The Reformation

Read the second text highlighting Henry VIII's life and the period of the Reformation. There are links to the extra texts revealing the stories of Henry's wives. Having read the text pass to the exercises.
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Henry's break with Rome was purely political. He simply wanted to control the Church and to keep its wealth in its own kingdom. He himself still believed in the Catholic faith. But when he broke with Rome he wanted to make the break legal. Between 1532 and 1536 Parliament passed several acts, by which England officially became a Protestant country, even though the popular religion was Catholic.

- Appeals from English ecclesiastical courts to the Pope were prohibited.
- The Acts also prevented the Church from making any regulations without the King's consent.
- The Acts required the clergy to elect Bishops nominated by the Sovereign.
- The Act of Supremacy declared that the King was "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England"; the Treasons Act made it high treason, punishable by death, to refuse to acknowledge the King as such.

Opposition to Henry's religious policies was quickly suppressed.

In 1536, Queen Anne began to lose Henry's favour. She gave a birth to a girl, Princess Elizabeth not to a boy. Henry had Anne arrested on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. In May 1536, the Court condemned Anne to death. She was beheaded. Her marriage to Henry was annulled shortly before her execution.

Only days after Anne's execution in 1536, Henry married Jane Seymour. Jane gave birth to a son, the Prince Edward and died two weeks thereafter. Henry considered her to be his only "true" wife, being the only one who had given him the male heir he so desperately seeked.

When Henry married Jane Seymour there was the Act which formally annexed Wales, uniting England and Wales into one nation. The Act provided for the sole use of English in official proceedings in Wales.

There were 2 great Catholic uprisings. The leaders of the rebellions were convicted of treason and executed. Henry sanctioned the destruction of shrines to Roman Catholic Saints. England's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops came to comprise the ecclesiastical element of the body.

Henry married for the fourth time to get one more heir as the Prince Edward was not a healthy child. Besides the marriage with Anne, the sister of the Protestant Duke of Cleves, who was seen as an important ally in case of a Roman Catholic attack on England, seemed rather prospective. But soon the Duke of Cleves became engaged in a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor, with whom Henry had no desire to quarrel and the marriage with Anne was annulled by her approbation.

Henry's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was very young and she appeared to have been involved into adulterous relationships and was executed. She was only about eighteen years old at the time.

Henry married his last wife, the wealthy widow Catherine Parr. She argued with Henry over religion; she was a Protestant, but Henry remained a Catholic. This behaviour almost led to her undoing, but she saved herself by a show of submissiveness. She helped Henry to reconcile with his first two daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth.

The Tudor dynasty (1485 -1603) established a system of government departments, staffed by professionals who depended for their position on the monarch. As a result, the feudal barons were no longer needed for implementing government policy. Parliament was traditionally split into two 'Houses'. The House of Lords consisted of the feudal aristocracy and the leaders of the Church; the House of Commons consisted of representatives from the towns and landowners in rural areas.

Unlike in much of the rest of Europe, the direct cause of the rise of Protestantism in England was political and personal rather than doctrinal. Henry VIII wanted a divorce which the Pope would not give him. Also, by making himself head of the "Church of England", independent of Rome, all church lands came under his control and gave him a large new source of income.

This rejection of the Roman Church accorded with a new spirit of patriotic confidence in England. The country had finally lost any realistic claim to lands in France, thus becoming more consciously a distinct 'island nation'. At the same time, increasing European exploration of the Americas and other parts of the world meant that England was closer to the geographical centre of western civilisation instead of being, as previously, on the edge of it. It was in the last quarter of this adventurous and optimistic century that Shakespeare began writing his famous plays.

It was therefore patriotism that had caused Protestantism to become the majority religion in England by the end of the century. It took a form known as Anglicanism, which was not so very different from Catholicism in its organization and ritual. But in the lowlands of Scotland it took a more idealistic form. Calvinism, with its strict insistence on simplicity and its dislike of ritual and celebration, became the dominant religion. It is from this date that the stereotype of the dour, thrifty Scot developed. However, the Scottish highlands remained Catholic and so further widened the gulf between the two parts of the nation. Ireland also remained Catholic. There, Protestantism was identified with the English, who at that time were making further attempts to control the whole of the country.

After the death of Edward VI there was a highly unstable situation in the country. In his will which contradicted his father's bequest, King Edward VI disinherited his sisters and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey the Queen of England (1553). Jane Grey ruled only for nine days. But the people opposed her reign and supported the claim of Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon.

Queen Mary I was determined to return England back to the Pope, as she was a fanatic Roman Catholic. She failed to understand the English hostility to Catholic Spain, and her marriage to Philip of Spain, was her own idea. Her marriage was very unpopular. She crushed the rebels and pursued an aggressive policy against protestants: more than 300 people was executed in the worst traditions of the Inquisition - burnt. That is why she earned the nickname Bloody Mary.

Elizabeth I,

sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen (since she never married), Elizabeth I was the fifth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty, having succeeded her half-sister, Mary I. She reigned during a period of turmoil in English history.

Elizabeth was a short-tempered and sometimes indecisive ruler. This last quality, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often saved her from political and marital misalliances. Like her father Henry VIII, she was a writer and poet. In terms of personality, Elizabeth was far more like her mother than her father: neurotic, glamorous, flirtatious, and charismatic. Elizabeth also inherited her mother's delicate bone structure, physique, facial features, and onyx black eyes, and petite girth. She did not inherit her father's enormous weight, but from him she inherited her red hair.

She came to speak or read six languages: her native English, as well as French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin. She had an outstanding intellect. Under the influence of Catherine Parr, Elizabeth was raised a Protestant.

Elizabeth's reign is referred to as the Elizabethan era or the Golden Age and was marked by increases in English power and influence worldwide.

Early reign.
The senior bishops declined to participate in the coronation (since Elizabeth was illegitimate under both canon law and statute and since she was a Protestant), the relatively unimportant Bishop of Carlisle crowned her.

One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth's early reign was religion. The Act of Uniformity 1559 required the use of the Protestant Book of Common Prayer in church services. Papal control over the Church of England had been reinstated under Mary I, but was ended by Elizabeth.

Many bishops were unwilling to conform to the Elizabethan religious policy. These were removed from the church bench and replaced by appointees who would submit to the Queen's policies. Under Elizabeth, factionalism in the Council and conflicts at court were greatly silenced. Elizabeth also reduced Spanish influence in England. She was independent in her diplomacy and adopted a principle of "England for the English."

Conflicts with France and Spain, plots and rebellions
The Queen found a rival in her cousin, the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and wife of the French King. In 1559, Mary had declared herself Queen of England with French support. In Scotland, Mary Stuart's mother attempted to cement French influence by providing for army fortification against English agresssion. A group of Scottish lords allied to Elizabeth and, under pressure from the English, Mary's representatives signed the Treaty of Edinburgh, which led to the withdrawal of French troops. French influence was greatly reduced in Scotland.

In France, meanwhile, conflict between the Catholics and the Huguenots led to the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion. Elizabeth secretly gave aid to the Huguenots. She made peace with France in 1564; she agreed to give up her claims to the last English possession on the French mainland, Calais. She did not, however, give up her claim to the French Crown.

When in 1562 Elizabeth fell ill with smallpox parliament, alarmed by the Queen's near-fatal illness, demanded that she marry or nominate an heir to prevent civil war upon her death. She refused to do either, and in April, she prorogued parliament. Parliament did not reconvene until Elizabeth needed its assent to raise taxes in 1566.

In 1569, Elizabeth faced a major uprising, known as the Northern Rebellion. Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth for apostasy and for her persecution of Catholics; he declared her deposed in a papal bull. After the Bull of Deposition was issued, however, Elizabeth escalated her policy of religious persecution.

In 1572, Elizabeth made an alliance with France. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which many French Protestants (Huguenots) were killed, strained the alliance but did not break it. Elizabeth even began marriage negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou.

Economic conflict with Spain and English piracy against Spanish colonies led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1585. In July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a grand fleet of 130 ships bearing over 30,000 men, set sail in the expectation of conveying a Spanish invasion force under the command of the Duke of Parma across the English Channel from the Netherlands.

The Spanish attempt was defeated by the English fleet under Charles Howard. The Armada was forced to return to Spain, with appalling losses on the north and west coasts of Scotland and Ireland; the victory tremendously increased Elizabeth's popularity.

Later years
Elizabeth became somewhat unpopular because of her practice of granting royal monopolies, the abolition of which Parliament continued to demand. Besides, at the same time as England was fighting Spain, it also faced a rebellion in Ireland, known as the Nine Years War.

Elizabeth I fell ill, suffering from frailty and insomnia. After a period of distressing reflection, she died on March 24 1603, aged 69, the oldest English Sovereign ever to have reigned; the mark was not surpassed until George II turned 70 in 1753.

Elizabeth was the first of three long-reigning queens in British history (the other two are Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II) and proved to be one of the most popular monarchs in English or British history. During her long reign she established, by skilful diplomacy, a reasonable degree of internal stability in a firmly Protestant England, allowing the growth of a spirit of patriotism and general confidence. She never married, but used its possibility as a diplomatic tool. The area which later became the state of Virginia in the USA was named after her by one of the many English explorers of the time (Sir Walter Raleigh).

When Elizabeth became the queen in 1558 she wanted to find peaceful answer on the problems of English Reformation. She wanted to bring together again those parts of English society (Catholic and Protestants) which were in disagreement. And at the same time she wanted to make England prosperous. As a result the Protestantism in England remained closer to the Catholic religion. But Elizabeth made sure that the church was still under her authority, and she made it "part of the state machine".

Some more words about Language and culture in the period of 14-17 centuries. The most prominent fact that London English had become accepted among the literate public. For the first time the people started to think of London pronunciation as "correct" pronunciation. So educated people began to speak "correct" English, and uneducated continued to speak local dialects. At that period literacy increased greatly: by the beginning of the 16th century about half the population of England could read and write. People became interested in art, literature and ideas of ancient Greece. This period was characterised by the appearance of outstanding thinkers, scientists, artists, and writers. In the early years of the 16th century English thinkers became interested in the work of the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. One of them wrote a book in which he described an ideal nation. The book was called Utopia and was very popular throughout Europe.

Many historians, however, have downplayed Elizabeth's reign. Though England achieved military victories, Elizabeth was far less pivotal than other monarchs, such as Henry V. Elizabeth has also been criticised for supporting the English slave trade, and her problems in Ireland also serve to blemish her record.

Read texts about the 16th Century Theatre

Summarise information.
Think about the peculiarities of the English Theatre.
Prepare the topic.

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Дата добавления: 2015-11-14