General Reference Summary of the Tudor Period (1485-1603)
I. Government II. Religion III. Military Affairs. IV. Literature,
Learning and Art. V. General Industry and Commerce. VI. Mode of
Life, Manners, and Customs
I. Government
406. Absolutism of the Crown; Free Trade; the Post Office.
During a great part of the Tudor period the power of the Crown was well-nigh absolute. Four causes contributed to this: (1) The destruction of a very large part of the feudal nobility by the Wars of the Roses.[1] (2) The removal of many of the higher clergy from the House of Lords.[2] (3) The creation of a new nobility dependant on the king. (4) The desire of the great body of the people for "peace at any price."
[1] In the last Parliament before the Wars of the Roses (1454) there were fifty-three temporal peers; at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII (1485) there were only twenty-nine. [2] Out of a total of barely ninety peers, Henry VIII, by the suppression of the monasteries, removed upwards of thirty-six abbots and priors. He, however, added five new bishops, which made the House of Lords number about fifty-nine.
Under Henry VII and Elizabeth the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission exercised arbitrary power, and often inflicted cruel punishments for offenses against the government, and for heresy or the denial of the religious supremacy of the sovereign.
Henry VII established a treaty of free trade, called the "Great Intercourse," between England and the Netherlands. Under Elizabeth the first postmaster-general entered upon his duties, though the post office was nott fully established until the reign of her successor.
II. Religion
407. Establishment of the Protestant Church of England.