Early modern Britain 1509–1745

The Tudors

HintTheir emblem was a red and white rose, and the line began with Henry VII.

The whyFive monarchs across 118 years: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. In that time England broke with Rome and began to build sea power.

Church

HintThe institution the Pope had led in England now had the king at its head instead.

The whyThe Act of Supremacy of 1534 made the monarch, not the Pope, the final authority over religion in England. It was a change in who held power as much as a change in belief.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries

HintA grand word for shutting an organisation down and breaking up everything it owned.

The whyTheir land and treasure went to the Crown and to loyal gentry, which bought powerful support for the break with Rome. Villages lost schools, hospitals and charity in the process.

Mary I

HintBurning nearly 300 Protestants earned her a grim nickname.

The whyShe was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a devout Catholic. Her five-year reign undid the Protestant reforms of Edward VI, which her sister then reversed again.

1559

HintThe year after she came to the throne, she set out a middle way to end the religious see-saw.

The whyThe Settlement was Protestant in doctrine but kept familiar bishops and ceremony, aiming for a compromise most people could live with rather than a pure version of either faith.

1588

HintIt set out the year after Mary, Queen of Scots was executed, and English fireships scattered it off Calais.

The whyEnglish ships were faster and better gunned, and the crescent formation broke apart at Calais. Storms then wrecked many vessels on the long voyage home round Scotland and Ireland.

The Houses of Parliament

HintThey rented a cellar beneath the place where the king and the whole political class met together.

The whyGuy Fawkes was caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords on 5 November. The discovery hardened anti-Catholic feeling for generations.

1642

HintCharles I raised his standard at Nottingham that August, months after failing to arrest five MPs in the Commons.

The whyThe quarrel was about money, religion and who really ruled. Charles had governed without Parliament for eleven years, then needed it to pay for war in Scotland, and it refused on his terms.

He was beheaded

HintFor the first time, an English court condemned a reigning monarch to death.

The whyThe court charged him as a tyrant and public enemy. He refused to plead, arguing that no court on earth could try a king, which was exactly the question at issue.

Lord Protector

HintNot quite a crown, but not far short of one; he was offered the throne and turned it down.

The whyHe governed from 1653 to 1658 with army backing under a written constitution. His campaigns in Ireland are remembered very differently there from the way they are remembered in England.

William of Orange

HintHe was the Protestant son-in-law of James II, and ruled jointly with his wife Mary.

The whyHe landed with an army but met almost no fighting in England, which is why the change was called the Glorious Revolution. The Bill of Rights of 1689 fixed that monarchs rule with Parliament.

Great Britain

HintEngland and Scotland stopped being separate states and shared one parliament under a single new name.

The whyThe two had shared a monarch since 1603, but 1707 merged the parliaments and created one market. Scotland kept its own legal system, church and schools.