England: history 1485–1714

A contemporary engraving of the trial of Charles I at Westminster Hall in January 1649. He was accused of having ‘conceived a wicked design .. to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people’. The trial began on 20 January and ended eight days later when the king was sentenced to death.

The main conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Robert Catesby was the leader of the plot, while Guy Fawkes was the explosives expert. Their disaffection with James I arose from his failure to implement tolerance measures for Catholics as had been widely anticipated.

Oliver Cromwell, a painting attributed to Van Dyck. Lord Protector and virtual dictator of England after the execution of Charles I, Cromwell inherited a divided and war-weary nation, to which he forcibly united Scotland and Ireland for the first time in their histories. His rule became associated with an unpopular type of Puritan zeal, and the Stuart Charles II was welcomed back by most of Britain after Cromwell's death.

In a contemporary portrait drawn as the frontispiece of a book of Christian prayers from 1569, Queen Elizabeth I of England is shown at prayer. Elizabeth had proved herself to be an accomplished scholar during childhood, and supported the Protestant cause against Catholicism.

For earlier periods of English history see Britain, ancient, Roman Britain, and England: history to 1485.

Henry VII and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty For much of the later 15th century England had suffered intermittent civil war – the Wars of the Roses between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster. These ended with the defeat and death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The victor, Henry Tudor, was crowned king as Henry VII after the battle. Henry was descended on his mother's side from John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III, and claimed the throne, therefore, by descent and by conquest, and united the houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV.

A hard-working, calculating, and, when necessary, ruthless king, Henry quickly defeated Yorkist plots and the rebellions in favour of the pretenders to the throne Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. He then went on to suppress the remaining power of the barons and restored firm government in England. By amassing vast personal wealth, which he spent lavishly when the occasion demanded, he restored the power of the monarchy, and, by encouraging trade and commerce, raised the country once more to the rank of a powerful European state.

Henry strengthened his position further by marrying his son Arthur to Catherine of Aragón and one of his daughters to James IV of Scotland, both marriages of vital importance in the later history of England. That his son, Henry VIII, succeeded peacefully to the throne in 1509 is a measure of Henry VII's success.

Henry VIII and the split with Rome The reign of Henry VIII (1509–47) is notable chiefly for the separation of the English church from Rome. The reign began with trouble with France and Scotland, the Scottish war being ended in 1513 by the Battle of Flodden. Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief minister in the early years, remained firm to the policy of preserving the balance of power, encouraging the Emperor Charles V and the French to bid against each other for the friendship of England. That Henry had no doctrinal quarrel with the pope and the church of Rome can be seen by the fact that he published a book against the teaching of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, and received from the pope the title ‘Defender of the Faith’.

By 1526, however, Henry was desperate for a male heir. Although he and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, had had a daughter, Mary, Catherine was now over 40 and Henry believed it unlikely that they would have a son. In order to extract himself from his marriage, he expressed religious scruples about it. Catherine had previously been married to his elder brother, Arthur, who died in 1502. At the time of Henry's subsequent marriage to Catherine it had been alleged that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, and a papal dispensation had been granted allowing Henry to marry his brother's widow. Henry now demanded, through Wolsey, that the pope, Clement VII, nullify his marriage to Catherine.

When the papal legate sent to England to hear the case referred it back to Rome, Henry dismissed Wolsey and, taking the advice of Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, carried out a series of legislative measures ending papal jurisdiction in England and proclaiming himself head of the church in England. Henry's lord chancellor, Thomas More, resigned, refusing to recognize Henry's supremacy over the church, and was later executed. Between 1534 and 1540 the new ecclesiastical order was imposed on England, with varying degrees of force, propaganda, and political contrivance. The monasteries were gradually dissolved and their wealth, passing to the king and the nobles, gave a powerful section of the population a vested interest in the continuation of Henry's reforms.

The changes provoked a few abortive rebellions, in particular the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536–37, which were put down with great cruelty. During the later years of the reign Protestantism became more apparent in the country as a whole, especially in London and the southeast, areas most accessible to the reformers of mainland Europe. Henry died in 1547, the popular, gifted monarch of his first years having become little more than a brutal tyrant.

Edward VI and Lady Jane Grey By his will Henry had left the throne to Edward VI (Henry's only son, by his third wife Jane Seymour), to be followed if he died without children by Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and then by Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn (Henry's second wife). Edward was only nine years of age when he succeeded, and the country was ruled for him by the protectors, his uncles the dukes of Somerset and Northumberland. During his reign Protestantism first gained a really secure footing in the country. The churches were stripped of images, and by the first and second English Prayer Books more Protestant doctrine and ceremonial were introduced.

In 1553 Edward died. In his will he set aside that of his father and named Northumberland's daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant and a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, as his heir. Mary, although a Catholic, found no difficulty in obtaining recognition as the rightful queen, and Northumberland, his son Lord Guildford Dudley, and Lady Jane Grey were committed to the Tower of London and later beheaded.

Mary I and the Catholic restoration Mary I restored Catholicism, and, for a time, England's allegiance to the pope. She married Philip II, king of Spain, and this, together with the persecutions of Protestants, did much to make her unpopular. Further, the alliance with Spain involved a war with France, during which England lost Calais, its last French possession. Amongst the Protestants burned during this reign were Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer. Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth I One of the most complex figures in English history, Elizabeth I lived in a period when one false step would have meant ruin, or at least national danger. Yet she managed to govern authoritatively for 45 years. That she was helped by circumstances there is no doubt, that her ministers were men of ability cannot be denied, but much must be allowed to her own personality and abilities.

Elizabeth tried to provide the Church of England with a via media (middle way), a compromise of doctrine that would reconcile Catholic and Protestant. Her great dangers, externally, came from Scotland and Spain. Scotland was disturbed by religious quarrels, and Mary Queen of Scots fled to England as a fugitive in 1568. Mary was dangerous as a Catholic claimant to the English throne and Elizabeth's greatest rival, and Elizabeth had her imprisoned, and finally executed (1587).

The following year Philip II sent the Spanish Armada to invade England, in response to England's support of the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. The English defeat of the Armada put an end to the threat represented by Catholic Spain, and English sea power established England as one of the great European powers. During Elizabeth's reign the first English colonies were established in North America, and overseas trade expanded, with the East India Company being established in 1600.

Although Elizabeth maintained her prestige to the end of her reign, in her later years acute problems were developing in Parliament, especially in matters of religion and taxation, which she was able to manage through her own unique abilities. But these were to prove a hazardous legacy for her successors.

James I and the establishment of the Stuart dynasty Elizabeth left no direct heir on her death in 1603, and so the Stuart king of Scotland, James VI, succeeded to the throne as James I of England. James was the Protestant son of Mary Queen of Scots and the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. Thus Edward I's vision of a united Great Britain was accomplished through the marriage schemes of Henry VII.

Various problems, in which can be seen many of the causes of the English Civil War, soon made themselves felt. An unpopular foreign policy, religious problems, heavy taxation, monopolies, corruption, and extravagance were not helped by the basic unattractiveness of the king's character. ‘The wisest fool in Christendom’ was a highly intelligent man, but he could not handle Parliament, and strongly espoused the absolutist philosophy of the divine right of kings. He lacked the common touch that had tempered the more unpleasant aspects of the Tudor monarchs, and he was given to cherishing favourites, which only served to increase his unpopularity.

Early in his reign, at the Hampton Court Conference, James tried to reconcile Puritans and Anglicans, an attempt that failed not least because of his own threats to the Puritans. He also alienated the Catholics, leading to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. During the Thirty Years' War James tried to act for a time, unsuccessfully, as the arbiter of Europe. His scheme included the highly unpopular (and in the end unsuccessful) plan to marry his heir to a Spanish princess. Despite his defects and problems, James I proved more successful than his successor.

Charles I and the English Civil War Charles I, the second son of James I, came to the throne in 1625. Of a particularly inflexible temperament, he believed implicitly in the divine right of kings. His accession brought little alteration in the policies of James I, and Charles was soon at odds with Parliament. They attacked his favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, they refused him supplies, and finally, in 1628, forced him to accept the petition of right, which limited his powers. In 1629, Charles dissolved Parliament.

Charles summoned no more parliaments until 1640. He ruled alone, aided principally by Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford, in the Eleven Years' Tyranny. To a limited extent he was successful. Although the tightening up of central government encroached upon and irritated the gentry and burgher classes, and although the use of prerogative power to carry through ecclesiastical reforms was unpopular, Charles was financially solvent. A host of financial expedients, including ship money, kept him so.

However, his financial reserves were not such as to be able to cope with an emergency. Such an emergency occurred in Scotland in 1640, triggered by Scottish resistance to the introduction of a new Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Charles was obliged to summon Parliament, thus setting the country on the road to the English Civil War. Charles's attempts to force episcopacy (church government by bishops) on the Scots – who favoured Presbyterianism – had roused anger in Scotland. The introduction of the Prayer Book compiled by Archbishop Laud led to open rebellion, and the first Bishops' War broke out.

Charles summoned the Short Parliament (April 1640), which was dissolved within three weeks. Then followed the Long Parliament, which undid the work of the ‘Eleven Years' Tyranny’, but which at the same time did much that was unconstitutional. Strafford and Laud were executed. Ship money was declared illegal, the Star Chamber abolished, and finally the king was forced to consent to the reading of the Grand Remonstrance (November 1641). He then made his fatal mistake: in January 1642 he attempted to arrest five members of Parliament, and failing, left London.

Charles I was now at war with Parliament, and raised his standard at Nottingham. At first the Royalists were successful, but in 1645 the Parliamentary leaders Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax formed the tightly organized and disciplined New Model Army, which defeated the Royalists at Marston Moor and Naseby. The king surrendered to the Scots, and was then handed over to the English, who, after prolonged negotiations and the outbreak of further fighting, executed him in January 1649.

The Commonwealth For the next eleven years England was a commonwealth – for the first four years a republic, and for the remaining seven a protectorate. The execution of the king aroused horror among many throughout Europe. Scotland and Ireland rose in revolt, and Charles II was crowned in Scotland, but Cromwell crushed the Irish at Wexford and Drogheda (1649–50) and routed the Scots routed at Dunbar (1650) and Worcester (1651), after which Charles II fled to France. For a short time England, Scotland, and Ireland were united.

In 1653 Cromwell became ‘Lord Protector’, ultimately ruling as arbitrarily as Charles I had tried to do. His foreign policy was spirited and popular, raising English prestige in Europe by forming an alliance with France against Spain. The Navigation Acts of 1650–51 were targeted at protecting English trade at the expense of the Dutch, and led to the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54), in which the English fleet under Robert Blake scored some notable naval victories. In 1658 Cromwell died, and there was chaos for a time in England. His son Richard became protector, but was ineffective and was forced to abdicate in May 1659. Finally, in 1660 Gen George Monck marched from Scotland with the army and declared in favour of a free parliament, which restored Charles II.

Charles II and the Restoration The Restoration was hailed with enthusiasm by the vast majority of the nation. The Puritan sombreness of the Commonwealth era had wearied them, and was also partly responsible for the excesses of Charles II's reign. Charles himself ruled with great skill, though often unscrupulously, trusting in secret French subsidies and his personal popularity to keep him independent of Parliament, and relying on a general unwillingness to have civil war again.

Notable events of Charles's reign include the outbreak of the Great Plague in 1665, and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Further Navigation Acts led to two more Anglo-Dutch wars (1665–67 and 1672–74), mostly fought at sea. These were militarily inconclusive, but they resulted in the exclusion of the Dutch from North America and west Africa, and in Britain taking over much of the overseas trade of the Dutch. The Popish Plot, fabricated by Titus Oates, led to the Exclusion Bills (1678–81) aimed at Catholics, and in particular at preventing Charles's Catholic brother James from succeeding to the throne. The supporters of the bills, the Petitioners, and their opponents, the Abhorrers, formed the nucleus of the Whig Party and the Tory Party respectively. The more extreme Whigs hatched the Rye House Plot in 1683 to kill Charles (who had Catholic leanings) and his brother, and to place Charles's illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, on the throne. But the plot was foiled, Monmouth fled abroad, and Charles succeeded in his principal aims, to keep his throne and to keep internal peace.

James II Charles died in 1685 and was succeeded by his brother James II. A Catholic himself, but believing in religious toleration, he was from the first held in suspicion by his subjects. Soon after the accession, the Duke of Monmouth returned to raise a rebellion, which was brutally suppressed, notably in the repressive trials known as the Bloody Assizes. Catholics were allowed into the army and the universities, the penal laws against them were dispensed with, and the king finally issued a Declaration of Indulgence (1687), in an attempt to win the support of both Catholics and Dissenters (Protestants who were not members of the established Church of England). Seven bishops petitioned against this but they were imprisoned and tried for seditious libel in 1688 (see seven bishops, trial of). Their acquittal was a serious blow to James's authority.

In the same year a male heir was born to James and his second wife, Mary of Modena. Hitherto the next heir to the throne had been Mary, his daughter by his first wife, Anne Hyde. Mary, now the wife of William (III) of Orange, was a Protestant and therefore acceptable to the majority of the population. Now that it was certain that the new heir would be brought up as a Catholic, several prominent Protestant politicians – both Whigs and Tories – sent messengers to William of Orange asking him to invade.

William and Mary Now began what became known as the Glorious Revolution. William landed at Torbay in Devon and before the end of the year he was in London. By that time James had fled, had been recaptured, and then permitted to escape again. In 1689 William and Mary became joint sovereigns as William III and Mary II, having accepted the Declaration of Rights (see Bill of Rights). This restricted royal powers, and established England as a constitutional monarchy. Catholics or any who should marry a Catholic were barred from succession to the English throne.

A Jacobite rebellion in favour of James II broke out in Scotland, led by John Graham Claverhouse, but was speedily crushed (1689). Attempts to enforce the loyalty of the Highland clans in Scotland to William and Mary led to the Massacre of Glencoe (1692). In Ireland there was also rebellion in favour of James, who was finally defeated in 1690 at the Boyne (see Boyne, Battle of the), which was followed by the Treaty of Limerick (see Limerick, Treaty of).

Conflict with France England in the meantime allied with the Dutch Republic in the War of the League of Augsburg against Louis XIV of France, terminated by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 (see France: history 1515–1815). Both sides, however, realized that this was but a truce, and prepared for further conflict.

With the king of Spain, Charles II, dying with no obvious heir, the question of the Spanish succession needed to be settled. Both William and Louis were interested in that settlement. The Partition Treaties (by which the Spanish throne would pass to Archduke Charles of Austria) were drawn up and agreed to, but finally Louis accepted the will of the Spanish king, which left Spain and its empire to the French king's grandson, Philip, and England and France prepared for war. Even now the English were not prepared to go to war just for the sake of the Spanish succession. But when James II died and Louis acknowledged James's Catholic son, the Old Pretender (James Francis Edward Stuart), as James III, England immediately clamoured for war. During the preparations William III died (1702). Mary had died in 1694, and, since they had no surviving children, William was succeeded by Mary's sister Anne.

The War of the Spanish Succession broke out at the beginning of Anne's reign. England's aim was to preserve the balance of power (by preventing France from dominating Europe) and the Protestant succession. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the English commander, won the victories of Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709), and Gibraltar was captured (1704). Eventually – with the Tories at home having become more powerful, and anxious to come to terms with the French – the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713, giving Britain Gibraltar, Menorca, and Nova Scotia.

The Act of Union and the Hanoverian succession In 1707 the Act of Union between England and Scotland had been passed and had come into force (see Scotland: history 1603 to 1746), and towards the end of Anne's reign the question of succession had to be settled. The last child of Anne had died in 1700, and the Act of Settlement of 1701 had arranged that the succession after Anne's death should pass to the nearest Protestant heirs of Sophia, Electress of Hanover (granddaughter of James I). But the Tory ministers, Henry St John Bolingbroke and Robert Harley, plotted the restoration of the Stuarts, and it was well known that the queen favoured the restoration of her half-brother, the Old Pretender. Her sudden death in 1714 and the swift measures adopted by the Whigs prevented, however, any serious steps from being taken to restore the Stuarts, and George I (son of Sophia) was proclaimed king without resistance.

The Act of Union of 1707 had made England and Scotland one under the name of Great Britain.