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Tudors & Stuarts
The
Tudors (1485-1603)
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Henry VII
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Henry VIII
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Edward VI
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Mary I
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Elizabeth I
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Henry
VII established himself as king by defeating Richard III at the Battle
of Bosworth, 1485. |
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Henry
VII finally established firm control over England's nobility, and his
son Henry VIII ended the power of the Pope in England and merged the
English Church with the State. |
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Henry
VIII immensely enriched the crown by seizing monastic land (1536-40),
but sold almost all of it in short order to finance foreign wars. The
main beneficiary was the English gentry (the landowning class immediately below
the titled nobility), who began to flex their new
financial muscle through the House of Commons in Parliament. |
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Elizabeth I made Protestantism the country's
official religion, and so faced opposition from Catholics at home and abroad.
She maintained a fairly successful alliance with the
increasingly well-educated and politicized gentry to repel the
Spanish-Catholic threat, defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588.
However, her reign was not without its strains - especially, tensions
with the puritan religious minority, and occasionally with Parliament. |
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Elizabeth never married, and on her death the throne passed to James
VI of Scotland and the House of Stuart. |
The
Stuarts
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James I
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Charles I
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Charles II
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James II
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William III
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Mary II
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Queen Anne
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The accession of James VI and I gave England and Scotland the same ruler, but
the two countries remained economically, religiously, legally, and politically
divided. |
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Both James I and Charles I tried to expand their power and limit that
of Parliament. The conflict, which was accompanied by continuing religious
strains, erupted into open Civil War in 1642.
Parliament's armies were triumphant and Charles I was executed in 1649.
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For eleven years - a period known as the
Interregnum - there was no king in England. From 1649 - or at least from
1653 - until
his death in 1658 the real ruler of England was the
parliamentary general Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector 1653-8). |
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After a brief period of confusion, Charles II was invited to return
from exile. He was crowned in 1660. |
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Charles II maintained an uneasy peace with Parliament, but his inept, openly Catholic
brother James II, succeeded in alienating virtually
every important interest group. |
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In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II was deposed and
replaced by his daughter Mary and her husband,
William III, and they - and all subsequent
- English monarchs became effectively accountable to Parliament
for the exercise of power. |
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