The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (40 page)

A discovery that completely passed by the Tudors, meanwhile, was the fork.

Traveller Tom Coryat believed he brought the first fork to England in 1611, but

that's not likely. People had them in 10th century Constantinople (that's

Istanbul today) and it's likely the odd rogue one got to England via Italy and

France by the 16th century. Check out the Bayeux Tapestry (made about

1070): everybody's eating with knives and fingers just like they did through

most of the Tudor time.

Widening Horizons

All medieval trade from England was with Europe before the discovery of the

New World. Africa and Asia remained closed shops as far as buying and sell-

ing went, although the Portuguese in particular were exploring along the west

African coast when Henry VII was newly crowned.

The biggest trade was in wool and unfinished cloth and much of it went via

the Spanish Netherlands port of Antwerp. Companies like the Staplers and

the Merchant Adventurers made huge fortunes out of this trade � the lord

chancellor still sits with his feet on a woolsack as a historic symbol in the

House of Lords.

The crisis in the wool market in the 1550s (see Chapter 7) led to a search for

other markets. Explorers Richard Chancellor and Sir Hugh Willoughby set off

in 1553 to find a new route to the East via the frozen Arctic Sea. They failed,

but the Muscovy Company of 1555 opened up new trade with Russia, which

brought furs and timber to England.

At the same time merchants were operating in Guinea in West Africa and

John Hawkins butted in to the Spanish American slave trade. Courtiers

and even the queen invested heavily in voyages of discovery (see Martin

Frobisher in the previous chapter) and many new companies were set up,

such as the Levant, the Eastland, the Virginia and the Hudson's Bay.

Nobody in England cried very much when Antwerp was virtually burned to

the ground in 1576.

Widening the (English) Channel

A long time after the Tudors, Napoleon Bonaparte said, `The Channel is but a

ditch. If I could control it for half an hour, I would have England in the palm

of my hand.' And that was the problem. The Channel wasn't just 21 miles of

water at its narrowest point, patrolled after the 1540s by English warships;

the psychological gap was important. 304 Part V: The Part of Tens

The English Court had already started using the English language, not French,

in the 14th century, and as England lost more and more of France during the

15th century the English felt less and less European as a result.

The last bit of France the English owned was Calais, and when they lost that

in 1558 it was a deep shock. The town itself wasn't very important � it was

the principle that mattered. Monarchs of England kept the French fleur-de-

lys on their coats of arms until 1803. The loss meant, however, that England

turned her back on Europe and got on with being first a global trader and

then a global power.

Henry VIII's break with Rome added to this `England first' attitude. The

Catholic Church might have ruled Europe (although its grip was seriously

weakened as a result of the Reformation) but it didn't rule England, creating a

sense of `them and us'.

The break with Europe wasn't complete, however:

The final version of the Church of England was basically Calvinistic.

Calvin was a Frenchman operating out of the Swiss city of Geneva.

The academic world � lawyers, doctors and scientists � carried on using

Latin, which people all over Europe used too.

The English eagerly accepted European trends � French hoods, Italian

britches, Spanish rapiers. Check out Shakespeare's plays (see Chapters

1 and 17) and notice the many Italian references.

Ten Top Tudor Buildings In This Chapter

Touring palaces and houses great and small

Visiting a noteworthy religious site

Examining fortification and high-tech touches

I f you want to see what's left of the Tudors, go to almost any city in

England. And on the way to the cities, stop off at a few country houses,

churches and pubs. A hierarchy existed: palaces were for the royals (see the

map in Chapter 3); great houses were owned by the nobility; manor houses

were the homes of the gentry; merchants lived in town houses. If any other

buildings survive, like the homes of the poor, it's always by a sheer miracle.

Be warned, though � subsequent generations have fiddled with many Tudor

buildings, and people often live in these period properties today. The Tudors

didn't have central heating, hot and cold running water or loos that flushed,

and if you see a TV set in a Jacobean (Stuart) cabinet, don't you believe it! And

Tudor houses didn't all have priest holes either (see Chapter 14).

Here are ten of the best buildings of the Tudor era that survive in England today.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shottery, Warwickshire

In case you're wondering, Anne Hathaway is famous for being the wife of

William Shakespeare. All the other buildings in this chapter are palaces, great

houses or castles. Anne Hathaway's Cottage (which was never actually hers,

by the way) is an example of an ordinary country home dating in its oldest

parts from the 15th century.

Building in villages like Shottery wouldn't have happened very often and

existing cottages would've been updated over time rather than starting from

scratch. Major building programmes only occurred in London, often taking

over ex-church land vacated by the monasteries in the 1530s (Chapter 6

explains why the monasteries dissolved at this time).

The Hathaway house belonged to a yeoman farmer (Anne's dad) and the

oldest part dates to the 1460s. It had a cross passage with a hall to the left

and a kitchen to the right. The house was cruck-built � imagine a capital letter

A with the feet as the foundations and the apex forming the ridge of the roof.

Joining these uprights were oak beams and the spaces between them were

originally filled in with wattle and daub (wooden slats and mud). By the early

17th century this infill began to be made of brick. The house had one fire-

place, and the very small windows had no glass but wooden shutters to keep

out wind and rain.

Later extensions to the house added more rooms on the ground floor with

two bedrooms above. The residents of many country cottages had to share

their home with their cattle, but because Anne Hathaway's father, Richard,

was reasonably well off (on her wedding day to William Shakespeare she

received 6 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence from his will) the animals were

kept in outbuildings nearby.

Check out the cottage today � it's part of the Shakespeare circuit based in

nearby Stratford and you can see the famous bed that, according to legend, is

the `second best' one that Shakespeare left Anne in his will.

Burghley House, Stamford

Elizabeth I's principal secretary, William Cecil, inherited Burghley House

from his father in 1553 and immediately began to rebuild. In 1563 he bought

the manor of Theobalds (pronounced Tibbalds) and started to build there

too. But in 1575 Cecil returned to Burghley House, completing the west front

in 1577 and the north front ten years later.

Cecil designed his additions in the classical style, much used in France and

the Low Countries (today's Netherlands). He'd never been to either country

but copied the style from Somerset House in London (www.somersethouse.

org.uk), which his former boss, the duke of Somerset (lord protector in

Edward VI's reign), built in the late 1540s.

Burghley House is built around a central courtyard. The Great Hall, which is

part of this range, originally had many large windows, but the weight of the

slate roof began to cause structural problems and so in the 18th century sev-

eral windows had to be filled in to strengthen the building. The present west

range was probably built by Cecil's son Thomas, at the very end of the 16th

century when the main entrance was moved from the west side to the north.

Visually, the heart of the house is its great central courtyard, which was

designed to impress with glorious classical embellishments of columns, obe-

lisks and carved roundels carrying portraits of Roman emperors � even a king

of Troy! Although large parts of the house have been rebuilt and restored,

much of it would be readily recognisable to William Cecil even today.

Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight

The original castle was built by the Normans in the late 11th century and by

Elizabeth's reign the curtain wall and circular towers were completely unsuit-

able for defence purposes against cannon. In Chapter 15 we explain that

even though the Armada had been defeated, Spain was still likely to try to

invade England again. One obvious landing point would be the Isle of Wight,

from which all kinds of attacks could be made on the south of England. So

although Elizabeth didn't like spending money, she eventually paid the bril-

liant Italian architect Federigo Gianibelli to update Carisbrooke just in case.

Gianibelli extended the medieval towers along the south wall and turned

them into gun platforms that could take at least two cannon. At the same

time he built a series of earthworks called arrowhead bastions, which went all

the way around the castle and were a death trap for any attackers.

To reach the castle wall you had to drop down a 12-foot ditch (and up the

other side!), cross open land, drop down a 6-foot ditch, climb a 12-foot wall,

cross more open ground and drop down a third ditch before attempting

to climb the 30-foot ramp that led to the wall itself. The attackers couldn't

see any of these ditches until it was too late. Oh, and by the way, while you

were doing navigating these ditches, you were being fired at by four cannon,

angled in such a way as to catch you in a murderous crossfire. As it hap-

pened, nobody ever attacked the castle to see how well this would work.

While you're at Carisbrooke, check out the cannon in the museum. It was

made by the Owen Brothers of London in the 1540s and was one of several

owned by local parishes for self-protection.

Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

Edmund Compton redesigned the family home in the 1480s, using a striking

red brick. His was one of the first country houses not to have the thick walls

and small windows necessary for defence. Compton, like everyone else, was

hoping the country wouldn't return to the Wars of the Roses (see Chapter 2).

Compton was on good terms with the Tudors. His son, William, was page to

Prince Henry, and the two became friends. In 1515 William started a building

programme at Wynyates using windows and other features that Henry gave

him from altered or demolished royal houses. He built the great entrance

porch, the chapel, the brick-fluted and twisted chimneys and many of the

towers that survive. Of all Tudor buildings, the chimneys at Wynyates are

impressive; no two are the same.

Henry VIII visited William many times, and the window of the bedroom that

he used still shows his arms in stained glass, along with those of Catherine of

Aragon. Elizabeth I also stayed at Compton Wynyates in 1572.

A curious feature of the house is the Priest's Room at the top of one of the

towers, so called because of five consecration crosses carved in the window-

sill. This detail is curious because (as far as historians know) the Comptons

were Protestants, who were unlikely to have given refuge to a fugitive priest.

In one respect Compton Wynyates has been fortunate. In 1574 Henry, Lord

Compton, began to build Castle Ashby, and so he neglected Wynyates while

lavishing money and attention on his new home. Wynyates was therefore

spared any efforts to keep it up to date. In the 18th century an order to

demolish the house was ignored. It was restored in 1884, and in 1978, when

Castle Ashby was opened to the public, Compton Wynyates became the fam-

ily's principal home.

Deal Castle, Kent

The most likely place for an attack by the French in Henry VIII's reign was

along the south coast of England. In 1539 Henry built a string of castles from

St Mawes and Pendennis in the west to Sandown in the east to keep the

French out. In 1545 Francis I's troops landed on the Isle of Wight and hand to

hand fighting took place at Sandown fort, which hadn't quite been finished in

time! Deal Castle is one of the best known of the surviving fortresses built for

Henry VIII.

Cannon had improved so much by this time that high medieval walls, as at

Carisbrooke, were useless against them. The answer was to build low, squat

defences, bristling with guns.

Deal's core was formed by the keep, around which were clustered six semi-

circular bastions, all with walls 4 metres (14 feet) thick to withstand the

expected bombardment. Four tiers of artillery defended the fortress: one

mounted on the roof of the keep, two others in the upper storeys and the

fourth in the bastions.