This established a rigorous system of apprenticeship, typically lasting years. If the cost of training to become a physician was prohibitive to all but a privileged few, the cost of an apprenticeship to an apothecary was still considerable; in the firts half of the nineteenth century these typically were set at around 500 guineas (£28,000 in today's money). Oral examinations were conducted by members of the society to ensure the candidate was proficient in recognising ingredients as well as in the craft of handling and mixing medicines. It was only after the exam had been passed that the newly qualified apothecary could own or keep a shop. Between 1815 and 1834, six thousand new apothecaries' licenses were issued, half to surgeons who were allowed to have the dual role of apothecary and surgeon. Apothecaries did not have the social standing or wealth of the physicians, who commanded large fees from their well-to-do customers. Instead, they offered healthcare services to everyone - as was true throughout history; the first record of an apothecary's shop dates ro 1345. During the Civil War (1642-49), when the rich fled the cities and were followed by their physicians, the apothecaries remained to tend to the people. Again, when the Great Plague hit London in 1665, it was the apothecaries who dared to stay. The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) wrote in 1790 that apothecaries were 'the physicians of the poor at all times and the rich when the danger is not very great.' From early in the eighteenth century apothecaries were legally ratified as members of the medicinal profession. Their role developed from dispenser of medicene, to practitioner and dispenser of medicine as they were allowed to prescribe medicines, a progression the physicians were busy defending their position in the market, new traders called chemists and druggists recognised a lucrative gap in the market and slipped in to steal a portion of the trade. This sparked the fury of both physicians and apothecaries, who accused the interlopers of muscling in on their territory, generating even more ill-feeling.
Each group bickered with the other, fighting for business and professional recognition and undermining specialised professional development. Indeed, the only thing they appeared to agree about was the exclusion of women from any medical profession. However, the Apothecaries Act of 1815 gave tacit approval to the apothecary's new role of general practitioner of medicine. It also recognised the right of chemists and druggists to prepare, compound, dispense and sell drugs and medicines. The emergence of chemists and druggists marked the true start of the pharmacy industry. They had first appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century and spread with the increase in urbanisation offering customers a reliable outlet for the purchase of over-the-counter medicines. They stayed open for long hours and were available in emergencies, meeting the needs of a population which, far from fields, hedgerows and cottage gardens, no longer had access to the raw materials they needed for homemade remedies. Moreover, despite the furore, they were not breaking any rules, since there was no regulations for the sale of deadly poisons, such as arsenic, or addictive, over-the-counter medicines, such as laudanum, they were free to muscle in on the market. These interlopers also supplied all manner of ready-made 'proprietary' medicines: miracle cures such as Clarke's Blood Mixture, 'The World Famous Blood Purifier and Restorer'; or Burgess's Lion Ointment, 'Amputation avoided - the knife superseded.' Chemists and druggists were not required to have dispensing qualifications. At best, they might have undertaken an apprenticeship with an apothecary, but there was no requirement for them to pass any exams. They were not permitted to prescribe as apothecaries could. Unofficially, though, they engaged in 'counter practice', recommending products for various ailments, or hurrying their customer away to seek the advice of an apothecary or physician post-haste. A bill introduced in 1841 proposed that after 1 February 1842 no person could practice medicine without a certificate, and that after December 1842 no one could carry out the business of a chemist or druggist without a certificate. Practising medicine was defined as recommending, prescribing or ordering any medicine, remedy or application, while the chemist and druggist was defined as a person able to dispense or mix for sale any drug or medicine. However, the bill failed to get support in the House of Commons. The group behind the bill did not give up the fight. In 1841, they proposed the formation of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (PSGB), whose function was to elevate the status of the practice of pharmacy. It aimed to head a defined and regulated programme of professional education and to unite the profession into one body. Chemists and druggists instead of being excluded, as they had always previously been, were invited to participate in the formation of the Society. Within two years, the Pharmaceutical Society had established a School of Pharmacy and had won a royal charter (1843). The title 'Royal' was granted to the society in 1988.
Legislation from 1852 established a Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists for those who had passed The Pharmaceutical Society's exams. It is at this time that the terms pharmaceutical chemist, pharmacist and pharmacy begin to enter into popular usage - the first recorded use of the word in England does not appear until the 1830s. While its use indicates the attainment of formal professional
standards, the public then, as now, mixed the terms chemist, druggist and pharmacy freely to describe a shop that sold medicines. The Medical Act of 1858 saw the faltering beginnings of a much needed process of reform; formal programmes of education were laid down to ensure that students achieved minimum standards of competence in medicine, surgery and midwifery. Regulations controlling the sale and compounding of medicines followed behind. The Pharmacy Act of 1868 restricted sale, dispensing and compounding of poisons to people who had been examined and registered by the PSGB. At this time the term 'Chemist and Druggist' was used by the PSGB to describe those who had passed its minor examination and therefore met with the minimum requirement to register as a pharmacist and the use of the title 'chemist and druggist' was restricted to legally registered pharmacists. The formation of the Pharmaceutical Society in 1841 also saw the launch of The Pharmaceutical Journal, a monthly with a firm emphasis on pharmaceutical education and science, until 1870 when it became weekly. The Chemist & Druggist, a monthly trade circular, was launched in competition in 1859, it was more popularist in approach, and included regular features on the trade prices of medicinal compounds, court reports detailing many mishaps from accidentally poisoning to bankruptcy. A popular feature was the exchange of recipes.
Despite legislative controls standards were not what we might expect today. As late as 1899, (1850-1931), the man who established Boots the Chemist, commented:
I thoroughly welcome legislation that will compel every chemist's and druggist shop, whether belonging to a company or otherwise, to be wholly and solely under the control of a registered chemist or manager. I will go further than that, and state that I should be equally glad to welcome that legislation should enforce the work of dispensing medicines should also be confined in every shop to a registered chemist.
At the turn of the century, Jesse Boot advocated a new approach. He himself had had no prospect of becoming a qualified pharmacist since his family lacked the funds. He instigated a scheme to recruit and support promising boys through an apprenticeship, and paid them 10 shillings (10/-) weekly in the first year of apprenticeship, 12 shillings and sixpence (12/6) in the second, 15/-in the third, and 17/6 in the fourth. Assistants who had worked for Boot for more than two years were eligible to compete for four scholarships offered annually, to enable them to take six-month full-time course at a recognised school of pharmacy and to sit the Minor examination. Jesse Boot commented:
Formerly the drug trade was one that could only be enetered into by those having money and friends. With us a good salary is given during apprenticeship, scholarships to our assistants, and after passing their examinations good and improving situations are found for them. To me the most satisfactory feature of our business is that we have men on the staff who have passed their qualifying examination with credit, and for this not to have cost their parents or friends a penny.
Boot also encouraged chemists to give young assistants a lesson in Latin before they started work at 8 a.m. and provided training for dispensing assistants.
In the 64-year reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), there were revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of many life-threatening diseases, as well as in education and laws relating to healthcare and the provision of medicines and poisons. Consumer medicine reached the high street, creating a new medical industry that sold traditional herbal remedies as well as the newest proprietary medicines and which played a role in transforming public health. Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914), physicist, chemist and inventor of the incandescent electric light bulb, maintained that an educated pharmacist was 'one of society's most useful and necessary members.'
Monday 31 October 2011
Sunday 30 October 2011
Victorian Pharmacy
HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
People wanting their teeth pulled, or to be bled, might visit a barber, or even a surgeon, who combined skills in hairdressing, dentistry, blood-letting and surgery. Surgeons were craftsmen, who learned their skills in long apprenticeships. It was easier to become a surgeon than a physician because a would-be surgeon needed only to rause sufficient funds for an apprenticeship. By 1800, there were 8000 members of the Royal College of Surgeons. Physicians, on the other hand, required a university education - an expensive business, which restricted access to the profession. Theoretically they were the most knowledgeable practitioners. In an era when it was rare for the sick to attend hospital, physicians made home visits, diagnosing illness and prescribing treatments. They were not, however, permitted to act as surgeons, or to dispense drugs. Indeed, physicians were often quite ignorant of the properties of the drugs they prescribed. There were far fewer practising physicians than surgeons or apothecaries: at the start of the nineteenth century, there were just 179 licensed physicians in London; by 1847, there were 643. Each might expect to earn between £1500 and £2000 per year - £88,000-117,000 in today's money. The Victorian apothecary was a cross between a General Practitioner and a dispensing chemist. But his shop was like nothing we would recognise. There were no tempting displays of medicines, herbs or other sundries - medicines were made to order.
The business of selling medicines and drugs was not a licensed activity. Indeed, grocers prescribed medicines, booksellers sold proprietary medicines, and the mail-order business in patent pills, creams and medicines was booming.
FIRST AID KIT
Press an ivy leaf on a cut - the rough side cleans
the wound and the smooth side helps to heal it;
eat an onion (raw), if one is unfortunate enough
to be stung by a wasp in the throat; a soap and
sugar poultice will draw out a splinter.
OIL OF EARTHWORMS
A useful linament for muscular aches and pains.
Dried earth worms 7 oz
Olive oil 32 fl oz
Wine 2 fl oz
Boil together until wine has evaporated.
Apply by rubbing the oil into the skin.
ATTEMPTS AT REGULATION
All those involved in the dispensing of drugs - apothecaries, chemists and druggists - relied on the ever-increasing number of pharmacopoeias available to learn about the latest treatments and practices. New substances were continually being uncovered. In the early past of the nineteenth century, morphine, quinine and strychnine appeared for the first time.
One of the main sources of information for physicians and apothecaries were herbals and pharmacopeia' both offering reference sources on the medicinal properties of plants and minerals. The first London Pharmacopoeia was not published until 1618 when a royal proclamation instructed all apothecaries follow its guide. From 1846, all the various pharmacopoeia editions - London, Edinburgh and Dublin - were absorbed into the single authoritative voice of the British Pharmacopoeia. Unfortuneately, there was still such ignorance of the causes of disease that many of the so-called cures were mere panaceas. Nicholas Culpeper's books, The English Physitian (1652) and The Complete Herbal (1653) were radical in that both were published in vernacular English and were designed to be self-help books for use by the poor who could not afford medical help, though doubtless those who would benefit the most were not literate enough to do so. Nevertheless Culpeper's books are said to be the most successful non-religious text ever and have been in print continuously since the seventeenth century. They provoked fury in both physicians and apothecaries alike who saw the work as a threat to their lucrative business. But then Culpeper was highly critical of physician's skills: 'They are bloodsuckers, true vampires, have learned little since Hippocrates; use blood-letting for ailments above the midriff and purging for those below. They evacuate and revulse their patients until they faint. Black Hellebor, this poisonous stuff, is a favourite laxative. It is surprising that they are so popular and that some patients recover. My own poor patients would not endure this taxing and costly treatment. The victims of physicians only survive since they are from the rich and robust stock, the plethoric, red-skinned residents of Cheapside, Westminster and St James.'
Stramonium
The Dratorium stramonium cultivated in Britain. The leaves dried, collected when the plants are in flower, and the ripe seeds. Medicinal Properties: Influences especially the respiratory organs. Much used in asthma; the leaf chiefly by smoking in the form of cigarettes. The extract and the tincture made of the seeds are used in convulsive coughs as antispasmodics and as anodynes in gastrodynia and other painful affections.
Apothecaries were responsible for the supply, compounding and sale of drugs, and this was how they madde their living. They could also make home visits, provide medical advice and prescribe medication, but could not charge for this service. They had established their independence from the Company of Grocers in 1617 when King James I permitted the creation of The Worshipful Society of the Art and Mystery of the Apothecaries.
People wanting their teeth pulled, or to be bled, might visit a barber, or even a surgeon, who combined skills in hairdressing, dentistry, blood-letting and surgery. Surgeons were craftsmen, who learned their skills in long apprenticeships. It was easier to become a surgeon than a physician because a would-be surgeon needed only to rause sufficient funds for an apprenticeship. By 1800, there were 8000 members of the Royal College of Surgeons. Physicians, on the other hand, required a university education - an expensive business, which restricted access to the profession. Theoretically they were the most knowledgeable practitioners. In an era when it was rare for the sick to attend hospital, physicians made home visits, diagnosing illness and prescribing treatments. They were not, however, permitted to act as surgeons, or to dispense drugs. Indeed, physicians were often quite ignorant of the properties of the drugs they prescribed. There were far fewer practising physicians than surgeons or apothecaries: at the start of the nineteenth century, there were just 179 licensed physicians in London; by 1847, there were 643. Each might expect to earn between £1500 and £2000 per year - £88,000-117,000 in today's money. The Victorian apothecary was a cross between a General Practitioner and a dispensing chemist. But his shop was like nothing we would recognise. There were no tempting displays of medicines, herbs or other sundries - medicines were made to order.
The business of selling medicines and drugs was not a licensed activity. Indeed, grocers prescribed medicines, booksellers sold proprietary medicines, and the mail-order business in patent pills, creams and medicines was booming.
FIRST AID KIT
Press an ivy leaf on a cut - the rough side cleans
the wound and the smooth side helps to heal it;
eat an onion (raw), if one is unfortunate enough
to be stung by a wasp in the throat; a soap and
sugar poultice will draw out a splinter.
OIL OF EARTHWORMS
A useful linament for muscular aches and pains.
Dried earth worms 7 oz
Olive oil 32 fl oz
Wine 2 fl oz
Boil together until wine has evaporated.
Apply by rubbing the oil into the skin.
ATTEMPTS AT REGULATION
All those involved in the dispensing of drugs - apothecaries, chemists and druggists - relied on the ever-increasing number of pharmacopoeias available to learn about the latest treatments and practices. New substances were continually being uncovered. In the early past of the nineteenth century, morphine, quinine and strychnine appeared for the first time.
One of the main sources of information for physicians and apothecaries were herbals and pharmacopeia' both offering reference sources on the medicinal properties of plants and minerals. The first London Pharmacopoeia was not published until 1618 when a royal proclamation instructed all apothecaries follow its guide. From 1846, all the various pharmacopoeia editions - London, Edinburgh and Dublin - were absorbed into the single authoritative voice of the British Pharmacopoeia. Unfortuneately, there was still such ignorance of the causes of disease that many of the so-called cures were mere panaceas. Nicholas Culpeper's books, The English Physitian (1652) and The Complete Herbal (1653) were radical in that both were published in vernacular English and were designed to be self-help books for use by the poor who could not afford medical help, though doubtless those who would benefit the most were not literate enough to do so. Nevertheless Culpeper's books are said to be the most successful non-religious text ever and have been in print continuously since the seventeenth century. They provoked fury in both physicians and apothecaries alike who saw the work as a threat to their lucrative business. But then Culpeper was highly critical of physician's skills: 'They are bloodsuckers, true vampires, have learned little since Hippocrates; use blood-letting for ailments above the midriff and purging for those below. They evacuate and revulse their patients until they faint. Black Hellebor, this poisonous stuff, is a favourite laxative. It is surprising that they are so popular and that some patients recover. My own poor patients would not endure this taxing and costly treatment. The victims of physicians only survive since they are from the rich and robust stock, the plethoric, red-skinned residents of Cheapside, Westminster and St James.'
Stramonium
The Dratorium stramonium cultivated in Britain. The leaves dried, collected when the plants are in flower, and the ripe seeds. Medicinal Properties: Influences especially the respiratory organs. Much used in asthma; the leaf chiefly by smoking in the form of cigarettes. The extract and the tincture made of the seeds are used in convulsive coughs as antispasmodics and as anodynes in gastrodynia and other painful affections.
Apothecaries were responsible for the supply, compounding and sale of drugs, and this was how they madde their living. They could also make home visits, provide medical advice and prescribe medication, but could not charge for this service. They had established their independence from the Company of Grocers in 1617 when King James I permitted the creation of The Worshipful Society of the Art and Mystery of the Apothecaries.
Tuesday 25 October 2011
Victorian Pharmacy
Public Health
At the start of Queen Victoria's reign, the public had long been in the habit of self-medicating. This was partly because of the scarcity of public health provision, but principally because most people simply did not have the pennies to spare on physicians or apothecaries. Many people, notably the working class, had a deep mistrust of physicians, whose cures were often as bad, if not worse, than the original problem. Illnesses were managed rather than cured, and it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that real advances were made in the understanding of the causes of ill health, as well as its management and treatment. Medical thinking was still dominated by the theories of Hippocrates (460-c.370 BC). He suggested that illness was caused by an imbalance in the four humors - blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. This approach began to be revised only after 1860. Treatments to 'rebalance the humours' and clear the 'miasma of bad air' were vigorous - and not for the faint-hearted. The principal therapy was blood-letting, but purging and laxative treatments were popular, as were enemas and blistering plasters. The latter were applied to various parts of the body with the intent of causing irritation to the skin; it was common, for example, to fix them behind the ears as a means of alleviating toothache. Medicenes and ointments frequently contained highly toxic substances such as antimony, mercury and arsenic. These tortuous therapies were commonplace and left patients debilitated or created an addiction. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) remarked that medicene is 'a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.'
Blistering Ointment
Cantharides in coarse powder 600 grammes
Powdered euphorbium 200 grammes
Black pitch and yellow resin, of each 400 grammes
Yellow wax 300 grammes
Olive oil 1000 grammes
Mix the wax, pitch and resin at a gentle heat; add the oil, constantly stirring; strain through cloth. Put the cantharides and the euphorbium in the vessel and damp with water. Add, little by little, half the resinous mixture, and heat to evaporate the water. Then add the rest of the mixture; heat for a few seconds; withdraw from the fire, and stir well till quite cold.
The Cities And Disease
The living conditions in Victorian Britain gave rise to many of the underlying health problems. Of particular significance was the huge shift from rural to urban life. In 1801, only one-fifth of the population lived in towns and cities; by 1850, the figure had risen to approximately half of the population; and by 1901, the ratio had shifted again with four-fifths residing in urban enviroments. Towns and cities offered employment and escape from rural poverty, but conditions were shocking.
Rapid urban development had been unregulated, and the ramshackle, severely overcrowded housing left inhabitants more susceptible to infectious diseases. Access to fresh water was limited, with water companies providing a supply only two to three times a week for just a few hours at any one time. This was a situation that did not improve until halfway through Victoria's reign: it was not until 1870 that a continuous supply of water was made available to Londoners for the first time, though for the majority of people this still meant using a street pump. Refuse was either stored in the home or left in piles for the scavengers' cart to collect. The dustbin did not make an appearance in Britain until after 1900. As well as being littered with rubbish, the streets were full of horse manure, so there were flies everywhere in summer. The removal of horse manure was almost as big a problem as that of human waste. Indeed, the management of human sewage was primitive: latrines and cesspits were common, and in the towns and cities a night soil collector made the rounds for those who used only pails. Tons and tons of human waste were removed from the city and despatched to the countryside by boat or train, where it was spread on the fields, thus neatly extending the range of waterborne diseases. The first public water closets were seen at The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. To use them, you had to spend a penny - hence the phrase. Theoretically, flush toilets resolved the sewage dilemma, albeit for only the fortunate few. But the disposal of flushed waste was no more ethical; it was pumped into the sewer, and then directed straight into the nearest river - the source of drinking water. As a result, and typhoid, waterborne diseases, were transmitted through contaminated faeces - a fact that was not recognized until the 1850s. Legislation to improve London's water supply was implemented in 1855, and for the first time water was drawn from outside the city and filtered. The government was forced to take further action after the Great Stink of 1858. In an unusually hot summer, the River Thames and its tributaries overflowed with raw sewage creating an unbearable stench. The following year, the civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) started work on the construction of the central London sewage system. The rest of the country followed London's lead to improve water quality, at least in the towns, after 1870.
Lemon Wash Balls
A lovely lemon-scented soap for handwashing clothing.
Cut 6lbs of soap into very small pieces; melt it into a pint of water in which 6 lemons have been boiled. When melted, withdraw the soap from the fire and add 3lbs of powdered starch and a little essence of lemon; knead the whole into a paste and form into balls of the required size.
Malnourishment And Pollution
But if water supplies and water quality are not what we are used to today, neither was the food. There was little legislation to control the sale of consumables: meat was often rotten and foodstuffs contaminated with dangerous additives as manufacturers competed to produce the cheapest goods. Bakers added alum or chalk to their flour, and mashed potatoes, plaster of Paris or sawdust to increase the weight of their loaves. Brewers added bitter substances, such as strychnine, to their beer to improve taste and save on the cost of hops. People developed a taste for adulterated food, and even principled purveyors were forced to adopt less upright practices because consumers complained that their food didn't 'taste right' without the additives. Legislative controls were not implemented until the Food, Drink and Drugs Act of 1872. Many working class families were therefore malnourished. Women and children suffered the worst with a diet comprising of bread, margarine and tea with sugar. A survey conducted by Charles Booth over a period of 17 years, and published in 1889, revealed that 35 per cent of London's population lived in abject poverty. Surveys from other cities revealed much the same picture. The memoir Mrs John Brown: 1847-1935 describes a typical tragedy from the late 1800s:
In the bed was a young woman, wan and dazed. She was holding a week-old baby to her empty breast. It was so pitiful I did not know what to say. 'I thought there were two children.' 'There was three days to ago,' the woman said. 'Show her, Jem.' The man got up heavily and opened the bottom drawer of a rickety chest, and there lay a little dead child of about two. I gasped. He said, 'We be waiting for the parish to come and bury her.' The mother said, 'We couldn't put her upstairs, alone, in the empty room.' I stood still, sobbing, but the parents shed no tears, nor said a word, except when Jem closed the drawer. 'She were a nice little lass, she were,' he said.
Pollution was a further problem. The air in towns and cities was heavy with smoke from coal fires, which provided the only means of cooking, hot water and heating. It has been estimated that about two-and-a-half million tons of soot were produced annually by domestic consumption alone. This made day-to-day life squalid and dirty for most people, no matter how hard they might try to keep up appearances. More importantly, the soot contributed to the famous London fogs, or London Peculiars, where visibility was reduced to a couple of feet. They were not, however, limited to the capital; towns all over Britain were plagued by them. The fog was thick and brownish yellow in colour, with a sulphurous, sooty, smoky smell. Unlike most fogs, they did not diminish as the sun rose, but became thicker. Horse-drawn coaches and omnibuses had to be led by men carrying torches to warn of their approach. The respiratory diseases that followed were a major source of ill-health and death. In December 1873, the Medical Times and Gazette described a recent fog as 'one of the most disastrous this generation has known. . . . To persons with cardiac and respiratory disease it has in numerous instances proved fatal.' The fogs would not abate until the 1960s. Indeed, the last of the great London fogs went on for four days in December 1952, and is estimated to have killed 4000 people.
This air pollution was also implicated in the high incidence of rickets. Children were more susceptible to this nutritional disease, because thick pollution reduces exposure to sunlight. Rickets were first noted in Britain back in the 1600s, but by the nineteenth century it was widespread. The disease causes softening of the bones, leading to fractures and deformity. A survey undertaken by the British Medical Association in the 1880s revealed a sharp difference between the high incidence of rickets in the urban centres and its virtual absence from small towns, villages and the countryside.
Curiously, bread was implicated. The incidence of rickets was higher in the smoky south because coal was expensive, meaning that it was cheaper for people to buy their bread. Commercially prepared bread was commonly adulterated with alum, an ingredient believed to increase susceptibility to rickets. In the smoky north, where bread was home-baked, children were less susceptible to the disease.
SELF-HELP
In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it began to dawn on doctors and scientists that this devastating combination of enviromental problem was the root cause of many epidemics.
Progress was slow, however, and the sick face a dilemma: to bankrupt themselves consulting a qualified physician or apothecary, who anyway had little real understanding of disease; or to consult a chemist and druggist for a fraction of the price. For the most of the nineteenth century, the chemist and druggist, or pharmacist, was the main source of medical provision for poor and rich alike.
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published in 1859, gives some idea of the lengths to which the ordinary housewife was prepared to go when it comes to First Aid. She was advised to keep the following items at home in case of emergenices:
The London illustrated News of 1847 reveals the severity of the thick, sulphurous fogs which caused many deaths.
Antimonial Wine, Antimonial Powder, Blister Compound, Blue Pill, Calomel, Carbonate of Potash, Compound Iron Pills, Nitre, Oil of Turpentine, Opium (powdered), Laudanum, Sal-Ammoniac, Senna Leaves, Soap Liniment, Opoldeldoc, Sweet Spirits of Nitre, Turner's Cerate. To which should be added: Common Adhesive Plaster, Isinglass Plaster, Lint, a pair of small Scales with Weights, an ounce and a drachm Measure-glass, a Lancet, a Probe, a pair of Forceps, and some curved Needles.
Many of these medicenes contain lead, mercury and antimony, all of which are highly toxic. As for the forceps and needles, the average housewife was equipping herself with the means to haul a baby into the world, and to stitch up a wound, should the occasion demand. It's an approach more robust than that of the shrinking violet more commonly associated with Victorian womanhood. And it's approach that was cultivated out of necessity. Even amongst what we would now call healthcare professionals, there was still very little real understanding of the cause of illness and disease - and only a rather hazy understanding of anatomy. Healthcare was a private business, a commercial enterprise like any other and it operated much as it had for centuries. (There was no National Health Service until 1948). The only free medical care came from charity hospitals, such as the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead and some teaching hospitals. Friendly Societies sprang up in the late eighteenth century. Members made regular payments in return for which they received help with the cost of paying for a doctor or, indeed, for a funeral. By the end of the ninteenth century, there were more than 30,000 Friendly Societies, which offered working men and women some security in times of need and protected them from debt through illness, death or old age.
At the start of Queen Victoria's reign, the public had long been in the habit of self-medicating. This was partly because of the scarcity of public health provision, but principally because most people simply did not have the pennies to spare on physicians or apothecaries. Many people, notably the working class, had a deep mistrust of physicians, whose cures were often as bad, if not worse, than the original problem. Illnesses were managed rather than cured, and it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that real advances were made in the understanding of the causes of ill health, as well as its management and treatment. Medical thinking was still dominated by the theories of Hippocrates (460-c.370 BC). He suggested that illness was caused by an imbalance in the four humors - blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. This approach began to be revised only after 1860. Treatments to 'rebalance the humours' and clear the 'miasma of bad air' were vigorous - and not for the faint-hearted. The principal therapy was blood-letting, but purging and laxative treatments were popular, as were enemas and blistering plasters. The latter were applied to various parts of the body with the intent of causing irritation to the skin; it was common, for example, to fix them behind the ears as a means of alleviating toothache. Medicenes and ointments frequently contained highly toxic substances such as antimony, mercury and arsenic. These tortuous therapies were commonplace and left patients debilitated or created an addiction. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) remarked that medicene is 'a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.'
Blistering Ointment
Cantharides in coarse powder 600 grammes
Powdered euphorbium 200 grammes
Black pitch and yellow resin, of each 400 grammes
Yellow wax 300 grammes
Olive oil 1000 grammes
Mix the wax, pitch and resin at a gentle heat; add the oil, constantly stirring; strain through cloth. Put the cantharides and the euphorbium in the vessel and damp with water. Add, little by little, half the resinous mixture, and heat to evaporate the water. Then add the rest of the mixture; heat for a few seconds; withdraw from the fire, and stir well till quite cold.
The Cities And Disease
The living conditions in Victorian Britain gave rise to many of the underlying health problems. Of particular significance was the huge shift from rural to urban life. In 1801, only one-fifth of the population lived in towns and cities; by 1850, the figure had risen to approximately half of the population; and by 1901, the ratio had shifted again with four-fifths residing in urban enviroments. Towns and cities offered employment and escape from rural poverty, but conditions were shocking.
Rapid urban development had been unregulated, and the ramshackle, severely overcrowded housing left inhabitants more susceptible to infectious diseases. Access to fresh water was limited, with water companies providing a supply only two to three times a week for just a few hours at any one time. This was a situation that did not improve until halfway through Victoria's reign: it was not until 1870 that a continuous supply of water was made available to Londoners for the first time, though for the majority of people this still meant using a street pump. Refuse was either stored in the home or left in piles for the scavengers' cart to collect. The dustbin did not make an appearance in Britain until after 1900. As well as being littered with rubbish, the streets were full of horse manure, so there were flies everywhere in summer. The removal of horse manure was almost as big a problem as that of human waste. Indeed, the management of human sewage was primitive: latrines and cesspits were common, and in the towns and cities a night soil collector made the rounds for those who used only pails. Tons and tons of human waste were removed from the city and despatched to the countryside by boat or train, where it was spread on the fields, thus neatly extending the range of waterborne diseases. The first public water closets were seen at The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. To use them, you had to spend a penny - hence the phrase. Theoretically, flush toilets resolved the sewage dilemma, albeit for only the fortunate few. But the disposal of flushed waste was no more ethical; it was pumped into the sewer, and then directed straight into the nearest river - the source of drinking water. As a result, and typhoid, waterborne diseases, were transmitted through contaminated faeces - a fact that was not recognized until the 1850s. Legislation to improve London's water supply was implemented in 1855, and for the first time water was drawn from outside the city and filtered. The government was forced to take further action after the Great Stink of 1858. In an unusually hot summer, the River Thames and its tributaries overflowed with raw sewage creating an unbearable stench. The following year, the civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) started work on the construction of the central London sewage system. The rest of the country followed London's lead to improve water quality, at least in the towns, after 1870.
Lemon Wash Balls
A lovely lemon-scented soap for handwashing clothing.
Cut 6lbs of soap into very small pieces; melt it into a pint of water in which 6 lemons have been boiled. When melted, withdraw the soap from the fire and add 3lbs of powdered starch and a little essence of lemon; knead the whole into a paste and form into balls of the required size.
Malnourishment And Pollution
But if water supplies and water quality are not what we are used to today, neither was the food. There was little legislation to control the sale of consumables: meat was often rotten and foodstuffs contaminated with dangerous additives as manufacturers competed to produce the cheapest goods. Bakers added alum or chalk to their flour, and mashed potatoes, plaster of Paris or sawdust to increase the weight of their loaves. Brewers added bitter substances, such as strychnine, to their beer to improve taste and save on the cost of hops. People developed a taste for adulterated food, and even principled purveyors were forced to adopt less upright practices because consumers complained that their food didn't 'taste right' without the additives. Legislative controls were not implemented until the Food, Drink and Drugs Act of 1872. Many working class families were therefore malnourished. Women and children suffered the worst with a diet comprising of bread, margarine and tea with sugar. A survey conducted by Charles Booth over a period of 17 years, and published in 1889, revealed that 35 per cent of London's population lived in abject poverty. Surveys from other cities revealed much the same picture. The memoir Mrs John Brown: 1847-1935 describes a typical tragedy from the late 1800s:
In the bed was a young woman, wan and dazed. She was holding a week-old baby to her empty breast. It was so pitiful I did not know what to say. 'I thought there were two children.' 'There was three days to ago,' the woman said. 'Show her, Jem.' The man got up heavily and opened the bottom drawer of a rickety chest, and there lay a little dead child of about two. I gasped. He said, 'We be waiting for the parish to come and bury her.' The mother said, 'We couldn't put her upstairs, alone, in the empty room.' I stood still, sobbing, but the parents shed no tears, nor said a word, except when Jem closed the drawer. 'She were a nice little lass, she were,' he said.
Pollution was a further problem. The air in towns and cities was heavy with smoke from coal fires, which provided the only means of cooking, hot water and heating. It has been estimated that about two-and-a-half million tons of soot were produced annually by domestic consumption alone. This made day-to-day life squalid and dirty for most people, no matter how hard they might try to keep up appearances. More importantly, the soot contributed to the famous London fogs, or London Peculiars, where visibility was reduced to a couple of feet. They were not, however, limited to the capital; towns all over Britain were plagued by them. The fog was thick and brownish yellow in colour, with a sulphurous, sooty, smoky smell. Unlike most fogs, they did not diminish as the sun rose, but became thicker. Horse-drawn coaches and omnibuses had to be led by men carrying torches to warn of their approach. The respiratory diseases that followed were a major source of ill-health and death. In December 1873, the Medical Times and Gazette described a recent fog as 'one of the most disastrous this generation has known. . . . To persons with cardiac and respiratory disease it has in numerous instances proved fatal.' The fogs would not abate until the 1960s. Indeed, the last of the great London fogs went on for four days in December 1952, and is estimated to have killed 4000 people.
This air pollution was also implicated in the high incidence of rickets. Children were more susceptible to this nutritional disease, because thick pollution reduces exposure to sunlight. Rickets were first noted in Britain back in the 1600s, but by the nineteenth century it was widespread. The disease causes softening of the bones, leading to fractures and deformity. A survey undertaken by the British Medical Association in the 1880s revealed a sharp difference between the high incidence of rickets in the urban centres and its virtual absence from small towns, villages and the countryside.
Curiously, bread was implicated. The incidence of rickets was higher in the smoky south because coal was expensive, meaning that it was cheaper for people to buy their bread. Commercially prepared bread was commonly adulterated with alum, an ingredient believed to increase susceptibility to rickets. In the smoky north, where bread was home-baked, children were less susceptible to the disease.
SELF-HELP
In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it began to dawn on doctors and scientists that this devastating combination of enviromental problem was the root cause of many epidemics.
Progress was slow, however, and the sick face a dilemma: to bankrupt themselves consulting a qualified physician or apothecary, who anyway had little real understanding of disease; or to consult a chemist and druggist for a fraction of the price. For the most of the nineteenth century, the chemist and druggist, or pharmacist, was the main source of medical provision for poor and rich alike.
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published in 1859, gives some idea of the lengths to which the ordinary housewife was prepared to go when it comes to First Aid. She was advised to keep the following items at home in case of emergenices:
The London illustrated News of 1847 reveals the severity of the thick, sulphurous fogs which caused many deaths.
Antimonial Wine, Antimonial Powder, Blister Compound, Blue Pill, Calomel, Carbonate of Potash, Compound Iron Pills, Nitre, Oil of Turpentine, Opium (powdered), Laudanum, Sal-Ammoniac, Senna Leaves, Soap Liniment, Opoldeldoc, Sweet Spirits of Nitre, Turner's Cerate. To which should be added: Common Adhesive Plaster, Isinglass Plaster, Lint, a pair of small Scales with Weights, an ounce and a drachm Measure-glass, a Lancet, a Probe, a pair of Forceps, and some curved Needles.
Many of these medicenes contain lead, mercury and antimony, all of which are highly toxic. As for the forceps and needles, the average housewife was equipping herself with the means to haul a baby into the world, and to stitch up a wound, should the occasion demand. It's an approach more robust than that of the shrinking violet more commonly associated with Victorian womanhood. And it's approach that was cultivated out of necessity. Even amongst what we would now call healthcare professionals, there was still very little real understanding of the cause of illness and disease - and only a rather hazy understanding of anatomy. Healthcare was a private business, a commercial enterprise like any other and it operated much as it had for centuries. (There was no National Health Service until 1948). The only free medical care came from charity hospitals, such as the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead and some teaching hospitals. Friendly Societies sprang up in the late eighteenth century. Members made regular payments in return for which they received help with the cost of paying for a doctor or, indeed, for a funeral. By the end of the ninteenth century, there were more than 30,000 Friendly Societies, which offered working men and women some security in times of need and protected them from debt through illness, death or old age.
Monday 24 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
On December 15th, 1620 a very different colony was established father north by just over 100 English Puritan farmers and craftsmen. These colonists became known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were seeking a place where they could worship without persecution. They left Plymouth in a ship called the Mayflower and dropped anchor off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The colony flourished when native American farmers taught the settlers how to grow corn (maize). In the autumn of 1621 they held their first harvest supper. They feasted on geese, turkeys, duck, shellfish, watercress and wine and invited the native Americans to the first Thanksgiving Day. That day, towards the end of November, is now a national holiday in the United States. Families and neighbours meet together to share the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
THE EARLY SETTLERS
The first settlers' houses were built of wood, of which there was plenty in the surrounding fortress. The roofs were made of thatch and later of thin sheets of hardwood called shingle. The first chimneys were made of stone and later of brick. The colonists' life was hard: they spun thread, wove cloth, and tanned leather for jackets and shoes, and made candles from fat or beeswax. Although there was plenty of land to grow crops and they were free from religious persecution life was tough for these first settlers so that even after ten years, their colony still numbered only about 300 people.
In 1636, Roger Williams established a permanent settlement at Providence, Rhode Island (the smallest state in the United States). Williams was a Puritan minister who was driven out of Massachusetts because he accused the Puritans of not being tolerant enough. Williams bought the land from two native American Narragansett chiefs. Setting up a new colony held many dangers - land had to be cleared, even in the harsh winter, and supplies were scarce. However, by 1643 there were four settlements in Rhode Island which united in 1663.
The Mayflower took 102 Puritan colonists and 47 crew safely across the Atlantic. The ship was only about 30 metres long and 6 metres wide. The height of the space below deck was only one metre (high enough for a small child) and there were no portholes. Here the men, women and children rolled about and were sick as the ship was tossed around by the ocean swell for two months. The only water available for washing was sea water. Nevertheless, only one colonist and four crew died on the epic voyage.
1620: Pilgrim Fathers sail from Plymouth to colonize America. They arrive at Cape Cod and found the Plymouth Colony.
1621: James I calls third Parliament: it votes money for English involvement in Thirty Years War. Great Protestation asserts the rights of Parliament; petition against Catholicism.
1623: George Villiers, Jame's favourite, becomes Duke of Buckingham. Charles and Duke of Buckingham fail to negotiate Spanish marriage. First English settlement in New Hampshire.
1624: James calls fourth Parliament. Marriage arranged between Charles and Henrietta Maria of France.
1625: James dies: succeeded by Charles I. Charles marries Henrietta Maria. Parliament votes customs' duties for king for one year only.
1626: Charles summons second Parliament which impeaches Buckingham and is dissolved. War with France. Charles collects taxes without Parliament's approval.
1628: Charles calls his third Parliament: MPs present Petition of Right, and oppose king's collction of taxes.
CHARLES I
ON JAMES I'S DEATH IN 1625, his son Charles I inherited a difficult financial situation. Parliament believed that ''the King should live of his own'', meaning that money from taxes and Crown lands should pay all government expenses, and also the expenses of the Court.
It was usual for Parliament to vote a new sovereign money for life in the form of customs duties. However, James I had found expenses rising faster than income. This was partly due to inflation, caused by the arrival of gold and silver from the Americas. James resorted to a variety of methods to raise money, including creating the title of baronet and selling it to wealthy candidates. Irritated at Charles's attempts to ignore them, Members of Parliament voted taxes to Charles for one year only. Charles had a constant struggle to find money by other means to finance himself. Finally he raised taxes without Parliament's consent, but this led to a bitter conflict with those wanting to protect the rights of Parliament.
PARLIAMENT'S PETITION OF RIGHT
In the first four years of his reign Charles I called three Parliaments and disagreed with all of them. At the root of the problem were money and war: first against Spain, and then against France to support the Huguenots (the French Protestants). Parliament was all for the war, and voted funds for it - but at a price. That price was embodied in the Petition of Right, presented to the king by the House of Commons in 1628. It demanded an end to: martial law; billeting of troops on people; imprisonment without trial; and forced loans and taxes (raised without the consent of Parliament). The king was forced to accept the petition.
KING AGAINST PARLIAMENT
The quarrel between the king and Parliament continued, because Charles refused to stop collecting his own taxes after the time limit set by Parliament. The Commons passed three resolutions condemning the actions of Charles and his ministers. When the Speaker of the House, Sir John Finch, tried to announce that the king had dismissed Parliament, the Members of Parliament held him in his chair while the resolutions were put to the vote, and the doors were barred against Black Rod, the royal messenger from the House of Lords. Today, the Commons slam their door in Black Rod's face whenever he comes to summon them to hear the Queen's Speech in the Lords at the opening of Parliament. After this incident Charles did dissolve Parliament, and he ruled for 11 years without it. Like his father James I, Charles firmly believed in the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and rejected the role of Parliament to run the country.
THE CIVIL WAR
THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR OF 1642 to 1646, or Great Rebellion as some people called it, was sparked off by religion. Charles tried to impose bishops on the Scottish Church, and the Presbyterians refused to accept them. They signed a Covenant to resist, and raised an army. Charles made peace, but it did not last. He had to summon Parliament to obtain money to pay for his army, but dissolved it after three weeks. Then the Scots invaded England, and Charles persuaded them to halt on payment of £850 a day. Desperate, he had to call Parliament again in 1640.
This Parliament began by impeaching Strafford and Laud, the king's hated ministers, for treason, and later had Strafford executed. They abolished two ancient courts - Star Chamber and High Commission - which Charles had used to raise money illegally. John Hampden and John Pym led Members of the Commons to insist on reforms. Charles tried to arrest them and three other Members for treason. He failed, and soon armed conflict broke out. The opposing sides were the Parliamentarians, or Roundheads (they had their hair cut short), and the Royalists, or Cavaliers - because they wore long hair like the knights (chevaliers in French) of old.
BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR
The king's main support was in the west; Parliament held the east, and London. The actual fighting took place in a relatively small part of the country. But the impact of the Civil War was felt everywhere, not least because family loyalties were split. Early battles were inconclusive: the king's forces had better cavalry under the command of his nephew Prince Rupert )who had fought in Europe in the Thirty Years War). But the Parliamentary army, with its musketeers and pikemen, proved steadfast on the whole against the cavalry attacks. They were also later trained to charge and proved so steady in attack that Rupert called these well-trained forces Ironsides. Led by Oliver Cromwell, the Ironsides defeated Rupert and the Royalist army at Marston Moor in 1644 and won all the north of England. Parliament was so impressed it reorganized its forces into a New Model Army, based on Cromwell's Ironsides. This army grew to 20,000 men and was strictly disciplined, properly equipped, and regularly paid. It was led by General Fairfax with Cromwell as second-in-command. It defeated the king at the battle of Naseby in 1645, the last major battle of the Civil War. Charles escaped to Scotland but was handed over to Parliament by the Scots. Eventually, Parliament came to the conclusion that it could not trust the King and Charles became the only British monarch to be tried for treason and executed.
THE COMMONWEALTH
THE EXECUTION OF Charles I left England firmly in the hands of Parliament and its army. For the next 11 years the country did not have a king. This period was called the Commonwealth against Dutch, French and Spanish support for the young Charles II, as well as Scottish and Irish rebellions. Charles II was proclaimed king in Scotland, and the Irish also rallied to the Royalist cause. Cromwell took an army to Ireland, where he subdued the Royalists with great severity. Charles and an army of Scots marched into England, where they were defeated by Cromwell at Worcester. Charles escaped to France.
CROMWELL AND PARLIAMENT
The country was governed by the so-called Rump Parliament, made up of those Members of the Commons remaining when Cromwell and the army had forced through Charles I's trial and execution. It was this Parliament that had declared the Commonwealth and also abolished the House of Lords. Members of the Rump were mostly Puritans. Oliver Cromwell, however, was the real power in the land. He turned the Rump out, and called a new Parliament, nominated by the Army and the independent Nonconformist Churches. It was nicknamed Barebone's Parliament, after one of its more extreme religious Members, Praise-God Barebone. This Parliament also failed to provide a strong government.
CROMWELL: LORD PROTECTOR
From 1653 Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. He was offered the Crown by Parliament but refused to be King Oliver. As Protector, Cromwell made the country peaceful and also made it stronger abroad. He allowed some religious freedom, except for Catholics in Ireland. He put down the Levellers who believed in the abolition of distinctions of rank. Cromwell still used his army to enforce what he thought was right. To maintain his army he had to increase taxes which made him very unpopular. Cromwell died, probably of cancer, in 1658.
CHARLES II
CROMWELL WAS GIVEN a king's funeral. At this time no one was sure who should replace him - though most people wanted to return to having a monarchy. Before he died, Oliver Cromwell nominated his son to succeed him. Richard Cromwell was a weak and mild man and the Army, still the main power in the land, turned him out. Amid all the chaos, General George Monk, commander in Scotland, organized new elections, and a fresh Parliament recalled Charles II from exile to be king in 1660. Charles travelled from Holland with 100 ships, and timed his entry into London to coincide with his birthday. He was received with great popular acclaim.
THE CLARENCE CODE
After the upheavals and trauma of the Civil War and Commonwealth, people feared the Puritans both on religious grounds and also as a threat to the monarchy. Parliament therefore passed a group of Acts, which were known as the Clarendon Code, named after the king's chief minister, the Earl of Clarendon. The Code compelled all clergymen and people holding office in local and national government to take Communion in accordance with the rites of the Anglican Church. People who did not attend Church of England services would be punished. Nonconformist prayer-meetings were limited to five people, and their clergy were barred from coming nearer than eight kilometres to a town. Charles II is thought to have had some Catholic sympathies, but he knew that to keep his Crown he had to support the Church of England. So he went along with Parliament's rigid laws against Catholics and Puritans alike. Only on his deathbed did he convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
THE GREAT PLAGUE
The London that Charles II returned to in 1660 was the largest city in Europe with 500,000 inhabitants (Paris had 350,000). However, health and hygiene in the city had not improved since the time of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. The streets were just as dirty and full of disease and rats were everywhere. Many houses were built closely together and streets were very narrow. This meant that any epidemic would spread rapidly.
FOCUS ON THE GREAT PLAGUE
On June 7th, 1665, Samuel Pepys noted in his famous diary that ''this day, much against my will I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors''. This was the tell-tale sign that the occupants had become sick with the plague. The Great Plague, from 1664 to 1665, was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the southeast of England which killed 68,596 people - almost 20 per cent of London's population. There was no cure: bodies would be carried out at night in carts to special mass pits. Drivers rang handbells and called out ''Bring out your dead!'' They were paid well for a dangerous job. Pepys provides a gritty day-to-day account of the plague in his diaries.
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON
The following year saw another disaster, the Great Fire of London. This began in a baker's house in Pudding Lane and quickly swept through the crowded wooden houses. It raged for several days, until houses were blown up to make gaps which the fire could not cross. King Charles himself directed the firefighters and even worked among them. The fire was not an unmixed disaster; filthy alleys were burned down, the plague was halted, and London was rebuilt with wider streets and improved water supplies. After the fire, many new buildings were erected in stone and brick, instead of wood. Among them were 52 churches designed by the architect. Christopher Wren, including his most well-known building, St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1675-1710.
SAMUEL PEPYS'S DIARIES
We know a lot about both disasters in London thanks to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. He was a civil servant helping to improve the navy. He also had access to Charles II's Court and was a great gossip. He kept a diary for nine years but wrote it in secret and in code. The diaries were then lost, and not rediscovered until 1825. The diary has since became one of the most famous ever written in Britain. Its pages bring alive the London of Charles II with its theatres, coffee houses, horse-racing, gambling and beautiful women.
THE DUTCH WAR
The English and Dutch were rivals in fishing and trade, and when the Dutch started settlements on the Hudson River of North America among the English colonies, the merchants appealed to Parliament and war was declared. It began with an English victory in a naval battle of 300 ships off Lowestoft in 1665. In 1667, when the English fleet was unable to put to see because of lack of supplies, the Dutch sailed up the Medway, raided the naval dockyard at Chatham, and captured the flagship Royal Charles, which they took back to Holland as a war trophy. Other battles were fought during the two years that the war dragged on. One, in June 1666, in the North Sea, lasted for four days. The Dutch were led by their great admiral De Ruyter, and the English fought under George Monk, Duke of Albemarle. Both sides claimed victory.
JAMES II
CHARLES II HAD NO CHILDREN with his wife Catherine of Braganza from Portugal, but he had many mistresses who gave him 14 illegitimate sons and daughters. The most popular of his sons was James, Duke of Monmouth, called the Protestant Duke. Monmouth was a capable soldier, who had commanded English troops during the Dutch War. When Charles II died, his brother James became king in 1685, Monmouth thought he could rally the Protestant cause against the Catholic James and win the throne for himself. But he picked his time badly: James had not been king long enough to make himself unpopular, and the motley army Monmouth was able to raise was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, in Somerset. Monmouth was executed for treason, and so were nearly 300 of his followers. A further 800 were sold as slaves to Barbados.
JAMES II AND CATHOLIC PLOTS
Jame's succession was also threatened by fears of a Catholic plot. The Exclusion movement, led by the Whigs - the first political party in English history - believed the new king would try to restore the Roman Catholic religion. They wanted to exclude him from the throne. From 1688 James tried to introduce pro-Catholic measures including a Declaration of Indulgence which cancelled all laws against Nonconformists (chiefly Catholics). Seven bishops were arrested because they would not read out the Declaration in church, but were found not guilty. The arrests were very unpopular.
WHIG AND TORY
The terms Whig and Tory came into use at this time as terms of abuse for political opponents. Whig was originally a name for Scottish cattle thieves, but it was applied to those people who wanted to exclude James II from the throne because of his Catholic sympathies. James made a promise to uphold the Church of England (despite being a Catholic) to quieten the protesters. Tory was originally the name given to Irishmen whose land had been taken away and who had become outlaws. But the term Tory was given to those people who supported James II and the claims of the Crown. How the terms came to be applied to English political groups is obscure. But the name became thoroughly established in British politics.
WILLIAM AND MARY
JAMES II'S OBVIOUS ATTEMPTS to favour Catholics so angered the Protestants that Parliament invited the Dutch Protestant prince, William of Orange to come and deliver the country from its unpopular ruler. Parliament was prompted to this action by the birth of a son to James by his second wife. This pushed the claim of the Protestant Princess Mary, Jame's daughter and William's wife, into second place. William's invasion consisted of some 250 ships which anchored at Torbay in Devon in November 1688. William with his Protestant army landed to press his wife's claim to the throne. Mary had refused to accept the Crown unless Parliament also offered it to her husband. When William arrived in London James fled to France. As a result Parliament agreed that James had vacated his throne and offered the Crown to William and Mary.
IRISH PROTESTANT RULE
After he was deposed by William of Orange, Irish Catholics sided with James, while the Protestants of Ulster supported William. James went to Ireland where he raised an army. In 1689 he laid siege to Londonderry where thousands of Irish Protestants sought refuge. He failed to take the city and William finally defeated James at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. This battle is still celebrated annually by the Protestant Orangemen of Ulster. James fled back to France, where he died in 1701.
QUEEN ANNE
The Treaty of Ryswick made in 1697 between England, France, Holland and Spain had acknowledged William III as the rightful King of England, and Anne, James II's Protestant daughter, as his successor. She became Queen Anne I in 1702, aged 37, and was the last Stuart monarch. Her life was full of great personal sadness and bad health. She had 17 children but all of them died in infancy or childhood. Her reign was dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession abroad and by rivalry between Whigs and Tories at home. By the terms of the Act of Succession of 1701 the throne was to pass to the nearest Protestant heir, in the House of Hanover. Anne hated her German cousins and refused to allow them to come to England. But as her reign drew to an end she sent an envoy to the future George I, assuring him of her friendship. By so doing she played a vital role in ensuring that there was a peaceful change of dynasty.
ACT OF UNION
The political union of England and Scotland, which James I had tried to bring about when he became King of England in 1603, was finally accomplished in 1707. The Scots did not accept the English Act of Settlement, which in 1701 had settled the Crown on the descendants of the Protestant Sophia of Hanover (grand-daughter of James I and mother of the future George I). There was an unspoken threat that Scotland might, when Queen Anne died, bring back the Catholic Stuarts by making James II's son, James Francis Edward the Old Pretender, King of Scotland. This threat brought the English Parliament to support the move towards union. The Scots had come to realize that their country could no longer prosper as an independent nation. Under the Act of Union, their Parliament gained free trade with England, and cash to pay off huge debts acquired in a disastrous colonising venture in Darien in Central America. The Scots also kept their own legal system and Presbyterian church.
BIRTH OF GREAT BRITAIN
The resulting kingdom of England and Scotland was called Great Britain. For some years after the union the people of Scotland, felt they were at a disadvantage in an unequal partnership. The English majority in the combined Parliament meant that measures which favoured England at Scotland's expense were passed. One example was a special tax on linen, which was unimportant in the south but a major industry north of the border. However, the union was in Scotland's favour as it was now able to trade with England's various colonies. After decades of conflict the two countries combined in an uneasy but peaceful alliance.
FOCUS ON THE COFFEE HOUSES
During the 1600s coffee was brought to England from the Middle East. In 1652 the first coffee house was opened in London. Coffee houses quickly spread to become popular places where people went to gossip, do business deals and discuss politics. In 1688 Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house in Tower Street, a rendezvous for people who would insure ships and their cargoes, and read a publication called Lloyd's News, which gave important shipping details. From this original 17th-century coffee house sprang the modern Lloyd's, the world's foremost shipping insurers. From about 1704 single news-sheets - the first form of newspapers - could also be bought and read at coffee houses.
On December 15th, 1620 a very different colony was established father north by just over 100 English Puritan farmers and craftsmen. These colonists became known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were seeking a place where they could worship without persecution. They left Plymouth in a ship called the Mayflower and dropped anchor off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The colony flourished when native American farmers taught the settlers how to grow corn (maize). In the autumn of 1621 they held their first harvest supper. They feasted on geese, turkeys, duck, shellfish, watercress and wine and invited the native Americans to the first Thanksgiving Day. That day, towards the end of November, is now a national holiday in the United States. Families and neighbours meet together to share the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
THE EARLY SETTLERS
The first settlers' houses were built of wood, of which there was plenty in the surrounding fortress. The roofs were made of thatch and later of thin sheets of hardwood called shingle. The first chimneys were made of stone and later of brick. The colonists' life was hard: they spun thread, wove cloth, and tanned leather for jackets and shoes, and made candles from fat or beeswax. Although there was plenty of land to grow crops and they were free from religious persecution life was tough for these first settlers so that even after ten years, their colony still numbered only about 300 people.
In 1636, Roger Williams established a permanent settlement at Providence, Rhode Island (the smallest state in the United States). Williams was a Puritan minister who was driven out of Massachusetts because he accused the Puritans of not being tolerant enough. Williams bought the land from two native American Narragansett chiefs. Setting up a new colony held many dangers - land had to be cleared, even in the harsh winter, and supplies were scarce. However, by 1643 there were four settlements in Rhode Island which united in 1663.
The Mayflower took 102 Puritan colonists and 47 crew safely across the Atlantic. The ship was only about 30 metres long and 6 metres wide. The height of the space below deck was only one metre (high enough for a small child) and there were no portholes. Here the men, women and children rolled about and were sick as the ship was tossed around by the ocean swell for two months. The only water available for washing was sea water. Nevertheless, only one colonist and four crew died on the epic voyage.
1620: Pilgrim Fathers sail from Plymouth to colonize America. They arrive at Cape Cod and found the Plymouth Colony.
1621: James I calls third Parliament: it votes money for English involvement in Thirty Years War. Great Protestation asserts the rights of Parliament; petition against Catholicism.
1623: George Villiers, Jame's favourite, becomes Duke of Buckingham. Charles and Duke of Buckingham fail to negotiate Spanish marriage. First English settlement in New Hampshire.
1624: James calls fourth Parliament. Marriage arranged between Charles and Henrietta Maria of France.
1625: James dies: succeeded by Charles I. Charles marries Henrietta Maria. Parliament votes customs' duties for king for one year only.
1626: Charles summons second Parliament which impeaches Buckingham and is dissolved. War with France. Charles collects taxes without Parliament's approval.
1628: Charles calls his third Parliament: MPs present Petition of Right, and oppose king's collction of taxes.
CHARLES I
ON JAMES I'S DEATH IN 1625, his son Charles I inherited a difficult financial situation. Parliament believed that ''the King should live of his own'', meaning that money from taxes and Crown lands should pay all government expenses, and also the expenses of the Court.
It was usual for Parliament to vote a new sovereign money for life in the form of customs duties. However, James I had found expenses rising faster than income. This was partly due to inflation, caused by the arrival of gold and silver from the Americas. James resorted to a variety of methods to raise money, including creating the title of baronet and selling it to wealthy candidates. Irritated at Charles's attempts to ignore them, Members of Parliament voted taxes to Charles for one year only. Charles had a constant struggle to find money by other means to finance himself. Finally he raised taxes without Parliament's consent, but this led to a bitter conflict with those wanting to protect the rights of Parliament.
PARLIAMENT'S PETITION OF RIGHT
In the first four years of his reign Charles I called three Parliaments and disagreed with all of them. At the root of the problem were money and war: first against Spain, and then against France to support the Huguenots (the French Protestants). Parliament was all for the war, and voted funds for it - but at a price. That price was embodied in the Petition of Right, presented to the king by the House of Commons in 1628. It demanded an end to: martial law; billeting of troops on people; imprisonment without trial; and forced loans and taxes (raised without the consent of Parliament). The king was forced to accept the petition.
KING AGAINST PARLIAMENT
The quarrel between the king and Parliament continued, because Charles refused to stop collecting his own taxes after the time limit set by Parliament. The Commons passed three resolutions condemning the actions of Charles and his ministers. When the Speaker of the House, Sir John Finch, tried to announce that the king had dismissed Parliament, the Members of Parliament held him in his chair while the resolutions were put to the vote, and the doors were barred against Black Rod, the royal messenger from the House of Lords. Today, the Commons slam their door in Black Rod's face whenever he comes to summon them to hear the Queen's Speech in the Lords at the opening of Parliament. After this incident Charles did dissolve Parliament, and he ruled for 11 years without it. Like his father James I, Charles firmly believed in the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and rejected the role of Parliament to run the country.
THE CIVIL WAR
THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR OF 1642 to 1646, or Great Rebellion as some people called it, was sparked off by religion. Charles tried to impose bishops on the Scottish Church, and the Presbyterians refused to accept them. They signed a Covenant to resist, and raised an army. Charles made peace, but it did not last. He had to summon Parliament to obtain money to pay for his army, but dissolved it after three weeks. Then the Scots invaded England, and Charles persuaded them to halt on payment of £850 a day. Desperate, he had to call Parliament again in 1640.
This Parliament began by impeaching Strafford and Laud, the king's hated ministers, for treason, and later had Strafford executed. They abolished two ancient courts - Star Chamber and High Commission - which Charles had used to raise money illegally. John Hampden and John Pym led Members of the Commons to insist on reforms. Charles tried to arrest them and three other Members for treason. He failed, and soon armed conflict broke out. The opposing sides were the Parliamentarians, or Roundheads (they had their hair cut short), and the Royalists, or Cavaliers - because they wore long hair like the knights (chevaliers in French) of old.
BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR
The king's main support was in the west; Parliament held the east, and London. The actual fighting took place in a relatively small part of the country. But the impact of the Civil War was felt everywhere, not least because family loyalties were split. Early battles were inconclusive: the king's forces had better cavalry under the command of his nephew Prince Rupert )who had fought in Europe in the Thirty Years War). But the Parliamentary army, with its musketeers and pikemen, proved steadfast on the whole against the cavalry attacks. They were also later trained to charge and proved so steady in attack that Rupert called these well-trained forces Ironsides. Led by Oliver Cromwell, the Ironsides defeated Rupert and the Royalist army at Marston Moor in 1644 and won all the north of England. Parliament was so impressed it reorganized its forces into a New Model Army, based on Cromwell's Ironsides. This army grew to 20,000 men and was strictly disciplined, properly equipped, and regularly paid. It was led by General Fairfax with Cromwell as second-in-command. It defeated the king at the battle of Naseby in 1645, the last major battle of the Civil War. Charles escaped to Scotland but was handed over to Parliament by the Scots. Eventually, Parliament came to the conclusion that it could not trust the King and Charles became the only British monarch to be tried for treason and executed.
THE COMMONWEALTH
THE EXECUTION OF Charles I left England firmly in the hands of Parliament and its army. For the next 11 years the country did not have a king. This period was called the Commonwealth against Dutch, French and Spanish support for the young Charles II, as well as Scottish and Irish rebellions. Charles II was proclaimed king in Scotland, and the Irish also rallied to the Royalist cause. Cromwell took an army to Ireland, where he subdued the Royalists with great severity. Charles and an army of Scots marched into England, where they were defeated by Cromwell at Worcester. Charles escaped to France.
CROMWELL AND PARLIAMENT
The country was governed by the so-called Rump Parliament, made up of those Members of the Commons remaining when Cromwell and the army had forced through Charles I's trial and execution. It was this Parliament that had declared the Commonwealth and also abolished the House of Lords. Members of the Rump were mostly Puritans. Oliver Cromwell, however, was the real power in the land. He turned the Rump out, and called a new Parliament, nominated by the Army and the independent Nonconformist Churches. It was nicknamed Barebone's Parliament, after one of its more extreme religious Members, Praise-God Barebone. This Parliament also failed to provide a strong government.
CROMWELL: LORD PROTECTOR
From 1653 Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. He was offered the Crown by Parliament but refused to be King Oliver. As Protector, Cromwell made the country peaceful and also made it stronger abroad. He allowed some religious freedom, except for Catholics in Ireland. He put down the Levellers who believed in the abolition of distinctions of rank. Cromwell still used his army to enforce what he thought was right. To maintain his army he had to increase taxes which made him very unpopular. Cromwell died, probably of cancer, in 1658.
CHARLES II
CROMWELL WAS GIVEN a king's funeral. At this time no one was sure who should replace him - though most people wanted to return to having a monarchy. Before he died, Oliver Cromwell nominated his son to succeed him. Richard Cromwell was a weak and mild man and the Army, still the main power in the land, turned him out. Amid all the chaos, General George Monk, commander in Scotland, organized new elections, and a fresh Parliament recalled Charles II from exile to be king in 1660. Charles travelled from Holland with 100 ships, and timed his entry into London to coincide with his birthday. He was received with great popular acclaim.
THE CLARENCE CODE
After the upheavals and trauma of the Civil War and Commonwealth, people feared the Puritans both on religious grounds and also as a threat to the monarchy. Parliament therefore passed a group of Acts, which were known as the Clarendon Code, named after the king's chief minister, the Earl of Clarendon. The Code compelled all clergymen and people holding office in local and national government to take Communion in accordance with the rites of the Anglican Church. People who did not attend Church of England services would be punished. Nonconformist prayer-meetings were limited to five people, and their clergy were barred from coming nearer than eight kilometres to a town. Charles II is thought to have had some Catholic sympathies, but he knew that to keep his Crown he had to support the Church of England. So he went along with Parliament's rigid laws against Catholics and Puritans alike. Only on his deathbed did he convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
THE GREAT PLAGUE
The London that Charles II returned to in 1660 was the largest city in Europe with 500,000 inhabitants (Paris had 350,000). However, health and hygiene in the city had not improved since the time of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. The streets were just as dirty and full of disease and rats were everywhere. Many houses were built closely together and streets were very narrow. This meant that any epidemic would spread rapidly.
FOCUS ON THE GREAT PLAGUE
On June 7th, 1665, Samuel Pepys noted in his famous diary that ''this day, much against my will I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors''. This was the tell-tale sign that the occupants had become sick with the plague. The Great Plague, from 1664 to 1665, was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the southeast of England which killed 68,596 people - almost 20 per cent of London's population. There was no cure: bodies would be carried out at night in carts to special mass pits. Drivers rang handbells and called out ''Bring out your dead!'' They were paid well for a dangerous job. Pepys provides a gritty day-to-day account of the plague in his diaries.
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON
The following year saw another disaster, the Great Fire of London. This began in a baker's house in Pudding Lane and quickly swept through the crowded wooden houses. It raged for several days, until houses were blown up to make gaps which the fire could not cross. King Charles himself directed the firefighters and even worked among them. The fire was not an unmixed disaster; filthy alleys were burned down, the plague was halted, and London was rebuilt with wider streets and improved water supplies. After the fire, many new buildings were erected in stone and brick, instead of wood. Among them were 52 churches designed by the architect. Christopher Wren, including his most well-known building, St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1675-1710.
SAMUEL PEPYS'S DIARIES
We know a lot about both disasters in London thanks to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. He was a civil servant helping to improve the navy. He also had access to Charles II's Court and was a great gossip. He kept a diary for nine years but wrote it in secret and in code. The diaries were then lost, and not rediscovered until 1825. The diary has since became one of the most famous ever written in Britain. Its pages bring alive the London of Charles II with its theatres, coffee houses, horse-racing, gambling and beautiful women.
THE DUTCH WAR
The English and Dutch were rivals in fishing and trade, and when the Dutch started settlements on the Hudson River of North America among the English colonies, the merchants appealed to Parliament and war was declared. It began with an English victory in a naval battle of 300 ships off Lowestoft in 1665. In 1667, when the English fleet was unable to put to see because of lack of supplies, the Dutch sailed up the Medway, raided the naval dockyard at Chatham, and captured the flagship Royal Charles, which they took back to Holland as a war trophy. Other battles were fought during the two years that the war dragged on. One, in June 1666, in the North Sea, lasted for four days. The Dutch were led by their great admiral De Ruyter, and the English fought under George Monk, Duke of Albemarle. Both sides claimed victory.
JAMES II
CHARLES II HAD NO CHILDREN with his wife Catherine of Braganza from Portugal, but he had many mistresses who gave him 14 illegitimate sons and daughters. The most popular of his sons was James, Duke of Monmouth, called the Protestant Duke. Monmouth was a capable soldier, who had commanded English troops during the Dutch War. When Charles II died, his brother James became king in 1685, Monmouth thought he could rally the Protestant cause against the Catholic James and win the throne for himself. But he picked his time badly: James had not been king long enough to make himself unpopular, and the motley army Monmouth was able to raise was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, in Somerset. Monmouth was executed for treason, and so were nearly 300 of his followers. A further 800 were sold as slaves to Barbados.
JAMES II AND CATHOLIC PLOTS
Jame's succession was also threatened by fears of a Catholic plot. The Exclusion movement, led by the Whigs - the first political party in English history - believed the new king would try to restore the Roman Catholic religion. They wanted to exclude him from the throne. From 1688 James tried to introduce pro-Catholic measures including a Declaration of Indulgence which cancelled all laws against Nonconformists (chiefly Catholics). Seven bishops were arrested because they would not read out the Declaration in church, but were found not guilty. The arrests were very unpopular.
WHIG AND TORY
The terms Whig and Tory came into use at this time as terms of abuse for political opponents. Whig was originally a name for Scottish cattle thieves, but it was applied to those people who wanted to exclude James II from the throne because of his Catholic sympathies. James made a promise to uphold the Church of England (despite being a Catholic) to quieten the protesters. Tory was originally the name given to Irishmen whose land had been taken away and who had become outlaws. But the term Tory was given to those people who supported James II and the claims of the Crown. How the terms came to be applied to English political groups is obscure. But the name became thoroughly established in British politics.
WILLIAM AND MARY
JAMES II'S OBVIOUS ATTEMPTS to favour Catholics so angered the Protestants that Parliament invited the Dutch Protestant prince, William of Orange to come and deliver the country from its unpopular ruler. Parliament was prompted to this action by the birth of a son to James by his second wife. This pushed the claim of the Protestant Princess Mary, Jame's daughter and William's wife, into second place. William's invasion consisted of some 250 ships which anchored at Torbay in Devon in November 1688. William with his Protestant army landed to press his wife's claim to the throne. Mary had refused to accept the Crown unless Parliament also offered it to her husband. When William arrived in London James fled to France. As a result Parliament agreed that James had vacated his throne and offered the Crown to William and Mary.
IRISH PROTESTANT RULE
After he was deposed by William of Orange, Irish Catholics sided with James, while the Protestants of Ulster supported William. James went to Ireland where he raised an army. In 1689 he laid siege to Londonderry where thousands of Irish Protestants sought refuge. He failed to take the city and William finally defeated James at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. This battle is still celebrated annually by the Protestant Orangemen of Ulster. James fled back to France, where he died in 1701.
QUEEN ANNE
The Treaty of Ryswick made in 1697 between England, France, Holland and Spain had acknowledged William III as the rightful King of England, and Anne, James II's Protestant daughter, as his successor. She became Queen Anne I in 1702, aged 37, and was the last Stuart monarch. Her life was full of great personal sadness and bad health. She had 17 children but all of them died in infancy or childhood. Her reign was dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession abroad and by rivalry between Whigs and Tories at home. By the terms of the Act of Succession of 1701 the throne was to pass to the nearest Protestant heir, in the House of Hanover. Anne hated her German cousins and refused to allow them to come to England. But as her reign drew to an end she sent an envoy to the future George I, assuring him of her friendship. By so doing she played a vital role in ensuring that there was a peaceful change of dynasty.
ACT OF UNION
The political union of England and Scotland, which James I had tried to bring about when he became King of England in 1603, was finally accomplished in 1707. The Scots did not accept the English Act of Settlement, which in 1701 had settled the Crown on the descendants of the Protestant Sophia of Hanover (grand-daughter of James I and mother of the future George I). There was an unspoken threat that Scotland might, when Queen Anne died, bring back the Catholic Stuarts by making James II's son, James Francis Edward the Old Pretender, King of Scotland. This threat brought the English Parliament to support the move towards union. The Scots had come to realize that their country could no longer prosper as an independent nation. Under the Act of Union, their Parliament gained free trade with England, and cash to pay off huge debts acquired in a disastrous colonising venture in Darien in Central America. The Scots also kept their own legal system and Presbyterian church.
BIRTH OF GREAT BRITAIN
The resulting kingdom of England and Scotland was called Great Britain. For some years after the union the people of Scotland, felt they were at a disadvantage in an unequal partnership. The English majority in the combined Parliament meant that measures which favoured England at Scotland's expense were passed. One example was a special tax on linen, which was unimportant in the south but a major industry north of the border. However, the union was in Scotland's favour as it was now able to trade with England's various colonies. After decades of conflict the two countries combined in an uneasy but peaceful alliance.
FOCUS ON THE COFFEE HOUSES
During the 1600s coffee was brought to England from the Middle East. In 1652 the first coffee house was opened in London. Coffee houses quickly spread to become popular places where people went to gossip, do business deals and discuss politics. In 1688 Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house in Tower Street, a rendezvous for people who would insure ships and their cargoes, and read a publication called Lloyd's News, which gave important shipping details. From this original 17th-century coffee house sprang the modern Lloyd's, the world's foremost shipping insurers. From about 1704 single news-sheets - the first form of newspapers - could also be bought and read at coffee houses.
Sunday 23 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
THE GUNPOWDER PLOT
James I enforced an old law against Roman Catholics which stated that they had to go to Protestant churches, or be fined. A group of Catholics decided to start a revolution by blowing up the Houses of Parliament at a time when James was to be there. But one of the conspirators warned a relative, who was likely to be endangered by the plot: ''Retire yourself into the country . . . they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.'' The relative passed the information on to the authorities who searched the cellars of Parliament.
GUY FAWKES
Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, was caught red-handed guarding several barrels of gunpowder. The leader of the conspiracy was not, in fact, Fawkes but Robert Catesby. Fawkes endured hours of torture on the rack, but refused to incriminate anyone else. Fawkes and the other conspirators confessed under torture and were tried for treason and executed.
AUTHORISED BIBLE
When James I came to the throne there were five English translations of the Bible in use. He ordered a new translation. Fifty churchmen and scholars completed the task in seven years. The result was the Authorised Version, or King James Bible - which is still the most popular English version after more than 350 years. The beauty of its language has been a lasting influence on all English-speaking peoples. It also provided a major inspiration for the Puritan movement which later overthrew Charles I.
THE PURITANS
The Reformation of England had brought very few changes to the Church and many Catholic practices continued. The Church of England retained bishops, ceremony and vestments. But many people wanted a simpler, purer form of worship, with no bishops or elaborate religious ritual. They became known as Puritans. Some Puritans left England for America, where they could worship as they chose. But most remained determined to fight oppression rather than evade it. They were the dominant influence in Parliament in its later clash with Charles I.
LADY ARABELLA STUART
Lady Arabella Stuart was Jame's first cousin, and had a claim to the throne on Elizabeth's death. For this reason Elizabeth I and then James, were determined that she should marry only someone they could trust. Arabella fell in love with William Seymour, later Duke of Somerset. He was a great-great-grandson of Henry VII and, in Henry VIII's will, had been made the next heir to the British throne after Elizabeth. James forbade this match, but the couple married secretly in 1610. A conspiracy against James I was hatched, but the couple were found out and imprisoned. Arabella and Seymour planned an escape, Seymour got away, but Arabella was recaptured and confined in the Tower, where she died, insane. Seymour later became a leading Royalist general in the Civil War.
THE FIRST COLONIES
THE BEGINNINGS OF the British empire took place in Elizabethan times with Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuccessful attempt to set up a colony at Roanoke in North America. But James I distrusted Raleigh and finally had him executed. In 1607 three ships sailed into present-day Chesapeke Bay in Maryland where they built a fort at Jamestown (named after James I). Of the 104 colonists, almost half died that summer from malaria, typhoid and shortage of food. It was here that the Algonquin princess Pocahontas befriended Captain John Smith and saved him from being clubbed to death. She later came to London and attended the royal court. She died in 1617 on her way back to Jamestown. The colony itself eventually prospered and plantations of tobacco were established with the help of the local native American tribes. Later the colonists brought in black slaves from West Africa to work the fields.
James I enforced an old law against Roman Catholics which stated that they had to go to Protestant churches, or be fined. A group of Catholics decided to start a revolution by blowing up the Houses of Parliament at a time when James was to be there. But one of the conspirators warned a relative, who was likely to be endangered by the plot: ''Retire yourself into the country . . . they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.'' The relative passed the information on to the authorities who searched the cellars of Parliament.
GUY FAWKES
Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, was caught red-handed guarding several barrels of gunpowder. The leader of the conspiracy was not, in fact, Fawkes but Robert Catesby. Fawkes endured hours of torture on the rack, but refused to incriminate anyone else. Fawkes and the other conspirators confessed under torture and were tried for treason and executed.
AUTHORISED BIBLE
When James I came to the throne there were five English translations of the Bible in use. He ordered a new translation. Fifty churchmen and scholars completed the task in seven years. The result was the Authorised Version, or King James Bible - which is still the most popular English version after more than 350 years. The beauty of its language has been a lasting influence on all English-speaking peoples. It also provided a major inspiration for the Puritan movement which later overthrew Charles I.
THE PURITANS
The Reformation of England had brought very few changes to the Church and many Catholic practices continued. The Church of England retained bishops, ceremony and vestments. But many people wanted a simpler, purer form of worship, with no bishops or elaborate religious ritual. They became known as Puritans. Some Puritans left England for America, where they could worship as they chose. But most remained determined to fight oppression rather than evade it. They were the dominant influence in Parliament in its later clash with Charles I.
LADY ARABELLA STUART
Lady Arabella Stuart was Jame's first cousin, and had a claim to the throne on Elizabeth's death. For this reason Elizabeth I and then James, were determined that she should marry only someone they could trust. Arabella fell in love with William Seymour, later Duke of Somerset. He was a great-great-grandson of Henry VII and, in Henry VIII's will, had been made the next heir to the British throne after Elizabeth. James forbade this match, but the couple married secretly in 1610. A conspiracy against James I was hatched, but the couple were found out and imprisoned. Arabella and Seymour planned an escape, Seymour got away, but Arabella was recaptured and confined in the Tower, where she died, insane. Seymour later became a leading Royalist general in the Civil War.
THE FIRST COLONIES
THE BEGINNINGS OF the British empire took place in Elizabethan times with Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuccessful attempt to set up a colony at Roanoke in North America. But James I distrusted Raleigh and finally had him executed. In 1607 three ships sailed into present-day Chesapeke Bay in Maryland where they built a fort at Jamestown (named after James I). Of the 104 colonists, almost half died that summer from malaria, typhoid and shortage of food. It was here that the Algonquin princess Pocahontas befriended Captain John Smith and saved him from being clubbed to death. She later came to London and attended the royal court. She died in 1617 on her way back to Jamestown. The colony itself eventually prospered and plantations of tobacco were established with the help of the local native American tribes. Later the colonists brought in black slaves from West Africa to work the fields.
Saturday 22 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
ELIZABETH'S COURT
The court around Queen Elizabeth glittered like the queen herself. Here was an age when, it seemed, every gentleman aspired to be a poet or a musician, or both. For example, Sir Philip Sidney, the brave soldier who died fighting the Spanish at Zutphen, in the Netherlands, was a fine poet. Elizabeth's reign saw a flourishing of plays and poetry. The Globe Theatre, since restored in 1996, could hold nearly 3,000 people. The outstanding playwright was William Shakespeare, but at the time he was one of many highly regarded dramatic poets. Others had more than one occupation. Playwright Christopher Marlowe, murdered in a tavern brawl, is thought to have been a secret agent; Edmund Spenser, who wrote The Faerie Queene, helped in the plantation (settlement) of Ireland.
England led the way in the writing of music for keyboard instruments, and much traditional church music was written at this time. Two outstanding musicians were Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd. Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign madrigals (love poems sung by several voices without musical accompaniment) were introduced into England. Thomas Morley edited a collection of madrigals in honour of Elizabeth, called The Triumphs of Oriana, but it was not published until after the Queen's death.
FOCUS ON THE THEATRE
England's first theatre was built at Shoreditch. It was based on the enclosed courtyard of big inns, where actors used to perform. The theatre was built by actor-manager James Burbage. The building was simply called 'The Theatre'. It was open to the sky, like the later Globe Theatre where Shakespeare acted. Other theatres, such as the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, had roofs.
1562-64: Elizabeth I sends forces to France to help the Huguenot (French Protestants) in their revolt against the Catholic government. John Hawkins becomes the first English slave trader.
1565: Mary, Queen of Scots marries her cousin Lord Darnley. Royal Exchange, London, founded. John Hawkins brings back sweet potatoes and tobacco.
1566: Darnley and others murder David Rizzio, Mary's secretary.
1567: Darnley murdered; Mary marries Bothwell. Mary abdicates; succeeded by son James VI, aged one. Earl of Moray becomes Regent: Mary held prisoner.
1568: Mary escapes to England and becomes prisoner of Elizabeth.
1569: Rebellion in the north of England: Durham Cathedral plundered.
1570: Pope Pius V declares Elizabeth a usurper and heretic.
1572: Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Northumberland executed for treason. Francis Drake attacks Spanish harbours in the Americas.
1573: John Hawkins begins to reform the Navy.
1575: MP Peter Wentworth claims freedom from arrest for Members of Parliament for discussing key areas of government.
1576: James Burbage opens first theatre at Shoreditch.
1577-80: Drake's voyage round the world. Drake returns from voyage and is knighted by Elizabeth.
1583: Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for England. Edinburgh University founded.
EXPLORATION
WHEN THE ITALIAN EXPLORER Christopher Columbus approached Henry VII in 1492 for funds to pay for his voyages of discovery, Henry, known for his financial caution, turned him down. Columbus was eventually funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who benefited greatly from his discoveries in America. Five years later Henry VII did finance John Cabot's expedition. Cabot was a sailor from Genoa, Italy, who was based in Bristol. His voyage led eventually to the founding of the first British colony in America, at Newfoundland (in present-day Canada). Later a rich cod-fishing trade developed there. Henry VII was pleased with the results and gave Cabot a pension of £20.
THE RISE OF THE NAVAL POWERS
From the end of the 15th century, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and later England, started on a series of daring expeditions to claim new lands and wealth on the other side of the world. The European powers intended to ship spices, precious metals, cotton and others materials back home. To do this they all needed strong navies. Henry VIII helped to establish a reliable English navy of 50 to 70 ships and about 8,000 sailors, as well as a network of dockyards. One of the new ships he had built was the Mary Rose, named after his favourite sister, but it capsized and sank before his eyes on July 19, 1545.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
Sir Francis Drake was an accomplished explorer and sea captain who served Elizabeth loyally and helped England become a major sea power. Between 1577 to 1580, he and his men on the Golden Hind made an epic voyage around the world, the first crew to do so. Elizabeth and others bought shares in the voyage, the object of which was to plunder the Spanish colonies as well as to explore a way by sea to Asia and its riches. Elizabeth gave Drake a knighthood on his return.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Walter Raleigh was a great soldier, explorer, and writer. The story Raleigh removing his coat and placing it over a large puddle so Elizabeth could avoid getting wet may not be true. But he did become one of the Queen's favourites at Court. Elizabeth wanted colonies for England - chiefly to establish trading posts for merchants and so bring wealth to the country. In 1584, Raleigh sent 100 colonists across the Atlantic to America to find gold and take possession of new lands. Queen Elizabeth was impressed with the venture and so he named the new land Virginia after her, because people called her the ''Virgin Queen''. Raleigh was also the first person to introduce tobacco and potatoes into England from the American colonies.
1584: Sir Walter Raleigh tries to establish a colony near Roanaoke Island, Virginia (now North Carolina).
1586: Drake raids Santo Domingo and Cartagena in West Indies. Francis Walsingham uncovers Babington Plot, involving Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary condemned for treason.
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, executed. Drake partly destroys Spanish fleet at Cadiz. War with Spain breaks out.
1588: Philip II launches ''Invincible Armada'' against England, but it is destroyed.
1590: First Shakespeare plays performed.
1592: Plague kills 15,000 Londoners.
1593: Poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe murdered.
1595: Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, heads rebellion in Ireland.
1595: Spaniards land in Cornwall, burn Mousehole and Penzance. Raleigh explores Orinoco River in South America.
1597: John Harington describes his new invention, the water-closet.
1598: Battle of the Yellow Ford: Irish defeat the English.
1599: Earl of Essex becomes Lord Deputy of Ireland; he concludes truce with Tyrone, but is arrested at home. Lord Mountjoy succeeds Essex as Lord Deputy of Ireland. East India Company founded.
1601: Essex dabbles in plots, is tried for treason and executed. Spanish army lands in Ireland, but surrenders at Kinsale.
1603: Mountjoy crushes Irish rebellion. Elizabeth I dies; succeeded by James I of England (James VI of Scotland). Amnesty in Ireland. Main and Bye Plots against James I: Raleigh is jailed for involvement.
THE STUARTS
(1603-1714)
ELIZABETH I'S HEIR WAS JAMES VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. The family of Stuart had ruled Scotland for 232 years before James VI united England and Scotland under a common crown, thought not yet in law. Eventful as those years had been, they were not so dramatic as the following 111 years during which the Stuarts ruled over England, Wales, Scotland and , in name, over Ireland. In that time the combined nation underwent two revolutions: the English Civil War 1642-1645 which ended with the execution of Charles I, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This was a bloodless affair, when the Dutch prince William of Orange was invited to become King of England in place of Catholic James II, and so secure the Protestant succession for the English throne.
At first the Stuart monarchs claimed to rule by divine right; eventually it was made plain that they ruled by the consent and invitation of Parliament. The death of Charles I brought a period known as the Commonwealth when England was ruled by Oliver Cromwell and Parliament. On Cromwell's death, Parliament called Charles II back from exile and in 1660 the monarchy was restored. By the end of the Stuart period England and Scotland were formally united, and Ireland was more controlled by the English than before. Meanwhile, the British were expanding overseas. Many colonies, were set up in the North America. The religious tensions at home drove some people abroad to escape persecution. The most famous group was the Pilgrim Fathers, who founded the Plymouth Colony in America in 1620. Elsewhere, British traders established settlements in southern Africa and India which would eventually develop into an empire.
James I
THE NEW KING James I of England was, as he said himself, an ''old and experienced king''. He had already ruled Scotland for 25 years as James VI. The son of Mary Stuart and Lord Darnley, he believed in the divine, or God-given, right of kings to rule, and had managed the Scottish Parliament more or less as he liked. The English Parliament was far less easy to handle, insisting that the king could rule only by its consent. James supported the Protestant Church and was determined to enforce its practices.
The court around Queen Elizabeth glittered like the queen herself. Here was an age when, it seemed, every gentleman aspired to be a poet or a musician, or both. For example, Sir Philip Sidney, the brave soldier who died fighting the Spanish at Zutphen, in the Netherlands, was a fine poet. Elizabeth's reign saw a flourishing of plays and poetry. The Globe Theatre, since restored in 1996, could hold nearly 3,000 people. The outstanding playwright was William Shakespeare, but at the time he was one of many highly regarded dramatic poets. Others had more than one occupation. Playwright Christopher Marlowe, murdered in a tavern brawl, is thought to have been a secret agent; Edmund Spenser, who wrote The Faerie Queene, helped in the plantation (settlement) of Ireland.
England led the way in the writing of music for keyboard instruments, and much traditional church music was written at this time. Two outstanding musicians were Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd. Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign madrigals (love poems sung by several voices without musical accompaniment) were introduced into England. Thomas Morley edited a collection of madrigals in honour of Elizabeth, called The Triumphs of Oriana, but it was not published until after the Queen's death.
FOCUS ON THE THEATRE
England's first theatre was built at Shoreditch. It was based on the enclosed courtyard of big inns, where actors used to perform. The theatre was built by actor-manager James Burbage. The building was simply called 'The Theatre'. It was open to the sky, like the later Globe Theatre where Shakespeare acted. Other theatres, such as the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, had roofs.
1562-64: Elizabeth I sends forces to France to help the Huguenot (French Protestants) in their revolt against the Catholic government. John Hawkins becomes the first English slave trader.
1565: Mary, Queen of Scots marries her cousin Lord Darnley. Royal Exchange, London, founded. John Hawkins brings back sweet potatoes and tobacco.
1566: Darnley and others murder David Rizzio, Mary's secretary.
1567: Darnley murdered; Mary marries Bothwell. Mary abdicates; succeeded by son James VI, aged one. Earl of Moray becomes Regent: Mary held prisoner.
1568: Mary escapes to England and becomes prisoner of Elizabeth.
1569: Rebellion in the north of England: Durham Cathedral plundered.
1570: Pope Pius V declares Elizabeth a usurper and heretic.
1572: Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Northumberland executed for treason. Francis Drake attacks Spanish harbours in the Americas.
1573: John Hawkins begins to reform the Navy.
1575: MP Peter Wentworth claims freedom from arrest for Members of Parliament for discussing key areas of government.
1576: James Burbage opens first theatre at Shoreditch.
1577-80: Drake's voyage round the world. Drake returns from voyage and is knighted by Elizabeth.
1583: Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for England. Edinburgh University founded.
EXPLORATION
WHEN THE ITALIAN EXPLORER Christopher Columbus approached Henry VII in 1492 for funds to pay for his voyages of discovery, Henry, known for his financial caution, turned him down. Columbus was eventually funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who benefited greatly from his discoveries in America. Five years later Henry VII did finance John Cabot's expedition. Cabot was a sailor from Genoa, Italy, who was based in Bristol. His voyage led eventually to the founding of the first British colony in America, at Newfoundland (in present-day Canada). Later a rich cod-fishing trade developed there. Henry VII was pleased with the results and gave Cabot a pension of £20.
THE RISE OF THE NAVAL POWERS
From the end of the 15th century, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and later England, started on a series of daring expeditions to claim new lands and wealth on the other side of the world. The European powers intended to ship spices, precious metals, cotton and others materials back home. To do this they all needed strong navies. Henry VIII helped to establish a reliable English navy of 50 to 70 ships and about 8,000 sailors, as well as a network of dockyards. One of the new ships he had built was the Mary Rose, named after his favourite sister, but it capsized and sank before his eyes on July 19, 1545.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
Sir Francis Drake was an accomplished explorer and sea captain who served Elizabeth loyally and helped England become a major sea power. Between 1577 to 1580, he and his men on the Golden Hind made an epic voyage around the world, the first crew to do so. Elizabeth and others bought shares in the voyage, the object of which was to plunder the Spanish colonies as well as to explore a way by sea to Asia and its riches. Elizabeth gave Drake a knighthood on his return.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Walter Raleigh was a great soldier, explorer, and writer. The story Raleigh removing his coat and placing it over a large puddle so Elizabeth could avoid getting wet may not be true. But he did become one of the Queen's favourites at Court. Elizabeth wanted colonies for England - chiefly to establish trading posts for merchants and so bring wealth to the country. In 1584, Raleigh sent 100 colonists across the Atlantic to America to find gold and take possession of new lands. Queen Elizabeth was impressed with the venture and so he named the new land Virginia after her, because people called her the ''Virgin Queen''. Raleigh was also the first person to introduce tobacco and potatoes into England from the American colonies.
1584: Sir Walter Raleigh tries to establish a colony near Roanaoke Island, Virginia (now North Carolina).
1586: Drake raids Santo Domingo and Cartagena in West Indies. Francis Walsingham uncovers Babington Plot, involving Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary condemned for treason.
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, executed. Drake partly destroys Spanish fleet at Cadiz. War with Spain breaks out.
1588: Philip II launches ''Invincible Armada'' against England, but it is destroyed.
1590: First Shakespeare plays performed.
1592: Plague kills 15,000 Londoners.
1593: Poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe murdered.
1595: Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, heads rebellion in Ireland.
1595: Spaniards land in Cornwall, burn Mousehole and Penzance. Raleigh explores Orinoco River in South America.
1597: John Harington describes his new invention, the water-closet.
1598: Battle of the Yellow Ford: Irish defeat the English.
1599: Earl of Essex becomes Lord Deputy of Ireland; he concludes truce with Tyrone, but is arrested at home. Lord Mountjoy succeeds Essex as Lord Deputy of Ireland. East India Company founded.
1601: Essex dabbles in plots, is tried for treason and executed. Spanish army lands in Ireland, but surrenders at Kinsale.
1603: Mountjoy crushes Irish rebellion. Elizabeth I dies; succeeded by James I of England (James VI of Scotland). Amnesty in Ireland. Main and Bye Plots against James I: Raleigh is jailed for involvement.
THE STUARTS
(1603-1714)
ELIZABETH I'S HEIR WAS JAMES VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. The family of Stuart had ruled Scotland for 232 years before James VI united England and Scotland under a common crown, thought not yet in law. Eventful as those years had been, they were not so dramatic as the following 111 years during which the Stuarts ruled over England, Wales, Scotland and , in name, over Ireland. In that time the combined nation underwent two revolutions: the English Civil War 1642-1645 which ended with the execution of Charles I, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This was a bloodless affair, when the Dutch prince William of Orange was invited to become King of England in place of Catholic James II, and so secure the Protestant succession for the English throne.
At first the Stuart monarchs claimed to rule by divine right; eventually it was made plain that they ruled by the consent and invitation of Parliament. The death of Charles I brought a period known as the Commonwealth when England was ruled by Oliver Cromwell and Parliament. On Cromwell's death, Parliament called Charles II back from exile and in 1660 the monarchy was restored. By the end of the Stuart period England and Scotland were formally united, and Ireland was more controlled by the English than before. Meanwhile, the British were expanding overseas. Many colonies, were set up in the North America. The religious tensions at home drove some people abroad to escape persecution. The most famous group was the Pilgrim Fathers, who founded the Plymouth Colony in America in 1620. Elsewhere, British traders established settlements in southern Africa and India which would eventually develop into an empire.
James I
THE NEW KING James I of England was, as he said himself, an ''old and experienced king''. He had already ruled Scotland for 25 years as James VI. The son of Mary Stuart and Lord Darnley, he believed in the divine, or God-given, right of kings to rule, and had managed the Scottish Parliament more or less as he liked. The English Parliament was far less easy to handle, insisting that the king could rule only by its consent. James supported the Protestant Church and was determined to enforce its practices.
Friday 21 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
EDWARD VI
Edward was only nine when he came to the throne, and the government was in the hands of his uncle, Edward, Duke of Somerset, who had the title Protector. Somerset abolished the laws against heresy, removed images and altars from the churches, and introduced an English-language Book of Common Prayer, which was compiled by Thomas Cranmer. By an Act of Uniformity in 1549, the use of this Prayer Book was made compulsory. In another change, priests who had previously had to live as single men were now allowed to marry.
LADY JANE GREY
In 1550 the Duke of Northumberland took over from Somerset as Protector and persuaded Edward to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir to the throne. Lady Jane, the grand-daughter of Henry VII, was married to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley. Edward agreed to Lady Jane Grey becoming his successor because he feared that the Crown would otherwise pass to his sister, Mary, who was a devout Catholic and who would make England a Catholic country again. Edward died in 1553 but his death was kept secret and Lady Jane was proclaimed queen. But less than two weeks later Mary's claim to the throne was recognized and Lady Jane and her husband were imprisoned. At first Mary refused to execute Lady Jane Grey, Dudley and Northumberland, for attempting to secure a Protestant succession. But a rising in their favour led by Sir Thomas Wyatt made Mary realize they would always be a danger to her while they lived. They were beheaded in the Tower of London on February 12, 1554.
MARY I
Mary I came to the throne in 1553. She had been unhappy ever since Henry VIII had divorced her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Her greatest wish now was to undo the Reformation and restore England to the Roman Catholic faith. Mary's husband, the devoutly Catholic Philip II of Spain, encouraged her plans. Opposition to the Church of Rome was strong and could only be crushed by harsh measures. Mary began by stopping all clergy from reading the Book of Common Prayer. In Mary's five-year reign 275 Protestants were put to death for refusing to convert back to Catholicism. Among the victims were nobles and clergy such as Archbishop Cranmer. Mary has since acquired the nickname ''Bloody Mary''. Mary died broken-hearted in 1558. Her husband did not love her and lived abroad and she had no child or heir. The loss of Calais - England's last foothold in France - in 1558 was the final blow for this unhappy queen. ''When I die,'' Mary said, ''Calais will be written on my heart.''
FOCUS ON THE GREAT TUDOR PALACES
There are many fine Tudor manors, houses and palaces all over England - from the black-and-white half-timbered houses of Chester, to the Great Houses of Hardwick Hall, and especially Hampton Court Palace. Five wives of Henry VIII lived in the splendid Hampton Court situated beside the Thames, and it is said to be haunted by the ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife. The palace was offered to Henry in 1526 by Cardinal Wolsey who wanted to keep in favour with the king. Tournaments were held in the Tiltyard Gardens, and the Clock Court, Great Hall and Gate House are all of Tudor origin. Bess Hardwick, one of the richest people in Elizabeth I's reign, was actively involved in the designed of her great house, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire in 1597. Now that the barons' wars were over, these palaces were built without castle-style fortifications.
Elizabeth I
HENRY VIII'S YOUNGER DAUGHTER, Elizabeth, ascended the throne in 1558, with no opposition. She restored the Protestant religion and gradually established the Church of England. Elizabeth I was a remarkable woman. She spoke five languages besides English: Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish. She was a talented musician, a graceful dancer and a fine archer. She was also a very skilled politician, calculating and extremely clever. Elizabeth said of herself that she had ''the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too''.
GOOD QUEEN BESS
Elizabeth's reign lasted for 45 years. She remained unmarried and independently powerful, and dominated her male advisors. She died without an heir: Her court celebrated her as Gloriana, and the ordinary people referred to her as Good Queen Bess. Her enemies were mostly Roman Catholics, who were badly treated and often went in fear of their lives. Her reign also witnessed the execution of Mary Stuart and the dramatic attack of the Spanish Armada.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was just a week old on the death of her father, James V. She was brought up as a Catholic in France, and was married at the age of 16 to the dauphin of France. When he became king in 1559, she became Queen of France as well as of Scotland. Through her descent from Henry VIII's sister, Margaret, Mary was also Elizabeth's heir and so she had a claim to the English throne too. Mary was celebrated as the most beautiful woman of her time, an accomplished and graceful child of the French court. She was also a clever politician - almost as dominating as Elizabeth of England.
MARY'S DECLINE AND FALL
In 1561 Mary's husband died and she returned to Scotland. The Scots were mainly Protestants and disapproved of Mary's religion and of her foreign ways. She next married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was a jealous man. Darnley helped murder Mary's secretary, David Rizzio, suspecting him of being the queen's lover. Mary, in turn, was determined on revenge. Soon after their son James was born, Darnley was strangled and the house where he was staying blown up. Suspicion fell on James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and increased when Mary married him. The Scottish lords did not like Bothwell. Scottish opposition to Mary forced her to give up the throne in favour of her baby son, James VI. Mary fled to England, throwing herself on Elizabeth's mercy. But Elizabeth made her a prisoner. Mary was considered a ringleader in a series of plots against Elizabeth. Mary was charged with involvement in the Babington Plot and was tried and found guilty. Elizabeth eventually allowed Mary's execution.
PHILIP II PLANS AN INVASION
Under Elizabeth I, England became Protestant again. Philip II of Spain was determined to dethrone her. He wanted to restore England to the Catholic faith that his wife Mary I had so rigorously tried to reinstate. Elizabeth had angered Philip by supporting the Dutch in their war of independence against Spain. British seamen, were also raiding Spanish colonies and plundering treasure ships. Philip planned an invasion.
THE ARMADA
In 1588 an Armada, or fleet, of 130 Spanish warships set sail up the English Channel, to pick up soldiers from Dunkirk in France and land them on the English coast. The English prepared an emergency fleet led by experienced sailors Lord Howard of Effingham, Francis Drake, John Hawkins, and Martin Frobisher. The English fought a running naval battle with the Spanish in the Channel. Eventually the Armada took shelter in Calais harbour, but Drake sent in fireships. To escape the danger of their whole fleet catching fire, the Spaniards hurriedly raised anchor and sailed out to another confused battle. Both sides had run short of cannon fire, and with no further supplies available, the Armada was forced by bad weather to escape into the North Sea.
The Armada returned home after sailing round the British Isles. It lost 44 ships out of 130. Many surviving ships had to be scrapped. This did not end the conflict between Spain and England which continued because Elizabeth could not bear to hold peace talks with Spain. It was left to her successor, James I, to make peace in 1604.
Edward was only nine when he came to the throne, and the government was in the hands of his uncle, Edward, Duke of Somerset, who had the title Protector. Somerset abolished the laws against heresy, removed images and altars from the churches, and introduced an English-language Book of Common Prayer, which was compiled by Thomas Cranmer. By an Act of Uniformity in 1549, the use of this Prayer Book was made compulsory. In another change, priests who had previously had to live as single men were now allowed to marry.
LADY JANE GREY
In 1550 the Duke of Northumberland took over from Somerset as Protector and persuaded Edward to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir to the throne. Lady Jane, the grand-daughter of Henry VII, was married to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley. Edward agreed to Lady Jane Grey becoming his successor because he feared that the Crown would otherwise pass to his sister, Mary, who was a devout Catholic and who would make England a Catholic country again. Edward died in 1553 but his death was kept secret and Lady Jane was proclaimed queen. But less than two weeks later Mary's claim to the throne was recognized and Lady Jane and her husband were imprisoned. At first Mary refused to execute Lady Jane Grey, Dudley and Northumberland, for attempting to secure a Protestant succession. But a rising in their favour led by Sir Thomas Wyatt made Mary realize they would always be a danger to her while they lived. They were beheaded in the Tower of London on February 12, 1554.
MARY I
Mary I came to the throne in 1553. She had been unhappy ever since Henry VIII had divorced her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Her greatest wish now was to undo the Reformation and restore England to the Roman Catholic faith. Mary's husband, the devoutly Catholic Philip II of Spain, encouraged her plans. Opposition to the Church of Rome was strong and could only be crushed by harsh measures. Mary began by stopping all clergy from reading the Book of Common Prayer. In Mary's five-year reign 275 Protestants were put to death for refusing to convert back to Catholicism. Among the victims were nobles and clergy such as Archbishop Cranmer. Mary has since acquired the nickname ''Bloody Mary''. Mary died broken-hearted in 1558. Her husband did not love her and lived abroad and she had no child or heir. The loss of Calais - England's last foothold in France - in 1558 was the final blow for this unhappy queen. ''When I die,'' Mary said, ''Calais will be written on my heart.''
FOCUS ON THE GREAT TUDOR PALACES
There are many fine Tudor manors, houses and palaces all over England - from the black-and-white half-timbered houses of Chester, to the Great Houses of Hardwick Hall, and especially Hampton Court Palace. Five wives of Henry VIII lived in the splendid Hampton Court situated beside the Thames, and it is said to be haunted by the ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife. The palace was offered to Henry in 1526 by Cardinal Wolsey who wanted to keep in favour with the king. Tournaments were held in the Tiltyard Gardens, and the Clock Court, Great Hall and Gate House are all of Tudor origin. Bess Hardwick, one of the richest people in Elizabeth I's reign, was actively involved in the designed of her great house, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire in 1597. Now that the barons' wars were over, these palaces were built without castle-style fortifications.
Elizabeth I
HENRY VIII'S YOUNGER DAUGHTER, Elizabeth, ascended the throne in 1558, with no opposition. She restored the Protestant religion and gradually established the Church of England. Elizabeth I was a remarkable woman. She spoke five languages besides English: Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish. She was a talented musician, a graceful dancer and a fine archer. She was also a very skilled politician, calculating and extremely clever. Elizabeth said of herself that she had ''the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too''.
GOOD QUEEN BESS
Elizabeth's reign lasted for 45 years. She remained unmarried and independently powerful, and dominated her male advisors. She died without an heir: Her court celebrated her as Gloriana, and the ordinary people referred to her as Good Queen Bess. Her enemies were mostly Roman Catholics, who were badly treated and often went in fear of their lives. Her reign also witnessed the execution of Mary Stuart and the dramatic attack of the Spanish Armada.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was just a week old on the death of her father, James V. She was brought up as a Catholic in France, and was married at the age of 16 to the dauphin of France. When he became king in 1559, she became Queen of France as well as of Scotland. Through her descent from Henry VIII's sister, Margaret, Mary was also Elizabeth's heir and so she had a claim to the English throne too. Mary was celebrated as the most beautiful woman of her time, an accomplished and graceful child of the French court. She was also a clever politician - almost as dominating as Elizabeth of England.
MARY'S DECLINE AND FALL
In 1561 Mary's husband died and she returned to Scotland. The Scots were mainly Protestants and disapproved of Mary's religion and of her foreign ways. She next married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was a jealous man. Darnley helped murder Mary's secretary, David Rizzio, suspecting him of being the queen's lover. Mary, in turn, was determined on revenge. Soon after their son James was born, Darnley was strangled and the house where he was staying blown up. Suspicion fell on James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and increased when Mary married him. The Scottish lords did not like Bothwell. Scottish opposition to Mary forced her to give up the throne in favour of her baby son, James VI. Mary fled to England, throwing herself on Elizabeth's mercy. But Elizabeth made her a prisoner. Mary was considered a ringleader in a series of plots against Elizabeth. Mary was charged with involvement in the Babington Plot and was tried and found guilty. Elizabeth eventually allowed Mary's execution.
PHILIP II PLANS AN INVASION
Under Elizabeth I, England became Protestant again. Philip II of Spain was determined to dethrone her. He wanted to restore England to the Catholic faith that his wife Mary I had so rigorously tried to reinstate. Elizabeth had angered Philip by supporting the Dutch in their war of independence against Spain. British seamen, were also raiding Spanish colonies and plundering treasure ships. Philip planned an invasion.
THE ARMADA
In 1588 an Armada, or fleet, of 130 Spanish warships set sail up the English Channel, to pick up soldiers from Dunkirk in France and land them on the English coast. The English prepared an emergency fleet led by experienced sailors Lord Howard of Effingham, Francis Drake, John Hawkins, and Martin Frobisher. The English fought a running naval battle with the Spanish in the Channel. Eventually the Armada took shelter in Calais harbour, but Drake sent in fireships. To escape the danger of their whole fleet catching fire, the Spaniards hurriedly raised anchor and sailed out to another confused battle. Both sides had run short of cannon fire, and with no further supplies available, the Armada was forced by bad weather to escape into the North Sea.
The Armada returned home after sailing round the British Isles. It lost 44 ships out of 130. Many surviving ships had to be scrapped. This did not end the conflict between Spain and England which continued because Elizabeth could not bear to hold peace talks with Spain. It was left to her successor, James I, to make peace in 1604.
Thursday 20 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
THE RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance is the modern name for the revival and spread of learning that took place from the 1400s onwards. It began in Italy, and spread throughout Europe. The works of ancient Greek and Roman writers and philosophers were widely read. Artists developed new styles of painting, including the use of perspective, or the illusion of distance. The speed with which these new ideas spread was due to the use of printing presses which began at this time. The Renaissance came to England in the reign of Henry VII, who invited Italian scholars and artists to his court. It found its greatest expression in literature: the Tudor period was a time of great poetry. It was also a time of major musical activity, especially the composition of Italian-style madrigals for groups of singers.
FRENCH AND SCOTS DEFEATED
In 1511 Pope Julius II asked Henry VIII, the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor to help him drive the French out of Italy. Henry agreed, hoping to reconquer some of England's frontier territories in France. His first expedition failed, but in 1513 he led a second expedition and at Guingates (Thérouanne) he won a short battle known as the Battle of Spurs after the speed at which the French fled. In that year the Scots invaded England to aid France. At Flodden Field, in Northumberland, the Scots faced an English army half its size but led by an experienced general, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. English cannon, arrows and tactics won the day. The Scots lost King James IV and 10,000 men.
HENRY, DIVORCE AND THE CHURCH
After 18 years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII had no male heir, only a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. No queen had ever ruled all England, and the Wars of the Roses showed the damage that could be caused by disputes over the succession to the throne. In 1527 Henry decided to divorce Catherine, who was unlikely to bear more children, and find a wife who could give him a son and so secure the Tudor dynasty. Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to ask the Pope to grant a divorce. The Pope refused, and Wolsey fell from power. So that Henry could grant himself a divorce, he decided to separate the Church in England from the authority of the Pope, a move carried out by a series of Acts of Parliament. Meanwhile Henry had married a lady of the court, Anne Boleyn. In 1533 the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared Henry's marriage with Catherine invalid (using the original widow) and his marriage with Anne legal. Anne soon produced a child, but it was another girl, Elizabeth. Once again Henry was disappointed, and, not having a son, he turned against Anne. In 1536 a charge of adultery was brought against Anne. She was accused of treason, tried and beheaded. Henry then married Jane Seymour who produced the longed-for son which they named Edward.
HENRY CLOSES THE MONASTERIES
English monasteries were in decline in the 1500s, and many of them were badly run. Henry's first attack against them came from Wolsey, who obtained papal permission to suppress 40 of the smaller monasteries. In 1536 Henry ordered nearly 400 of the remaining small ones to be dissolved, and took over their land and property. The rest of the smaller monasteries were then dissolved and the monks pensioned off. This move was so beneficial to Henry's finances that in 1539 Henr decided to dissolve the larger monasteries. Monasteries resisted were destroyed and their monks brutally killed. Henry gained still more wealth by selling off the monastery lands to rich nobles, but the charity and care which the monks had given to the poor and needy was a great loss.
UNION WITH WALES
In 1536 Henry VIII decided that Wales should be united with England. By the Act of Union it became part of England. An Act in 1541 gave Wales the right to send members to the English Parliament in Winchester. The Welsh shires were created by the Tudors, and English law was extended to Wales, with English as the official language of the law courts.
HENRY, KING OF IRELAND
Having made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, Henry VIII decided to extend his powers to Ireland, where the English owned large estates including most of Leinster and Meath. In 1541, an Irish Parliament was called in Dublin and gave Henry the title of King of Ireland. More than 40 Irish chiefs and Anglo-Irish nobles surrendered their lands to the King and received them back as vassals, the same terms by which English barons held their lands. Henry tried but failed to force Protestantism on Catholic Ireland.
HENRY'S FAILURES IN MARRIAGE
After Jane Seymour's death, Henry's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, arranged a marriage with a German princess, Anne of Cleves. The marriage was to ally England with the Protestant princes of northern Germany - an alliance on which Cromwell was very keen. Henry had never met Anne, but as part of the marriage arrangements he received a portrait of her. One story has it that when Anne arrived she was so plain that the disappointed Henry described her as ''the Flanders more''. However, there is no reason to believe the painting falsely flattered her face.
The marriage was soon dissolved, and Henry married Catherine Howard, a beautiful young noblewoman. Catherine was unfaithful to him, and Henry had her beheaded. Henry's last marriage was to a widow, Catherine Parr, who knew how to manage him, and who outlived him. Henry died in 1547. He left behind a son, Edward VI, who was a sickly child of only 10 years of age, and two unmarried daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. This meant that the succession to the throne was far from secure.
FOCUS ON THE MARY ROSE
The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's greatest warship. It could carry 200 crew, 185 soldiers and 30 gunners. There were some 140 cannon and hand guns. But it capsized and sank before Henry's eyes a few kilometres from Portsmouth Harbour during an engagement with a French invasion fleet on July 19th, 1545. The wreck was located in about 12 metres of water in 1971 by Alexander McKee and raised in 1982 with the current Prince of Wales in attendance. Among the artefacts recovered were cannons, longbows, gold coins and sail maker's and barber-surgeon's tools. The remains are now housed in Portsmouth alongside HMS Victory in an exciting display of Britain's maritime history.
THE REFORMATION
Although Henry VIII had broken ties with the Pope, he still supported the beliefs and customs of the Roman Catholic faith. During the reign of his son Edward VI, England was to move steadily away from Catholicism and towards the Protestant religion, in the movement later known throughout Europe as the Reformation. The Reformation had started in Germany in 1517 when Martin Luther protested against certain elaborate practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Forty years later, half of Europe was Protestant.
The Renaissance is the modern name for the revival and spread of learning that took place from the 1400s onwards. It began in Italy, and spread throughout Europe. The works of ancient Greek and Roman writers and philosophers were widely read. Artists developed new styles of painting, including the use of perspective, or the illusion of distance. The speed with which these new ideas spread was due to the use of printing presses which began at this time. The Renaissance came to England in the reign of Henry VII, who invited Italian scholars and artists to his court. It found its greatest expression in literature: the Tudor period was a time of great poetry. It was also a time of major musical activity, especially the composition of Italian-style madrigals for groups of singers.
FRENCH AND SCOTS DEFEATED
In 1511 Pope Julius II asked Henry VIII, the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor to help him drive the French out of Italy. Henry agreed, hoping to reconquer some of England's frontier territories in France. His first expedition failed, but in 1513 he led a second expedition and at Guingates (Thérouanne) he won a short battle known as the Battle of Spurs after the speed at which the French fled. In that year the Scots invaded England to aid France. At Flodden Field, in Northumberland, the Scots faced an English army half its size but led by an experienced general, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. English cannon, arrows and tactics won the day. The Scots lost King James IV and 10,000 men.
HENRY, DIVORCE AND THE CHURCH
After 18 years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII had no male heir, only a daughter, Mary, born in 1516. No queen had ever ruled all England, and the Wars of the Roses showed the damage that could be caused by disputes over the succession to the throne. In 1527 Henry decided to divorce Catherine, who was unlikely to bear more children, and find a wife who could give him a son and so secure the Tudor dynasty. Henry ordered Cardinal Wolsey to ask the Pope to grant a divorce. The Pope refused, and Wolsey fell from power. So that Henry could grant himself a divorce, he decided to separate the Church in England from the authority of the Pope, a move carried out by a series of Acts of Parliament. Meanwhile Henry had married a lady of the court, Anne Boleyn. In 1533 the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared Henry's marriage with Catherine invalid (using the original widow) and his marriage with Anne legal. Anne soon produced a child, but it was another girl, Elizabeth. Once again Henry was disappointed, and, not having a son, he turned against Anne. In 1536 a charge of adultery was brought against Anne. She was accused of treason, tried and beheaded. Henry then married Jane Seymour who produced the longed-for son which they named Edward.
HENRY CLOSES THE MONASTERIES
English monasteries were in decline in the 1500s, and many of them were badly run. Henry's first attack against them came from Wolsey, who obtained papal permission to suppress 40 of the smaller monasteries. In 1536 Henry ordered nearly 400 of the remaining small ones to be dissolved, and took over their land and property. The rest of the smaller monasteries were then dissolved and the monks pensioned off. This move was so beneficial to Henry's finances that in 1539 Henr decided to dissolve the larger monasteries. Monasteries resisted were destroyed and their monks brutally killed. Henry gained still more wealth by selling off the monastery lands to rich nobles, but the charity and care which the monks had given to the poor and needy was a great loss.
UNION WITH WALES
In 1536 Henry VIII decided that Wales should be united with England. By the Act of Union it became part of England. An Act in 1541 gave Wales the right to send members to the English Parliament in Winchester. The Welsh shires were created by the Tudors, and English law was extended to Wales, with English as the official language of the law courts.
HENRY, KING OF IRELAND
Having made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, Henry VIII decided to extend his powers to Ireland, where the English owned large estates including most of Leinster and Meath. In 1541, an Irish Parliament was called in Dublin and gave Henry the title of King of Ireland. More than 40 Irish chiefs and Anglo-Irish nobles surrendered their lands to the King and received them back as vassals, the same terms by which English barons held their lands. Henry tried but failed to force Protestantism on Catholic Ireland.
HENRY'S FAILURES IN MARRIAGE
After Jane Seymour's death, Henry's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, arranged a marriage with a German princess, Anne of Cleves. The marriage was to ally England with the Protestant princes of northern Germany - an alliance on which Cromwell was very keen. Henry had never met Anne, but as part of the marriage arrangements he received a portrait of her. One story has it that when Anne arrived she was so plain that the disappointed Henry described her as ''the Flanders more''. However, there is no reason to believe the painting falsely flattered her face.
The marriage was soon dissolved, and Henry married Catherine Howard, a beautiful young noblewoman. Catherine was unfaithful to him, and Henry had her beheaded. Henry's last marriage was to a widow, Catherine Parr, who knew how to manage him, and who outlived him. Henry died in 1547. He left behind a son, Edward VI, who was a sickly child of only 10 years of age, and two unmarried daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. This meant that the succession to the throne was far from secure.
FOCUS ON THE MARY ROSE
The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's greatest warship. It could carry 200 crew, 185 soldiers and 30 gunners. There were some 140 cannon and hand guns. But it capsized and sank before Henry's eyes a few kilometres from Portsmouth Harbour during an engagement with a French invasion fleet on July 19th, 1545. The wreck was located in about 12 metres of water in 1971 by Alexander McKee and raised in 1982 with the current Prince of Wales in attendance. Among the artefacts recovered were cannons, longbows, gold coins and sail maker's and barber-surgeon's tools. The remains are now housed in Portsmouth alongside HMS Victory in an exciting display of Britain's maritime history.
THE REFORMATION
Although Henry VIII had broken ties with the Pope, he still supported the beliefs and customs of the Roman Catholic faith. During the reign of his son Edward VI, England was to move steadily away from Catholicism and towards the Protestant religion, in the movement later known throughout Europe as the Reformation. The Reformation had started in Germany in 1517 when Martin Luther protested against certain elaborate practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Forty years later, half of Europe was Protestant.
Tuesday 18 October 2011
British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714
THE TUDORS
(1485 - 1603)
THE BEGINNING OF THE Tudor period in British History also signalled the end of the Middle Ages. The old feudal ways of life had largely disappeared and a new aristocracy drawn from the ranks of the growing middle classes was emerging. This was a period of great exploration and expansion in overseas trade, which gave the country a new source of wealth. The ideas of the Renaissance, which revived an interest in the art and learning of ancient Greece and Rome, marked the beginnings of modern culture and science. These ideas were spread by the use of the worst features of the Roman Catholic Church, was adopted in England at first as a political move, and later as a matter of faith. The Tudors finally united Wales and England, so that one set of laws and rights applied to both countries. They also tried to complete the conquest of Ireland by settling English colonists in large estates there which were called plantations. Scotland suffered years of violent conflict.
Henry VII
THE LANCASTRIAN HENRY TUDOR defeated the Yorkist King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and became King Henry VII. This marked the end of the series of civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses which had been fought between two leading families called Lancaster (who had a red rose badge) and York (who wore a white rose badge).
Many nobles had been killed or their power weakened. Henry VII made sure this continued by getting rid of their private armies and by executing many for treason against the Crown. He then took over their estates. Henry also married a Yorkist princess to help bring the two families together.
YORKIST THREATS
Despite Henry VII's victory in the Wars of the Roses, he was stil forced to watch constantly for threats to his throne from the few remaining Yorkist supporters. These supporters were often aided by foreign powers. France and Scotland in particular were traditional enemies of England. Richard III's younger sister, Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy, twice found youths prepared to pretend to be claimants to the throne.
LAMBERT SIMNEL
The first pretender to the throne was Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford joiner. Yorkists tried to pass Simnel off as the missing Edward, Earl of Warwick, who had been imprisoned in 1485. The Irish, who had long been supporters of the Yorkist cause, ralllied to Simnel. Lord Kildare, Lord Deputy of Ireland, had him crowned Edward VI in Dublin by the archbishop. Margaret of Burgundy supplied money and arms to support his cause and he sailed for England in 1487. However, Henry VII defeated him at Stoke in Nottinghamshire. Simnel was captured and made a servant in the royal kitchens where he lived for almost 40 years.
PERKIN WARBECK
The second claimant was Perkin Warbeck, son of a Flemish tax collector. Warbeck was supported in turn by the King of France, Duchess Margaret, the Holy Roman Emperor, and James IV of Scotland. He posed as Richard, Duke of York, who had been murdered with his brother Edward V in the Tower. Warbeck claimed that he was spared when his brother was killed. Margaret supported him as her long lost nephew. He stayed with her in Flanders and eventually landed in England but was caught and hanged in 1499. Henry punished Flanders for harbouring Warbeck; he expelled all Flemings from England and moved Edward's wool market base from Antwerp to Calais. Another Yorkist claimant, Edmund de la Pole, known as the White Rose of England, was also supported by Margaret. He was executed in 1513.
IRELAND UNDER POYNINGS
To limit Irish support for Perkin Warbeck and the Yorkist cause, Henry VII sent Sir Edward Poynings to Ireland as Lord Deputy. Poynings called an Irish Parliament, which passed the Statute of Drogheda, also called Poyning's Law: no Irish Parliament could meet without the English king's consent, and no bill could be considered there without his permission. All bills placed before the Irish Parliament had to be passed by the English Privy Council beforehand. Also, all laws passed in England should also be the law in Ireland. This ended home rule in Ireland for centuries.
Henry VIII
HENRY VIII BECAME KING IN 1509 at the age of 17. A short time before that he was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. She had been married to Arthur, Henry's elder brother, to strengthen an alliance between England and Spain. But Arthur died suddenly, so Henry VII decided his younger son should marry Catherine because he was worried that he may have to return her dowry. The marriage was at first forbidden by the Church because the couple were too closely related, but Henry VII persuaded the Pope to allow it.
(1485 - 1603)
THE BEGINNING OF THE Tudor period in British History also signalled the end of the Middle Ages. The old feudal ways of life had largely disappeared and a new aristocracy drawn from the ranks of the growing middle classes was emerging. This was a period of great exploration and expansion in overseas trade, which gave the country a new source of wealth. The ideas of the Renaissance, which revived an interest in the art and learning of ancient Greece and Rome, marked the beginnings of modern culture and science. These ideas were spread by the use of the worst features of the Roman Catholic Church, was adopted in England at first as a political move, and later as a matter of faith. The Tudors finally united Wales and England, so that one set of laws and rights applied to both countries. They also tried to complete the conquest of Ireland by settling English colonists in large estates there which were called plantations. Scotland suffered years of violent conflict.
Henry VII
THE LANCASTRIAN HENRY TUDOR defeated the Yorkist King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and became King Henry VII. This marked the end of the series of civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses which had been fought between two leading families called Lancaster (who had a red rose badge) and York (who wore a white rose badge).
Many nobles had been killed or their power weakened. Henry VII made sure this continued by getting rid of their private armies and by executing many for treason against the Crown. He then took over their estates. Henry also married a Yorkist princess to help bring the two families together.
YORKIST THREATS
Despite Henry VII's victory in the Wars of the Roses, he was stil forced to watch constantly for threats to his throne from the few remaining Yorkist supporters. These supporters were often aided by foreign powers. France and Scotland in particular were traditional enemies of England. Richard III's younger sister, Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy, twice found youths prepared to pretend to be claimants to the throne.
LAMBERT SIMNEL
The first pretender to the throne was Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford joiner. Yorkists tried to pass Simnel off as the missing Edward, Earl of Warwick, who had been imprisoned in 1485. The Irish, who had long been supporters of the Yorkist cause, ralllied to Simnel. Lord Kildare, Lord Deputy of Ireland, had him crowned Edward VI in Dublin by the archbishop. Margaret of Burgundy supplied money and arms to support his cause and he sailed for England in 1487. However, Henry VII defeated him at Stoke in Nottinghamshire. Simnel was captured and made a servant in the royal kitchens where he lived for almost 40 years.
PERKIN WARBECK
The second claimant was Perkin Warbeck, son of a Flemish tax collector. Warbeck was supported in turn by the King of France, Duchess Margaret, the Holy Roman Emperor, and James IV of Scotland. He posed as Richard, Duke of York, who had been murdered with his brother Edward V in the Tower. Warbeck claimed that he was spared when his brother was killed. Margaret supported him as her long lost nephew. He stayed with her in Flanders and eventually landed in England but was caught and hanged in 1499. Henry punished Flanders for harbouring Warbeck; he expelled all Flemings from England and moved Edward's wool market base from Antwerp to Calais. Another Yorkist claimant, Edmund de la Pole, known as the White Rose of England, was also supported by Margaret. He was executed in 1513.
IRELAND UNDER POYNINGS
To limit Irish support for Perkin Warbeck and the Yorkist cause, Henry VII sent Sir Edward Poynings to Ireland as Lord Deputy. Poynings called an Irish Parliament, which passed the Statute of Drogheda, also called Poyning's Law: no Irish Parliament could meet without the English king's consent, and no bill could be considered there without his permission. All bills placed before the Irish Parliament had to be passed by the English Privy Council beforehand. Also, all laws passed in England should also be the law in Ireland. This ended home rule in Ireland for centuries.
Henry VIII
HENRY VIII BECAME KING IN 1509 at the age of 17. A short time before that he was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. She had been married to Arthur, Henry's elder brother, to strengthen an alliance between England and Spain. But Arthur died suddenly, so Henry VII decided his younger son should marry Catherine because he was worried that he may have to return her dowry. The marriage was at first forbidden by the Church because the couple were too closely related, but Henry VII persuaded the Pope to allow it.
The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603
No foreigner had been king of England since William the Conqueror, and 'the very name of stranger was odious', so the opponents of the Spanish marriage insisted. Marriage to a 'stranger' would outrage the people. England would by this marriage be 'marrying everlasting strife and danger from the French', who were already intriguing witht the Scots and Irish. Since Philip was Mary's kinsman a papal dispensation was necessary: a prospect so objectionable that it must be kept secret, and secrecy brought its own dangers. Philip might promise to adapt to English ways, but no one would believe him, and the Spanish would be as hated in England as they were in Flanders. But Mary was adamant: she would die if she married Courtenay. She now loved Philip, she confessed, before ever she met him. To Gardiner's objection: 'And what will the people say?' she replied that it was not for him to prefer the people's will to hers. When the Speaker led a deputation from Parliament on 16 November to rehearse arguments against the Spanish marriage 'learnt in the school of the Bishop of Winchester [Gardiner]', she roundly rejected their petition. Gardiner's objections may have represented less a narrow patriotism than a politic way of securing the best terms for the marriage treaty; terms so favourable to England that Philip forswore them three times before witnesses, even while he swore them. The fears that 'heretics' would use the marriage as proof that the restoration of the old religion meant foreign domination, that papal tyranny and Spanish tyranny were all one, would not go away.
Monday 17 October 2011
The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603
The treason charges against Somerset were framed, so Warwick confessed later, but Warwick's guilt does not exculpate Somerset, who was not innocent. Arundel's insistence that the plan to arrest Warwick and Northampton intended 'by the passion of God . . . no harm to your bodies' was never credible. Somerset was brought before his fellow peers in December 1551 and condemned for felony, though not for treason. He went to the block on 22 January 1552. At Somerset's final fall the Council rewarded themselves with greater lands and grander titles. Warwick created the dukedom of Northumberland upon the confiscated Percy earldom and estates, and took it for himself; he planned the dismemberment of the palatinate bishopric of Durham; he assumed the Border office of Warden General. A territorial power base in the North-East was now his. The new resolution in November 1551 that the King could sign all bills passed under the Signet, for his personal commands, without counter-signature by a member of the Council was a way for Dudley, the new Duke of Northumberland, to use his influence over Edward to increase his own authority. Yet the King, bereft of two uncles, began to claim greater power. 'Many talked that the young King was now to be feared.' The most radical reformation yet in religion began, in part because Edward willed it. The divine hand was seen to punish a faithless people in the spring of 1551; the faithlessness construed differently by conservatives and evangelicals. Those who lamented the loss of traditional ways of worship blamed the disasters upon heresy. That March Princess Mary defied her half-brother and his religious laws - 'her soul was God's and her faith she would not change' - and marked her defiance by riding to Westminster with a great retinue, each servant wearing a forbidden rosary. Her stand encouraged all those of like mind. But most who held to the old faith held it more covertly. In the first English novel, Beware the Cat (1553), Mouseslayer the cat tells of her adventures among flawed humans, of how her blind mistress recovered her lost sight as she gazed sightlessly upon the elevated Host at a secret Mass performed in her chamber by an outlawed priest. So should all cats summon that priest to say Mass for their blind kittens, said the feline counsillor Pol-noir. Evangelicals, especially in London, enjoyed the joke, but not the reality, as they witnessed Catholics coming to worship the sacrament, even at St Paul's.
At the trial of the evangelical London preacher John Bradford in 1553, he remembered that 'the doctrine taught in King Edward's days was God's pure religion . . .' 'What religion mean you,' asked the Bishop of Durham, 'in King Edward's days? What year of his reign?' As the leaders of the new Church tried to make real their vision of a truly evangelical Church, they struggled to carry with them a whole people, most of whom were still hostile to it, and at the same time to defend it against their fellow reformers who, by setting their individual and unassailable consciences against the institutional Church, threatened to split English Protestantism. Archbishop Cranmer, with Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London as his lieutenant, insisted that their evangelical revolution must proceed at a uniform pace, with order and discipline, with the authority of the Crown and the consent of Parliament. More restless spirits, like John Hooper and John Knox, came to see Cranmer's cautious policy of making haste slowly as a betrayal of the evangelical cause. In its theological intent, the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 had been radical: the offering of the eucharistic elements of the bread and wine to God in the Mass, their adoration and reservation, were no longer part of the rite of the English Church. Yet ambiguities remained which allowed priests still to counterfeit the Mass. In June 1550 Bishop Gardiner, Cranmer's adversary through two decades, succeeded in subverting Cranmer's masterpiece by saying that it would not offend his conscience to use the Book, and this because 'touching the truth of the very presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament, there was as much spoken in that book as might be desired'. In the winter and spring of 1551-2 Cranmer advanced a triple programme of reform: the revision of canon law, the formulation of a doctrinal statement, and the rewriting of the Book of Common Prayer to save it from conservative sabotage and evangelical criticism. A new Act of Uniformity passed in April 1552 authorized as substantially revised Prayer Book in which the dramatic shape of the rite was altered in order to mark a break with the Church's tainted past. When the faithful received the elements of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper they were now directed to think on Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, and the words of administration were profoundly changed: 'Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving . . . ' Bread was still bread, wine stil wine, and Christ's presence was spiritual. This Prayer Book brought to an end any possibility of officially praying for the dead, so destroying in the rite the old sense of communion between the dead and the living. Had all of Cranmer's schemes for reform been implemented, the new Church of England would have had parity with the Reformed Churches of Europe. But Northumberland, who had advanced the evangelical cause, now moved to wreck it.
In the spring of 1553 rumours spread that Edward was dying. There had been rumours before, but this time they were true. The Lady Mary was his heir. The prospect of her accession appalled Edward, who believed that she would restore the tyranny of Rome; it was more alarming still for Northumberland, who expected not only his own overthrow but also retribution. Together they determined to overturn Henry VIII's will and the Succession Act of 1544 and to disinherit Mary and Elizabeth. By a 'device' they perverted the succession; it was now to pass to the male descendants of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary. But neither Mary's daughter, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, nor her daughters had borne sons. At the very end of Edward's life, the succession was diverted further to the Duchess's daughter, Lady Jane Grey, who had in May married Northumberland's son, Guildford Dudley. Northumberland was kingmaker. When Edward died on 6 July his death was kept secret while the succession was secured. When a 'marvellous strange monster' was born that summer - it seemed to many that this signified the two Queens Jane and Mary proclaimed at Edward's death. Which one would succeed? For any queen to rule was against nature, for women were to be governed, not to govern.
On 10 July 1553 Queen Jane was proclaimed in London, as the citizens looked on, grim and silent. The Duke of Northumberland seemed to hold all the resources of power. The Council had signed the letters patent which bestowed the crown on Lady Jane, who was married to his son; he had the dying King's blessing; the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, many of the court, the mayor and aldermen of London, and leading judges had, however unwillingly, given assent to Edward's 'device'; he controlled the capital, the Tower, the Great Seal, the navy and many troops. Yet, despite all this, Lady Mary was proclaimed queen in London on 19 July. Mary believed her triumph, the triumph of one excluded from the succession, the clearest sign of divine favour, and that belief marked all her purposes thereafter. What of the secondary causes? A conciliar had put Queen Jane on the throne; a popular rising deprived her of it. The revolt of the common people, usually condemned as the work of the Devil, was here believed to be divinely inspired for the preservation of the right: Vox populi, vox Dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God. Northumberland held power, but he lacked legitimacy. He also, crucially and inexplicably for so astute a politician, had allowed Mary her freedom. When warning reached Mary of Edward's imminent death she had fled Hunsdon in Hertfordshire for Kenninghall in Norfolk, where the local strength of her household lay, and then proceeded to Framlingham in Suffolk. The leading gentry and nobility of East Anglia, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley rallied to Mary. On 14 July Northumberland set out from London to arrest Mary, leaving behind a Council which was sworn to him, but whose loyalty faltered with its courage. The news that reached the councillors in their refuge and stronghold of the Tower terrified them. The people were rising for Mary. It was the 'country folk' who flocked to their 'rightful queen' at Kenninghall, and who protested against Lady Jane's proclamation at Ipswich; mariners mutinied against their captains and tenants refused to rise with their lords for Jane. Both Mary's supporters and Jane's prepared for battle. But by 19 July the Council in London, hearing of the universal desertions to Mary's cause, realized that the game was up. This was the only successful popular rising of the century.
Why did the people rise for Mary? Hatred of Northumberland and old suspicion of his motives were enough to discredit Jane, who was queen only by his 'enticement'. Outrage at the perversion of the true succession and fears of divine punishment against those who were cheating Mary of her right led many to oppose that injustice. But there was another cause. Queen Jane stood for reformed religion. On 12 July conciliar orders had come to sheriffs to gather troops against the bastard Mary who threatened the 'utter subversion of God's holy word'. Northumberland claimed that preservation of true religion was the first reason for altering the succession; 'God's cause . . . hath been the original ground.' Mary's defiant attachment to the old faith was common knowledge. In July 1553, as partisans for both queens armed, people were faced with disturbing choices. Did conscience dictate a higher loyalty to a divine than to a secular power, a duty to a Catholic rather than a Protestant queen, and what did prudence direct? It was the Catholic gentry who rallied first to Mary's cause. Evangelicals joined her too, far less enthusiastically, motivated principally by legitimism, and bowing to the divine punishment they deserved for not living according to the Gospel when it had been freely given to them. The consequences for the gospellers should Mary succeed were hardly considered at the time, though even amid the loyalist rejoicings at her proclamation there were other voices which cried in the wilderness. Those consequences soon became clear. Upon hearing the news that the turncoat councillors had proclaimed her, Mary's first act was to order a crucifix to be set up in the chapel at Framlingham. How should the new queen, triumphant yet precarious, rule? Whom should she trust? Mary was, as she ascended the throne at the age of thirty-seven, without any experience of government and innocent of formal political education, but years of deprivation and despair had taught her the first essential lesson: to trust no one at court. Her father had kept her away from her mother, Catherine of Aragon, and had even, in his fury, tried to have her condemned for treason when she refused, for a time, to submit to the Royal Supremacy and acknowledge her own bastardy. From her mother Mary had inherited her stubbornness, courage and Catholic piety; from her father - it waited to be seen. Like her half-brother Edward and half-sister Elizabeth, Mary had received the best humanist education: they had the intelligence and astuteness to benefit fully from it; whether Mary was similarly gifted was far less certain.
At her accession Mary pardoned her opponents, who were too many to condemn, except Northumberland and his closest adherents. Those whose loyalty had been most doubtful - like Sir William Paget, the 'master of practices', and the Earl of Pembroke - now made the greatest show of it, and returned to the Council, for their experience was needed. Into her household and Council Mary took also those East Anglian nobles and gentry who had brought her to the throne, whose devotion was as conspicuous as their inability to offer her politic advice. So inclusive was her Council that Paget sourly judged the government of England to be 'more like a republic' than a monarchy, but soon business was conducted by an inner circle consisting of Paget, Sir William Petre, Bishops Gardiner, Heath and Thirlby, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, the Marquess of Winchester and Sir Robert Rochester. Divisions among the councillors were bitter as they blamed each other for the past, resented the promotion of the loyal over the disloyal, envied each other's influence, and remembered old betrayals. How could Gardiner forget that Pembroke and Petre had interrogated him in prison only three years earlier? And there were seismic divisions over policy. With the accession of a queen came a transformation in the nature of politics. At court, access to the monarch, in her private apartments, was allowed only to her ladies, whose influence with her was great. The queen's intimates, like Gertrude, Marchinoness of Exeter and Susan Clarenicus, had been trusted by her since the dark days of the 1530s. Men seeking influence with the queen, and information, now tried to 'fall a-talking' to them. And women, too, besought them: 'remember me', 'forget me not'. The Duchess of Northumberland made a desperate appeal to Lady Paget that she intercede with her husband and with Mistress Clarenicus and the Marchioness 'in speaking for my husband's life'. Nothing could save Northumberland, who went to the block on 22 August, but they did their best for her sons. In the most secret conferences with Mary, Susan Clarenicus was present, and Simon Renard wondered whether 'she knew the meaning of all this'. Renard, the Imperial ambassador, Mary trusted as 'her second father confessor'. She now looked for counsel where she had always looked before, to her cousin, Emperor Charles V, and would not act without his advice. From Cardinal Pole came uncompromising admonitions. Mary's first wish was to restore the Catholic religion of her childhood, to dismantle the Supremacy with which she was so unwillingly burdened, and to restore England to Rome. Each of her advisers offered different advice about when and how this should be achieved. But above all Mary sought divine guidance. She looked always towards the Holy Sacrament reserved in her chamber, and 'invoked it as her protector, guide and counsellor and still prayed with all her heart that it would come to her help'.
The Queen needed an heir, a Catholic heir, so she must marry. For herself, she had embraced chastity, 'had never felt that which was called love', but she knew her duty. Whom to choose? Some urged an English husband, and chose Edward Courtenay, a victim of Henry VIII's rage against the Marquess of Exeter and his family, freed at last from the Tower but personally unstable. Yet how, asked Mary, could a queen marry a subject, and why should she be forced to marry a man because Gardiner had been his friend in prison? She listened now to Charles V. Since the first days of her reign, and before, he had planned for her to marry Prince Philip, his son. This would be Habsburg conquest of England by marriage.
At the trial of the evangelical London preacher John Bradford in 1553, he remembered that 'the doctrine taught in King Edward's days was God's pure religion . . .' 'What religion mean you,' asked the Bishop of Durham, 'in King Edward's days? What year of his reign?' As the leaders of the new Church tried to make real their vision of a truly evangelical Church, they struggled to carry with them a whole people, most of whom were still hostile to it, and at the same time to defend it against their fellow reformers who, by setting their individual and unassailable consciences against the institutional Church, threatened to split English Protestantism. Archbishop Cranmer, with Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London as his lieutenant, insisted that their evangelical revolution must proceed at a uniform pace, with order and discipline, with the authority of the Crown and the consent of Parliament. More restless spirits, like John Hooper and John Knox, came to see Cranmer's cautious policy of making haste slowly as a betrayal of the evangelical cause. In its theological intent, the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 had been radical: the offering of the eucharistic elements of the bread and wine to God in the Mass, their adoration and reservation, were no longer part of the rite of the English Church. Yet ambiguities remained which allowed priests still to counterfeit the Mass. In June 1550 Bishop Gardiner, Cranmer's adversary through two decades, succeeded in subverting Cranmer's masterpiece by saying that it would not offend his conscience to use the Book, and this because 'touching the truth of the very presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament, there was as much spoken in that book as might be desired'. In the winter and spring of 1551-2 Cranmer advanced a triple programme of reform: the revision of canon law, the formulation of a doctrinal statement, and the rewriting of the Book of Common Prayer to save it from conservative sabotage and evangelical criticism. A new Act of Uniformity passed in April 1552 authorized as substantially revised Prayer Book in which the dramatic shape of the rite was altered in order to mark a break with the Church's tainted past. When the faithful received the elements of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper they were now directed to think on Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, and the words of administration were profoundly changed: 'Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving . . . ' Bread was still bread, wine stil wine, and Christ's presence was spiritual. This Prayer Book brought to an end any possibility of officially praying for the dead, so destroying in the rite the old sense of communion between the dead and the living. Had all of Cranmer's schemes for reform been implemented, the new Church of England would have had parity with the Reformed Churches of Europe. But Northumberland, who had advanced the evangelical cause, now moved to wreck it.
In the spring of 1553 rumours spread that Edward was dying. There had been rumours before, but this time they were true. The Lady Mary was his heir. The prospect of her accession appalled Edward, who believed that she would restore the tyranny of Rome; it was more alarming still for Northumberland, who expected not only his own overthrow but also retribution. Together they determined to overturn Henry VIII's will and the Succession Act of 1544 and to disinherit Mary and Elizabeth. By a 'device' they perverted the succession; it was now to pass to the male descendants of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary. But neither Mary's daughter, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, nor her daughters had borne sons. At the very end of Edward's life, the succession was diverted further to the Duchess's daughter, Lady Jane Grey, who had in May married Northumberland's son, Guildford Dudley. Northumberland was kingmaker. When Edward died on 6 July his death was kept secret while the succession was secured. When a 'marvellous strange monster' was born that summer - it seemed to many that this signified the two Queens Jane and Mary proclaimed at Edward's death. Which one would succeed? For any queen to rule was against nature, for women were to be governed, not to govern.
On 10 July 1553 Queen Jane was proclaimed in London, as the citizens looked on, grim and silent. The Duke of Northumberland seemed to hold all the resources of power. The Council had signed the letters patent which bestowed the crown on Lady Jane, who was married to his son; he had the dying King's blessing; the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, many of the court, the mayor and aldermen of London, and leading judges had, however unwillingly, given assent to Edward's 'device'; he controlled the capital, the Tower, the Great Seal, the navy and many troops. Yet, despite all this, Lady Mary was proclaimed queen in London on 19 July. Mary believed her triumph, the triumph of one excluded from the succession, the clearest sign of divine favour, and that belief marked all her purposes thereafter. What of the secondary causes? A conciliar had put Queen Jane on the throne; a popular rising deprived her of it. The revolt of the common people, usually condemned as the work of the Devil, was here believed to be divinely inspired for the preservation of the right: Vox populi, vox Dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God. Northumberland held power, but he lacked legitimacy. He also, crucially and inexplicably for so astute a politician, had allowed Mary her freedom. When warning reached Mary of Edward's imminent death she had fled Hunsdon in Hertfordshire for Kenninghall in Norfolk, where the local strength of her household lay, and then proceeded to Framlingham in Suffolk. The leading gentry and nobility of East Anglia, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley rallied to Mary. On 14 July Northumberland set out from London to arrest Mary, leaving behind a Council which was sworn to him, but whose loyalty faltered with its courage. The news that reached the councillors in their refuge and stronghold of the Tower terrified them. The people were rising for Mary. It was the 'country folk' who flocked to their 'rightful queen' at Kenninghall, and who protested against Lady Jane's proclamation at Ipswich; mariners mutinied against their captains and tenants refused to rise with their lords for Jane. Both Mary's supporters and Jane's prepared for battle. But by 19 July the Council in London, hearing of the universal desertions to Mary's cause, realized that the game was up. This was the only successful popular rising of the century.
Why did the people rise for Mary? Hatred of Northumberland and old suspicion of his motives were enough to discredit Jane, who was queen only by his 'enticement'. Outrage at the perversion of the true succession and fears of divine punishment against those who were cheating Mary of her right led many to oppose that injustice. But there was another cause. Queen Jane stood for reformed religion. On 12 July conciliar orders had come to sheriffs to gather troops against the bastard Mary who threatened the 'utter subversion of God's holy word'. Northumberland claimed that preservation of true religion was the first reason for altering the succession; 'God's cause . . . hath been the original ground.' Mary's defiant attachment to the old faith was common knowledge. In July 1553, as partisans for both queens armed, people were faced with disturbing choices. Did conscience dictate a higher loyalty to a divine than to a secular power, a duty to a Catholic rather than a Protestant queen, and what did prudence direct? It was the Catholic gentry who rallied first to Mary's cause. Evangelicals joined her too, far less enthusiastically, motivated principally by legitimism, and bowing to the divine punishment they deserved for not living according to the Gospel when it had been freely given to them. The consequences for the gospellers should Mary succeed were hardly considered at the time, though even amid the loyalist rejoicings at her proclamation there were other voices which cried in the wilderness. Those consequences soon became clear. Upon hearing the news that the turncoat councillors had proclaimed her, Mary's first act was to order a crucifix to be set up in the chapel at Framlingham. How should the new queen, triumphant yet precarious, rule? Whom should she trust? Mary was, as she ascended the throne at the age of thirty-seven, without any experience of government and innocent of formal political education, but years of deprivation and despair had taught her the first essential lesson: to trust no one at court. Her father had kept her away from her mother, Catherine of Aragon, and had even, in his fury, tried to have her condemned for treason when she refused, for a time, to submit to the Royal Supremacy and acknowledge her own bastardy. From her mother Mary had inherited her stubbornness, courage and Catholic piety; from her father - it waited to be seen. Like her half-brother Edward and half-sister Elizabeth, Mary had received the best humanist education: they had the intelligence and astuteness to benefit fully from it; whether Mary was similarly gifted was far less certain.
At her accession Mary pardoned her opponents, who were too many to condemn, except Northumberland and his closest adherents. Those whose loyalty had been most doubtful - like Sir William Paget, the 'master of practices', and the Earl of Pembroke - now made the greatest show of it, and returned to the Council, for their experience was needed. Into her household and Council Mary took also those East Anglian nobles and gentry who had brought her to the throne, whose devotion was as conspicuous as their inability to offer her politic advice. So inclusive was her Council that Paget sourly judged the government of England to be 'more like a republic' than a monarchy, but soon business was conducted by an inner circle consisting of Paget, Sir William Petre, Bishops Gardiner, Heath and Thirlby, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, the Marquess of Winchester and Sir Robert Rochester. Divisions among the councillors were bitter as they blamed each other for the past, resented the promotion of the loyal over the disloyal, envied each other's influence, and remembered old betrayals. How could Gardiner forget that Pembroke and Petre had interrogated him in prison only three years earlier? And there were seismic divisions over policy. With the accession of a queen came a transformation in the nature of politics. At court, access to the monarch, in her private apartments, was allowed only to her ladies, whose influence with her was great. The queen's intimates, like Gertrude, Marchinoness of Exeter and Susan Clarenicus, had been trusted by her since the dark days of the 1530s. Men seeking influence with the queen, and information, now tried to 'fall a-talking' to them. And women, too, besought them: 'remember me', 'forget me not'. The Duchess of Northumberland made a desperate appeal to Lady Paget that she intercede with her husband and with Mistress Clarenicus and the Marchioness 'in speaking for my husband's life'. Nothing could save Northumberland, who went to the block on 22 August, but they did their best for her sons. In the most secret conferences with Mary, Susan Clarenicus was present, and Simon Renard wondered whether 'she knew the meaning of all this'. Renard, the Imperial ambassador, Mary trusted as 'her second father confessor'. She now looked for counsel where she had always looked before, to her cousin, Emperor Charles V, and would not act without his advice. From Cardinal Pole came uncompromising admonitions. Mary's first wish was to restore the Catholic religion of her childhood, to dismantle the Supremacy with which she was so unwillingly burdened, and to restore England to Rome. Each of her advisers offered different advice about when and how this should be achieved. But above all Mary sought divine guidance. She looked always towards the Holy Sacrament reserved in her chamber, and 'invoked it as her protector, guide and counsellor and still prayed with all her heart that it would come to her help'.
The Queen needed an heir, a Catholic heir, so she must marry. For herself, she had embraced chastity, 'had never felt that which was called love', but she knew her duty. Whom to choose? Some urged an English husband, and chose Edward Courtenay, a victim of Henry VIII's rage against the Marquess of Exeter and his family, freed at last from the Tower but personally unstable. Yet how, asked Mary, could a queen marry a subject, and why should she be forced to marry a man because Gardiner had been his friend in prison? She listened now to Charles V. Since the first days of her reign, and before, he had planned for her to marry Prince Philip, his son. This would be Habsburg conquest of England by marriage.
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