THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE (1485-1625) HISTORICAL BACKGROUND DOTT. GABRIELE A. COCCO

1. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE (1485-1625) HISTORICAL BACKGROUND DOTT. GABRIELE A. COCCO

2. HISTORICALBACKGROUND • ‘Discovery’ of America Death of Lorenzo de’ Medici 1534 Act of Supremacy – Henry VIII 1547-53 Reign of Protestant Edward VI 1553-58 Reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor • Crowning of Elizabeth I • Execution of Mary Stuart ‘Queen of Scots’ a Catholic usurper to the throne of Elizabeth • Defeat of Spanish Armada • Death of Elizabeth I Succession of James IV Stuart of Scotland → James I • Gunpowder Plot 1620 Departure of the Pilgrims Fathers for New England 1625 Charles I becomes king

4. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR By the 15th century England enjoyed peace and internal stability; as a result, it attempted to expand into a European Empire by repeatedly attacking France. Henry V (House of Lancaster) led England to victory at Agincourt in 1415. His soldiers fought for a King and a Countryhaving a sense of nationhood that the French feudal system of independent baronial armies did not share. Henry was acknowledged heir to the throne of Francein 1420, consolidating his position by marrying the French Princess Catherine. However, his early death and weak successor, combined with the military success of Joan of Arc, the British were forced back to Calais, which was to remain England’s only French port for other 100 years.

6. THE WARS OF THE ROSES(1454-1485)

7. The Middle Ages closed in England with a long, devastating blood feudfought for royal power between the ancient dynastic houses of York and Lancaster. The civil war, aggravated by the soldiers returning home from France, discontented and unemployed and ready to continue fighting under new leaders, was not a total war, but a series of sieges, attacks organised by a few wealthy nobles. The wars were finally won by Henry Tudor (House of Lancaster) who defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and became Henry VII of England.

8. Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this sun of York;And all the clouds that lour'd upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; […] And now, instead of mounting barded steedsTo fright the souls of fearful adversaries,I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my timeInto this breathing world, scarce half made up,And that so lamely and unfashionableThat dogs bark at me as I halt by them;Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, William Shakespeare, Richard III Act I, scene 1

9. King Henry VII Under his rule England enjoyed a fairly long spell of unbroken peace and prosperity: Tudor Grammar Schools with their more or less uniform curricula had established the possibility of loyalty to a community of the educated laity. • Army and Navy and the State administration were reorganised and put under the direct and strict control of the king. • A mercantile fleet was created to promote trade with foreign countries. • Political alliances were made; Henry VII married his eldest son, Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of the future Emperor Charles V of Spain.

10. HENRY VIII (1509-47) His accession was welcomed by humanists scholars, Erasmus of Rotterdam at their head, as the beginning of a new Golden Age. Henry received classicaleducation from John Skelton. He was a typical Renaissance princewho maintained a magnificent court as he liked music and dancing; he was a poet and athlete. He was also a great patron of the arts and intellectuals. Yet he was cruel and executed all those who displeased him. He spent money on warship and guns, making the English fighting fleetthe best in Europe.

11. The Reformation and the Church of England The initial cause of contention between the king and the Papacywas Pope Clement VII’s refusal to grant the king a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his deceased brother Arthur. Henry was obsessed by Catherine’s inability to give him a male heir and, at the same time, was enthralled by the charms of Ann Boleyn. Henry’s friend and advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, was also unable to change the Pope’s mind and so Henry decided to sever all contact with the Church of Rome. Wolsey refused to follow the king on the road to Reformation as he wanted to become a papal candidate. His chancellor, Sir Thomas More – a strong Catholic, objected to the divorce and resigned, but after Henry passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, More’s continued objection became an act of treason and he was executed.

12. The Act of Supremacy (1534) Henry VIII became the only Supreme Head on Earth of the Anglican Church or Church of England and had the right to choose the bishops. The king was persuaded by his secretary Thomas Cromwell to dissolve the monasteries and seize their wealth. Cromwell became known as Malleus Monachorum. The lands and the wealth of the monasteries were confiscated between 1536 and 1539. The lands were sold mainly to families that made up the new Tudor aristocracy. These families were eager to defend their newly-acquired properties and they gave the Crown support in fighting against Rome. The social charities such as schools and hospitals for the poor mostly disappeared.

14. THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII As a young man, Henry had been married by special dispensation to CATHERINE OF ARAGONwho gave him a daughter, Mary, but she was now unlikely to bear him a son. In 1536, ANNE BOLEYN, who had given the king a daughter, Elizabeth, was executed and Henry married JANE SEYMOUR. In 1540, the king later married the Protestant ANNE OF CLEVESbut he soon divorced to marry CATHERINE HOWARD. After two years he had he executed because of a love affair with hr cousin. Henry’s last wife was CATHERINE PARR, who managed to survive her husband.

16. HENRY VIII’S VICTIMS Though an efficient administrator, Thomas Cromwell made a mistake in arranging Henry’s fourth marriage –to establish an alliance with the German protestant princes against France and the Empire. Thomas Morewas beheaded in 1535, he was only one of the estimated 17,000 people the king had executed. The young poet and diplomat the Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, was executed on Tower Hill for his Roman Catholic faith. Anne Boleyn andCatherine Howard, two of the king’s wives, were both accused of being unfaithful and were sentenced to death.

17. EdwardVI(1547-53) Henry VIII died in 1574 and was succeeded by his nine years old son Edward, an invalid. King Edward continued his father’s moves towardsEnglish Protestantismunder guidance of his two advisors, his uncle, the idealist Seymour, and the ambitious John, Earl of Warwick. He was also helped by Archbishop Cranmer, who wroteTheBook of Common Prayer. a Protestant catechism and prayer book, was issued and church services in England instead of Latin were made obligatory. TheBook of Common Prayer replaced the Latin missal, it was introduced in 1549 and revised several times until 1975. It is considered alandmark of English prose.

18. LADY JANE GREY Tuberculosis snatched Edward VI away, and, as the duke of Northumberland had sought to guarantee, Lady Jane Grey, was proclaimed queen, a state of affairs that lasted nine days.

19. BLOODY MARY(1553-58) She was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and the wife of Philip II of Spain. During her reign Puritans were put to death. The celebration of Puritan martyrs had survived in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1562-63), whilst the Catholic queen for he intolerance as for religious matters became popularly known as Bloody Mary. A great amount of executions was carried out under her orders, 300 Protestants were burned at the stake, including her father’s friends Latimer and Cramner.

20. Microcosm and Macrocosm The Chain of Being Elizabethans pictured universal order under three forms: • a chain • a series of corresponding planes • a cosmic dance § CHAIN: It stretched from God to the meanest of inanimate objects § PLANES: The different planes were divine and angelic, the universe or macrocosm, the body politic, man or the microcosm, and lower creation. § DANCE: The created universe was itself in a state of music, perpetual dance.

21. The whole universe was governed by divine will; Nature was God’s instrument, the social hierarchy was a product of Nature. It followed that subordination and unity were the natural rules for the state, a “body politic” which wasto be subject to a single head.

22. Elizabeth I (1558-1603) A critical time of English history. England was under constant threat of its Catholic enemies, Spain in particular. Elizabeth managed to steer the Church of England between the two extremes of Catholicism on the one hand, and strongly radical forms of Protestantism – in the form of Puritanism – on the other. The religious compromise granted internal peace and enabled England to increase wealth and commercial power

23. Elizabeth’s Ecclesiastical Policy SECOND ACT OF SUPREMACY (1559). It restated the independence of the Church of England and proclaimed the queen its ‘Supreme Governor’. Elizabeth was not proclaimed Head of the Church of England by the Parliament. ACT OF UNIFORMITY (1559) It made the use of The Book of Common Prayer compulsory throughout England. The Anglican Church was not a Reformed Church on the model of German or Swiss Churches. The authority of the pope was abolished but not that of the bishops; the Church was still hierarchically ordered. Most of Catholic dogmas and exterior forms of worship were kept. All Church ceremonies and liturgy were now in English and monastic orders had been abolished.

24. MARY STUART Mary Stuart was the Queen of Scots. She was the heir to the throne after Elizabeth; a Catholic. She lived in France and was married to the Dauphin of France. She truly represented a great internal threat to Elizabeth’s security. After the death of her husband, King François II, many English Catholics tried to make her queen of England, with the intention to restore Catholicism. Mary was kept prisoner for over 18 years and in 1587 after discovering her involvement in a plot to seize the throne of England, Elizabeth reluctantly had her executed.

25. Portrait of the Sieve By Quentin Massys the Young (ca. 1580-1583) Oil on Canvas, Pinacoteca Nazionale Siena

26. The Rainbow Portrait Marcus Gheeraerts (ca. 1600-1603) Hatfield House

27. "The Ditchley Portrait", by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger c. 1592., Oil on canvas. The National Portrait Gallery

28. The Armada Portrait by George Gower (ca. 1588) oil on canvas Wobum Abbey

30. The Ermine Portrait William Segar (1585) Hatfield House

31. The Pelican Portrait

32. The Pelican Portrait PELICAN: “by means of her bill and claws, the mother pets her nestlings and with such a devotion she kills them. Three days later, the father finds the nestlings dead and, in great despair, he pecks at his breast and pierces it. The blood that flows out of his wounds restores the nestling to life” St. Jerome, Exegesis on Psalm 102 Questi è colui che giacque sopra ‘l petto del nostro pellicano, e questi fue di su la croce al gran officio eletto Dante, Paradiso XXV, 112-114

33. The Phoenix Portrait

34. JAMES I He was the son of Mary Stuart and her second husband, Lord Darnley. He became the first of the Stuart kings in England, ruling both countries as James VI of Scotland and James I of England. He showed a belief in the divine right of kings to rule. And in the subjection of Parliament to the king’s will; he also insisted on strict conformity to the rites of the Anglican Church. This excluded both Catholics and Puritans from government, since conformity to the Church of England was required to hold public offices.

35. (November 5, 1605)

36. Crispen van de Passe, The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators (c.1606)

37. Problems were immediate and James became an unpopular king. Having inherited a large national debt from Elizabeth, that rapidly trebled in size, James found it increasingly difficult to force Parliament to ratify any new taxes to pay for the debt. A bitter debate between King and Parliament arose. The king was also faced with tension from the emerging Puritan group in society. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which an attempt to blow up the Houses o Parliament was discovered and the supposed leader, the Catholic Guy Fawkes was executed, the fear of a Catholic revolution was high. The Puritans petitioned the king to purify English society of ‘alien’ Catholic interest.

38. Seventeenth century print of the members of the Gunpowder plot being hanged, drawn and quartered