The English Renaissance

The Tudors

Henry VII• Henry VII, who came to the

English throne when the Wars of the Roses ended, was the first king of the Tudor’s dynasty.

• He tried to consolidate his position through:

1. A treaty with France;2. A trade treaty with the

Netherlands;3. The dynasty marriage

between his son Arthur and the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon.

• During his reign he turned England into a modern state.

• He also laid the foundations of English naval power.

Henry VIII• Henry VIII was Henry VII’s second son. From an early

age he was a known figure at court. He was a natural sportsman.

• He was called the “Golden Prince” both for his natural good looks and for his chivalry and education .

• In 1521 he was granted the title of “Defender of the Faith” by the pope.

• After the death of his brother, Henry married his widow. In twenty years of marriage Catherine only produced a daughter, Mary, and Henry desperately wanted a male heir.

• He began to consider marriage to his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn, and asked the pope for a divorce.

• Henry broke with Rome and declared himself “Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England”

• He married Anne Boleyn and she gave him a second daughter, Elyzabeth.

• Henry went on to have four more wives in quick succession and one son, Edward, from his third wife, Jane Seymour.

Mary I• Mary I was born in 1516, the only surviving

child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.• Rejection by her father and the cruel

treatment of her mother were to have fundamental influence on her life.

• She refused to abandon her own traditional faith, and when she became queen, she believed herself to be the agent of a Counter-Reformation.

• This attempt to restore England to papal obedience, her marriage to the Catholic Philip of Spain and the burning of Protestants, earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary”.

• Mary’s end was tragic: deserted by her husband, without an heir, her foreign and domestic policies were a failure, and her country was still divided over religion when she died.

Elizabeth I• In 1558 Elizabeth,Henry the VIII and Anne Boleyn’s

daughter, became queen of a divided nation – the majority of which was a Catholic and anti-Spanish.

• She was twenty-five and had a strong personality, a lively intelligence and a passionate character. She had received an excellent education and could speak French, Latin ans Italian with ease, but above all she was a political genius.

• As queen she faced the problems of marriage and succession, religious division, domestic discontent and foreign threats. Her Church of England restored the country firmly to Protestantism, yet she granted Catholics freedom of worship.

• She was unmarried and used this as a political weapon. She often repeated the “the Queen was married to her people”.

• She recognised Spain as her main trade rival and enemy. At first, open war was avoided and exploration and overseas trade expanded, making England a commercial and sea power.

• In 1588 the Spanish decided to invade England and sent a great armada of 130 galleons to the English Channel, but the English defeated the Spanish Armada.

After the Tudor dynastyJames I

• With the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the Tudor line died out and James VI of Scotland became the first Stuart king in England, with the title of James I.

• He was a Protestant, and instead of basing his rule on “the love of his people”, he based it on the theory of the “divine right of kings”. He believed that, as a monarch, he was the representative of God on earth.

• He was interested in witchcraft and the supernatural.• Catholics were barred from public life and were fined

if they refused to attend the Church of England; Puritans disapproved of both the rites and the bishops of the Church of England. So hundred of men left England for America.

• King James authorised a new translation of the Bible in 1604.

• In 1605, some radical Catholics, led by Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the king in the Houses of Parliament.

An expanding world• The restlessness of the 16th century was

increased by new geographical and scientific discoveries which weakened the old models of the world and the universe.

• By around 150 AD, the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy had written the Geography, which defined the discipline of geography and laid down the principles of global mapping.

• In Ptolemy’s view of the universe, the sun and the planets revolved around a stationary earth. Below the moon was the world of mutability; above it, that of permanence. This old order of ideas was weakened by new cultural influences.

• Copernicus was born in Poland but studied in Italy. He created a new model of the solar system in which the sun was at the centre, with the earth and the other planets moving around it.

• The invention of the telescope by Galileo Galilei proved that the earth turns around the sun; moreover, the Italian astronomer established the scientific method.