Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

**KALKI** · #1 23-02-2004

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

From the standpoint of 1603, evaluate and account for the main changes that had taken place in the political, or social or economic aspects of English life compared with the situation found by King Henry VII when he took the throne in 1485.

The accession of the Welshman Henry Tudor to the throne in 1485 brought to an end the gang warfare known as the Wars of the Roses, in which supporters of the Yorkist fought supporters of the Lancastrians. By 1485 these nobles had fought so long and well that only a dozen were left alive and an end to this ruinous struggle was welcomed. By marrying Elizabeth of York, the Lancastrian Henry Tudor hoped to unite the two warring factions and so bring peace to the country, which would enable him to strengthen his hold on the throne.

Henry was a successful monarch. When the Yorkists pretended that first Lambert Simnel and later Perkin Warbeck were the rightful heirs to the throne, the people of England refused to rise in revolt. They preferred the rule of Henry, who had brought peace, had put England in a strong position in European affairs and had enabled the merchant-trading class to get on with the development of English industry and trade.

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, inherited many of her father's capacities - in music, poetry, athletics, hunting and above all in appearance of majesty. She tried to maintain a religious policy which would avoid the worst features of the Protestantism of Northumberland and the Catholicism of Mary's reign. The authority of the Pope was again abolished and Parliament named the monarch Governor of the Church, a title which it was hoped would cause less offence to Catholics than Henry VIII's claim to be Supreme Head. Services were to be in English and an amended form of Cranmer's Prayer Book was to be used. Everyone had to attend church or pay a fine of one shilling - which was a small punishment compared to the burnings of Mary's day.

From 1300 onwards many people were openly critical of the way in which the Roman Catholic Church was organised and operated.

They pointed to the many huge monasteries, where monks no longer lived according to the rules of their founders but were more concerned with making money from the sheep farms and other parts of their estates, and demanded that the monks return to the life of prayer and poverty which they were supposed to be leading.

In Europe as in England there was criticism of the way in which the Pope - the head of the church - had become more of a politician than a Church leader, more concerned with enlarging his Papal States by war than with preaching the Gospel of Christ.

Henry VIII was an ardent Catholic who resented the attacks made by Luther and his followers on the teachings of the Church. He wrote a defence of the Church's teachings which won him international fame. His marriage to the Spanish Catherine of Aragon brought him into a close relationship with the Emperor Charles V - Catherine's nephew and the Pope's main defender against the activities of Luther and his supporters. But by 1527 Henry had become tired of Catherine - who had given him only a daughter, Mary, as heir to the throne. He had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn - who was reluctant to become his lover until he had divorced Catherine and married her instead.

Henry turned for advice to Wolsey - his Cardinal, Chancellor and friend - who promised to persuade the Pope to declare that Henry's marriage to his sister-in-law was illegal and should be annulled, so freeing the king to marry Anne. Wolsey obtained the office of Papal Legate for the purpose of declaring the marriage illegal. But to make sure that the Emperor would not object to his aunt's being divorced and that the Pope would agree to grant the divorce, Wolsey arranged for the Pope to send another Legate to sit with him in deciding the issue. Unfortunately, Campeggio would not work as quickly as Wolsey, Henry and Anne wished. Henry grew annoyed by the long time taken by the legates, particularly as he was anxious to marry Anne. So he dismissed Wolsey and appointed his archbishop a young Catholic priest, Thomas Cranmer, who told him that it would be sufficient if a court of English churchmen declared the marriage illegal - there was no need to wait for the Pope to make his declaration.

In 1529 Henry called parliament together and persuaded it to pass Acts against various Church scandals, such as the non-residence of clergy when they got paid for being priests or bishops but lived away from their parishes or sees. Acts against high fees charged for funerals and weddings also won popular support for the young king.

In 1532 Henry passed the Act of Annates which ended the payment by a bishop or abbot of the whole of his first year's income to the Pope. Henry decided not to put the Act into operation for a year - hoping that this would persuade the Pope to grant him his divorce. In 1532 Anne Boleyn became pregnant and the question of the divorce was even more urgent if Anne's child was to be born legitimate. Henry therefore married Anne in secret.

In 1533 Henry's parliament passed an Act which forbade appeals in Church cases to be taken to Rome. In May, Cranmer declared Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid and on 1 July Henry anointed and crowned Anne as queen of England. In September Anne's child was born - not the male heir that Henry had hoped for, but a girl, who was christened Elizabeth.

The pope excommunicated Henry and Cranmer for their actions - but in 1534 Henry persuaded Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy which made him the head of the English church. So the break with Rome was complete, largely because of the skilful way in which the lawyer- politician Thomas Cromwell handled parliament. The majority of people accepted these great changes. Only a few imitated Thomas More in refusing to accept Henry as Head of the Church: in 1535 the abbots of two large monasteries, together with some of their monks, were executed for refusing to acknowledge Henry's new status. Cromwell and Henry decided to attack the power of the monasteries to ensure that this opposition would not be repeated. In 1536, 400 of the smaller monasteries were ordered to close and their properties passed to the Crown, and by 1539 the same fate had overtaken larger monasteries. The face of England was changed as a result of the King's desire for a divorce.

Before Henry VIII died he left instructions that his infant son, Edward, was to be advised by a council consisting equally of Catholics and Reformers. But the Duke of Somerset and later the Duke of Northumberland seized power for themselves and their radical Protestant followers. They helped to produce an anti-Catholic prayer book and allowed their followers to plunder churches - tearing down statues, taking out stained-glass windows and painting over decorated walls. When Mary became queen she swung the religious pendulum violently the other way with her attempt to restore Catholicism as the official religion of the country. Some people welcomed this return to the old ways, others saw in it an attempt to make England a province of Catholic Spain. Moreover, Mary's cruelty to her opponents offended the nationalists as well as the religious feelings of her subjects.

Religious differences made politics and diplomacy much more complicated. Religion had become an important diplomatic issue in foreign affairs in Western Europe. This meant that English foreign and domestic policy had to avoid antagonising the major continental powers.

Elizabeth was much wiser than her sister. She realized that the majority of people were neither violently Catholic nor violently Protestant. She also realised that the 'new' men were unwilling to give up their recently acquired monastic land and the wealth it brought them. So she tried to avoid offending people - by producing a prayer book which was not as anti-catholic as that of 1552 and by allowing Catholics to practise their religion as long as they did it quietly. In 1570 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth as the illegitimate daughter of the renegade Henry. Some Catholics took this as a signal to plot against her and to try to put the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the throne in her place. After the death of the French-dominated Mary in 1587, the Spanish felt free to try and conquer England. The failure of this attack confirmed Elizabeth in her position as the much loved queen of a country which had become more nationalist-minded than ever.

Throughout Elizabeth's reign the Catholics tried to increase their influence and a small number of Englishmen went to Europe to be trained as priests. If any of these were caught on their return to England they were executed as traitors. Gradually, therefore, the danger of a catholic revival died out - but the danger from the puritan extremists remained and was of major importance in the seventeenth century.

Bibliography

*ELTON,G.R. (1974) England Under the Tudors. Methuen

*GUY,J. (1988) Tudor England. O.U.P.

*HEARD,N. (1990) Edward VI and Mary a mid-Tudor crisis? Hodder and Stoughton

*PALMER,M.D. (1971) Henry VIII. Longman

*RIDLEY,J. (1988) the Tudor Age. Constable