The Tudors are the royal dynasty of England of Welsh descent. They ruled in an era when Western Europe moved from the Middle Ages to the early New Age. Representatives of the dynasty made changes in public administration, the relationship between the crown and people, in the image of the monarchy and in matters of faith. She gave England five rulers: Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509); his son Henry VIII (1509-1547); and then his three children, Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary I (1553-1558) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
During the reign of this dynasty, Henry VIII broke off all relations with the papacy in Rome (1534), and also began the English Reformation, culminating in the creation of the Anglican Church under Elizabeth I. During this period, the English Renaissance reached its highest point. During the reign of Elizabeth, Spain and the Irish rebels were defeated, the independence of France and the Dutch and the unity of England itself were ensured.
Representatives of this dynasty are among the most famous monarchs of England. Each of them was an interesting, sometimes completely incomprehensible person.
Origin
The origins of the dynasty can be traced back to the 13th century, but Owen Tudor (approximately 1400-1461) laid the foundations of this family as a dynasty. He was a Welsh adventurer who served with Kings Henry V and Henry VI and fought on the side of Lancaster in The Wars of the Roses. He married the Venetian widow of Henry V, Catherine Valois. The founder of the Tudor dynasty was beheaded after the victory of the Yorkists near Mortimer Cross (1461).
Getting the throne
Owen's eldest son Edmund (circa 1430-1456) received the title of Earl of Richmond Henry VI and married Margaret Beaufort, Lady Margaret, who, as the great-granddaughter of Edward III's son John Gaunt, claimed the throne as a representative of the Lancaster family. Their only child, Heinrich Tudor, was born after the death of Edmund. In 1485, Henry invaded the possession of King Richard III and defeated him on the Bosworth Field. Henry VII strengthened his position by marrying in January 1486 Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV and the heiress of the House of York. The Tudor rose symbolized the union, representing the red rose of Lancaster superimposed on the white rose of York.
Joining the House of York to the Lancaster House was an important symbolic step, marking the end of the Rose War.
Reign of Henry VII
What won the victory of Heinrich Tudor in 1485 was not so much a personal charisma as the fact that the main representatives of the nobility left Richard III at a time when he most needed their support.
Defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, receiving parliamentary approval and marrying a rival family, Henry was crowned. He took part in diplomatic negotiations, securing his position, concluding agreements both within the country and abroad. Under him, Rosa Tudor appeared in the coat of arms of the dynasty. He began government reform, increased royal administrative control and increased royal finances. After his death, a stable state and a rich monarchy remained.
Henry VIII
The period of his reign was one of the most intense in the history of England. The English monarch from the Tudor dynasty Henry 8 is known for his six wives, which was the result of a desperate desire to have healthy male heirs in order to continue the Tudor dynasty. Another consequence of this need was the English Reformation, as Henry VIII separated the English Church from the pope and Catholicism in order to be able to divorce. Under him, a new powerful military force appeared - the Royal Navy, there were changes in the government, which tied the monarch to parliament more strongly. He was replaced by the only surviving son.
Edward VI
Son Edward, whom Henry very much wanted, inherited the throne in childhood (he was then 9 years old) and died six years later. His guardian and de facto ruler was Edward Seymour, and then John Dudley. They continued the Protestant Reformation.
Lady jane gray
This is one of the most tragic figures in the history of the Tudor dynasty. Thanks to the machinations of John Dudley, Edward VI was originally replaced by Lady Jane Gray, the fifteen-year-old great-granddaughter of Henry VII, a pious Protestant. However, Mary, although she was Catholic, received great support. As a result, Lady Jane's supporters quickly flipped to the other side. She stayed on the throne for only nine days. She was executed in 1554 as a result of the rebellion of Thomas Wyatt against Maria Tudor. In fact, she did little personally, they tried to use her only as a nominal leader.
Mary I
She was the first queen in the history of the Tudor dynasty, which itself rightfully owned England. After a divorce from her mother, Henry VIII declared her illegitimate. After some time, she became the rightful heir to the crown. Taking the throne, Mary Tudor entered into an unpopular marriage with Philip II in Spain and returned England to the Catholic faith. Her policy to restore Catholicism and brutal reprisals against Protestants earned her the nickname Bloody Mary. Even when she fell from death fever, Maria continued to worry about the fate of the state. The enmity with her sister did not stop her from depriving her husband of any rights to the throne and approving the latter in that capacity.
Elizabeth I
The youngest daughter of Henry VIII survived the conspiracy that threatened Mary. One of the nation’s most respected monarchs, Elizabeth returned the Protestant faith to the country, fought against Spain and other Protestant peoples, and cultivated a powerful image of herself as a virgin queen devoted to her nation. Historians consider her reputation as a great ruler erroneous, since she was more anxious to smooth out sharp corners and to make decisions carefully.
During her reign, Elizabeth refused to choose between Edward VI Seymour (a descendant of Mary) and the King of Scotland, James VI (a descendant of the elder sister of Henry VIII Margarita): the former was an heir according to the will of Henry VIII, and the latter claimed the crown according to inheritance. On her deathbed, she appointed King of Scotland as his successor, who became James I, king of Great Britain.
End of the Tudor Dynasty
None of the children of Henry VIII had offspring. And after the death of Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor dynasty, the throne was taken by James Stuart of Scotland, the first of the Stuart dynasty and the descendant of the older sister of Henry VIII Margarita. Another dynasty has become history.
Economic development
The history of the Tudor dynasty is filled with a variety of events. By 1485, the state began to recover from a demographic catastrophe as a result of the Black Death and agricultural depression of the late 14th century. As the 15th century approached, population growth increased and continued to grow over the next century. The population, which in 1400 may have declined to 2.5 million people, by 1600 had grown to about 4 million people. Population growth required an increase in products and goods. Yeomen farmers, sheep breeders, fabric manufacturers and adventure traders brought about a social and economic revolution. With extraordinary speed, the export of raw wool gave way to the export of woolen fabric. By the time Henry VII took the throne, Merchant Adventurers, an association of London textile exporters, controlled the London and Antwerp markets. By 1496, they were a chartered organization with a legal monopoly on the sale of woolen fabrics. Largely due to their political and international importance, Henry successfully negotiated, concluding the Intercursus Magnus, a large and long-term, very profitable commercial agreement between England and Venice, Florence, the Netherlands and the Hanseatic League.
Inflation
The landlords increased the size of their herds to such an extent that animals outnumbered people by a ratio of 3 to 1, and as merchants grew rich in the wool trade, inflation made a difference in the economy. England was affected by rising prices, declining real wages and the depreciation of money. Between 1500 and 1540, prices in England doubled; the same thing happened in the next generation. In 1450, the value of wheat was similar to that in 1300; by 1550 she had tripled. At that time, people did not immediately begin to realize that price increases were the result of inflationary pressures caused by population growth, the international war and the flow of gold and silver arriving from the New World.
Agriculture
Inflation and the wool trade together created economic and social turmoil over the many years of the history of the Tudor dynasty. Lack of land and labor, low rents and high wages, which prevailed during the beginning of the 15th century, were replaced by a lack of land, excess labor, high rents and lower wages as a result of the economic depression and population decline. The landlord, who a century earlier could not find tenants or workers for his land and left his fields under steam, could now turn his meadows into sheep pens. Rental costs and profits increased significantly; the need for labor was reduced because one shepherd and his dog could do the work of half a dozen people who had previously worked the same field. The medieval system of land use and communal services was slowly collapsing. The common land of the estate was divided and fenced, and the peasants who owned the land according to documents or according to an unwritten custom were evicted.
About 50,000 people were forced to leave the land. Agricultural technology has been transformed, the gap between rich and poor has widened.
By 1500, an essential economic basis was formed for the future political and social domination of aristocrats: a 15th-century knight was turning from a desperate and irresponsible landowner, ready to support the Rose War, into a respected landowner, longing for a strong government and the rule of law.
Dynastic threats
The new dynasty had to be provided not only with the necessary support, it was necessary that all possible candidates for the throne, appearing throughout almost the entire history of the Tudor dynasty, be eliminated. Elizabeth from York married Henry; the sons of Edward IV were deprived of the right of succession; Richard III's nephew Edward Plantagenet, a young Earl of Warwick, was imprisoned, deprived of the right to inherit from his own uncle. But the descendants of Edward IV's sister and daughter remained a threat to the new government. Equally dangerous was the stubborn myth that the youngest of the two princes killed in the Tower of London escaped from his killer, and that Earl Warwick escaped from his jailers.
The existence of the applicants acted as a catalyst for further baronial discontent and aspirations of the Yorks, and in 1487, John de la Paul, the nephew of Edward IV, with the support of two thousand mercenaries paid for with Burgundy gold, returned to England from Flanders to support the claims of Lambert Simnel, who introduced himself like a genuine Earl of Warwick. Again Henry Tudor triumphed in the war; at the Battle of Stokes, de la Paul was killed, and Simnel was captured and put as a janitor in the royal kitchen. Ten years later, Henry again had to confront, this time a Flemish named Perkin Warbeck, who for six years was accepted in Yorkist circles in Europe as the real Richard IV, brother of the murdered Edward. Warbeck tried to take advantage of the anger of the Cornish, caused by heavy royal taxation and increased government efficiency. He sought to lead the Cornwall army, fomenting public discontent with the Tudor throne. It was a test of the strength and popularity of the Tudor monarchs, as well as the support of the nobility. As a result, the social revolution and the subsequent dynastic war ended in failure, and Warbeck was imprisoned with Count Warwick. In the end, both of them turned out to be too dangerous even in captivity, and in 1499 they were executed.
Attempts to destroy the new dynasty did not stop in the next century. Under Henry VIII, the Duke of Buckingham (a descendant of the youngest son of Edward III) was killed in 1521; Count Warwick, Countess of Salisbury, was beheaded in 1541, her descendants were expelled from patrimonial lands. In January 1547, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the grandson of Buckingham, was executed. Towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII, the work of destroying the pretenders was so well done that the curse of the fertility of Edward III was replaced by the opposite problem: the Tudor line proved fruitless in the issue of the birth of healthy male heirs. The son of Henry VII, Arthur, died in 1502 at the age of 15, and Henry VIII in turn produced only one legitimate son, Edward VI, who died at the age of 16, thereby discontinuing direct male inheritance.
The reign of the Tudor dynasty is from 1485 to 1601.