Renaissance

Not so many kings - WHEW - all together now - WHEW!

Henry VII

• Set up Privy Council - under the king supreme– The court of the star chamber - made its

rulings unhampered by common law

Built up navy

Renaissance ideas

• Ideas from Northern Italy were spreading across Europe

• Inducing men and women to regard themselves and their lives in relation to the world in which they lived rather than to the superhuman world of old-fashioned theologians

Men of ideas

• Erasmus• William Caxton - brought printing press

to England - Westminster• Vasco de Gama - made his journey

around the Cape of Good Hope to India• Columbus claimed the New World• World Expanding

England’s state

• For years - considered an offshore island of relatively little consequence in the affairs of Western Europe. Becoming a market and nation of importance – Expert sailors– Experienced merchants

• Henry VII’s daughter married King James IV of Scotland - kept peace

• Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon - daughter of Spain’s King Ferdinand - a sign of England’s rising importance

1509

• Henry VII died @52• Left a fortune, restored churches,

colleges and a huge navy• Prince Arthur died soon after his

wedding - bride boasted she was a virgin - Pope granted dispensation

• She married the new king of England

Henry VIII

• Attractive, highly intelligent, athletic, enjoyed pleasures of court - intellectual - Thomas More - artistic, and leisure.

• Pursued his activities but left country almost in hands of Thomas Wolsey -immensely rich and powerful archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor, and Cardinal

Cardinal Wolsey

• Fat, clad in scarlet, rode a donkey through town with an orange stuffed with a cloth soaked in vinegar to ward off smell.

• Shamed the realm when he died – he had many phony charities and was extremely wealthy – gave cause for Protestant movement

Anne Boleyn

• When Catherine couldn’t give Henry a son –Henry wanted a divorce. He went to Cardinal Wolsey who went to Pope Clement VII. Pope had been driven from Rome by Charles V – Catherine’s uncle. Clement was distracted and did not sanction the divorce.

Anne Boleyn

• Henry now in love with one of the Queen’s ladies – Anne Boleyn

• 1532 – Wolsey died – disgrace• Anne was pregnant• January – Henry and Anne were

secretly married• May – ecclesiastical court decreed

marriage to Catherine null and void

Church of England

• Pope excommunicated king• King established the legislative principle

that King of England was independent of Rome – stopped revenue going to Rome

• Parliament passed Act of Supremacy – King Supreme Head of Church of England – Anglican church

The Reformation

• Catholic to Protestant – not unpopular with the people

• Dissent had built up for years especially when Wolsey died and – he had an immense fortune from ecclesiastical offices of profit

Thomas Cromwell

• Carried out King’s revolution– Dismantling of abbeys– Transfer of properties and lands to the

crown– Sale to the English gentry– Some great abbeys still lie in ruin

1541 – Henry VIII

• 50, grossly fat, coarse, inspired fear more than admiration

• Anne Boleyn had been beheaded on charges of adultery

• Jane Seymour – died in childbirth – Edward• Anne of Cleves – excessively plain – forced

upon Henry in pursuit of a German alliance

• Catherine Howard – beheaded for alleged adultery

• Catherine Parr – 6th wife – outlived Henry

• DIVORCED, BEHEADED, DIED• DIVORCED, BEHEADED, SURVIVED

Henry VIII

• Published religious dissents his whole life

• Musical – Is said to have written “Green Sleeves”

• Court contained many poets and artists

Edward VI – 1547 - 1553

• Henry died in 1547• Edward was 9• Protestant – Act of Uniformity• Book of Common Prayer• King’s advisors continued to plunder Catholic

churches• Died at age 15 – Poisoned by medicines his

physicians had prescribed

Lady Jane Grey

• Edward VI’s cousin• Set up to inherit throne as she was

Protestant. Her father-in-law was the advisor to Edward – Duke of Northumberland

• Lady fainted when she heard she was queen – saying Mary should be Queen

Mary I – Bloody Mary 1553-1558

• Came in and took over• Had Northumberland, his son, and Lady

Jane Grey executed• Devoutly Catholic, unworldly and

impressionable• Reign remembered for the screams of

Protestants on the crackling fires - 300

Book of Martyrs

• 1563 – Commemorated all those who were killed by Mary I

Mary I

• Married to Phillip II of Spain• Had may hysterical pregnancies• Husband left her• Died of cancer of the ovaries in 1558• Lost England’s last stronghold in Europe –

Calais• Country in economic decline,

• bands of unemployed• Prices rising, wages remaining low

Elizabeth I – 1558- 1603

• 25 years old – capable, strong, intelligent, extremely vain– Flirtatious– Difficult– Demanding– Reluctant to make up her mind and

constantly changing it

Elizabethan court

• Busy hive of activity– James Lancaster – established East India

Trading Company – beginning of empire in India

– Artists, poets, theatres – Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh

Conspirators

• Claim to throne was iffy• Cousin – Mary Queen of Scots –

executed in 1587• 1588 – Spanish Armada with approval

of the Pope to go get the “heretical queen of England”

Spanish Armada

• Ships were outmanuevered by smaller British ships. Having suffered heavy losses, they were dispersed by a storm. Survivors were forced to sail around Scotland and down the coast of Ireland. Many who clambored ashore were robbed, murdered, or held for ransom.

King James VI of ScotlandKing James I of England

• 1603 – Elizabeth died• James son of Mary Stuart• Not a man to command respect• The wisest fool in Christendom• Conceited, slovenly, spoke in full dialect of

his country, loud, expressed his opinion, terrified of witches and naked steel, hated the sea and pigs, wrote a diatribe against smoking now widespread due to Raleigh

During James’s time• First purely renaissance building in England –

Whitehall – completed• William Harvey physician at St Bartholomew’s

worked on explaining circulation of the blood• William Gilbert established the magnetic

nature of the earth and founded the study of electrical science

• The authorized version of the Bible - 1611• The Puritans sailed the Mayflower to North

America

James

• Needed to spend time on– Neglected needs of the navy– Problems of Ulster – where Protestants

were being settled on land from which Irish Catholics were being expelled

– Growing discontent of Puritans and Catholics in England

Guy Fawkes

• 1605 – plot to blow up King and Parliament – planted barrels of gunpowder in the cellar of the houses of Parliament

Rest of James’s Reign

• Authority as king was exercised as divine right

• Members of Parliament were resentful• King dissolved 1st Parliament and tried to rule

on his own for 10 years• 1621 - summoned Parliament as he was

short of money – dispute, dissolved• King James died and left son Charles I to

contend with Parliament