, combining the Red and White Roses

Monarchs and main events

•Edward VI (1547-53): Somerset (1547-49); Northumberland (1550-3);

•Prayer Books 1549, 1552; Protestantism;

•Economic problems; debasement;

•Rebellions 1549.

•Lady Jane Grey.

•Mary (1553-8): Catholicism and the pope restored.

Edward VI (1537/47-53)

Monarchs and main events

•Mary 1553-8: marriage to Philip II of Spain 1554; Wyatt’s rebellion.

•Burning of heretics.

•Influenza 1556-8.

•Elizabeth (1558-1603);

•Protestantism restored 1559; Prayer Book;

•Puritans

•Catholics: assassination; Spanish Armada 1588

•Finance; Ireland; America – Virginia; Drake Ralegh.

Monarchs and main events

•Stuarts: 1603-1714

•James VI and I (1567/1603-1625):

•Gunpowder Plot 1605;

•Finance; worsening relations with parliament; pro-Spanish foreign policy.

•Charles I (1625-49): continued financial and constitutional problems; Arminianism and Catholicism;

•Civil War (1642-6, 1648);

Monarchs and main events

•1647-9: the English Revolution;

•Issues: religious toleration (new religious groups; Baptists; Independents/ Congregationalists); how much power should be returned to the King? What role should the army have, if any?

•1649: execution of Charles I; abolition of monarchy

•1649-58: republican experiments; Oliver Cromwell;

•1658-60: Restoration; Charles II (1660-85).

Economy and Society

•Health, disease, and mortality:

•Lack of hygiene;

•Smallpox; Elizabeth 1562.

•Typhoid; typhus (Prince Henry 1612)

•Plague: bubonic; septicemic; pneumonic; rats and fleas; 1563, 1603, 1625, 1665.

•But population rose: England 2.5 to 5 million 1485-1630; London 50,000 to 500,000 1500-1700; towns grew through immigration.

•Food prices rose fivefold in 1500s; industrial prices doubled.

Henry, Prince of Wales, 1594-1612

Economy and Society

•Price rise 1500-1650: population growth; import of silver from Spanish America; debasement of English coinage 1540s-50s.

•Growth of population: unemployment/ vagrancy/ vagabondage.

•Agrarian economy.

•Importance of harvest; bad harvests 1554-6, 1594-7, 1622, 1630.

Economy and Society

•Population rise: unemployment: poverty; migration to towns (esp. London);

•Population rise: rise of food prices; good times for rich farmers;

•Farming innovations: water meadows; crop rotation; new crops (cabbages, turnips, onions; potato and tobacco rare; Ralegh); draining Fens.

•Enclosure (esp. of common land)

Economy and Society

•Enclosure: at first of arable land for pasture (after Black Death 1348); then in 1500s for arable; enclosure disliked by Tudor governments (seen as causing vagrancy and as reducing size of population; Sir Thomas More; Hugh Latimer).

•But by 1600s the population was clearly too large (not too small): emigration to Virginia etc. was encouraged.

Economy and Society

•By 1650 governments stopped worrying about enclosure; English farming was producing more food than ever before;

•Despite the great rise in population 1500-1650, England stopped importing and started exporting grain;

•Scholarly debate – R.H. Tawney; Eric Kerridge.

•Real wages rose in the late seventeenth century; but population did not rise; England escaped from the Malthusian trap.

Industry

•Cloth production: a domestic industry; clothiers.

•Slump in early 1620s: major economic problems.

•Building

•Mining: silver in Wales; lead in Derbyshire; tin in Cornwall; iron in west Midlands; coal in North.

•Development of a national economy: the growth of London turned a group of regional economies into a national one.

James I, Crown, 1624: Welsh Plumes.

Social Structure

•Nobles; gentry; yeomen; husbandmen; labourers; vagrants; (and anomalous townsfolk);

•Nobles: duke/ duchess; marquess/ marchioness; earl/ countess; viscount (-ess); baron (-ess);

•Gentry: baronets (1611); knights; esquires; mere gentry; Members of Parliament (MPs); Justices of the Peace (JPs)

•1600: 2% gentry; own 50% of land; nobles own 15%; crown and church own much of the rest.

Social Structure

•Nobles and Gentry;

•Yeomen: 50 acres; £40 p.a.

•Husbandmen: 30 acres; £15 p.a.

•Labourers: about £9 p.a.

•Vagabonds/ vagrants.

•Women: status went with that of husband/ father; Bess of Hardwick.

•Townsfolk: aldermen of London; Thomas Sutton.

•Villeins (and Slaves): Pigge’s Case 1618.

Bess of Hardwick (Elizabeth Hardwick/ Cavendish/ St Lee/ Talbot; 1527-1608)

Hardwick Hall (“More Glass than Wall”)

Government

•No distinction between Executive and Legislative Powers until 1640s;

•Monarch: held executive powers, with Council: from 1530s this was the Privy Council, which consisted of the heads of bureaucratic departments and a few others.

•The Privy Council had judicial functions, as the Star Chamber and the Court of Requests.

•Privy Council: executive powers: markets; stewardships of royal land;

•Patron and client: the essence of political reality.

Royal Prerogatives

•Summoning, proroguing, and dissolving parliament;

•Impositions?

•Monopolies (Essex; Ralegh; Sir Giles Mompesson)

•Purveyance;

•Wardship;

•Imprisonment without cause shown.

•Proclamations.

Parliament

•Lords (bishops; abbots – to 1530s; lay peers = dukes to barons).

•Commons (Knights of the shire; citizens/ burgesses).

•Rotten/ pocket boroughs; Old Sarum.

•Parliament (with the monarch) made (and repealed) laws and voted taxes;

•But could the monarch introduce emergency measures (?taxation) without the consent of parliament?

The Bureaucracy/ Civil Service

•Executive orders were made by the monarch; to be valid they had to be sealed by the Great Seal (Chancery; Lord Chancellor), Privy Seal (Lord Privy Seal), or signet (Secretary).

•The Exchequer managed royal finance, under the Treasurer and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

•The Chancery was both a law court (administering equity law) and an adminstrative department.

The Bureaucracy/ Civil Service

•The Exchequer collected taxes and was a law court with jurisdiction over royal finance.

•In addition to Chancery, there were central courts dealing with royal finance (Exchequer), criminal cases (King’s/ Queen’s Bench), and civil suits (Common Pleas).

•The judges of the central courts visited the localities in Assizes, and there enforced royal policy.

•The central bureaucracy was tiny by modern standards.

Local Government and the Church

•JPs (Justices of the Peace (sheriffs; shire-reeves).

•Fivefold increase in number of JPs in 1500s;

•Their powers greatly increase;

•The monarch appoints JPs, and can dismiss them at will;

•But the JPs serve without payment; if they join together as a group to block royal policy, the monarch can do little;

•Monarchs sometimes appoint clergy as (especially reliable) JPs: this is unpopular.

The Church and the Clergy

•Church courts; heresy; moral offences; marriage and divorce; last wills and testaments; excommunication; public penance.

•High Commission (from 1559; fines and imprisons)

•10,000 parishes; (Arch)bishoprics (sees; dioceses); archdeaconries; rural deaneries;

•Tithes; advowsons.

•Archbishop of Canterbury;

•Archbishop of York.

The House of York

Lancastrians/ Beauforts

Introducing the Tudors

Henry V m. Catherine m. Owen Tudor

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Henry VI Edmund Tudor

m. Margaret Beaufort

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Henry VII

The Wars of the Roses

•1399: Henry IV (Lancaster) takes power from Richard II, ignoring the March claim – which becomes the Yorkist claim;

•1422: death of Henry IV’s son Henry V; the infant Henry VI becomes King; he has mental / personality problems;

•1447: Henry VI marries the French Princess Margaret of Anjou;

•1449-53: Henry VI loses all English land in France except Calais;

Wars of the Roses

•1453: Margaret and Henry VI have a son, Edward;

•1450s: intermittent fighting between Henry VI and Margaret on the one hand, and Richard Duke of York on the other;

•Both sides get support of nobles with private armies; York supported by the Nevilles; Henry by the Percies.

•1459: Margaret defeats and attaints the Yorkists;

Wars of the Roses

•Attainder; the pros and cons;

•1460-1: the Yorkists are back again; Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury; Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker; Edward IV. Wakefield (12/30/60).

•Edward IV (1442/61-70; 1471-83);

•Marries Elizabeth Woodville;

•Rebellion 1470-1: George, Duke of Clarence; Warwick the Kingmaker; Henry VI.

Edward IV (b. 1442; r. 1461-70, 1471-83)

Elizabeth Woodville (1437-92)

Wars of the Roses

•1471: rebellion crushed: the end of the Kingmaker, Henry VI, and Prince Edward.

•1471-83: Edward IV in control;

•But 1483 he dies at 41;

•1483: Edward V succeeds at 13; his uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester is appointed Lord Protector; Richard takes the throne as Richard III;

•The Princes in the Tower (Edward V; Richard Duke of York)

Richard III (1483-5)

•Richard III: an authoritative king; ruled in the North under Edward IV, and when he took the throne used as his main agents the people who had helped him govern the North; “the Cat, the Rat, and Lovell the Dog ruled all England under the Hog”. (Catesby, Ratclifffe, and Lord Lovell);

•By taking the throne from Edward V, Richard divided the Yorkist cause;

Richard III (1452-85)

Discovered under a car park in Leicester (not far from Bosworth) in 2012: the bones of Richard III (or someone else).

The Fall of Richard III

•Many supporters of Edward IV objected strongly to Richard taking the throne from Edward’s son;

•Elizabeth Woodville, Edward V’s mother, was especially angry;

•She contacted the exiled Lancastrian Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and offered him a deal:

•Depose Richard, take the throne, and marry Elizabeth of York (Edward IV’s and Elizabeth Woodville’s daughter).

Henry VII becomes King, 1485

•Richard III: revolt of Buckingham 1483.

•1485: Henry Tudor lands in Wales; moves to central England, picking up Welsh support;

•Richard III summons nobles to fight for him;

•Many fail to respond; Sir William Stanley (brother-in law of Henry’s mother Margaret Beaufort) changes sides (with 3000 troops) in the course of the battle of Bosworth (8/22/85); Richard is killed in battle.

Henry VII (1457-1509)

Elizabeth of York (1465-1503)

Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509): Mother of Henry VII at 13, she outlived him

Reasons for the Wars of the Roses

•Rival claims: Henry deals with the main one (Elizabeth of York) by marrying her;

•Bastard feudalism: (indentured) retainers; embracery; maintenance; good lordship; worship; local factions – Percy vs. Neville in North; Lord Bonville and Earl of Wiltshire vs. Earl of Devon in southwest; Blounts vs. Longfords in Derbyshire;

•But bastard feudalism is threatening only when crown is too weak to control nobles;

Reasons for the Wars of the Roses

•Weakness of monarchy: Henry VI had mental problems;

•Edward IV a strong King, but weakened by rivals for the throne – Henry VI; brother George, Duke of Clarence;

•Henry VII had few credible rivals, and so was able to reduce the powers of the nobility; by marrying Elizabeth he united the roses and stabilized the monarchy.

Henry VII (1485-1509)

•1485: 28 years old, with little experience or record;

•“New Monarchy”; Renaissance; humanism.

•Establishing the Tudor dynasty:

•Stoke 1487; Francis, Viscount Lovell; John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln; Lambert Simnel.

•Edmund de la Pole (Suffolk); Richard de la Pole (d. 1525). Hapsburgs (Philip the Handsome).

Medieval Style: Henry VII Groat, 1498-9

Renaissance Style: Henry VII Groat, 1504-5

Henry VII and the Succession

•Edward, Earl of Warwick (d. 1499; son of George, Duke of Clarence).

•Perkin Warbeck (d. 1499).

•Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (daughter of George, Duke of Clarence; exec. 1541, at 68).

•Prince Arthur (1486-1502); Henry (b. 1491).

•Jasper Tudor (d. 1495).

Henry VIII’s elder brother, Prince Arthur (1486-1502; d. of tuberculosis; sweating sickness?)

Henry VII and the Nobility

•Decline in number of nobles; Henry rewards people with knighthood of the garter rather than noble title;

•Henry breaks up marriage alliances between wealthy noble families.

•A lack of “super-nobles”: the Kingmaker died 1471, and the crown got his estates; Percy, Earl of Northumberland d. 1489; his heir was 11, and a ward of the crown; the Stafford Duke of Buckingham was 7 in 1485;

•Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset;

•Bonds and recognisances.

Keeping the nobles in order

•Advisers: humanism; Desiderius Erasmus; Sir Thomas More; “virtus vera nobilitas” – virtue is the true nobility;

•Clergy: Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor; Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal.

•Lord Dinham (Treasurer);

•Gentry: Giles Daubeney (soldier); Reginald Bray (finance); Richard Empson, Edmund Dudley (legal and financial experts).

Henry VII flanked by his hated advisers Empson and Dudley

Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury; this tower was built by John Morton c. 1490; Thomas More lived here as a young page boy.

The King and the Nobles

•Conditional reversal of attainders: Thomas Howard (1443-1524): Lord Treasurer, Earl of Surrey, and (1513) Duke of Norfolk.

•Bonds and recognisances used to prevent nobles having private armies; Lord Burgavenny heavily fined for breaking 1504 act on this.

•The risk of such tough policies was rebellion (rioting in Yorkshire 1489; Cornish rebellion 1497); but there were few rival claimants to lead rebellion.

Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and Duke of Norfolk (1443-1524)

Finance

•Chamber and Exchequer finance;

•Henry’s close personal interest in auditing royal accounts.

•No siblings; King held both Yorkist and Lancastrian estates; drew about 4 times as much cash from land as Edward IV;

•Peace: customs duties increase about 20%

•Henry got some money from forced loans/ benevolences, and from parliament; but there was no parliament 1497-1504, or 1504-10; was he setting England on the road to royal absolutism?

Henry VII: Foreign Policy

•Henry liked money, and peace;

•Spain: Ferdinand of Aragon; Isabella of Castile;

•Treaty of Medina del Campo 1489;

•Marriage of Catherine of Aragon (b. 1485) to Arthur (b. 1486); but Arthur d. 1502.

•Joanna (Juana la Loca); Philip the Handsome; Charles V; Hapsburgs.

•1506 Philip agrees to the Malus Intercursus.

•1492: Boulogne; Charles VII of France;

•1497: John Cabot sails to Newfoundland.

John Cabot, an Italian in the service of Henry VII, and probably the first post-Viking European to explore mainland North America

Henry VIII (1509-47)

•Henry in 1509: not quite 18; flamboyant; extrovert; keen to dissociate himself from his father’s money-grubbing policies.

•He soon left the day-to-day administration to Thomas Wolsey, the most powerful man in England other than the King between 1514 and 1529.

•Outline: (1) Britain in 1509; (2) early years 1509-13; war with France; (3) Wolsey; (4) Anne Boleyn and the fall of Wolsey.

Henry VIII c. 1509

Britain in 1509

•No serious rivals for the throne; 1 duke (Edward Stafford; Buckingham); 1 marquess (Thomas Grey; Dorset)

•Land: gentry; nobles; church; crown; Henry holds both Lancastrian and Yorkist land;

•The borders (with Wales and Scotland): disorderly: crown relies on local notables to enforce royal authority.

•Wales: not yet fully incorporated into English administration.

Britain in 1509 (contd.)

•Scotland: independent, under James IV (Stuart); James married Henry’s sister Margaret; but Scotland was traditionally allied to England’s old enemy France (“the auld alliance”) and war was common.

•Ireland: England controls Dublin and “the Pale”; Cork; Waterford; elsewhere native Irish and Anglo-Irish are in charge; Fitzgeralds (Earls of Kildare and Desmond); Butlers (Earls of Ormond).

•Calais.

Ireland 1450

Henry VIII: Early Years – 1509-13

•New Policies: marriage to Catherine of Aragon (b. 1485) 1509;

•Attainder of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley 1510.

•Foreign policy: war with France 1511;

•Ferdinand of Aragon; Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince).

•1512: English army under Dorset goes to southwest France; expensive failure.

Catherine of Aragon, aged about 18

An Older Catherine

Henry VIII c. 1520

Henry c. 1535

Henry c. 1540

Henry VIII: Early Years (Contd.)

•1513: Henry leads a new invasion of France.

•1513: battle of the Spurs; capture of Tournai.

•1513: Catherine regent in England; Thomas Howard (Surrey) in charge of reserve army; Flodden – great victory over Scots (d. of James IV); Surrey becomes Duke of Norfolk;

•1514: deserted by Hapsburg allies, Henry makes peace with France; Louis XII marries Mary Tudor; he dies 1515, and she remarries Charles Brandon (Duke of Suffolk).

Thomas Wolsey (1470/1-1530)

•Wolsey: son of an Ipswich butcher; graduated from Oxford at 15; became a clergyman; 1507 a royal chaplain;

•1509: Wolsey appointed to Henry VIII’s Council; his real rise begins;

•1513: Wolsey organizes the French campaign;

•1514: Wolsey becomes Bishop of Lincoln and Bishop of Tournai;

•1515: Archbishop of York; Cardinal; Lord Chancellor;

•1518: papal legate (for life 1524)

Wolsey

Wolsey (Contd.)

•Mistress (Joan?) Lark and two children (for whom he found jobs in the church);

•Nepotism; simony; pluralism.

•Entertaining; building; Hampton Court

•Domestic policy: Chancery; Star Chamber; Court of Requests; strained relations with parliament; Hunne’s Case 1514-15 (Richard Hunne);

•Amicable Grant 1525.

Hampton Court

Wolsey: Foreign Policy

•Wolsey’s views: humanism (Erasmus; More); pro-papal; balance of power;

•1518 Treaty of London: idea of perpetual peace through negotiated settlements;

•But whatever Wolsey’s views, Henry continued to have military ambitions;

•He was offered alliances by both Charles V and Francis I of France;

•1522: Norfolk in Brittany;

Charles V (1500-58)

Francis I (1494-1547)

Foreign Policy and the Fall of Wolsey

•1523: Suffolk heads towards Paris; revolt of Charles de Bourbon.

•1525: Pavia; 1526: England switches sides;

•1526: Henry is attracted to Anne Boleyn; he and she want Wolsey to get pope to annul his existing marriage; Wolsey fails, and falls;

•1527: Sack of Rome; Pope Clement VII in power of Charles V;

•1529: Ladies’ Peace of Cambrai;

•1529: fall of Wolsey; he heads north to York;

•1530: summoned to London, Wolsey dies at Leicester Abbey.

“The King’s Great Matter”: divorce from Catherine of Aragon

•Mary Boleyn; Elizabeth Blount; Henry Fitzroy (b. 1519; Duke of Richmond 1525; d. 1536).

•Anne Boleyn (c. 1500-36): daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn (courtier and diplomat, and for some years ambassador to France, where Anne spent much of her youth); Anne’s mother was the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter;

•Back in England from France, the heir of the Percy Earl of Northumberland wooed Anne, but Henry got Wolsey to break up the relationship;

Anne Boleyn

Henry hated writing – but wrote many love letters to Anne Boleyn

“The King’s Great Matter”: divorce from Catherine of Aragon (Contd.)

•By 1527 Henry wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine, his brother’s widow;