Mary I (1553-1558 ad)

Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was born in 1516 and suffered through a terrible childhood of neglect, intolerance, and ill-health. She was a staunch catholic from birth, constantly resisting pressure from others to renounce her faith, a request she steadfastly refused. She married Philip II of Spain in 1555, but was unable to produce a child.

Mary began her tumultuous reign at 37 years of age, arriving in London amid a scene of great rejoicing. Following the disarray created by Edward VI's passing of the succession to Lady Jane Grey (Jane lasted only nine days), Mary's first act was to repeal the Protestant legislation of her brother, Edward VI, hurling England into a phase of severe religious persecution. Her major goal was the re-establishment of Catholicism in England, a goal to which she was totally committed. Persecution came more from a desire for purity in faith than from vengeance, yet the fact remains that nearly 300 people (including former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer and many of the most prominent members of society) were burned at the stake for heresy, earning Mary the nickname, "Bloody Mary."

Mary's marriage to the militant Catholic Philip was again designed to enforce Roman Catholicism on the realm. Unfortunately for Mary, two factors compelled opposition to her plans: the English people hated foreigners - especially the Spanish - and twenty years of Protestantism had soured the English on popery. She met with resistance at every level of society, and, unlike her father and brother, failed to conform society into one ideological pattern. Philip II, cold and indifferent to both Mary and her realm, remained in England for only a short time. He coerced Mary to enter into war with France, resulting in defeat and the loss of the last English continental possession, Calais. With the retirement of his father, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, Philip returned to Spain; Mary died a mere ten months later.

England suffered during the reign of Mary I: the economy was in ruin, religious dissent reached a zenith and England lost her last continental territory. Jane Austen wrote this rather scathing commentary about Mary: "This woman had the good luck of being advanced to the throne of England, in spite of the superior pretensions, Merit and Beauty of her Cousins Mary Queen of Scotland and Jane Grey. Nor can I pity the Kingdom for the misfortunes they experienced during her reign, since they fully deserved them..."

Elizabeth I (1558-1603 ad)

A Queen with the Heart of a King

The first Queen Elizabeth, whose name has become a synonym for the era which she dominated (1558-1603), was born in 1533 to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Called "Gloriana" by Edmund Spenser in "The Faerie Queene", Elizabeth's deft political skills and strong personal character were directly responsible for putting England (at the time of her accession in 1558 a weak, divided backwater far outside the mainstream of European power and cultural development) on the road to becoming a true world economic and political power and restoring the country's lost sense of national pride. Her legacy is such that students today earning a masters in political science or especially an international MBA study her 400 year old actions. Although she entertained many marriage proposals and flirted incessantly (her closest brush with marriage came with Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester), she never married or had children.

Elizabeth inherited a tattered realm: dissension between Catholics and Protestants tore at the very foundation of society; the royal treasury had been bled dry by Mary and her advisors, Mary's loss of Calais left England with no continental possessions for the first time since the arrival of the Normans in 1066 and many (mainly Catholics) doubted Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Continental affairs added to her problems - France had a strong foothold in Scotland, and Spain, the strongest European nation at the time, posed a threat to the security of the realm. Elizabeth proved most calm and calculating (even though she had a horrendous temper), employing capable and distinguished men to carrying out royal prerogative.

Her first order of business was to eliminate religious unrest. Elizabeth lacked the fanaticism of her siblings (Edward VI favored Protestant radicalism, Mary I, conservative Catholicism), which enabled her to devise a compromise that, basically, reinstated Henrician reforms. She was, however, compelled to take a stronger pro-Protestant stance when events demanded it, for two reasons: the machinations of Mary Queen of Scots and persecution of continental Protestants by the two strongholds of Orthodox Catholicism, Spain and France.

The situation with Mary Queen of Scots was most vexing to Elizabeth. Mary, in Elizabeth's custody beginning in 1568 (for her own protection from radical Protestants and disgruntled Scots), gained the loyalty of Catholic factions and instituted several-failed assassination/overthrow plots against Elizabeth. After irrefutable evidence of Mary's involvement in the plots came to light, Elizabeth sadly succumbed to the pressure from her advisors and had the Scottish princess executed in 1587.

The persecution of continental Protestants forced Elizabeth into war, a situation which she desperately tried to avoid. She sent an army to aid French Huguenots (Calvinists who had settled in France) after a 1572 massacre wherein over three thousand Huguenots lost their lives. She sent further assistance to Protestant factions on the continent and in Scotland following the emergence of radical Catholic groups and assisted Belgium in their bid to gain independence from Spain.

The situation came to head in 1588 after Elizabeth rejected a marriage proposal from Philip II of Spain. The indignant Spanish King, incensed by English piracy and forays in New World exploration, sent his much-feared Armada to raid England, inadvertently providing Elizabeth with an opportunity to put on public display those qualities of heart that one might not expect to find in those days, in a small, frail woman. She traveled to Tilbury, Essex, to address her troops as they awaited the coming battle with the feared Spanish naval forces. She told them,

". . . therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm . . ."

As they say, the rest is history. The English won the naval battle handily, aided by some fortuitous inclement English Channel weather, and emerged as the world's strongest naval power, setting the stage for later English imperial designs.

Elizabeth was a master of political science. She inherited her father's supremacist view of the monarchy, but showed great wisdom by refusing to directly antagonize Parliament. She acquired undying devotion from her advisement council, who were constantly perplexed by her habit of waiting to the last minute to make decisions (this was not a deficiency in her makeup, but a tactic that she used to advantage). She used the various factions (instead of being used by them), playing one off another until the exhausted combatants came to her for resolution of their grievances. Few English monarchs enjoyed such political power, while still maintaining the devotion of the whole of English society.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in the years 1577 to 1580, fleeing from the Spanish, only the second to accomplish this feat after Ferdinand Magellan's expedition.

In 1579 Drake landed somewhere in northern California and claimed what he named Nova Albion for the English Crown (Albion is an ancient name for England or Britain), though the claim was not followed by settlement. Subsequent maps spell out Nova Albion to the north of all New Spain. England's interests outside Europe now grew steadily, promoted by John Dee (1527-1609), who coined the phrase "British Empire." An expert in navigation, he was visited by many of the early English explorers before and after their expeditions. He was a Welshman, and his use of the term "British" fitted with the Welsh origins of Elizabeth's Tudor family, although his conception of empire was derived from Dante Alighieri's book Monarchia.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1537-1583) followed on Cabot's original claim when he sailed to Newfoundland in 1583 and declared it an English colony on August 5 at St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Sir Walter Raleigh organized the first colony in Virginia in 1587 at Roanoke Island. Both Gilbert's Newfoundland settlement and the Roanoke colony were short-lived, however, and had to be abandoned due to food shortages, severe weather, shipwrecks, and hostile encounters with indigenous tribes on the American continent.

The Elizabethan era built on the past century's imperial foundations by expanding Henry VIII's navy, promoting Atlantic exploration by English sailors, and further encouraging maritime trade especially with the Netherlands and the Hanseatic League, a Baltic trading consortium. The nearly twenty year Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604), which started well for England with the sack of Cadiz and the repulse of the Spanish Armada, soon turned Spain's way with a number of serious defeats which sent the Royal Navy into decline and allowed Spain to retain effective control of the Atlantic sea lanes, thwarting English hopes of establishing colonies in North America. However it did give English sailors and shipbuilders vital experience. Rivalry between the British, the Dutch and the Spanish reflected both commercial and territorial competition but also the Protestant-Catholic divide.

Scotland, Ireland and Wales under the reign of Tudors

I. Wales

A. Wales in the Fourteenth Century

1. occasionally rebelled during Edward II's reign

2. but generally stable during the 14th century

3. Welsh often used as soldiers by the English king

- esp. in the Hundred Years' War

B. Wales under the Lancastrians and Yorkists

1. The Glyn Dwr Rising

a. Phase I: Initial Rebellion (1400)

1. Owain Glyn Dwr was a wealthy Welshman

2. Henry IV would not support him in a land dispute

3. thus, he rebelled

4. but Henry quickly subdued the rebellion

b. Phase II: A National Rising (1401)

1. Owain had escpaed to western Wales

2. the rebellion arouse lingering animosity towards the English

3. more and more people joined Owain

4. he defeated an English force in 1401

5. again subdued by Henry IV

c. Phase III: Victories and Alliances (1402-1404)

1. allied with the Scots, French and Edmund Mortimer

2. had taken several Welsh castles by 1404

3. declared Prince of Wales by a Welsh Parliament in 1404

d. Phase IV: Slow Defeat (1405-1413)

1. the future Henry V defeated Owain in 1405

2. then slowly retook most of Wales from 1406 to 1409

3. Owain's family captured in 1409

4. Owain continued to launch small raids from 1409-1413,

but the rebellion was basically over

2. Wales after the Glyn Dwr Rising

a. Henry IV enacted all sorts of legislation that restricted the Welsh

b. Wales remained fairly stable for the rest of the 15th c.

C. Wales under the Tudors and Stuarts

1. Henry VII

a. he was part Welsh

b. he repealed the statutes of Henry IV

2. Thomas Cromwell and the Act of Union

a. Cromwell wanted the English government to control Wales completely

b. thus, he got Parliament to pass the Act of Union in 1536

1. this was an effort to Anglicize Wales

2. all of Wales was divided into shires

3. the shires were governed by sheriffs and justices of the peace

4. but the Welsh could choose their own justices

5. and they also received representation in the English Parliament

3. The Reformation in Wales

a. the Act of Union ensured that the Welsh church would reform like

the English church

1. Welsh churches were subject to the archbishop of Canterbury

2. the English king was the official head of the church

b. actual religious reform was slower because of the language barrier

c. but translation into Welsh and printing of the English prayer book

and the Bible in the second half of the 16th c. facilitated reform

II. Ireland

A. Ireland in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

1. The Scottish Invasion (1315-1318)

a. the Bruces opened a second front against the English

b. they gave voice to Irish resistance

c. the Irish were then able to firm up their independence

in eastern Ireland and begin harassing the English in the east

2. The Statutes of Kilkenny (1366)

a. Edward III sent his son Lionel, duke of Clarence, to Ireland

to solidify English control there

b. Lionel fored the Irish Parliament to pass the Statutes of Kilkenny

c. these were similar Henry IV's statutes concerning Wales

d. they dictated that:

1. the Irish should live by themselves

2. they should worship by themselves

3. they should maintain their own language, laws, customs

3. The Fifteenth Century

B. Ireland under the Tudors

1. Henry VII and Poynings' Law

a. Henry VII wanted more direct control

b. he deposed the powerful earl of Kildare

c. appointed Sir Edward Poynings to run Ireland for him

d. he passed a statute later called Poynings' Law (1494)

1. it said that the Irish Parliament could not meet

without the king's permission

2. it also said that the parliament could only pass

legislation approved by the king's council

2. Henry VIII and Cromwell

a. surrender and re-grant

b. trying to make the Irish lords more English

3. The Mid-Tudor Plantations

a. Edward VI and Mary wanted to create a buffer zone around the Pale

b. they confiscated land around the Pale and granted it to Englishmen

4. Elizabeth and Protestantism

a. Elizabeth wanted a uniform religion in all her territories

b. the Irish in Munster rebelled in the 1580s [MAP]

c. the Munster Plantation

d. other rebellions (e.g., the one by Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone)

were crushed

e. Elizabeth left the Stuarts a completely controlled Ireland

f. but the violence and plantations increased the Irish animosity

toward the English

g. thus, Elizabeth's efforts at religious reform didn't really take

C. Ireland under the Stuarts

1. James I and the Ulster Plantation

a. continued Elizabeth's policy of plantations in order to subdue

and Anglicize the Irish

b. the Ulster Plantation

c. a response to the earl of Tyrone's rebellion

2. The Reign of Charles I

a. The Connacht Plantation

b. The Irish Massacre of 1641

3. Oliver Cromwell

a. led an army to Ireland in 1649 to exact revenge for the Massacre of 1641

b. he viciously subdued Ireland

c. Act of Parliament of 1652

- this and other acts dictated that nearly all lands held by Catholics

should be seized and sold to English Protestants

d. by 1660, Irish Catholics held less than 25% of the land in Ireland

4. The Restoration

- the status quo continues

5. Summary:

a. the English gained complete control militarily

b. but they could never win the hearts and minds of the Irish

c. all they managed to do was sow the seeds of religious discord

and nationalist hatred that would plague the Irish for centuries

III. Scotland

A. Scotland in the Fourteenth Century

1. Edward II

- crushed at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314

2. Edward III

a. David II was 5 years old when he became king of Scotland

b. ineffective as king when he reached adulthood

c. crushed when he invaded England in 1346

3. The Rise of the Scottish Parliament

a. similar composition to that of England

b. similar powers, as well

4. The Rise of the Stewarts

a. new ruling dynasty

b. Robert II and Robert III not effective

B. Scotland under the Lancastrians and Yorkists

1. next three Stewarts (James I, II and III) also not effective

2. they came to the throne as minors

3. thus, Scotland is no threat to England during this period

C. Scotland under the Tudors and Stuarts

1. James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-1542)

2. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1567), and the Scottish Reformation

a. John Knox

b. influenced by John Calvin in Geneva

c. he brought a strict Calvinist Protestantism to Scotland

- it came to be called Presbyterianism

3. James VI/I (1567-1625) and the Stewarts (Stuarts) in England

a. the two kingdoms eventually grew closer and closer

b. they officially unified with an Act of Union in 1707