Early modern Britain 1509–1745

Annulment

HintNot a modern legal ending of a valid marriage, but a ruling that it had never been lawful at all.

The whyCatherine of Aragon had first been married to Henry's elder brother Arthur, so the case turned on whether a papal dispensation had ever made the second marriage lawful. Pope Clement VII, effectively a prisoner of Catherine's nephew the Emperor Charles V, would not rule against her, which is why Henry ended by taking the decision out of Rome's hands altogether.

Appeals, then Supremacy.

HintOne law shut the door to Rome; the other opened the king's way to the top of the church.

The whyThomas Cromwell drove both Acts through Parliament, and that matters: Henry did not simply declare himself head of the church, he had the change written into statute. Because it was law, later monarchs needed Parliament to undo or redo it — Mary I repealed the settlement in 1554, Elizabeth I restored it in 1559.

Powerful families had bought the monastic land and would not give it back

HintFollow the property: whoever now owns the abbey estates has a strong reason to keep the new church settlement.

The whyAround 800 religious houses were closed between 1536 and 1540, and their land was sold on to nobles and gentry, often cheaply. That created thousands of families with a direct financial stake in the break with Rome. When Mary I restored Catholicism she could not take the land back, and the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 had already shown how bitterly the closures were resented in the north.

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.

James I

HintThe Stuart who had come south from Scotland two years earlier; his Catholic subjects felt he had broken his promises to them.

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.

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.