4.29 Europe: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 22/29)

But to return to Henry VIII, the reckless and vicious elimination of his various wives have been the source of many books, dramas and histories and will only be tabulated here for record. Catharine of Aragon, mother of Mary the Catholic, was finally divorced after 20 years. Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth, was beheaded. Jane Seymour, mother of Edward VI, died apparently of natural causes. Of the last three, Anne of Cleves was divorced and Catherine Howard was beheaded while Catherine Parr outlived the king. (Ref. 119 ) In the last of his reign Henry was the most absolute monarch England had known. His late, terrible disposition may have been in part fashioned by his syphilis and a chronic leg ulcer. Upon his death in 1547 his son by Jane Seymour became Edward VI, when he was but ten years old, and he never did gain the strength to rule. The power of the throne was contested by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and his brother, Thomas Seymour. The former was ruined by Kit's Rebellion, a Catholic peasant revolt, as the duke sympathized with the losing peasants against the nobles.

When Edward VI died in 1553 followers of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth battled to put one of them on the throne. Mary, a nervously ill, unattractive woman, whose only solace was her Catholic faith, became the queen. In the meantime Archbishop Cranmer had written the First Book of Common Prayer as a substitute for the missal and breviary of the defeated church. Although at first tolerant, Mary soon had him burned at the stake. The papal legate was brought back and persecutions of Protestants resulted in the name "Bloody Mary" for the queen. In the end the people were more ready than before to accept the "new" or Protestant faith. Mary married Philip, destined later to be Philip II of Spain, but never having been crowned by Parliament, he returned to Spain not long before Mary died.

Elizabeth became queen in 1558, restoring Protestantism. Royal agents then tortured Catholic priests; non-attendance at some English Protestant Church cost 12 pence a Sunday in 1559 and by the 1580s reached 20 pounds a month. (Ref. 119 , 51 , 133 ) It was actually Elizabeth who signed the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, officially dividing the spoils of the 60 year French-Spanish war, in which England had been intermittently involved. (Ref. 292 )

In the last half of the century foreign trade began to be an important part of the English economy for the first time and in the last quarter, there was a great overseas expansion, first with piracy and then world-wide trade. The Merchant Adventurers was a wool and cloth, closed corporation which actually operated primarily outside of England in Antwerp and later Hamburg. Joint stock companies including the Moscovy Company (1555), the Levant Company (1581) and the English East India Company developed. (Ref. 292 ) Sir Francis Drake, the most unscrupulous of the English pirates, left England in 1577 to sail through the Strait of Magellan and enter the Pacific, there harassing every Spanish ship, ransacking cities of Chile and Peru and finally sailing up past San Francisco and then across to the Moluccas and Java. He arrived home with great loot, to be made a hero, and gave hope to English farmers and shepherds who were resenting feudal taxes and tithes. That trip really stimulated the colony experiments of the next century. Drake was also one of the chief admirals at the time of the Spanish Armada, when the English fleet drove off the Catholic ships, which had been sent to facilitate a channel crossing of Spanish troops from Belgium. (See pages 780-782). The backbone of the potent English navy included 18 powerful galleons, varying from 300 tons up, excellently armed; 7 smaller galleons of 100 tons or more; and a great number of pinnaces. While awaiting the great battle, the crews were kept healthy on land, with fresh food and good water, not going to sea until absolutely necessary. (Ref. 133 , 39 ) After the remnants of the defeated Spanish fleet sailed away in the North Sea, the English kept expecting a renewed attack and kept their ships manned and vigilant. As a result, typhus fever then killed the English sailors in greater number than had the battles.