Unit 3
IRON AGE - 800BC - SUMMER AD 42
THE CELTS
The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language, religion, and cultural expression. They were not centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They were warriors, living for the glories of battle and plunder. They probably came from central Europe or further east. They were also the people who brought iron working to the British Isles. The Celts were technically advanced. They knew how to work with iron, and could make better weapons than the people who used bronze.Social organisation
The Celts were organised into different tribes, and tribal chiefs were chosen from each family or tribe, sometimes as the result of fighting matches between individuals, and sometimes by election.The Celtic tribes were ruled over by a warrior class, of which the priests, or Druids, seem to have been particularly important members. These Druids could not read or write, but they memorised all the religious teachings, the tribal laws, history, medi-cine and other knowledge necessary in Celtic society. The Druids from different tri-bes all over Britain probably met once a year. They had no temples, but they met in sacred groves of trees, on certain hills, by rivers or by river sources. We know little of their kind of worship except that at times it included human sacrifice.
Celtic tribes were set up with six basic classes. However, a person could rise from the lowest class to the largest class, or move in the other direction. The good that was done in service to the entire tribe was the basis for the advancement in Celtic society.
Tools
The Ancient Celts used a lot of different tools. The most popular tools were the sword, spear, throwing clubs, and a bow and arrow as well as shields. The Celtic's also used the axe, and knives, both were used during the battles the Celts fought. The ancient Celtic's had very powerful and sophisticated tools for the time. During the Iron Age (this was the time when iron was discovered), the Celts were one of the first groups of people to make tools and weapons out of iron.
Houses
The British Celts lived in roundhouses. We know this from the archaeological remains that have been excavated and dated to the Iron Age. The size of the roundhouses can be seen from the rain ditches which surround the houses. From those ditches we know that some of the roundhouses in the hill fort were quite big and that there was room for a lot of people inside. We guess that these were the homes of the warriors and their families and that the biggest house would have belonged to the Chief. It is thought that the peasants probably lived in hovels outside the walls of the fort although there has been little excavation to prove this.
The archaeological record for these roundhouses is incomplete due to the decomposition of organic materials and the removal and reuse of their contents elsewhere. However, Castell Henllys Iron Age Hill Fort probably provides the most authentic reconstruction of Iron Age roundhouses in Britain. The roundhouses at Castell Henllys have been reconstructed using the archaeological evidence found at the site. Each of the upright poles which support the roof of the roundhouse have been placed into the original post holes. Archaeologists discovered that the walls of the houses were made of wattle and daub. The wattle walls were made by weaving a fence of pliable hazel or willow sticks into an extremely strong circular structure. The daub was made of a mixture of clay, straw and animal dung. The straw and dung help to stop the clay from cracking and falling away. The daubed walls were very good at keeping the heat in and the wind out. Lime-washed walls helped to create a better appearance and make the houses a little lighter.
It is quite dark inside the roundhouses with most of the light coming from the doorway during the day. In the centre of the roundhouses there were fireplaces. At night the flames from the fire provide some light but you still needed to get additional lighting from rush lights if you wanted to see things more clearly. It is more practical to use the daylight and get up at sunrise. The fire would also have been used for cooking. There is evidence of a saddle quern-stone, which would have been used to grind corn* to make bread. There may have been an oven somewhere in the roundhouse (pictured - right). Sometimes food was cooked on hot stones placed next to the fire and it is quite likely that a cauldron would only have been used in one of the houses for communal cooking as it would have been a very costly item. A firedog may have been used to roast meat over the open fire.
Settlements
Farming
When the Celts and the Normans arrived in Ireland and they brought different ways of farming with them. In this way farming changed a little over the centuries. Some things stayed the same because people still had to plant and harvest crops and they still had to look after their animals. Some of the basic methods of farming stayed the same up until the time of our grandparents.During the British Iron Age, large tracts of land in Southern and Eastern Britain were used to produce crops and the Celts who lived there were skilled arable farmers. Religion and farming were closely linked in Iron Age Britain. It is said that they produced a lot of corn, along of another crops like oats, rye and millet. It seems that these ones were introduced to Britain during the Iron Age. Few vegetables were known in Britain prior to the Roman Invasion of the country. However, Celtic beans and fat hen were grown and a kind of primitive parsnip was found in Britain at that time. Herbs would probably have been the main way to get your 'greens'.
According to the Roman reporter, Pliny the Elder, the British farmers invented the practice of manuring the soil with various kinds of mast, loam, and chalk. He described how chalk was dug out from 'pits several hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but widening towards the bottom.
Agriculture
The Celtic tribes continued the same kind of agriculture as the Bronze Age people before them. But their use of iron technology and their introduction of more advanced ploughing methods made it possible for them to farm heavier soils.Geography
Viking and the beginning of Norman Britain and Middle Ages (until Henry III)
Viking and the beginning of Norman Britain
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where ‘on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). These ruthless pirates continued to make regular raids around the coasts of England, looting treasure and other goods, and capturing people as slaves. Monasteries were often targeted, for their precious silver or gold chalices, plates, bowls and crucifixes. Outside Anglo-Saxon England, to the north of Britain, the Vikings took over and settled Iceland, the Faroes and Orkney, becoming farmers and fishermen, and sometimes going on summer trading or raiding voyages. Orkney became powerful, and from there the Earls of Orkney ruled most of Scotland. To this day, especially on the north-east coast, many Scots still bear Viking names. The Vikings took over Northumbria, East Anglia and parts of Mercia. In 866 they captured modern York (Viking name: Jorvik) and made it their capital. They continued to press south and west. The kings of Mercia and Wessex resisted as best they could, but with little success until the time of Alfred of Wessex, the only king of England to be called ‘the Great'.The Viking raiding did not stop - different Viking bands made regular raiding voyages around the coasts of Britain for over 300 years after 793. For example in 991 Olaf Tryggvason's Viking raiding party was beaten off by the English.The final Viking invasion of England came in 1066, when Harald Hardrada sailed up the River Humber and marched to Stamford Bridge with his men. His battle banner was called Land-waster. The English king, Harold Godwinson, marched north with his army and defeated Hardrada in a long and bloody battle. The English had repelled the last invasion from Scandinavia.
King Alfred – Danelaw
It is for his valiant defence of his kingdom against a stronger enemy, for securing peace with the Vikings and for his farsighted reforms in the reconstruction of Wessex and beyond, that Alfred - alone of all the English kings and queens - is known as 'the Great'.
Edward "The Confessor" and his succession
Duke William of Normandy
William was the elder of the two children of Robert I of Normandy and his concubine Herleva. In 1035 Robert died while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and William, his only son, whom he had nominated as his heir before his departure, was accepted as duke by the Norman magnates and by his overlord, King Henry I of France.
By 1042, when William reached his 15th year, was knighted, and began to play a personal part in the affairs of his duchy, the worst was over. But his attempts to recover rights lost during the anarchy and to bring disobedient vassals and servants to heel inevitably led to trouble. From 1046 until 1055 he dealt with a series of baronial rebellions, mostly led by his kinsmen. Occasionally he was in great danger and had to rely on Henry of France for help, but it was during these years that William learned to fight and rule. A decisive moment came in 1047, when Henry and William defeated a coalition of Norman rebels at Val-ès-Dunes, southeast of Caen, a battle in which William first demonstrated his prowess as a warrior.
After 1047 William began to participate in events outside his duchy.
Between 1054 and 1060 William was threatened by the combined menace of internal revolt and the new alliance against him between King Henry and Geoffrey Martel. Had the Norman rebels coordinated their attacks with king and count, it would have meant the end for William, but his own skill and some luck allowed him to prevail. After suppressing the rebels, William decisively defeated the invading forces of Henry and Geoffrey at the Battle of Mortemer in 1054. After a second victory, at Varaville in 1057, the duke was in firm control of Normandy. His position was secured even further when both Henry and Geoffrey died in 1060 and were succeeded by weaker rulers. Finally conquering Maine in 1063, William became the most powerful ruler in northern France.
In 1064 Harold Godwineson was shipwrecked off the coast of Normandy. Some historians believe that Duke William of Normandy held him captive until he had sworn on Holy Relics to enforce William’s claim to the throne of England. Others believe that Harold offered his support willingly.
After that, in 1066 Edward the Confessor died. William expected to be offered the crown as promised in 1064. He was dismayed to hear that Godwineson had taken the crown for himself and planned to invade England.
During the last 15 years of his life, William was more often in Normandy than in England, and there were five years, possibly seven, in which he did not visit the kingdom at all. He retained most of the greatest Anglo-Norman barons with him in Normandy and confided the government of England to bishops, trusting especially his old friend Lanfranc. He returned to England only when it was absolutely necessary. William was taken to a suburb of Rouen, where he lay dying for five weeks.
The Battle of Hastings
The Battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, the Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, beginning the Norman conquest of England. It took place approximately 7 miles (11 kilometres) northwest of Hastings, close to the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, and was a decisive Norman victory.King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
Just over two weeks before, William, the duke of Normandy, had invaded England, claiming his right to the English throne. In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwine, head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself. In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwine was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim.
On September 28, 1066, William landed in England at Pevensey, on Britain’s southeast coast, with approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry. Seizing Pevensey, he then marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle.
After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William marched on London and received the city’s submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. French became the language of the king’s court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. William I proved an effective king of England, and the “Domesday Book,” a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements. Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus, became William II, the second Norman king of England.
Middle Ages
William I
William I of England (1028 – 1087) known as William the Conqueror, was born in 1028 in Falaise Castle, Normandy. He was the son of Robert of Normandy and Arlette of Conteville. William I ruled as the Duke of Normandy from 1035 to 1087 and as the King of England from 1066 to 1087. At the age of 26, William I married his cousin Matilda of Flanders at the Cathedral of Notre Dam, Eu. William I was 26 and Matilda of Flanders was 22. Their marriage produced 10 children. William I invaded England with 12,000 strongs and won the victory of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. During his reign, he ordered many castles and keeps to keep English people from rebellion. In September 9, 1087, at the age of 60, William I died at the convent of Saint Gervais, near Rouen, France from abdominal injuries after he fell from a horse during the Siege of Nantes.Feudal System
Feudalism had a dramatic effect on England and Europe during the Middle Ages. The pyramid of power which was the Feudal system ran to a strict 'pecking' order - during the Medieval period of the Middle Ages everyone knew their place. The emergence of the Medieval Feudal System of the Middle Ages affected all spheres of Medieval society: a land-based economy, the judicial system and the rights of the feudal lords under the feudal system and the lack of rights for the serfs and peasants. The events which led to the decline of the feudal system. The most important and interesting aspects and facts about feudalism have been comprehensively detailed in the pages which can be accessed from this section.
Henry II (Thomas Beckett)
They reached Canterbury Cathedral on December 29th, where they found Becket before the High Altar, as he had gone there to hear Vespers. One of the knights approached him, and struck Becket on the shoulder with the flat of his sword. It seems that the knights did not at first intend to kill Becket, but as he stood firm after the first blow, the four attacked and butchered him. Henry was horrified when he heard the news as he believed that it was his words that had been the cause of Becket’s death. As an act of penitence he donned sackcloth and ashes, and starved himself for three days.
Catholic church: monasteries, nunneries, friars...
Church
Society was made up of three 'estates': the nobility, the church, whose duty was to look after the spiritual welfare of that body, and everyone else…The only universal European institution was the church, and even there a fragmentation of authority was the rule; all the power within the church hierarchy was in the hands of the local bishops. The church basically saw itself as the spiritual community of Christian believers, in exile from God's kingdom, waiting in a hostile world for the day of deliverance.
The Roman Catholic Church became organized into an elaborate hierarchy with the pope as the head in western Europe. There was a growing sense of religion and a need to be with Christ and his followers.
During the Middle Ages, the Church was a major part of everyday life. The Church served to give people spiritual guidance and it served as their government as well.
Monasteries
Each monastery endeavoured to form an independent, self-supporting community whose monks had no need of going beyond its limits for anything. In course of time, as a monastery increased in wealth and number of inmates, it might come to form an enormous establishment, covering many acres and presenting within its massive walls the appearance of a fortified town. A Medieval monastery was a farm, an inn, a hospital, a school and a library. Furthermore, life consisted of a regular round of worship, reading, and manual labor.Nunneries
There were many different orders of Medieval Nuns established during the Middle Ages. All Medieval Nuns led lives which were strictly disciplined. Their lives were dedicated to their God and their faith and was a renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem. Women were not usually well educated during the Middle Ages although some nuns were taught to read and write. Medieval Nuns lived in a convent or nunnery. Each convent or nunnery formed an independent, self-supporting community which meant that the Medieval Nuns had no need of going beyond the limits of the convent or nunnery for anything. The three main vows of the Medieval nuns of the Middle Ages were:- The Vow of Poverty
- The Vow of Chastity
- The Vow of Obedience
Friars:
A medieval friar was a special kind of monk who was considerably different from the monks of the earlier times. A medieval friar followed a certain kind of lifestyle which was based on the concept of penance as laid down in the Gospel and travelled to spread the word of God. Among the essential elements of a medieval friar’s life included teaching religion and music to children, visits to the sick and the elderly, writing letters and reports about their mission, and indulging in prayers.A medieval friar was considered exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishops on missions to the far flung corners of the world. Some of these major and important mendicant orders included Franciscans and Dominicans.Blackdeath
The “Black Death” or simply “Plague”, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in several forms of plague, is believed to have been the cause. The plague created a series of religious, social, and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. The Black Death is thought to have originated in the dry plains of Central Asia, carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships to the Mediterranean and Europe.Richard I, "lionheart"
He earned the title ‘Coeur-de-Lion’ or ‘Lion Heart’ as he was a brave soldier, a great crusader, and won many battles against Saladin, the leader of the Saracens who were occupying Jerusalem at that time.
Was he really one of the greatest kings of England – or one of the worst?
It appears that he hadn’t much interest in being king …in his ten years as monarch he only spent a few months in England, and it is doubtful that he could actually speak the English language. He once remarked that he would have sold the whole country if he could have found a buyer. Fortunately he couldn’t find anyone with the necessary funds.
Richard was the son of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. He spent much of his youth in his mother’s court at Poitiers. During the last years of Henry’s reign, Queen Eleanor constantly plotted against him. Encouraged by their mother, Richard and his brothers campaigned against their father in France. King Henry was defeated in battle and surrendered to Richard, and so on the July 5th 1189, Richard became King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou.
After his coronation Richard, having already taken the crusader’s vow, set out to join the Third Crusade to free the Holy Land from Saladin, the leader of the Turks.
Whilst wintering in Sicily, Richard was met by his mother along with a potential bride to-be…Berengaria of Navarre. He initially resisted the match. On the way to the Holy Land, part of Richard’s fleet was wrecked off Cyprus. The island’s ruler Isaac I made the mistake of upsetting Richard by badly treating his surviving crews. Richard had landed in Rhodes but immediately sailed back to Cyprus where he defeated and deposed Isaac. Whether it was the magic of the island, the heightened senses from his victory or something else entirely, it was in Cyprus that Richard relented and married Berengaria of Navarre. An unlikely place perhaps for an English king to get married, nevertheless Berengaria was crowned Queen of England and Cyprus. Richard continued with the Crusade, landing and taking the city of Acre on 8 June 1191. Whilst reports of his daring deeds and exploits in the Holy Land excited the folks back home and in Rome, in reality he failed to achieve the main objective which was to regain control of Jerusalem.
So in September, after concluding a three years’ peace deal with Saladin he set off alone on the long journey home. During the journey Richard was shipwrecked in the Adriatic and eventually captured by the Duke of Austria. A heavy ransom was demanded for his release.
Kings apparently do not come cheap, and in England it took a quarter of every man’s income for a whole year to raise the funds for Richard’s release. He eventually returned to England in March 1194. However he didn’t spend much time in England and spent the rest of his life in France doing what he seemed to enjoy most of all …fighting. It was while besieging the castle at Chalus in France that he was shot by a crossbow bolt in the shoulder. Gangrene set in and Richard ordered the archer who had shot him, to come to his bedside. The archer’s name was Bertram, and Richard gave him a hundred shillings and set him free. King Richard died at the age of 41 from this wound. The throne passed to his brother John.
A sad end for the Lion-Heart, and alas, also for poor Bertram the archer. Despite the King’s pardon he was flayed alive and then hanged.
King John (Magna Carta)
Richard had no son, and he was followed by his brother, John. John had already made himself unpopular with the three most important groups of people, the nobles, the merchants and the Church. John was unpopular mainly because he was greedy. The feudal lords in England had always run their own law courts and profited from the fines paid by those brought to court. But John took many cases out of their courts and tried them in the king's courts, taking the money for himself. King John had signed Magna Carta unwillingly, and it quickly became clear that he was not going to keep to the agreement. The nobles rebelled and soon pushed John out of the southeast. But civil war was avoided because John died suddenly in 1216. This new agreement was known as Magna Carta, the Great Charter, and was an important symbol of political freedom. The king promised all "freemen" protection from his officers, and the right to a fair and legal trial. At the time perhaps less than one quarter of the English were "freemen". Most were not free, and were serfs or little better. Hundreds of years later, Magna Carta was used by Parliament to protect itself from a powerful king. In fact, Magna Carta gave no real freedom to the majority of people in England . The nobles who wrote it and forced King John to sign it had no such thing in mind . They had one main aim: to make sure John did not go beyond his rights as feudal lord. Magna Carta marks a clear stage in the collapse of English feudalism. Feudal society was based on links between lord and vassal. At Runnvmede the nobles were not acting as vassals but as a class. They established a committee of twenty-four lords to make sure John kept his promises. That was not a "feudal" thing to do. In addition, the nobles were acting in co-operation with the merch ant class of towns. The nobles did not allow John's successors to forget this charter and its promises. Every king recognised Magna Carta, until the Middle Ages ended in disorder and a new kind of monarchy came into being in the sixteenth century. There were other small signs that feudalism was changing. When the king went to war he had the right to forty days' fighting service from each of his lords. But forty days were not long enough for fighting a war in France. The nobles refused to fight for longer, so the king was forced to pay soldiers to fight for him. (They were called "paid fighters", solidaritess, a Latin word from which the word "soldier" comes.) At the same time many lords preferred the ir vassals to pay them in money rather than in services. Vassals were gradually beginning to change into tenants. Feudalism. The use of land in return for service was beginning to weaken. But it took anot her three hundred years before it disappeared completely.The Tudors - 1485/1603
Dates
Artists and movements
Main painters
Henry VIII was the first English king to employ artists to paint portraits of the royal family. Henry was not very impressed with English artists and therefore recruited them from Europe. The most important of these was the German artist, Hans Holbein.Henry and other members of the royal family were unwilling to spend long periods of time sitting in front of Holbein while he painted them. After Hans Holbein had finished a portrait of Henry that he liked, his assistants would make several copies of the painting. Some of these copies were displayed in England while others were sent to foreign monarchs.Another important artist of the Tudor court was Levina Teerlinc. Levina was born in Bruges and was recruited by Henry VIII in 1546. Her work was much admired by Elizabeth I. We know from court records that Levina presented a new portrait of Elizabeth every New Year's Day. The most important English artist of the Tudor period was Nicholas Hilliard. He specialized in painting miniatures and was commissioned to paint several of Queen Elizabeth. When Elizabeth was considering marrying the Due d' Alencon in 1577, she sent Hilliard to France to paint his picture. However, after seeing his portrait she decided against the marriage.
Movements
Tudor period was characterized by the isolation from the European trends and disrupt artistic representations. However, because of a huge amount of time we can't stop talking about the artistics movements that prevailed throughout this historical context and influienced the artistic manifestations of that time. This styles are Gothic and Renaissance.Architecture
Tudor period was characterized by the economic evolution that enabled the birth of bourgeoise. This upward social mobility produced social standing throughout the building of stately homes which were made in a style called the Tudor style. Tudor style coincides with the first part of reign of the Tudor monarchs and it was characterized by a use of half-timber work; large group of rectangular windows; rich oriel, or bay, windows; complex roofs with many gables; fantastic chimney treatments; and much brickwork, frequently in patterns.Henry VII
Henry was King of England from 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, and the first monarch of the House of Tudor. Henry won the throne when his forces defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the culmination of the Wars of the Roses. Henry was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle. He cemented his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and niece of Richard III. Henry was successful in restoring the power and stability of the English monarchy after the civil war. Henry can also be credited with a number of administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives. He paid very close attention to detail, and instead of spending lavishly he concentrated on raising new revenues. And after a reign of nearly 24 years, he was peacefully succeeded by his son, Henry VIII. Amiable and high-spirited, Henry Tudor was friendly and dignified in manner, while it was clear to everyone that he was extremely intelligent.Henry VIII
To understand English Reformation one must know under what circumstances Henry VIII and Catheryn of Aragon got married.Catherine was married to Prince Arthur. Unfortunately their marriage was to be short lived as Arthur contracted what may have been "sweating sickness" and died shortly afterwards.
Catherine stayed on in England and was betrothed to Arthur's younger brother, Henry. However, they weren't married straight away due to wrangling between King Ferdinand and King Henry VII over Catherine's dowry. In April 1509 Henry assumed the throne on the death of his father, married Catherine in a private ceremony in June after receiving a dispensation from the Pope, and Catherine’s short marriage to Arthur was annulled.
For the first few years accounts suggest they lived happily together and she bore Henry six children, including three sons, but all of them died except for one – their daughter, Mary (later Mary I), born in 1516.
Unable to produce a male heir, Catherine’s marriage to Henry began to sour and Henry began pursuing her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. In 1527 Henry, still desperate for a son, asked the Pope for an annulment of his marriage so he could marry his new mistress. He claimed that the marriage was cursed as it went against the biblical teaching that a man should never marry his brother's widow.
However, Catherine refused to give in to Henry, saying her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated. She attracted much popular sympathy as she fought for her own rights and those of her daughter Mary. For seven years the Pope refused to annul their marriage, as he was afraid of angering Catherine's nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
Henry VIII therefore set up the Church of England and made all Church officials swear that he was its leader so he could arrange his own divorce. This process was called the reformation and was confirmed by the Act of Supremacy (1534) which declared Henry to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England. He declared any monks who spoke against him to be traitors and had them executed.
In 1535, he sent royal commissioners led by Thomas Cromwell to all the monasteries (where monks or nuns: lived, prayed, worked and studied) who reported that many were breaking the rules by using money earned from their rich farmlands to pay for luxury living standards.
The cultural and social impact was significant, as much of the land was sold to the gentry and churches and monasteries were gutted and destroyed. Henry's personal religious beliefs remained Catholic, despite the growing number of people at court and in the nation who had adopted Protestantism.
He got married four times after Anne Boleyn - Anne had given birth to a daughter, Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I), but Henry had grown tired of her, and after two further pregnancies ended in miscarriages, she was arrested in 1536 on trumped up charges of adultery and publicly beheaded at the Tower of London -. However, only one of them gave him a son.
he final years of his reign witnessed Henry VIII's physical decline and an increasing desire to appear all-powerful. Henry continued with fruitless and expensive campaigns against Scotland and France.
Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547 and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI.
Hitoric Figures
Thomas More
Thomas More, (born February 7, 1478, London, England—died July 6, 1535), English humanist and statesman, chancellor of England (1529–32), who was beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. He is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. His most famous work was Utopia. More's book imagines a complex, self-contained community set on an island, in which people share a common culture and way of life.Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell, Baron Cromwell of Okeham, (born c. 1485, Putney, near London—died July 28, 1540, probably London), principal adviser (1532–40) to England’s Henry VIII, chiefly responsible for establishing the Reformation in England, for the dissolution of the monasteries, and for strengthening the royal administration. At the instigation of his enemies, he was eventually arrested for heresy and treason and executed.English Reformation in Wales and Ireland
The 'Act of Union' was part of the intensification of the sovereignty of the crown – the essence of what Geoffrey Elton described as ‘the Tudor Revolution’. An even more central part of that revolution was Henry VIII’s abolition of the authority of the Pope within his territories, for, in doing so, the king was declaring that his kingdom was a totally sovereign state.Evidence for the initial reaction in Wales is sparse, although it is unlikely that the anti-papal legislation was welcomed in so traditionalist a nation.
Yet that legislation, and later more radical moves such as the dissolution of the monasteries, the attack upon chantries and the introduction of an English-language Prayer Book, incited no uprisings in Wales as they did in northern England and in Cornwall. That may be because of the Welsh gentry’s instinctive loyalty towards the Tudor monarchy, but it was also a consequence of the reign of terror inflicted upon Wales in the 1530s by Rowland Lee, president of the Council of the Marches.
Indeed, in seeking to understand the course of the Reformation in Wales, the increasing power of the agents of the English crown must always be borne in mind. Initially, attitudes in Wales were probably very similar to attitudes in Ireland.
In Ireland, however, the power of the English crown was limited, and there the coercive power of the English authorities was not strong enough to bar entry to those members of Roman Catholic orders who were determined upon campaigns to ensure that the Irish remained loyal to the faith of their forefathers. In Wales, that coercive power was sufficient to ensure that no such campaigns would be launched.
There were, nonetheless, more constructive elements in the story of how the Welsh came to accept the Henrican and Elizabethan religious settlements. Chief among them were the efforts of a handful of Welsh Humanists who were determined that the central tenets of Protestantism would be accessible to the Welsh people, the vast majority of whom knew no language other than Welsh.
There was John Price, who in 1546, published the first book in the Welsh language; William Salesbury who in 1561 published a Welsh translation of the main texts of the English Prayer Book and in 1567 was mainly responsible for the first Welsh edition of the New Testament; and, above all, there was William Morgan who in 1588 published the entire Bible in Welsh, using language so exalted that his work remains the object of veneration.
The publication was prepared in obedience to a statute of 1563 which commanded that a Welsh version of the Bible and the Prayer Book should be available in every one of the parish churches of Wales. (The statute was somewhat ironic, for it meant that parliament was authorizing the use of the Welsh language in spiritual matters barely a generation after the 'Act of Union’ had banned its use in secular matters.)
Equally important was the fading of the myth that Protestantism was ‘the English religion’. It was replaced by another myth: that Protestantism was the re-embodiment of the beliefs of early Welsh Christianity, whose purity had been defiled by the Romish practices imposed upon it following St Augustine’s arrival at Canterbury.
Thus, by becoming Protestants, the Welsh were not embracing a new and dangerous heresy; rather were they returning to the faith of their forefathers, a faith which sprang directly from the era of the Apostles, for tradition maintained that it was Joseph of Arimathea who had converted the Britons to Christianity.
Edward VI
Edward became king at the age of nine, when his father died in January 1547. His father had arranged that a council of regency should rule on his behalf, but Edward's uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, took power and established himself as protector. Somerset and the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, were intent on making England a truly Protestant state, supported by the young king. An English Prayer Book was issued in 1549 with an Act of Uniformity to enforce it.In the summer of 1549, peasants in the West Country revolted in protest against the Prayer Book. Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk was focused on economic and social injustices. At the same time, the French declared war on England. The Norfolk rebellion was suppressed by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. In the atmosphere of uncertainty, Dudley exploited his success by bringing about the downfall of Somerset, who was arrested and later executed. Although Dudley, later duke of Northumberland, never took the title of protector, this is the role he now assumed. Protestant reform was stepped up - the new Prayer Book of 1552 was avowedly Protestant. Altars were turned into tables, religious imagery destroyed and religious orthodoxy was enforced by a new and more stringent Act of Uniformity.
It soon became clear that Edward was suffering from tuberculosis and would not live long. Northumberland was determined that his religious reforms should not be undone, so he persuaded Edward to approve a new order of succession. This declared Mary illegitimate and passed the throne to Northumberland's daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, who was a more distant descendant of Henry VIII. Edward died on 6 July 1553. However, Jane was only queen for a few days until, with overwhelming popular support, Mary took the throne.
Mary I
Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother Edward VI succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed (accurately) that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had begun during his reign. On his death, leading politicians tried to proclaim Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was the first queen regnant of England.In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556. She is known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. The executions that marked her pursuit of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and Ireland led to her denunciation as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents.
Elizabeth I
Church laws
Elizabeth, Mary's half-sister, was lucky to become queen when Mary died in 1558. Mary had considered killing her, because she was an obvious leader for Protestant revolt. Elizabeth managed to remain neutral during the struggle while Mary lived. When she became queen in 1558, Elizabeth I wanted to find a peaceful answer to the problems of the English Reformation. She wanted to bring together again those parts of English society which were in religious disagreement. In some ways the kind of Protestantism finally agreed in 1559 remained closer to the Catholic religion than to other Protestant groups. But the Church was still under her authority, unlike politically dangerous forms of Protestantism in Europe: she made the Church part of the state machine.The parish, the area served by one church, became the unit of state administration. People had to go to church on Sundays by law and they were fined if they stayed away. By this law, the parish priest became almost as powerful as the village squire. Elizabeth also arranged for a book of sermons to be used in church. Although most of the sermons consisted of Bible teaching, this book also taught the people that rebellion against the Crown was a sin against God.
Trade
Elizabeth and her advisers considered trade the most important foreign policy matter, as Henry VII had done. For them whichever country was England's greatest trade rival was also its greatest enemy. This idea remained the basis of England's foreign policy until the nineteenth century.She correctly recognised Spain as her main trade rival and enemy. Spain at that time ruled the Netherlands, although many of the people were Protestant and were fighting for their independence from Catholic Spanish rule. Elizabeth helped the Dutch rebels in several ways. Besides that, English ships had already been attacking Spanish ships as they returned from America loaded with silver and gold. This had been going on since about 1570, and was the result of Spain's refusal to allow England to trade freely with Spanish American colonies. Although these English ships were privately owned "privateers", the treasure was shared with the queen. Elizabeth apologised to Spain but kept her share of what had been taken from Spanish ships. Philip knew quite well that Elizabeth was encouraging the "sea dogs", as they were known. These seamen were traders as well as pirates and adventurers.
The most famous of them were John Hawkins. Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher, but there were many others who were also trying to build English sea trade and to interrupt Spain's.
Spanish Armada
After a failed attack, Philip built the largest fleet that had ever gone to sea. But most of the ships were designed to carry soldiers, and the few fighting ships were not as good as the English ones. English ships were longer and narrower, so that they were faster, and their guns could also shoot further than the Spanish ones. However, the Spanish Armada was defeated more by bad weather than by English guns. Some Spanish ships were sunk, but most were blown northwards by the wind, many being wrecked on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland. For England it was a glorious moment, but it did not lead to an end of the war with Spain, and England found itself having to spend more than ever on England's defence. Peace was only made with Spain once Elizabeth was dead.Colonies
Elizabeth followed two policies. She encouraged English sailors like John Hawkins and Francis Drake to continue to attack and destroy Spanish ships bringing gold, silver and other treasures back from the newly discovered continent of America. She also encouraged English traders to settle abroad and to create colonies. This second policy led directly to Britain 's colonial empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The first English colonists sailed to America towards the end of the century. One of the best known was Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought tobacco back to England. The settlers tried without success to start profitable colonies in Virginia, which was named after Elizabeth, the "virgin" or unmarried queen.
England also began selling West African slaves to work for the Spanish in America. John Hawkins carried his first slave cargo in 1562. By 1650 slavery had become an important trade, especially for Bristol. It took until the end of the eighteenth century for this trade to be ended.
A number of companies were established during Elizabeth's reign: the Eastland company to trade with Scandinavia and the Baltic in 1579; the Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire in 1581; the Africa Company to trade in slaves, in 1588; and the East India Company to trade with India in 1600. The East India Company was established mainly because the Dutch controlled the entire spice trade with the East Indies (Indonesia).
The English were determined to have a share in this rich trade, but were unsuccessful. However, the East India Company did begin to operate in India, Persia and even in Japan. The quarrel over spices was England's first difficulty with the Dutch. Before the end of the seventeenth century trading competition with the Dutch had led to three wars.
Scotish Kirk
The Protestant Church in Scotland was called the Scottish Kirk. However, they didn’t give the monarch authority over the church. This was possible because the Reformation took place while the queen was unable to interfere. The new Kirk was a far more democratic organisation than the English Church, because it had no bishops and was governed by a General Assembly. The Kirk taught the importance of personal belief and the study of the Bible, and this led quickly to the idea that education was important for everyone in Scotland. As a result, most Scots remained better educated than other Europeans, including the English, until the end of the nineteenth century.The new Kirk in Scotland disliked Mary and her French Catholicism. Mary was careful not to give the Kirk any reason for actually opposing her. She didn’t try to bring back Catholicism.
Mary Queen of Scots
Henry hoped to marry his son Edward to the baby Queen of Scots, Mary, and in this way join the two countries together under an English king. Nevertheless, rather than give little Mary to the English, the Scots sent her to France, where she married the French king's son in 1558. She was Catholic, but during her time in France Scotland had become officially and popularly Protestant, a key fact for understanding her importance.Mary's arrival to England posed a horrible political problem for Elizabeth. She was naturally averse to supporting rebels against their sovereign ruler, and to take direct action against Mary (even if a proven murderess and adulteress) risked provoking retaliation by the Catholic powers of Europe. On the other hand, England's interests lay in seeing Scotland ruled by a weak, Protestant, pro-English regency, rather than an unreliable, pro-French, Catholic monarch with pretensions to Elizabeth's own throne. But Mary's presence in England was inherently dangerous, as she became the focal point of Catholic hopes of overturning Elizabeth's Protestant regime. This would probably have been true whatever Mary did, but she fanned the flames of such schemes.
Mary was soon married again, to Lord Damley, a 'Scottish Catholic'. But when she tired of him, she allowed herself to agree to his murder and married the murderer, Bothwell. Scottish society, in spite of its lawlessness, was shocked. The English government did not look forward to the possibility of Mary succeeding Elizabeth as queen. In addition to her Catholicism and her strong French culture, she had shown very poor judgement. By her behaviour Mary probably destroyed her chance of inheriting the English throne. She found herself at war with her Scottish opponents, and was soon captured and imprisoned. However, in 1568 she escaped to England, where she was held by Elizabeth for nineteen years before she was finally executed.
James VI
The son of Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband, Lord Darnley, he succeeded to the Scottish throne on the enforced abdication of his mother and assumed power in 1583. He established a strong centralized authority, and in 1589 married Anne of Denmark (1574–1619).James's childhood and adolescence were unhappy, abnormal, and precarious; he had various guardians, whose treatment of him differed widely. His education, although thorough, was weighted with Presbyterian and Calvinist political doctrine, and his character – highly intelligent and sensitive, but also fundamentally shallow, vain, and exhibitionist – reacted violently to this. His political philosophy turned to the theory of the divine right of kings, in striking contrast to the practical experiences of his childhood.
S.XVIII-XIX. Empire and Sea Power - Victorian Britain
House of Hanover Tree
The House of Hanover
Kingdom of Hanover. They also provided monarchs of Great Britain and Ireland from 1714 to 1800 and ruled the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from its creation in 1801 until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Upon Victoria's death, the British throne passed to her eldest son Edward VII, a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha through his father. The current head of the House of Hanover is Ernest Augusts, Prince of Hanover.
Rulers
George Louis became the first British monarch of the House of Hanover as George I in 1714. The dynasty provided six British monarchs:Of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland
Of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Reform Bill 1832
The Reform Bills were a series of proposals to reform voting in the British parliament. These include the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884. The bills reformed voting by increasing the electorate for the House of Commons and removing certain inequalities in representation. The bill of 1832 disfranchised many boroughs which enjoyed undue representation and increased that of the large towns, at the same time extending the franchise, and was put through by the Whigs. The 1832 Reform Act was the most controversial of the electoral reform acts passed by the Parliament. The Act reapportioned Parliament in a way fairer to the cities of the old industrial north, which had experienced tremendous growth. The Act also did away with most of the "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs such as Old Sarum, which with only seven voters (all controlled by the local squire) was still sending two members to Parliament. This act not only re-apportioned representation in Parliament, thus making that body more accurately represent the citizens of the country, but also gave the power of voting to those lower in the social and economic scale, for the act extended the right to vote to any man owning a household worth £10, adding 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000. As many as one man in five (though by some estimates still only one in seven) now had the right to vote. For many conservatives, this effect of the bill, which allowed the middle classes to share power with the upper classes, was revolutionary. The agitation preceding and following the first Reform Act made many people consider fundamental issues of society and politics.People’s charter
This document, written in 1838 mainly by William Lovett of the London Working Men’s Association, stated the ideological basis of the Chartist movement. The Charter was launched in Glasgow in May 1838, at a meeting attended by an estimated 150,000 people. Presented as a popular-style Magna Carta, it rapidly gained support across the country and its supporters became known as the Chartists. A petition, populated at Chartist meetings across Britain, was brought to London in May 1839, for Thomas Attwood to present to Parliament. It received 1,280,958 signatures, yet Parliament voted not to consider it. However, the Chartists continued to campaign for the six points of the Charter for many years to come, and produced two more petitions to Parliament.The People's Charter detailed the six key points that the Chartists believed were necessary to reform the electoral system and thus alleviate the suffering of the working classes. These were:
Liberalism
Modern State
Much of what we know today as the modern state was built in the 1860s and 1870s. Between 1867 and 1884 the number of voters increased from 20 per cent to 60 per cent of men in towns and to 70 per cent in the country, including some of the working class. One immediate effect was the rapid growth in party organisation, with branches in every town, able to organise things locally. In 1872 voting was carried out in secret for the first time, allowing ordinary people to vote freely and without fear. This, and the growth of the newspaper industry, in particular "popular" newspapers for the new half-educated population strengthened the importance of popular opinion. Democracy grew quickly. A national political pattern appeared: The House of Commons grew in size to over 650 members and the House of Lords lost the powerful nineteenth centuries. Now it no longer formed policy but tried to prevent reform raking place through the House of Commons.Democracy also grew rapidly outside Parliament. In 1844 a "Co-operative Movement" was started by a few Chartists and trade unionists. Its purpose was self-help, through a network of shops which sold goods at a fair and low price, and which shared all its profits among its members. It was very successful, with 150 Co-operative stores by 1851 in the north of England and Scotland. By 1889 it had over 800.000 members. Co-operative self-help was a powerful way in which the working class gained self-confidence in spite of its weak position.
After 1850 a number of trade unions grew up based on particular kinds of skilled labour. However, unlike many European worker struggles, the English trade unions sought to achieve their goals through parliamentary democracy. In 1868 the first congress of trade unions met in Manchester, representing 118,000 members. The following year the new Trades Union Congress established a parliamentary committee with the purpose of achieving worker representation in Parliament. This wish to work within Parliament rather than outside it had already brought trade unionists into close co-operation with radicals and reformist Liberals. Even the Conservative Party tried to attract worker support. However, there were limits to Conservative and Liberal co-operation. It was one thing to encourage "friendly" societies for the peaceful benefit of workers. It was quite another to encourage union campaigns using strike action. During the 1870s wages were lowered in many factories and this led to more strikes than had been seen in Britain before. The trade unions' mixture of worker struggle and desire to work democratically within Parliament led eventually to the foundation of the Labour Party.
During the same period the machinery of modern government was set up. During the 1850s a regular civil service was established to carry out the work of government and "civil servants" were carefully chosen after taking an examination. The system still exists today. The army, too, was reorganised, and from 1870 officers were no longer able to buy their commissions. The administration of the law was reorganised. Local government in towns and counties was reorganised to make sure of good government and proper services for the people. In 1867 the first move was made to introduce free and compulsory education for children. In fact, social improvement and political reform acted on each other throughout the century to change the face of the nation almost beyond recognition.
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