Tudor England, 1485-1603

The period of English rule known as the Tudor era coincides with the Renaissance, which encompasses that period of time between 1400 and 1600 AD. In England, the Renaissance found its most accomplished expression in architecture, literature, and the theatre.

In 1485, Henry VII became king after defeating Richard III and putting an end to the War of the Roses. He then united the houses of Lancaster and York by marrying Elizabeth of York. During his reign, he established the Yeoman of the Guard (the bodyguard of the monarch) and revived the Court of Star Chamber, which limited baronial power.

The infamous Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509. Known for his excesses, Henry VIII was a very colourful character, indulging in revelry of all sorts and exhibiting a musical flair in his composition of "Greensleeves," a song that has since almost achieved folk ballad status. He built or otherwise accumulated forty different residences over the course of his reign, the most notable being Hampton Court and St. James's Palace. He is perhaps best remembered for his collection of six queens. Initially, Henry had no real interest in ruling and left the government of the nation to his Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who in 1529 was accused of treason (after failing to secure for Henry a divorce from Catherine of Aragon) and died before he could be tried. Sir Thomas More then became Chancellor, but resigned the Chancellorship three years later when he disagreed with both Henry's repudiation of papal authority and his manipulations to have his marriage to Catherine declared invalid. In 1534, Parliament ratified the Act of Supremacy, establishing Henry (who had been excommunicated by the pope in 1533) as head of the Church of England. Thomas More refused to recognize the king as such and was executed in 1535. During Henry's reign, at least 17,000 executions were carried out. Also in 1535, the first complete translation of the Bible into English was completed by Miles Coverdale. In 1536, England and Wales were united, monasteries were dissolved, and Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded on the same day Henry was granted dispensation to marry her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour, who died a year later in childbirth. In 1540, Henry married Anne of Cleves in an attempt to form an alliance with the German principality, but Henry refused to consummate the marriage (because he considered her dull and ugly), having it annulled within seven months. Soon thereafter, he married Catherine Howard but executed her for treason (and adultery) two years later. In 1543, he married his final wife, Catherine Parr, who encouraged Henry's founding of Trinity College at Cambridge in 1544.

Edward VI, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour, acceded to the throne at his father's death in 1547. Edward was only nine years old, so control of the government was seized by his uncle Edward Seymour, whom Edward named Duke of Somerset and Protector of the Realm. In 1549, the First Act of Uniformity made the Roman Catholic mass illegal, and the First Book of Common Prayer was issued, changing the Church service from Latin to English. The following year, the Duke of Somerset was deposed as Protector, sent to the Tower to await execution (some two years later) and replaced by the Earl of Warwick, John Dudley, who named himself Duke of Northumberland and persuaded Edward to nominate Lady Jane Grey (Northumberland's daughter-in-law) as his heir in an attempt to secure Protestant succession. Edward caught tuberculosis and died at the tender age of sixteen.

In 1553, sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey was queen for nine days; then Mary I (daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon), with public support, had her arrested (a year later, she was executed) and claimed the throne as her own, restoring Catholicism and persecuting Protestants. In 1554, Mary married Philip II of Spain, who became king of Spain two years later and left England, never to return. Mary's religious savagery and her penchant for sentencing Protestants to be burnt at the stake earned her the nickname "Bloody Mary." She died without issue in 1558.

Mary's half-sister Elizabeth I (daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn) succeeded her and reinstated Protestantism with the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559, though her brand of Protestantism was not as extreme as that of her late half-brother. Her forty-five year reign was a period of expansion, prosperity, and artistic development, though it was not without its challenges, as in the Plague of 1563-4, which killed over 20,000 in London alone, possibly from drinking contaminated water from the Thames. In 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots (a Catholic and a great-granddaughter of Henry VII) fled rebellions in Scotland, but Elizabeth, fearful that Mary might have a credible claim to the English throne and that that claim might incite Catholic rioting (not an unfounded fear, as the Northern Rebellion of 1569 proved), had her imprisoned. After a period of plotting and counterplotting, Mary was sent to trial in 1586 for her role in a conspiracy to kill Elizabeth; she was found guilty and was executed on charges of treason in 1587. In 1588, the English navy defeated the Spanish Armada (hitherto proclaimed 'invincible') in a stunning victory. Between 1580 and 1594, lead pipes were installed to bring water from the Thames into London. In 1590, in a failed attempt to find a post at court, Edmund Spenser dedicated The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth. During her reign, both Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare contributed to the development of the theatre. In 1603, Elizabeth died without naming a successor.