THE TUDORS AND THE REFORMATION

Character of the Period

Under the Tudors, that is, from the accession of Henry VII through the reign of Elizabeth, a new England was coining into being. Instead of the narrow, local life of the manors, towns, and gilds, there gradually appeared the larger life of the nation. Men were interesting themselves not merely in the small affairs of their own locality, but also in the larger affairs of the state as a whole, and were beginning to see that the welfare of the people of all England was of greater consequence than the welfare of only a part. Not until men realized this fact, as they had not in the Middle Ages, could a true national feeling be said to exist. This new national pride enhanced the prestige of the monarchs, because in the greatness of their kings men saw the greatness of their state also. Under the Tudors the power of the kings increased at home, because they catered to this growing national feeling. Inevitably their influence increased abroad also, for England was becoming not only a state united in itself, but also a state among other states, and the people desired that their sovereigns Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth, should play an important part in Continental affairs, not as feudal lords, as in the old days, but as kings and queens of England.

Henry s Claims and Character

The great importance of the reign of Henry VII lies in the fact that it brought security and rest to England after the disturbed period of the Wars of the Roses. On his father's side Henry was a grandson of Owen Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, whom Katherine, the widow of Henry V, had married, and nephew of Jasper Tudor, who had been beaten by the Yorkists at Mortimer's Cross in 1461.

CHAPEL OF HENRY VII.

This chapel was begun in 1502 and completed in 1520. In the foreground are beautiful brass-covered gates, bearing the roses of the houses of Lancaster and York. On each side of the chapel are stalls for knights of the Order of the Bath, above which are the swords and banners of the members.

On his mother's side he was a great-grandson of John of Gaunt. In his statement to parliament he rested his claims chiefly on his hereditary right. But he had also other titles, no one of them very sound, yet under the circumstances adequate. He had conquered at Bosworth-Field; and on the field of battle, Sir William Stanley, who had deserted Richard during the battle, had placed the fallen crown on the head of Henry as the only remaining representative of the Lancastrian line. Two months afterward Henry was crowned in London (October 30), and a week later parliament ratified the act by declaring that the inheritance of the crown should abide in him and in his heirs. In November the pope, Innocent VIII, issued a bull in his favor, and in January, 1486, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, thus uniting the two houses of Lancaster and York in his support. He had not married Elizabeth before, because he did not wish to be charged with having derived his title from a Yorkist. Yet all these claims taken together would have given him but an insecure position had he not been a man able to hold against all comers that which he had won.

Henry in character represented the old and the new eras. He was a good deal of an ecclesiastic, favoring the church and choosing his chief ministers from among the clergy. Like a mediaeval king, he was reserved and dignified, something of a dreamer by nature, and loved ecclesiastical culture and art, as the chapel of Henry VII, in Westminster, attests. On the other hand, in his shrewdness and thrift, he was wholly unlike a mediaeval king. He had been trained in a school of attainder and exile, which made him suspicious and cautious, and he was confronted by dangers which made him politic and stern. He disliked war, recognized the importance of the industrial and wealth-producing middle class, knew the value of money and the usefulness of diplomacy, and made it his chief aim to strengthen the government at home, and in foreign relations to raise it out of the insular position that it held and to give it place in the councils of Europe. He was just the type of king to prepare England for a great career.