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Tudor Chester

	HOUSE OF TUDOR
TUDOR ENGLAND	There are three kings and two queens in English history who used the surname " Tudor," and they came to the throne one after another.The Tudors were men and women of strong character, well fitted for the stirring times in which they lived.
	Henry VII, the first came to the throne in 1485, Queen Elizabeth, the last died in the year 1603. It is the one hundred and eighteen years between 1485 and 1603, which is known as the Tudor Period It is in every sense an exciting period, in which the genius of the English race may be said to have found its highest expression. In England men became aware that there was a A New World, they spoke of a New Learning, and they fought for a New form of Religion.
TIME LINE - 1485 - 1552 TIME LINE - 1552 - 1603	During the short space of the years which they ruled, the whole world, and England as part of the world, seemed to be changed.

Henry VII (1485-1509) was the first of the Tudors, but we find the first use of the name, in the reign of Henry VI, sixty-two years before. Queen Catherine, the mother of Henry VI., had two husbands, the first was King Henry V., who won the great victory of Agincourt; the second a Welsh gentleman named Owen Tudor, who was the father of Edmund Tudor, and grandfather of Henry VII.

Henry was at this time the representative of the house of Lancaster, and in order at once to strengthen his own title, and to put an end to the rivalry between the houses of York and Lancaster, he married in 1486 Elizabeth, the sister of Edward V. and heiress of the house of York.

After the desultory and profitless fighting which posterity has named the Wars of the Roses (c. 1455 - 1485). England was ready to benefit by the "governance" she had so conspicuously lacked in the fifteenth century. His reign was disturbed by insurrections attending the impostures of Lambert Simnel (1487), who pretended to be a son of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., and of Perkin Warbeck (1488), who affirmed that he was the Duke of York, younger brother of Edward V.; but neither of these attained any magnitude.

The king's worst fault was the avarice which led him to employ in schemes of extortion such instruments as Empson and Dudley. and his wily minister Cardinal Morton (d. 1500), who, like Cosimo de Medici, "used taxes instead of a dagger." The administration did much to increase the royal power and to establish order and prosperity, the nobility were greatly weakened by the Statute of Retainers, which prevented them from keeping a permanent fighting staff in their castles and mansions, Henry died 1509.

The authority of the English crown, which had been so much extended by Henry VII.., was continued by his son, who in his early years Henry VIII. (1509-1597) was a typical Renaissance prince, gifted and charming, admired by the whole nation.

The most important event of the reign was undoubtedly the Reformation ; though it had its origin rather in Henry's caprice and in the casual situation of his private affairs than in his conviction of the necessity of a reformation in religion, or in the solidity of reasoning employed by the reformers. Henry had been espoused to Catharine of Spain, who was first married to his elder brother Arthur, a prince who died young. Henry became disgusted with his queen, and enamoured of one of her maids of honour, Anne Boleyn. He had recourse, therefore, to the pope to dissolve a marriage which had at first been rendered legal only by a dispensation from the pontiff; but failing in his desires he broke away entirely from the Holy See, and in 1534 got himself recognized by act of parliament as the head of the English Church. Most people only remember that Henry was married six times, (Professor Pollard points out that they cling to him much more closely after death than they did in life).

Henry governed in a tyrannical and capricious manner, but gave his country an opportunity to develop its commerce and civilization. During the early years of the sixteenth century the woollen trade greatly developed, and this led to a large increase of sheep farming. Arable land was "enclosed" for pasture, while those who had hitherto worked the land were unemployed. This was the cause of much of the distress and poverty and vagrancy which mark this time. " The husbandmen be thrust owte of their owne," wrote Sir Thomas More (d. 1535), in his "Utopia" or description of the ideal state "...... what can they then els doo but steale ?"

The distress was intensified when the monasteries were dissolved by order of Henry VIII, and numbers of homeless wanderers who had depended on the monasteries for food and lodging had to seek it elsewhere. Some of the monks became vagrants. This was the greatest problem which faced Tudor England, and the state made sincere though not always effectual attempts to solve it, culminating in the Elizabethan poor law of 1601. Henry died in 1547, he left three children, each of whom reigned in turn. These were: Mary, by his first wife, Catharine of Aragon; Elizabeth, by his second wife, Anne Boleyn; and Edward, by his third wife, Jane Seymour.

Edward, who reigned first with the title of Edward VI., was nine years of age at the time of his succession, and died in 1558, when he was only sixteen. His short reign, or rather the reign of the Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset who was appointed regent, was distinguished chiefly by the success which attend, the measures of the reformers, who acquired great part of the power formerly engrossed by the Catholics. The intrigues of Dudley, duke of Northumberland, during the reign of Edward, caused Lady Jane Grey to be declared his successor but her reign, if it could he called such, lasted only a few days.

Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., was placed upon the throne, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband were both executed. Mary, a bigoted Catholic, seems to have wished for the crown only for the purpose of re-establishing the Roman Catholic faith. Political motives had induced Philip of Spain to accept of her as a spouse; but she could never prevail on her subjects to allow him any share of power. She died in 1558.

Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary, was attached to the Protestant faith, and found little difficulty in establishing it in England. Having concluded peace with France (1559), Elizabeth set herself to promote the confusion which prevailed in Scotland, to which her cousin Mary had returned from France as queen in 1561. In this she was so far successful that Mary placed herself in her power (1568), and after many years imprisonment was sent to the scaffold (1587). As the most powerful Protestant nation, and as a rival to Spain in the New World, it was natural that England should become involved in difficulties with that country. The dispersion of the Armada by the English fleet under Howard Drake, and Hawkins was the most brilliant event of a struggle which abounded in minor feats of valour. The new spirit of adventure sent men voyaging across the seas, and at home it led them to experiment with new forms and new ideas; in these days nothing seemed too difficult for the human body, nothing too ambitious for the human mind. In Elizabeth's reign London became the centre of the world's trade, the extension of British commercial enterprise being coincident with the ruin of Antwerp in 1585. Parliament was increased by the creation of sixty-two new boroughs, and its members were exempted from arrest.

In literature no less than in politics and commerce England began to assume the characteristics which distinguish her from the other European nations of to-day. The Renaissance came late to England, but it came with a richness and fullness which were worth waiting for, and it produced in Shakespeare (d. 1616), a great creative artist second to none in the whole history of civilization. As poet and dramatist Shakespeare is supreme, yet he owes much to the example and precept of those play- wrights who brought the drama, within a single generation, from obscurity to fame. Indeed, Marlowe (d. 1593) is inferior only to Shakespeare himself, and the lesser dramatists in any less brilliant age would have been famous.

The lyric poets, from whom it would be invidious to select names, Spenser (d. 1599) in his "Færie Queene," and "Shepheards Calendar" Bacon (d. 1626) in the terse vigour of his "Essays," Raleigh (d. 1618) in his "History of the World " each in his different sphere expressed the new vitality and the new spirit which now possessed English literature. Much of the material was borrowed, Shakespeare in particular showed great ingenuity in adapting other men's plots, and many of the old forms were used, but all the literature of the time is informed with the Renaissance spirit.

The Queen herself became the centre of a cult; poets wrote of the charms and beauties of "Gloriana," and the new colony in America was named "Virginia," also in her honour, Being the shrewdest of rulers, Elizabeth knew how to exploit and commercialize this enthusiasm; she commanded magnificent loyalty and devoted service at the expense of the most meagre of rewards.

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