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18 Great Britain
Society saw several very important changes. The laws of supply and demand favored the peasantry and brought reciprocal shifts in standards of living; landlords lost ground while tenants and workers improved. The decline of villeinage had begun in the previous century, and it was completed in the 15th. This was marked by the increase in copyhold tenure; that is, the granting of a copy of the manor court roll to a tenant, which amounted to a permanent lease. This much more favorable tenancy was a direct consequence of the relative advantage tenants possessed due to population decline (the Black Death). That condition began to be reversed by the end of the century.
There were some steps toward defining the class that became known as the “gentry.” The higher nobility, the peerage, had been defined more fully in the 14th century. They were the elite of the landowning class; the lesser but still wealthy landowners were consigned to the ranks of knights, esquires, and gentlemen. These were indeterminate groups whose ranks were swelled by increasing fortunes and new purchases of landed estates. In the 1440s those with incomes of £40 or more were enjoined to take a knighthood, though many did not. That status was required for one to be elected as a knight of the shire to attend Parliament (1445). There were no such clear delineations pertaining to the esquire and the gentleman. The terms placed their bearers in the wide zone between nobility and yeomanry, or small farmers. These were the more affluent local men, who were expected to serve in Parliament or as justices of the peace or as grand jurors—in other words, the governing class.
The 15th century also saw significant intellectual development and, apparently, increasing literacy. Sir Thomas More made the implausible claim that by 1500 half of the English population was literate. Assuming that he was correct in seeing significant improvement, some credit must be given to the popular devotional literature of the time and to the growing number of schools and colleges founded in the second half of the century. Moreover, the appearance of the printing press by 1476 aided the circulation of reading material. The century had a significant rise in the number of laymen who held official posts, many of which were formerly occupied by churchmen. There was also the oft-noted but elevated category of the intellectual elite, many of them exposed to and influenced by the humanist scholarship of both Italian and northern European origin. The number who traveled to these regions, returning to teach and write, was increasing. At another level, the study of law was being expanded in the Inns of Court, the schools for English lawyers. While it was too soon to speak of an English “renaissance,” the 15th century was providing some essential foundations.
England’s political troubles might have enabled her neighbors to resist her control. But there was intermittent exercise of that control, and there was no concerted effort to destroy the foundations of English power, with the exception of the Glendower revolt in the early years of the century. That exception to the rule also indicated the difficulty of resistance. While the revolt was of great duration (1400–15), its accomplishment was negligible. When the English captured James I of Scotland, an ally of France, and held him for ransom (1406–24), that seemed to show the weakness of the northern kingdom, but
The End of the Middle Ages 19
there was never a genuine threat to the Scottish monarchy. Perhaps only the increasing autonomy of Irish and Anglo-Irish leaders was cause for real concern. Yet England experienced no apparent fundamental weakening in relation to her immediate neighbors, and a restoration of English royal authority began to counteract the chaos of the 15th century. Sir John Fortescue, a constitutional lawyer of the time, had recommended a government less dependent upon public finance and less subject to the interests of powerful aristocrats; Edward IV and Henry VII began to achieve this. By the 16th century the power of the English monarchy had been stabilized. In the testing crises of the new century, a more centralized British state would be formed.
BRITAIN REFORMED
1509–1603
The Tudors presided over a century in which Britain was reformed in almost every aspect. The most dramatic change was in the church, but there was also a revolution in government (both in the English monarchy and in the British state), and wide-ranging social and intellectual change. Henry Tudor was perhaps an unlikely progenitor of such sweeping alterations. He himself was not a reformer, but rather a skillful manager of existing institutions. As seen in the last chapter, his reign as Henry VII (1485–1509) was notable for the restoration of stable royal administration. He prepared the ground for his son by accumulating a surplus in the treasury, affirming the Crown’s authority over the aristocracy and Parliament, strengthening royal courts of law, and avoiding costly military adventures. Finally, he assured the succession of his younger son Henry and arranged for the renewal of an alliance by marriage with Spain.
THE TUDOR DYNASTY
Henry VIII (1509–47) had much grander visions of his role than were ever entertained by his father. He thought that his realm should share the stage of European power with France and Spain and that the royal succession justified all manner of expedients, including a succession of royal wives and a reform of the church. Henry’s reign began smoothly enough, as he carried out his father’s wish and married Catherine of Aragon in 1509. She and Henry had five children, but only Princess Mary survived infancy. In search of a male heir, Henry decided to divorce Catherine, a process that took six years (1527–33) and led to England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. As head of the new Church of England, Henry married Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to Princess Elizabeth in 1533. Anne was found guilty of treason and executed. She was replaced by Jane Seymour, who gave birth to Prince Edward but died afterward (1537). Henry later married and divorced Anne of Cleves (1540); married Catherine Howard, who was executed for adultery (1540–42); and finally married Catherine Parr in 1543, who survived him.
Henry’s ambition in international affairs was as ill-conceived as his marital conduct. Dreaming of victory in France, he invaded in 1512, captured Tournai, and married his sister Mary to Louis XII. But the cost of the war (which also led
20
Britain Reformed 21
to the defeat of the French allies, the Scots, at Flodden in 1513) was its most serious result. In 1518 Henry and Cardinal Wolsey devised the Peace of London, leading to a temporary balance of power in Europe. But when a Spanish Habsburg became Holy Roman Emperor (Charles V in 1519), that illusion evaporated. Henry engaged in another diplomatic fantasy in 1520, meeting the French king Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Calais. This was a summit meeting, arranged with inordinate display and again designed to promote Henry’s international importance, but it mainly resulted in a drain on the
Portrait of Henry VIII
(Hulton/Archive)
22 Great Britain
treasury. Further campaigns against France and Scotland marked the last 20 years of his reign, all to no effect.
Henry’s personality was morbid, suspicious, and brutal. Wives, officials, clergymen, and suspected enemies were in mortal danger. The king had less to fear from court intrigues, rebels, or foreign agents than they had to fear from him. In his will, Henry directed that his son and successor Edward VI (1547–1553) have a council and no one adviser as a regent or protector. Edward Seymour, uncle to Edward and duke of Somerset, nevertheless assumed a protectorate. The duke pursued the fulfillment of the Treaty of Greenwich (1543), which was supposed to arrange the marriage of Edward to his cousin Mary of Scotland, daughter of James V. This policy was thwarted by French diplomacy, and Seymour was overthrown in 1549 by John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, who was protector for the rest of Edward’s reign. As the king’s protectors and his royal council were strong supporters of Protestant reform, the Church of England moved much further away from Roman Catholicism during these years. Edward himself never took power in his own right, as he became ill and died at the age of 15. Before his death, Northumberland persuaded the king to designate Lady Jane Grey (the duke’s daughter-in-law) as his successor. But those loyal to Princess Mary defeated this coup attempt.
Mary I (1553–58) was a devout Roman Catholic, spurned by the court and sometimes in mortal danger as she grew up. Her goal was to restore the old church, and she tried to advance that cause by undoing the legislation and policy of the previous two reigns. Her most ambitious move, however, was to marry King Philip of Spain, thus creating a dynastic union that would endow any heir with the strongest ties to the papacy and the traditional church. But the marriage was not successful; Philip lost interest in his bride, and while Mary was sure she was carrying his child, she was in fact dying of stomach cancer. Her death came in the midst of the efforts to undo the reformation, and it gave the throne to her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth I (1558–1603), the daughter of Anne Boleyn, had lived in an unstable situation for much of her early life. Declared illegitimate by her father in 1537, and suspected by her half-sister of being a plotter, she had learned to conduct herself in a circumspect fashion. Her own religion inclined toward the traditional features of Catholic worship, but she adopted the royal supremacy and limited aspects of the reformed religion. Elizabeth chose what some called a “via media,” or middle way, between Catholic and Protestant. She did have herself styled as “supreme governor” of the church, and she allowed much of the reformers’ agenda to be followed. But in this and other areas of policy— especially questions about her designs for a husband—Elizabeth was careful to conceal her true opinions. This was very helpful in staving off excommunication until 1570. Even after that, the catholic powers held back from a full assault, until in 1586 Philip of Spain decided to launch his armada católica against England. This decision was followed by the queen’s anguished choice to execute her cousin Mary, queen of Scots, for plotting against her. Elizabeth’s admirals succeeded in beating the Spanish Armada in 1588, and some later fleets were turned back by weather and other problems. Thus England was
Britain Reformed 23
spared an invasion, while her privateers and explorers harassed Spanish treasure fleets and made early forays into American exploration and colonization. Elizabeth harbored none of her father’s illusions about English power, but her reign saw the development of English maritime strength. Elizabeth never married, never had a child, and at the end she named her cousin Mary’s child, James VI of Scotland, as her successor. With this the Tudor dynasty ended, and the Stuart dynasty began.
The Tudors, particularly Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, guided the realm toward significantly new destinations. Their calculated plans were not all successful, but the end result for Britain was a striking set of new institutions and ideas, the most important being the formation of the Church of England.
THE CHURCH REFORMED
The Church of England was the product of what is called the English Reformation. That series of events was essentially the conversion of the church from a branch of the Western Christian Church to a department of the English state. Its immediate cause was Henry VIII’s struggle to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. However, that struggle occurred within a context of popular discontent with the church, humanist scholarship and debate, and continental Protestant reform movements. Therefore, the “Henrician” reformation, as it is sometimes called, was tied to many different, and sometimes unrelated developments, and its explanation must try to describe each of them.
There was widespread discontent within the English Christian community in the early 16th century. Whether it was sufficient to support a broad Protestant movement may be doubted, but there was a good deal of anticlerical feeling: a perception that there was an excessive number of clergy and that they absorbed large amounts of resources (tithes, rents, and fines) was accompanied by stories of inefficiency (clergy holding multiple benefices and not residing in them) and tales of injustice at the hands of church courts. A second problem was the formality and impersonal nature of religious worship, symbolized by the reading of the Latin mass to uncomprehending worshippers. More personalized worship by individuals, whether reading scripture or private meditation, was only available to the wealthier educated class. With Erasmus’s Handbook of a Christian Knight (1503), or his satire In Praise of Folly (1514), the English reader found devotional guidance and subversive entertainment; but again, that audience was severely limited in size.
The “king’s great matter” (his divorce from Catherine of Aragon) gave the ignition to reform, although it was not expected to have that effect. Indeed, in 1521 Henry VIII wrote a pamphlet attacking Martin Luther’s heretical views, called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments. The pope bestowed the title “defender of the faith” (fidei defensor) on the king, a title which ironically is still used on British coinage. Henry conceived of himself as something of a theologian, and when he decided to discard his wife Catherine in 1527, he marshaled several biblical arguments and urged Cardinal Wolsey to convince the pope that the annulment was correct. Such a concession was indeed common for royalty and aristocrats, but in
24 Great Britain
this case the pope had to invalidate his predecessor’s dispensation allowing Henry to marry his brother’s widow. The matter was complicated by the fact that Catherine’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, happened to have an army in control of Rome at the time. All of Wolsey’s efforts to win a trial and verdict in the king’s favor failed, and he died soon after being removed from office.
A member of Wolsey’s staff, Thomas Cromwell, soon became Henry’s chief advisor in church matters. He conducted a clever campaign to coerce the clergy into submitting to the king, prior to issuing directives and introducing legislation that gave the king supreme authority over the church in England. There was a series of legislative acts that denied revenues to Rome, terminated Roman legal authority, and finally declared the king to be the “supreme head” of the church. This involvement of Parliament as the vehicle for the king’s directives gave that body the appearance of greatly increased power. But for the time being, Henry was the principal beneficiary, and he used the oaths recognizing his supremacy as a tool to beat down his adversaries, such as his lord chancellor, Sir Thomas More; his bishops, including John Fisher; and other members of the church, such as the Carthusian monks of London—all of whom were executed by the king in 1535. The supreme head of the church could not tolerate the divided loyalty of the monks and friars, who were by definition under direct Roman authority. Hence, in 1535 Cromwell made a survey, the valor ecclesiasticus, which assessed the value of monastic properties and the management of their assets. This was used as a pretext for dissolving the houses, first the smallest and then the rest (1536–38). A reaction to the dissolution took place in the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), a popular demonstration against the destruction of monastic houses. Henry promised leniency to the pilgrimage’s leaders, but they were arrested and executed.
While the pretext for dissolution was to discipline errant monks, the purpose was to seize their wealth. Most of it was soon spent on the king’s wars or granted to members of the landowning class. Some was used to found schools, almshouses, and hospitals. The spoliation of the monasteries was a crude exercise in public looting, worthy of a rabid reform, but the king’s policy was still not of that type. He reluctantly authorized the English Bible in parish churches in 1539, a few years after his agents had hunted down William Tyndale, who was responsible for the first English translation of the New Testament. His archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, worked on a Book of Common Prayer, but it was not produced until after the king’s death. Meanwhile, numerous articles of religion were adopted, with later alterations in the 1530s and 1540s. The upshot of the Henrician reformation was the total reorganization of the Church of England under the authority of its “supreme head,” without coherent attention to change in doctrine.
This new Church of England was not the only reformed church in the British Isles, for of course the church in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland could hardly be insulated. Each of the other three areas had a unique experience. Since Wales was part of the English province of Canterbury, it was subject to all of the reforms instituted in England. There were pockets of resistance, just as there were in England, and Cromwell decided that the annexation of Wales was
Britain Reformed 25
Sir Thomas More
(Library of Congress)
required in order to better secure the settlement there. Ireland was directed to adopt the English changes, but only the Pale, that part of Ireland under English control, was likely to be affected. Moreover, the majority of the Irish church remained Catholic and was likely to provide a strong base for papal reaction. The reformed church was definitely in a minority position, even though it wielded the apparent powers of the state. In Scotland, the church was under the Scots crown and influenced by the French alliance. Thus it was resistant to reforms, but when the French retired and Scottish leaders took control in 1560, the country experienced a popular and Protestant reform. These differences reflect the varied pattern of government in the British Isles, a pattern which itself was being reformed in the 16th century, both in the English center and in the British periphery.
THE ENGLISH MONARCHY REFORMED
About 50 years ago a thesis was advanced that during the 16th century there was a “revolution in government”—a shift from medieval to modern—in
26 Great Britain
church, Parliament, and administration in England. There has been much debate and many amendments to the thesis, but the basic argument seems sound. The royal government of Henry VIII became something very different from its predecessors, and the modern elements, though buffeted over the next 150 years, remained visible and vital.
At the center of this revolution, Thomas Cromwell took old offices, combined them and their revenues, and applied new and more efficient accounting and management methods. He also reformed the king’s privy (private) council, forming a smaller and more efficient body to effectively manage the newly empowered Parliament, which alone could produce (at the king’s behest) the new statutes, so vital to the functioning of the reformed government. When Cromwell was deposed in 1540, a clerk to the council was appointed, and a regular register of council acts was begun.
These changes were not so surprising when it is seen that the problems of the 15th century had to do with the ability of powerful aristocrats to overawe the royal councils and intimidate royal officials. At first, under Henry VII, the council was an important new judicial forum. Sitting as the Court of Star Chamber, or the Court of Requests, the king’s councillors heard cases against powerful subjects or, in the second case, on behalf of poor persons, and administered justice outside the rules of the common law courts. Beside the obvious tension this created in the judicial sphere, these prerogative courts were a notable addition to royal authority.
Thus, some change was already under way when the storm of the Reformation blew through the English government. Several major governmental changes can be tied directly to the church’s reform. First, the powerful church- men—the extreme example being Cardinal Wolsey as the lord chancellor— would never again dominate the highest level of civil government. Second, the former wealth of the church, a basis for its role in public affairs, was put directly under the control of the Crown and, in the case of the dissolution, converted to civil uses. That process was managed by new secular courts, the Court of Augmentations (1536) and a Court of First Fruits and Tenths (1540), coupled to a Court of Wards (1540) for feudal revenues and a Court of General Surveyors (1542). These bodies were an attempt to bypass the ancient Court of Exchequer, to give the Crown more direct control over revenues. A third change, which did not last, was the creation of a secular manager of church affairs. “The King’s Vicegerent for Spirituals” was Cromwell’s title, and in this capacity he ordered the important survey of monastic properties that preceded the dissolution. The importance of the title is that it is more evidence of the radical experimentation then being undertaken, particularly in connection with church reform.
The further argument for revolution hinges on the work of Cromwell, and of some of his successors, in creating the post of secretary of state. The king’s chief officer had been the lord chancellor, who was the keeper of the great seal; head of the chancery or writing office, and as such the nominal supervisor of royal correspondence; and the head of the Court of Chancery, the court of equity jurisdiction. In the 1530s Cromwell held the office of king’s secretary,