The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (39 page)

Ten Things the Tudors Did for Us In This Chapter

Converting the nobility

Rethinking government

Separating England from Europe

Separating Catholic from Protestant

Circling the globe

W hen the Tudors came to power in 1485 England was still a medieval

country, run by a king who could barely control his nobles, where

violence was a way of life and where the Catholic Church, run from Rome,

was a law unto itself. Over the 118 years of Tudor rule, a lot of what people

take for granted today was created.

Change happened by degree, not all at once and not always for the better. But

by 1603 when Elizabeth I died, England wasn't just that awkward bit out in the

sea, a backwater where nothing important happened; it was a sovereign state

and a power to be reckoned with, and it had the finest navy in the world.

Later generations would see England become Britain, and Britain become `the

workshop of the world' and the heart of the biggest empire in history. But

British development started under the Tudors.

Civilising the Nobility

The men who ran England in the middle ages were the barons, hard men

in a hard age who had castles and private armies. Their castles are all over

England today, mostly in ruins � check them out for a feel of this lawless time.

What mattered to the nobility was the length of their pedigree � some fami-

lies went way back to 1066 and the Norman conquest � and the size of their

retinues (armed servants).

When the king was weak, as with Henry VI, or unpopular, as with Richard

III, the nobles felt it their duty to take over. If several nobles decided on the

same thing because of their ancestry, the result was a monumental punch-up

like the Wars of the Roses, which lasted on and off for 30 years. (Chapter 2

has all the details of these wars and the pre-Tudor kings.)

Henry VII, the first Tudor, decided to put an end to the strength of the nobility:

In 1504 he limited the nobles' followings to household servants (cooks

and cleaners, not soldiers).

He made the status of the king much higher than it had been � you

addressed the king as `Your Majesty', not `Your Grace'.

He educated his sons in the humanist tradition (see Chapter 2), stress-

ing the importance of honesty, service and competence.

Okay, so it was a slow process, and the odd powerful person in Tudor

England tried to be a monarch-maker � Thomas Wolsey under Henry VIII

(see Chapter 4); Somerset and Dudley, Edward VI's advisors (Chapter 7); and

even, though the attempt was pathetic, the earl of Essex in Elizabeth's last

years (Chapter 16).

But by and large, the nobility grew up. Realising that the Tudors brought in

new men from humble backgrounds, most of the nobility dropped their per-

sonal pursuit of power and worked hard for king and country.

Encouraging Self-government

One way to cut the power of the nobles (see the section `Civilising the

Nobility') was to give power and responsibility to somebody else. Look at

the backgrounds of some of the key men in this book who wielded enormous

power: where they started is amazing. Thomas Wolsey's dad was a butcher;

Thomas Cromwell's was a blacksmith and brewer. And they're just the tip of

the iceberg.

What Henry VII did was to take a system that already existed � local organisa-

tions like the Commission of the Peace, Commission of Sewers and so on � and

give it teeth. Until that time, gentlemen (rich, middle class men with or without

an actual coat of arms) were tied to some great lord. But under the Tudors,

gentlemen were tied to the king, and so the idea grew up of service to the

Crown, not to an individual. And this idea has carried forth to this day: the

Government's civil service stays constant whoever is on the throne and which-

ever political party is in power.

Parliament began in the 13th century as part of the Great Council of the king.

It was made up of peers of the realm at first, then knights of the shire were

added and finally burgesses (citizens) from towns with royal charters.

Edward I said in the 13th century, `Quid omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur'

(That which affects everybody ought to be decided by everybody) � so now

you can show off your Latin too! Edward wasn't talking about democracy,

though � not at all. Most people � the middle and working classes, the poor

and all women � weren't in the loop at all. No elections took place and no

political parties existed. Parliament only turned up when the king ordered it

and only talked about what he wanted them to talk about.

Henry VIII's break with Rome changed all that (see Chapter 6 and the next

section) because he needed all the help he could get. So in the 1530s Henry's

top man, Thomas Cromwell, pushed all kinds of acts through Parliament to

make them law. The acts were still the king's idea, but it now looked as if

everybody in Parliament agreed and the country backed him too.

More and more acts were passed this way and monarchs increasingly had to

call Parliament if they wanted money (usually to fight foreign wars). Now the

growing role of Parliament was a bit of a double-edged sword. Okay, it gave

the monarch support when he or she needed it, but it also made Parliament

realise how important they were. As Elizabeth's reign went on, more MPs

were demanding changes and getting difficult, and the queen sent one or two

to the Tower.

In the next century Parliament and the monarch clashed constantly under

the Stuarts. This led to civil war in 1642, the beheading of Charles I in 1649

and 11 years during which no monarch sat on the throne of England.

Today, Parliament calls the shots and the present royal family have no practi-

cal powers at all.

Breaking with Rome

You can read all about Henry VIII's split with Rome in Chapter 6. The break is

probably the most important change the Tudors brought about. Certainly, it

caused them most bother.

In a nutshell, Henry VIII needed a divorce to get the son he needed to carry

on the Tudor line. The pope (head of the Catholic Church) wouldn't grant

one, so Henry made himself head of the Church of England instead. Now he

could do what he liked.

The Catholic Church had been going for 1,400 years in England and old habits

were difficult to break. Most people were illiterate and superstitious, and the

Church had been there for them from cradle to grave.

Henry banned all links with Rome � the pope was now called the bishop of

Rome � and closed the monasteries because they were places where the

pope was regarded as top man.

Under Edward VI truly Protestant ideas took hold (see Chapter 8), but when

the king died at 15, his sister Mary, a Catholic, tried to put the clock back and

burned heretics who wouldn't follow her orders (Chapter 10). Then Elizabeth

I set up a compromise Church in 1559 that was supposed to be half Catholic

and half Protestant (Chapter 13), but nobody was fooled � it was a Protestant

Church and became even more so as time went on.

Despite attempts by later popes to excommunicate Elizabeth and even have

her killed, a number of Catholic plots failed and the Church of England is still

alive and kicking today. Now, in a more tolerant age, Catholics and Protestants

live side by side peacefully enough.

Building the Navy

As an island, Britain has always depended on the sea both for trade and

defence. The `wooden walls of England' (the navy) have often kept the

country safe from attack � and never more so than in 1588 when Philip II

unleashed the Spanish Armada (see Chapter 15).

Before the Tudors England had very few warships and they were used for

short periods of time, often being converted from existing trading vessels.

Naval warfare was more or less land warfare on water. That's why the front

and back of the ships had forecastles and aftcastles; they allowed soldiers to

fire arrows and slingshots at each other from the decks.

Henry VIII set to work building a permanent navy with splendid ships like the

Henry Grace a Dieu and the Mary Rose. They patrolled the English coast and

took troops to France or wherever they were needed. By 1545 the fleet had

nearly 50 ships varying in size from 20 to 1,000 tons. Check out the wreck of

the Mary Rose in the Historic Dockyard at Portsmouth.

The navy became a government department of its own from 1546 and the

lord admiral sat on the Privy Council (see Chapter 2), closely advising the

monarch.

By 1580, thanks to the revolutionary designs of John Hawkins (see Chapter

15), English warships like the Victory, the Nonpareil, the Dreadnought and

the Revenge were faster, more streamlined and more deadly than anything

owned by any other European power.

The navy's legacy was picked up in the late 17th century and led to patri-

otic songs like `Rule Britannia' in the 19th century. In 1886 the British navy

was the largest in the world, the size of any other two countries' navies put

together.

Putting a Woman on the Throne

Some countries, like France with its Salic Law, said it wasn't alright for a

woman to be queen in her own right. In theory, a queen could inherit the

crown of England, but it had never happened. And people were hesitant.

After all, the last queen before the Tudors had been Matilda in the 12th

century and she'd spent most of her time fighting her rival Stephen for the

crown. Nobody in Tudor England believed a woman could do the job.

The prejudice went back to Adam and Eve really � and medieval people, like

the Tudors, believed every word of the Bible. Eve wasn't only made after Adam

(a sort of reluctant PS), but she let the serpent (the devil) seduce her so that

all women were naturally weak and more or less immoral.

In England the inheritance of the throne was based on primogeniture � the

eldest son always following on from his dad. That all went a bit pear-shaped

during the Wars of the Roses (1455�1487; see Chapter 2) where it was every-

body for himself, but the Tudors carried on the primogeniture tradition.

The problem came with the early death of Edward VI (see Chapter 9). The

only two real contenders for the throne were Mary and Elizabeth, his half-

sisters who were both the daughters of Henry VIII. In fact, Henry had gone to

great lengths, breaking with Rome and risking eternal damnation, just to get a

son in the first place.

Mary wasn't a great queen � lots of men (like John Knox in Scotland, who

hated women) must have said `I told you so'. But Elizabeth was. She was

more of a man than Henry could have hoped for and she told her troops at

Tilbury in 1588 (see Chapter 15) that she had the stomach and heart of a

king, and a king of England at that.

Although they all had the job in different times and different circumstances,

later queens, like Mary II (1689), Victoria (1837) and Elizabeth II (1952), were

rather good at it. Oh, except Anne (1702)!

Messing Up Ireland

However you look at it, Tudor government in Ireland was a complete disas-

ter. Since the 12th century the English had owned the Pale, an area around

Dublin, and put castles and garrisons all over the Obedient Lands beyond

that. Outside this were the Wild Lands where people spoke Gaelic, poverty

was rife and tribe fought tribe as they had for centuries.

Henry VII was happy to let the situation continue, but Henry VIII wanted to

sort Ireland out. All his strong arm tactics did was provoke a rebellion from

the earl of Kildare and the idea of Irish independence was born. Have a look

at the Irish sections in throughout this book and you see a pattern emerging.

The map in Chapter 2 makes it clear. Yes, the English imposed the Protestant

religion in theory and yes, they carved up Ireland into English style counties,

but the rest was about force.

Local heroes like Hugh O'Neill rose in rebellion from time to time and by the

1580s England's fear was that the Irish might link up with Spain to cause real

problems. An alliance didn't quite happen, but the establishment of English

plantations with Scotsmen under the Stuarts was a festering sore that never

healed.

The true start of the troubles between England and Ireland belongs to a later

period, but all the warning signs existed already under the Tudors.

Bringing in Bad Habits

Potatoes got to England by 1586 and people dumped them into stews along-

side carrots, peas and beans. But who brought the spud to England? Francis

Drake found some in Cartagena that year. They originally came from Peru

and were only introduced into North America by the early English colonists

in Virginia. On the other hand, Walter Ralegh is also credited with bringing

tatties over. So who should be blamed for the chip, crisp, French fry (and

they're certainly not French!) and people's ballooning waistlines today? Frank

or Walt? You choose!

The natives found by Columbus and the conquistadors were already rolling

up tobacco leaves, lighting them and shoving them up their noses by the late

15th century. Spanish and Portuguese explorers brought the leaves back by

the 1550s and they got to England, where they really caught on, via raids on

the Caribbean Islands in the 1560s. Englishmen smoked tobacco in clay pipes

and it made them behave strangely. King James VI of Scotland hated the stuff,

writing articles about tobacco and calling it `the noxious weed'. Since then,

tobacco has killed millions of people all over the world.