History
Tudor Rebellions
The Tudor Rebellions were a series of uprisings in England during the 16th century, occurring under the rule of the Tudor monarchs. These rebellions were often driven by religious, social, or economic grievances, and they posed significant challenges to the authority of the ruling monarchs. The most notable rebellions include the Pilgrimage of Grace, Wyatt's Rebellion, and the Prayer Book Rebellion.
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eBook - ePubElizabethan Rebellions
Conspiracy, Intrigue and Treason
- Helene Harrison(Author)
- 2024(Publication Date)
- Pen & Sword History(Publisher)
Chapter 1Early Tudor Rebellions
‘Rebels, enemies, and traitors’1The Tudor dynasty suffered a number of rebellions and each monarch of the dynasty had at least one major revolt to deal with during their time on the throne. As Henry VII had seized the throne on the battlefield at Bosworth in 1485, perhaps this was understandable. Not all of the citizens, especially the nobility, accepted the Tudors as rightful kings and queens. there were surviving Plantagenet heirs who were preferable to many. The monarchs’ responses to these rebellions can also be understood in the context of the Wars of the Roses which were still in living memory, even to a few when Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, though more so in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Perhaps because the Tudors seemed to have a problem in providing male heirs the dynasty was seen as unstable which may have prompted at least some of the rebellions against them.The rebellions under the Tudor monarchs seem to mainly fall into two categories: succession and religion. These were the main issues that the Tudor monarchs were preoccupied with, particularly Henry VIII, whose reign was hugely affected by both issues, though Elizabeth I was also affected by both as will be seen. Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and beheaded his second, Anne Boleyn, in order to get a son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Because Henry VII had seized the throne on the battlefield, he had drilled into his son how vulnerable the Tudor dynasty was and Henry VIII had taken that to heart. Henry VIII also knew from first-hand experience that one son was not enough to secure the succession; his elder brother, Arthur, had died in 1502, leaving him unexpectedly as heir to the throne. This explains Henry’s further three marriages after Jane Seymour’s death in 1537, just days after the birth of their son, the future Edward VI. Henry VIII’s children were also very aware of potential succession issues. Edward VI took steps to try and exclude his half-sisters from the throne, and Mary I was determined to have a son of her own to prevent Elizabeth from succeeding her. There were religious issues after the Break with Rome, known as the mid-Tudor crisis, as each monarch had a very different belief of what the religion should be in England. Tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism dominated much of the sixteenth century across Europe, not just in England. However, England and Scotland seem to be some of the only countries where religion was used as an excuse to overthrow the monarch. There was also concern over England becoming an offshoot of another country and losing its independence, as evidenced mostly by Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain and the question over who Elizabeth should marry at the beginning of her reign.
eBook - ePubRebellion and Riot
Popular Disorder in England During the Reign of Edward VI
- John A. Andrew, III(Authors)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- The Kent State University Press(Publisher)
Although popular disorder was endemic throughout the sixteenth century, the pattern of rebellion and riot was extremely diverse. The rebellion of Henry Tudor in 1485 began as a royalist conspiracy against the Yorkists, and the dynastic interests of the Courtenays and Mary Stuart played important roles in later risings. When political opposition to the Tudors was not dynastic, it usually included conflict between court and country. For example, the northern aristocracy in 1536 and 1569 and the western gentry in 1549 vigorously opposed policies emanating from the court. The leadership of Thomas Cromwell and William Cecil aroused regional discontent; remote counties feared centralizing reforms of all kinds; and in 1549 the western gentry saw the Edwardian Reformation as little more than the program of court politicians supported by a clique of heretical clergy. After Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s, religion emerged as a divisive issue that fired political and social instability. Only under Edward VI did Catholics and Protestants rise at the same time. Religious unrest during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth came primarily from Catholics opposed to the royal supremacy, the monastic dissolution, and innovations in the church, while Mary’s opponents were exclusively Protestant. Real or imagined social and economic grievances played a part in many rebellions, particularly the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk. Riots almost always stemmed from economic issues; frequently heard grievances concerned rent payments, food prices, enclosure, and property rights.Popular disorder would be easier to understand if it were possible to write an equation showing the interaction of rational political, religious, and economic motivation. Unfortunately the minds of Tudor rebels and rioters were not so logical as modern historians would like. The commons’ political perceptions were affected by an imperfect understanding of the past and a limited comprehension of the present. Loyalty to a powerful magnate could cause a tenant or servant to join a rising in which he had no legitimate interest. Naive and credulous commons fell prey to rumors that excited the emotions and clouded the mind. Prophecies, as Keith Thomas has shown, were employed “in virtually every rebellion or popular rising which disturbed the Tudor state.”6
eBook - ePub- Cath Senker(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Arcturus(Publisher)
The Tudors 1485–1603T he ferocious rivalry of the Houses of York and Lancaster was over, to be replaced by a new civil conflict over religion. Like a butterfly effect, the desire of Henry VIII for a divorce prompted far-reaching changes: the English Reformation and decades of struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The religious wrangling did not prevent economic development though. An era of European exploration began in Tudor times, bringing riches from trade and exploitation, and new ideas; the monarchy benefited greatly from this period of prosperity. The Tudors did not rule alone – they had to recognize the importance of Parliament in running the country and relied on talented public servants. Yet the most dynamic king and queen, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, had a substantial personal impact on politics, economics and society.TUDOR MONARCHS
Henry VII (1485–1509) Henry VIII (1509–47) Edward VI (1547–53) Mary I (1553–58) Elizabeth I (1558–1603)HENRY VII (1485–1509)
Henry VII ended the War of the Roses, marrying Elizabeth of York to unite the houses of Lancaster and York and founding the Tudor dynasty. To stamp his authority on the land after three decades of civil war, he ruled harshly. Was his assertion of royal authority necessary to stabilize the country or did his tyrannical tendencies have a destabilizing effect? Historians today give a mixed verdict on the success of Henry’s rule.Securing stability
Henry’s throne certainly remained insecure, and there were several Yorkist plots against him. One pretender was Perkin Warbeck. The son of a boatman from Tournai, Belgium, Warbeck was persuaded in 1491 to pretend that he was Richard, Duke of York (the younger of the princes in the Tower), who had somehow escaped from the Tower of London. By 1493, the king had uncovered the plot and brought treason trials against Warbeck’s associates. When Warbeck landed with a force of 300 men in Kent in 1495, he and his followers were captured. The Englishmen among them were hanged for treason, while the pretender himself was eventually executed in 1499. Henry’s message to his enemies was clear.
eBook - PDF- Peter Widdowson(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
A crucial instance of this was the furore, after the death of Edward VI (1553), around the accession of Henry VIII’s legitimate daughter by Catherine of Aragon, Mary I (Mary Tudor), a Roman Catholic who married Philip II, King of Spain, and whose persecution of English Protestants in an attempt to restore England to the Roman Catholic fold resulted in the sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’. When she died childless in 1558, her half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I (daughter of Ann Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife), acceded to the throne, but Elizabeth’s failure to marry and produce an heir in her turn led, on her death in 1603, to the end the Tudor line and the start of the Stuart* succession. Â Politics The gradual development of an English national state and identity, distinct from the still largely Catholic mainland Europe. 1.2 THE (ENGLISH) REFORMATION Literally, ‘reformation’ means an act of reforming, amending and improving. Capitalised and preceded by the definite article, ‘The Reformation’ identifies that period and process in the 16th 2 T HE P ALGRAVE G UIDE TO E NGLISH L ITERATURE AND ITS C ONTEXTS , 1500–2000 Century in Europe which saw the doctrine and power of the Roman Catholic Church challenged and in many cases replaced by the various forms of Protestant religion. However, political and economic factors also determined its course and nature: the hostility of rulers and jurists to the temporal encroachments of the Vatican; the growing wealth of the clergy, and the religious and moral laxity of many; the development of printing, which assisted the spread of ideas; and related to this, the humanism of the Renaissance* , which encouraged a new critical and enquiring attitude of mind. The individualism at the heart of Reformation religions, combined with their embattled location in diverse Northern European states, also helped to foster the growth of nationalism and the economic prosperity of the mercantile classes.
eBook - ePub- Cath Senker(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Arcturus(Publisher)
The Tudors 1485–1603The ferocious rivalry of the Houses of York and Lancaster was over, to be replaced by a new civil conflict over religion. Like a butterfly effect, the desire of Henry VIII for a divorce prompted far reaching changes: the English Reformation and decades of struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The religious wrangling did not prevent economic development though. An era of European exploration began in Tudor times, bringing riches from trade and exploitation, and new ideas; the monarchy benefited greatly from this period of prosperity. The Tudors did not rule alone – they had to recognize the importance of Parliament in running the country and relied on talented public servants. Yet the most dynamic king and queen, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, had a substantial personal impact on politics, economics and society.HENRY VII(1485–1509)Henry VII ended the War of the Roses, marrying Elizabeth of York to unite the houses of Lancaster and York and founding the Tudor dynasty. To stamp his authority on the land after three decades of civil war, he ruled harshly. Was his assertion of royal authority necessary to stabilize the country or did his tyrannical tendencies have a destabilizing effect? Historians today give a mixed verdict on the success of Henry’s rule.A contemporary portrait of Henry VII.SECURING STABILITY
Henry’s throne certainly remained insecure, and there were several Yorkist plots against him. One pretender was Perkin Warbeck. The son of a boatman from Tournai, Belgium, Warbeck was persuaded in 1491 to pretend that he was Richard, Duke of York (the younger of the princes in the Tower), who had somehow escaped from the Tower of London. By 1493, the king had uncovered the plot and brought treason trials against Warbeck’s associates. When Warbeck landed with a force of 300 men in Kent in 1495, he and his followers were captured. The Englishmen among them were hanged for treason, while the pretender himself was eventually executed in 1499. Henry’s message to his enemies was clear.
eBook - PDFThe Northern Rebellion of 1569
Faith, Politics and Protest in Elizabethan England
- K. Kesselring(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
He acceded, and all returned to Brancepeth to begin their final deliberations. 29 On November 14, they rode into Durham with a few hundred men. Overturning the communion table and celebrating a Catholic mass, they began their rebellion. Justifying rebellion Such, then, were the grievances that pushed the earls and their confeder- ates to conspire and the precipitants that pushed them from conspiracy to rebellion. The earls’ links to the Norfolk marriage plan were tenuous at best, and despite the historiographical focus on them as the last defenders of a defunct feudal order, they clearly understood their griev- ances in terms of religion and were driven by others to act. But how did The Rebellion in the North 57 they now attempt to justify their actions to themselves and to others? How would they attempt to shape interpretations of their decision? There were, of course, traditions that allowed the baronial correction of a misguided monarch, just as there were traditions that enabled armed “petition” for redress by commoners. But the frequency of rebellion in this period should not blind us to the ideological and material hurdles that existed. Particularly in the Tudor years, a doctrine of unquestioning obedience had been tirelessly preached from the gallows and from the pulpits. As the Homily on Obedience baldly stated, “it is not lawful for inferiors and subjects in any case to resist the superior powers, for St. Paul’s words be plain, that whosoever resisteth shall get to themselves damnation: for whosoever resisteth, resisteth the ordinance of God.” 30 In such an intensely religious age, such strictures had a force that might now seem difficult to imagine. 31 Even the radical Protestant writers who suffered under Mary Tudor’s Catholic regime had generally recognized a line between disobedience and active resistance. Most concluded that while they might justly disobey flawed laws, they must never take up arms against God’s anointed.
eBook - PDFLondon
A Social and Cultural History, 1550–1750
- Robert O. Bucholz, Joseph P. Ward, Joseph P. Ward(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
In the middle of the seventeenth century, however, Londoners began to engage in mass demonstrations that would precipitate rebellion and revolution. To understand why, we have to address London’s role in “England’s Troubles” from the 1550s on. Rebellion and Revolution Riots were almost never isolated incidents. As we have seen, they took place within complex contexts of factors, some long-standing, like the weavers’ grievances against aliens; some immediate, like the economic hardships of 1594 to 1598 or 1708 to 1710. In general, however, it was possible for 282 London: A Social and Cultural History, 1550–1750 the authorities to treat riots as isolated incidents; that is, until the Gordon Riots of 1780, individual public demonstrations in London were generally not viewed as a symptom of a much larger problem, or a threat to the fundamental social order. Rebellion was different. As we learned in the Introduction, as London went, so went the nation. Admittedly, it was an open question whether London was truly governable at all, but it could not be ignored. The city’s sheer size and wealth; its central role in the dissemination of information; its strategic significance as gateway to the Thames valley and mother to thousands of potential soldiers; and its status as the capital meant that London had to figure in the calculations of anyone plotting to seize or hold the government of England before, during, or after our period. Put simply, a successful rebel had to enlist Londoners in his cause. The failure to do so explains the collapse of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and Wyatt’s, Essex’s, and Venner’s Rebellions in 1554, 1601, and 1661, respectively (see later discussion). But the City opened its gates to Jack Cade in 1450; Edward, Duke of York in 1461; Henry, Earl of Richmond in 1485; and William of Orange in 1688.
eBook - ePub- Susan Doran, Norman Jones, Susan Doran, Norman Jones(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Because of the nature of the questions that long underpinned studies of disorder, such histories are rarely segmented by reigns and are more often demarcated by dates of demographic or economic import. Yet, the Elizabethan period warrants a survey specific to itself, if for no other reason than to query its usual portrayal as a golden age of stability. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign, rebellions of the medieval sort were left behind, and the disorders of the Continental wars of religion remained in the distance. The turmoils that plagued the earlier Tudors came to an end, while those of the Stuarts had yet to begin. By some measures, then, these were years of domestic peace. But these same years witnessed some of the highest murder and execution rates in recorded English history. A period of crisis in the criminal courts began in the 1580s which would stretch beyond Elizabeth’s reign into the late 1620s. Historians today disagree about whether crime and rebellion should be seen as points linked on a continuum of social conflict, but many Elizabethans believed these links to be evident. For them, an evaluation of crime and rebellion as separate features of their world made little sense. And contemporaries were by no means so sanguine as historians in evaluating their world. Many an Elizabethan commoner located the golden age in the past, with longing or angry words of complaint. Their governors, in turn, feared the ‘many-headed monster’ of popular unrest and believed small crimes to be the seeds of serious tumults.Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper Nicholas Bacon regularly gathered justices before him in Star Chamber to exhort full implementation of the laws, even those against ostensibly petty offences. He warned that small sins left untreated inevitably ripened into greater crimes: ‘from such roots, such plants, such plants, such fruits’. He urged that ‘better it were for a man to be twice whipped than once hanged’, appealing not for lighter penalties but for greater vigilance against the petty offender in order to prevent the slide to serious sins.1 Conscientious justices of the peace (JPs) relayed this message to local juries. William Lambarde, for instance, repeatedly enjoined his presentment jurors to bring more offenders to the court’s attention. Serious felonies represented only the top boughs of the ‘tree of transgression’: to kill the tree, the jurors had to ‘hew in sunder the master roots and mores of idleness [and] unlawful games’.2
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