House of Tudor

Tudor
Parent house	Lancaster and York
Country	Kingdom of England
Founded	1485
Founder	Henry Tudor and Elizabeth Plantagenet
Current head	House Extinct
Final ruler	Elizabeth I of England
Titles	Duke of Richmond, Honour of Richmond
Estate(s)	England
Dissolution	1603
Cadet branches	N/A

For other uses, see Tudor (disambiguation).

The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor (Welsh: Tudur) was an English royal dynasty that lasted 118 years, beginning in 1485 and is seen as one of the most decisive periods in English history, as the dynasty shows the height of powers achieved by its monarchs, most notably Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The founder was Henry Tudor, a descendent of an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, the second son Duke of Lancaster, the third son of Edward III through his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort. Henry VII was also a descendent of Edward I through his great-grandmother, Margaret Holland, the wife of John Beaufort, the son of John of Gaunt.

Henry allied himself with the Lancastrian King Henry VI of England, though later pledged allegiance to the Yorkist Edward IV of England after his return to the throne in 1471, was responsible for modernising national government.

Henry Tudor was succeeded by his second son who became Henry VIII of England, the famous king who had eight wives, and created the Church of England.

Henry VIII was succeeded by his devoutly Protestant son, Edward VI, who attempted to cement the Protestant religion by introducing the Book of Common Prayer. His successor, the devoutly Catholic Mary I, overturned these attempts, and burned hundreds of Protestants at the stake for heresy. Her attempts, however, were also overturned when Elizabeth I re-introduced Protestantism during her long forty-five-year reign between 1558 and 1603.

None of Henry VIII's children had any children of their own. After Elizabeth I's death in 1603, the crown passed to Henry VII's great-grandson, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. The Tudor dynasty was succeeded by the House of Stuart.

Cementing a royal dynasty

File:Familycolor.jpg

The Dynasty Portrait or "The Whitehall Mural" The original by Hans Holbein was destroyed in the fire at Whitehall. This copy was made by Remigius van Leemput in the 17th century. Left to right, clockwise: Henry VIII, Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, and Jane Seymour

The Tudor dynasty was descended from the powerful and successful Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd, through his daughter Gwenllian Rhys, who married Ednyfed Fychan, seneschal of Gwynedd under Llewelyn the Great. The family first gained recognition in 1428-9, when Owen Tudor contracted a secret and illegal marriage to Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. The couple had three sons, two of whom, Jasper and Edmund, became prominent. Owen Tudor was punished for marrying the queen dowager, but his children by Catherine were recognised by Henry VI. Jasper Tudor was created Earl of Pembroke, and Edmund was created Earl of Richmond. Henry VI arranged Edmund's marriage to Margaret Beaufort, a wealthy heiress and a direct descendent of John of Gaunt, the first Duke of Lancaster, through an illegitimate son by Katherine Swynford. Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII of England, was the issue of this marriage.

Edmund remained firmly loyal to the Lancastrian Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses, and died, imprisoned by Edward IV at Carmarthen Castle, on November 1 1456. His son, Henry, was born two months later in 1457; and when Edward IV became king in 1461, he granted the infant's wardship to William, Lord Herbert, one of his major Welsh supporters. Henry lived under Edward IV until 1470, when Henry VI was restored. Henry Tudor was granted an audience with the restored king, and spent time with his Lancastrian uncle Jasper Tudor. Edward IV was once again restored in 1471, and Henry Tudor went into exile. However, Margaret Beaufort's marriage to a prominent Yorkist, Thomas Stanley, the first Earl of Derby, brought the Tudors influence at Court. Edward IV allowed Henry to inherit Margaret's estates when she died.

Edward IV died in 1483. His son Edward became King Edward V, but both he and his brother Richard, Duke of York were presumably murdered and disposed of in the Tower of London. Their uncle, Edward IV's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, seized power and declared himself Richard III of England. Henry Tudor, the last senior-surviving dynastic Lancastrian, fought Richard for the throne at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Henry won, and Richard was killed; Henry was declared Henry VII of England and claimed the throne by right of conquest (his claim through an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt was, at best, extremely weak). He also married Edward's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, thus uniting the warring royal houses of Lancaster and York (also, any issue would be descended from a legitimate royal house through his wife). They were married on January 18 1486.

Henry's success took place in essence in a power vacuum: the fractious English nobility had bled itself close to death in the thirty years prior to his victory at Bosworth Field, allowing him to consolidate power and establish the monarchy on an entirely new basis. Henry, a shrewd and careful man, built up the powers of the lesser magnates, who depended on the crown for their advancement, at the expense of the traditional aristocratic houses.

The Henrys: Six wives and international diplomacy

Marriage diplomacy

King Henry VII, the founder of the royal house of Tudor

Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth bore several children. They had two sons that survived childhood, Arthur, Prince of Wales and Henry. Their daughters included Margaret, who married James IV of Scotland; and Mary, who married Louis XII of France. Henry VII married his eldest son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, cementing an alliance with the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, and the two spent their honeymoon at Ludlow Castle, the traditional seat of the Prince of Wales. However, six months after the marriage, Arthur died, leaving his younger brother Henry as heir apparent. Henry VII acquired a Papal dispensation to allow Henry to marry his brother's widow; although it was granted, Henry VII delayed, and never allowed the marriage to occur in his lifetime.

Catherine of Aragon: divorced for not producing a male heir to the Tudor dynasty

Meanwhile, King Henry VII designed to change the way the country was governed. He consolidated the power of the monarch by disbanding the private armies of his nobles (which could have been used to launch rebellions). He also created Justices of the Peace to maintain law and order in every English county; and set up the Star Chamber, a group of Privy Councillors and lawyers–the king's most trusted men–to hear both criminal and civil court cases. As well as legal efficiency, Henry avoided expensive building projects and avoided unnecessary wars. By the time of his death in 1509, the treasury was full and the monarch was the undisputed head of the government.

Henry VII was succeeded by Henry VIII, his second son, a keen sportsman, devoted follower of the church, and a lover of art and music. After his father's death, Henry VIII was free to marry his fiancée Catherine of Aragon, and the two wed on June 11 1509, and crowned at Westminster Abbey on June 24 the same year. However, Catherine did not bear Henry the sons he was desperate for; Catherine's first child, a daughter, was stillborn, and her second child, a son named Henry, Duke of Cornwall, died fifty-two days after the birth. A further set of stillborn children were conceived, until a daughter Mary was born in 1516. A possible reason for the number of miscarriages suffered by Henry VIII's wives is that they could have been caused by Henry's syphilis. When it became clear to Henry that the Tudor dynasty was at risk, he consulted his chief minister Thomas Cardinal Wolsey about the possibility of divorcing Catherine. Wolsey visited Rome, where he hoped to get the Pope's consent for a divorce. However, the Pope, who was under the influence of Catherine's nephew, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, refused. Wolsey fell from favour as a result of his failure to procure a divorce, and Henry appointed Thomas Cromwell to procure a divorce.

Break with Roman Catholicism

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, Henry VIII's chief minister responsible for the Dissolution of the Monasteries

Cromwell's actions changed the course of English history, and ensured the Tudor dynasty's mark on the national religion. In order to allow Henry to divorce his wife, he broke from the Roman Catholic church, and declared the king Supreme Head of the Church of England. Therefore, the Church of England had been established, with Henry VIII at its head, and his newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared Henry's marriage to Catherine annuled. This allowed Henry to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn, the daughter of a minor diplomat Sir Thomas Boleyn. Anne was expected to produce a son–at the time, knowledge of genetics was largely unknown, and women were blamed if they did not produce a son. Despite this, Anne was confident; she became pregnant in 1533, but the child, born in September that year, was a girl, whom Anne named Elizabeth. Henry was disappointed, but was confident that Anne could still produce a son; Anne became pregnant again, but the child, Henry, died a few hours after birth in 1534. A further miscarriage in 1535 was too much for Henry to bear, and Thomas Cromwell stepped in again, claiming that Anne had taken lovers during her marriage to Henry, and she was tried for high treason, witchcraft and incest; these charges were most likely fabricated, but she was found guilty, and executed in 1536.

Protestant alliance

Henry VIII of England: Henry's quarrels with the Pope led to the creation of the Church of England

Henry married again, for a third time, to Jane Seymour, the daughter of a Wiltshire knight. Jane, pious, submissive and well-tempered, was the opposite of Anne, who was dominating and argumentative. Jane became pregnant, and produced a son, Edward in 1537. Jane died of puerperal fever only a few days after the birth, and Henry was devastated. Meanwhile, Thomas Cromwell was overseeing the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the sale of monastic land to court favourites, and the removal of valuable gold and silver from the monasteries to the Treasury. Cromwell continued to gain the king's favour when he designed and pushed through the Laws in Wales Acts, uniting England and Wales, and continued to hold favour even when Henry faced the biggest threat to his rule. The Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, led by Robert Aske, was a Catholic rising that began in York, in response to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The rebellion ended when Henry invited Aske to a private audience at the royal court, where he was pardoned. However, when fighting broke out again in the north, Henry changed his mind and had Aske executed at Clifford's Tower in York.

Meanwhile, Cromwell's influence was such that he persuaded Henry to marry for a fourth time, to the daughter of a Protestant German duke Anne of Cleves, thus forming an alliance with the Germans and dividing France and Spain; Henry was reluctant to marry again, especially to a Protestant, but he was persuaded when the court painter Hans Holbein the Younger showed him a flattering portrait of her. She arrived in England in December 1539, and Henry rode to Rochester to meet her on January 1 1540. Although the historian Gilbert Burnet claimed that Henry called her a Flanders Mare, there is no evidence that he said this; court ambassadors negotiating the marriage praised her beauty. It is more likely that Anne found Henry unattractive. Whatever the circumstances were, the marriage failed, and Anne agreed to a peaceful annulment, was called the king's sister, and received a massive divorce settlement, which included Richmond Palace, Hever Castle, and numerous other estates across the country. Henry took the opportunity to blame Cromwell for the failed marriage, and he was beheaded on 28 July 1540. Henry later regretted allowing his execution, realising how crucial his expertise had been in the past, and how useful he would have been in the time following his execution. The idea of an anti-Catholic Protestant alliance which Cromwell instigated echoed itself during the Glorious Revolution in 1688, when James II was deposed and replaced by the Protestants William III and Mary II.

Thomas Cranmer, Henry's first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, responsible for the Book of Common Prayer during Edward VI's reign

The fifth marriage was to the Catholic Catherine Howard, a cousin of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, who was promoted by Norfolk in the hope that she would persuade Henry to restore Roman Catholicism in England. At fifteen years old, she was considered young even for the standards of the day. Henry called her his “rose without a thorn”, but the marriage ended in failure. Catherine, forced into a marriage to an unattractive, obese man over thirty years her senior, had never wanted to marry Henry, and conducted an affair with the King's favourite, Thomas Culpeper, while Henry and she were married. She was accused of treason and was executed on February 13 1542, destroying the Roman Catholic hopes of a reconciliation with the Roman church.

While Henry conducted another Protestant marriage with his final wife Catherine Parr in 1543, the old Roman Catholic advisers, including the powerful third Duke of Norfolk had lost all their power and influence. Henry himself was still a committed Catholic, and he was nearly persuaded to arrest Catherine for preaching Lutheran doctrines to Henry while she attended his ill health. However, his son Edward was brought up a strict and devout Protestant by numerous tutors, including Bishop Richard Cox, John Belmain, and Sir John Cheke.

Edward VI: Protestant extremity

After Henry led troops during the Siege of Boulogne in 1544–an attempt to take French territory for England–he died on January 28 1547. His will had re-instated his daughters by his annulled marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn to the line of succession, but did not legitimise them. (Because his marriages had been annulled, they legally never occurred, so his children by those marriages were illegitimate.) Edward, his nine-year old son by Jane Seymour, was declared Edward VI of England.

Duke of Somerset's England

Although Henry had specified a group of men to act as regents during Edward's minority, Edward Seymour, Edward's uncle, quickly seized complete control, and created himself Duke of Somerset on February 15 1547. His domination of the Privy Council, the king's most senior body of advisers, was unchallenged. Somerset aimed to unite England and Scotland by marrying Edward to the young Scottish queen Mary, and aimed to forcibly impose the English Reformation on the Church of Scotland. Somerset led a large and well equipped army to Scotland, where he and the Scottish regent James Hamilton, the second Earl of Arran commanded their armies at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh on September 10 1547. Somerset's army eventually defeated the Scots, but the young Queen Mary was smuggled to France, where she was betrothed to the Dauphin, the future Francis II of France. Despite Somerset's disappointment that no Scottish marriage would take place, his victory at Pinkie Cleugh made his position appear unassailable.

The title page of Archbishop Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, 1549

Meanwhile, Edward VI, despite the fact that he was only a child of nine, had his mind set on religious reform. In 1549, Edward ordered the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, containing the forms of worship for daily and Sunday church services. The controversial new book was not welcomed by either reformers of Catholic conservatives; and it was especially condemned in Devon and Cornwall, where traditional Catholic loyalty was at its strongest. In Cornwall at the time, many of the people could only speak the Cornish language, so the uniform English bibles and church services were not understood by many. This caused the Prayer Book Rebellion, in which groups of Cornish non-conformists gathered round the mayor. The rebellion worried Somerset, now Lord Protector, and he sent an army to impose military solution to the rebellion. One in ten of the indigenous Cornish population was slaughtered. The rebellion did not persuade Edward to tread carefully, and only hardened his attitude towards Catholic non-conformists. This extended to Edward's elder sister, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, who was a pious and devout Catholic. Although called before the Privy Council several times to renounce her faith and stop hearing the Catholic Mass, she refused. He had a good relationship with his sister Elizabeth, who was a Protestant, albeit a moderate one, but this was strained when Elizabeth was accused of having an affair with the Duke of Somerset's brother, Thomas Seymour, the first Baron Seymour of Sudeley, the widow of Henry's last wife Catherine Parr. Elizabeth was interviewed by one of Edward's advisers, and she was eventually found not to be guilty, despite forced confessions from her servants Catherine Ashley and Thomas Parry. Thomas Seymour was arrested and beheaded on March 20 1549.

Problematic succession

A small boy with a big mind: Edward VI, desperate for a Protestant succession, changed his father's will to allow Lady Jane Grey to become queen

Lord Protector Somerset was also losing favour. After forcibly removing Edward VI to Windsor Castle, with the intention of keeping him hostage, Somerset was removed from power by Edward's rival on the council, John Dudley, the first Earl of Warwick, who created himself Duke of Northumberland shortly after his rise. Northumberland effectively became Lord Protector, but he did not use this title, learning from the mistakes his predecessor made. Northumberland was furiously ambitious, who aimed to secure Protestant uniformity while making himself land and money rich in the process; he ordered churches to be stripped of all traditional Catholic symbolism, resulting in the plain traditional churches often seen in Church of England churches seen today. A revision of the Book of Common Prayer was published in 1552. When Edward VI became ill in 1553, his advisers feared he would die, and looked to the future imminent accession of the Catholic Lady Mary, who would overturn all the reforms made during Edward's reign. Perhaps surprisingly, it was the dying Edward himself who feared a return to Catholicism, and wrote a new will repudiating the 1544 will of Henry VIII, which gave the succession to his cousin Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VII's daughter Mary Tudor, who, after the death of Louis XII of France in 1515 had married Henry VIII's favourite Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk. Lady Jane's mother was Lady Frances Brandon, the daughter of Suffolk and Princess Mary. Northumberland married Jane to his youngest son Guildford Dudley, allowing himself to get the most out of a necessary Protestant succession. Most of Edward's council signed the Devise for the Succession, and when Edward VI died on July 6 1553, Lady Jane was proclaimed queen. However, the popular support for the proper Tudor dynasty–even a Catholic member–overruled Northumberland's plans, and Jane, who had never wanted to accept the crown, was deposed after just nine days. Mary's supporters joined her in a triumphal procession to London, accompanied by her younger sister Elizabeth.

Mary I: A troubled queen's reign

File:Mary1England.jpg

Mary I of England, who returned England to the Roman Catholic Church

The early reign of Queen Mary I was successful. The politicians formerly loyal to Lady Jane Grey flocked to support Mary, and she pardoned most of those who would have kept her off the throne. Lady Jane herself was locked in the Tower of London in relative comfort, and allowed to walk outside (within the Tower walls) with relative freedom. However, when Jane's father Henry Grey, the first Duke of Suffolk, attempted to depose Mary and put Jane back on the throne, Mary executed both the Dukes of Suffolk and Northumberland. After some hesitation, she sent Lady Jane to the scaffold on February 12 1554, to avoid any further attempts to re-instate her to the throne. The Tudor dynasty's hold on the throne of England was once again secure.

However, Mary soon announced that she was intending to marry the Spanish prince Philip, son of her mother's nephew Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The prospect of a marriage alliance with Spain proved unpopular with the English people, who were worried that Spain would use England as a satellite, involving England in wars without the popular support of the people. Popular discontent grew; a Protestant courtier, Thomas Wyatt the younger led a rebellion against Mary, with the aim of deposing and replacing her with her half-sister Elizabeth. The plot was discovered, and Wyatt's supporters were hunted down and killed. Wyatt himself was tortured, in the hope that he would give evidence that Elizabeth was involved so that Mary could have her executed for treason. Wyatt never implicated Elizabeth, and he was beheaded. Elizabeth spent her time between different prisons, including the Tower of London.

Protestants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley being burned at the stake during Mary's reign

Mary married Philip at Winchester Cathedral, on July 25 1554. Philip found her unattractive, and only spent the minimal amount of time with her. Despite Mary believing she was pregnant numerous times during her five-year reign, she never reproduced. Devastated that she rarely saw her husband, and anxious that she was not bearing an heir to Catholic England, Mary took her revenge on Protestants by burning many of them at the stake between 1555 and 1558. Mary aimed to eradicate Protestant heresy, but her actions, even for Catholic conservatives, was seen as brutal and extreme; she became deeply unpopular with her people, and they hoped for her death so that Elizabeth could succeed her. Mary's dream of a resurrected Catholic Tudor dynasty was finished, and her popularity further declined when she lost the last English area on French soil, Calais, to Francis, Duke of Guise on January 7 1558. Mary died, bitter and lonely, on November 17 1558. Elizabeth Tudor was now Elizabeth I of England.

The Age of Intrigues and Plots: Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I at her coronation on January 15 1559

Elizabeth I, who was staying at Hatfield House at the time of her accession, rode to London to the cheers of both the ruling class and the common people. She chose as her chief minister Sir William Cecil, a Protestant, and former secretary to Lord Protector the Duke of Somerset and then to the Duke of Northumberland. Under Mary, he had been spared, and often visited Elizabeth, ostensibly to review her accounts and expenditure. Elizabeth also appointed her personal favourite, the son of the Duke of Northumberland Lord Robert Dudley, her Master of the Horse, giving him constant personal access to the queen.

Imposing the Church of England

Elizabeth was a moderate Protestant; she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who played a key role in the English Reformation in the 1520s. At her coronation in January 1559, many of the bishops–Catholic, appointed by Mary, who had expelled many of the Protestant clergymen when she became queen in 1553–refused to perform the service in English. Eventually, the relatively minor Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe, performed the ceremony; but when Oglethorpe attempted to perform traditional Catholic parts of the Coronation, Elizabeth got up and left. Following the Coronation, two important Acts were passed through parliament: the Act of Uniformity and the Act of Supremacy, establishing the Protestant Church of England and creating Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England (Supreme Head, the title used by her father and brother, was seen as inappropriate for a woman ruler). These acts, known collectively as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, made it compulsory to attend church services every Sunday; and imposed an oath on clergymen and statesmen to recognise the Church of England, the independence of the Church of England from the Vatican, and the authority of Elizabeth as Supreme Governor. Elizabeth made it clear that if they refused the oath the first time, they would have a second opportunity, after which, if the oath was not sworn, the offender would be deprived of their offices and estates.

Pressure to marry

File:Mary-queen-of-scots full.jpg

Mary, Queen of Scots, who conspired with English nobles to take the English throne for herself

The popularity of Elizabeth was extremely high, but her Privy Council, her Parliament and her subjects thought that the unmarried queen should take a husband; it was generally accepted that, once a queen regnant was married, the husband would relieve the woman of the burdens of head of state. Also, without an heir, the Tudor dynasty would end; the risk of civil war between rival claimants was a possibility if Elizabeth died childless. The first and most ardent suitor was Mary I's widower Philip II of Spain. However, numerous other suitors from nearly all European nations sent ambassadors to the English court to put forward their suit. Risk of death came dangerously close in 1564 when Elizabeth caught smallpox; when she was most at risk, she named Robert Dudley as Lord Protector in the event of her death. After her recovery, she appointed Dudley to the Privy Council and created him Earl of Leicester, in the hope that he would marry Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary rejected him, and instead married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a descendent of Henry VII, giving Mary a stronger claim to the English throne. Although many Catholics were loyal to Elizabeth, many also believed that, because Elizabeth was declared illegitimate after her parents marriage was annulled, Mary was the strongest legitimate claimant. Despite this, Elizabeth would not name Mary her heir; as she had experienced during the reign of her predecessor Mary I, the opposition could flock around the heir if they were disheartened with Elizabeth's rule.

Pope Pius V, who issued the Papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth and relieving her subjects of their allegiance to her

Numerous threats to the Tudor dynasty occurred during Elizabeth's reign. In 1569, a group of Earls led by Charles Neville, the sixth Earl of Westmorland, and Thomas Percy, the seventh Earl of Northumberland attempted to depose Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1571, the Protestant-turned-Catholic Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, had plans to marry Mary, Queen of Scots and then replace Elizabeth with Mary. The plot, masterminded by Roberto di Ridolfi, was discovered and Norfolk was beheaded. The next major uprising was in 1601, when Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, attempted to raise the city of London against Elizabeth's government. The city of London proved unwilling to rebel; Essex and most of his co-rebels were executed. Threats also came from abroad. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued a Papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance to her. Elizabeth came under pressure from Parliament to execute Mary, Queen of Scots to prevent any further attempts to replace her; though faced with several official requests, she vacillated between the decision to agree to the murder of an anointing queen, until she finally signed the death warrant in 1586. Mary was executed at Fotheringay Castle on February 8 1587, to the outrage of Catholic Europe.

Last hopes of a Tudor heir

The Spanish Armada: Catholic Spain's attempt to depose Elizabeth and take control of England

Despite the uncertainty of Elizabeth's–and therefore the Tudor dynasty's–hold on England, Elizabeth never married. The closest she came to marriage was between 1579 and 1581, when she was courted by Francis, Duke of Anjou, the son of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Despite Elizabeth's government constantly begging her to marry in the early years of her reign, it now was persuading Elizabeth not to marry the French prince; his mother, Catherine de' Medici, was suspected of ordering the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of six thousand French Protestant Hugenots in 1572. Elizabeth bowed to public discontent against the marriage, learning from the mistake her sister made when she married Philip II of Spain, and sent the Duke of Anjou away. Elizabeth knew that the continuation of the Tudor dynasty was now impossible; she was forty-eight in 1581, and too old to bear children.

By far the most dangerous threat to the Tudor dynasty during Elizabeth's reign was the Spanish Armada of 1588. Launched by Elizabeth's old suitor Philip II of Spain, and commanded by Alonso de Guzmán El Bueno, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Spanish had 22 galleons and 108 armed merchant ships; however, the English and the Dutch Republic outnumbered them. The Spanish lost as a result of bad weather on the English Channel and poor planning and supplies, and the skills of Sir Francis Drake and Charles Howard, the second Baron Howard of Effingham (later first Earl of Nottingham).

While Elizabeth declined physically with age, her running of the country continued to benefit her people. In response to famine across England due to bad harvests in the 1590s, Elizabeth introduced the poor law, allowing peasants that were too ill to work a certain amount of money from the state. All the money Elizabeth had borrowed from Parliament in twelve of the thirteen parliamentary sessions was paid back; by the time of her death, Elizabeth not only had no debts, but was in credit. Elizabeth died childless at Richmond Palace on March 24 1603. She never named a successor. However, her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil had corresponded with the Protestant Stuart son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, and James's succession to the English throne was unopposed. The Tudor dynasty had ended and the Stuart House became the English royal house.

Tudor monarchs of England

The six Tudor monarchs were:

Image	Name	Claim to the throne	Birth date	Accession date	Death date	Spouse(s)
	Henry VII	Right of conquest	January 28 1457	August 22 1485 (crowned October 30 1485)	April 21 1509	Elizabeth of York
	Henry VIII	Son of Henry VII	June 28 1491	April 21 1509 (crowned June 24 1509)	January 28 1547	(I) Catherine of Aragon, (II) Anne Boleyn, (III) Jane Seymour, (IV) Anne of Cleves, (V) Catherine Howard, (VI) Catherine Parr
	Edward VI	Son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour	October 12 1537	January 28 1547 (crowned February 20 1547)	July 6 1553	—
	Jane	Granddaughter of Henry VII's daughter Mary Brandon (née Tudor), Duchess of Suffolk	1537	July 10 1553	February 12 1554	Lord Guildford Dudley
File:Mary1England.jpg	Mary I	Daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon	February 18 1516	July 19 1553 (crowned October 1 1553)	November 18 1558	Philip II of Spain
	Elizabeth I	Daughter of Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn	September 7 1533	November 17 1558 (crowned January 15 1559)	March 24 1603	—

Henry VII's great-granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey also served as Queen for nine days before being deposed by Mary I. Jane was later executed along with her husband Guildford Dudley, son of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland.

To the Tudor period belongs the elevation of the English-ruled state in Ireland from a Lordship to a Kingdom (1541).

Tudor Family Tree

Margaret Beaufort was born in 1443, not 1433 as shown in the table.

References

• Guy, John (ed). The Tudor Monarchy. St Martin’s Press, 1997.
• Turton, Godfrey. The Dragon’s Breed: The Story of the Tudors from Earliest Times to 1603. Peter Davies, 1970.
• Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, ‘Beaufort, Margaret , countess of Richmond and Derby (1443–1509)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 27 Aug 2007
• R. S. Thomas, ‘Tudor, Edmund , first earl of Richmond (c.1430–1456)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 27 Aug 2007

External links

• Tudor Place
• Tudor History
• House of Tudor Chronology
• Official British Royal Site Discussion on the Tudors
• Template:PDFlink
• Tudor History

See also

• England and Wales
• Wars of the Roses
• Tudor style
• Tudor rose
• Richmond Castle
• Richmond Palace
• Tudor re-conquest of Ireland
• The Tudors and the Royal Navy