Last week we took time to get oriented—to familiarize ourselves with Britain and its peoples. Your forum posts told me a lot about how many of us imagine Britain. We envision a place of royalty, a place of castles and quaint villages. But, as Cavan pointed out, it’s also a place of Jimmy Page. This week we’re going to start digging into the roots of Britain’s global presence. For most of Medieval history Britain was not very cosmopolitan—meaning, it was rural, was barely able to feed its own population, and wasn’t very much connected with the rest of the world. But that started to change under the reign of a king named Henry VII. Henry VII reigned from 1485 until 1509. He was the first Tudor monarch and has secured the throne of England in the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between two rival families, the Yorks and the Lancasters. Henry was a Lancaster claimant, but married to a York, so he united the rival families. He successful ascended to the throne when he defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. This is important to our story because it shows the delicate circumstances under which Henry VII assumed the throne—his grip on power was pretty tenuous. So, he needed ways to secure his power. That came in the form of a strong military, a strong family, and strong allies. Henry VII built strong fiscal policies, improving England’s financial situation. He kept his border countries in line with strong military policies and good relationships with the regional nobility. He had a thriving family, with two robust sons (Arthur and Henry) and two robust daughters (Mary and Margaret). The next step, building strong alliances, came with the help of his family. He married one daughter to the Scottish royal family, and his other daughter to the next King of France. His older son, Arthur, was in line to be the King of England. So his marriage was particularly important. Henry looked across the English Channel to the most powerful country on the Continent—Spain. The Spanish, led by Ferdinand and Isabella at the time, were incredibly rich and incredibly connected—they counted the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor amongst their friends and family. Marrying one of his children into this family would be a major coup for Henry VII. So, he worked incredibly hard to make it happen. He ultimately secured a match for Arthur with Catherine, the youngest of Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughters. The wedding between Arthur and Catherine was the event of the century. It was a major wedding at the old St. Paul’s Cathedral with major parties, picnics, and an elevated walkway for the bride. But wedded bliss, and the important alliance with Spain, was short-lived. Arthur died after a brief illness, leaving the Spanish princess in England without a groom. Henry VII did the only thing he could think of, which was attach Catherine to his surviving son, Henry. The young prince refused the marriage, but when Henry VII died unexpectedly and the prince became King Henry VIII, he took Catherine as his wife in a private ceremony with only the priest as the witness. Henry VIII inherited a kingdom that was wealthy and stable, as well as internationally connected. He had a wife from the most powerful country in Europe, giving England vital global connections. He reigned from 1509 until 1547. And, in that time, he waged nearly ceaseless war, bringing Scotland and Ireland under his tyrannical thumb while also chasing the fleeting dream of conquering France, bankrupted his Kingdom, plagued his court in endless marital scandal, and made minimal inroads into global travel and trade. His divorce from Catherine of Aragon and simultaneous split from the Catholic Church helped Henry make a clear distinction between England and the Continent, setting England on a path of “exceptionalism.” He set himself up as not only the King of England, but also the head of the Church of England. Henry died in 1547, plagued with illnesses from jousting injuries and obesity. His son, Edward VI, inherited the throne and a kingdom that was religiously and politically divided, and cash-strapped. Edward’s short reign was dominated by his closest advisors who pushed Edward to adopt more religiously-strict policies that would punish Catholic populations living in Scotland and Ireland. Edward was a strict Protestant, but when he died in 1553, his Catholic sister Mary (daughter of Catherine of Aragon) took the throne. She’s sometimes referred to as “Bloody Mary” for her purges of Protestants throughout the English kingdom. She would persecute priests who converted to the Church of England, identifying them through their marriages (Catholic priests can’t marry, Protestant can). When Mary died of cancer in 1558, she was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth, like her father, mother, and brother, was a devout Protestant. She worked to undo the efforts of her Catholic sister, and implemented more stringent rules tying England, irretrievably, to the Church of England. Elizabeth, like her grandfather Henry VII, sought to improve England’s global standing. She focused on Spain as her target, and used the help of privateers to disrupt Spanish trade routes across the Atlantic. She fought off Spanish challenges, most memorably the Spanish Armada in 1588, improving England’s reputation as a naval power. Her refusal to marry empowered her, but also put England’s sovereignty at risk, seeing that she left to heir behind to succeed her. Later in her life she designated her cousin, James VI of Scotland, as her heir. So, when she died in 1603, the throne of England was occupied by a Scot. James I and VI (I of England/Britain, VI of Scotland) inherited a kingdom with growing colonial holdings, particularly in North America and Ireland. But James, as a Scot, had to prove himself to his England subjects. So, he spoiled his courtiers with extravagant presents and for everyone else—he implemented stringent Protestantism. The King James Bible is a product of James’s reign; so was crippling debt. James was succeeded by his son, Charles I. Charles, who like all of his predecessors deeply embraced the concept of the Great Chain of Being, wanted to rule as an absolutist monarch. That meant that he would not be accountable to Parliament, which at the time was a key advisory body that sought control of taxation matters. Because of the political impasse between Charles and Parliament, a civil war ensued. The not-so-long-term effect of the Civil War was an unseating of the idea of the Great Chain of Being.
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