The Tudors and the Leap to the Sea

So far, we have watched the idea of ‘the rule of law’ bud in Magna Carta, and seen the first wedge driven into a king’s power. Yet it was not Parliament alone that set the island’s destiny in motion. In the sixteenth century, a great religious upheaval that shook the whole of Europe washed over the island of Britain as well. The spark was the private affair of a single king. From it grew a church of its own, parted from the Pope in Rome, and in time, in the generation of his daughter, the day came to settle accounts with Spain, the great power across the sea. In this chapter, with the single century of the Tudor dynasty as our stage, we trace how religious reform and the leap to the sea became entangled, and how they pushed the island toward becoming a maritime nation, following both the light and the shadow of that story.

The Church Born of a Divorce: Henry VIII and the Reformation

The Tudor dynasty came to the throne after a long civil war, the Wars of the Roses. Its second monarch, Henry VIII (1491-1547), is often spoken of together with his ‘six wives.’ Yet the deepest mark he left on the island’s history was the independence of a church, which began from matters surrounding his marriage.

Henry was not blessed with a male heir by his first wife, Catherine, and wished for a divorce. At the time, dissolving a marriage required the approval of the Pope in Rome, but with political matters also entangled, the Pope refused to grant it. So Henry chose to proceed over the Pope’s head. In 1534, through Parliament, the Act of Supremacy was established, declaring the King of England to be ‘the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England.’ In this way the Church of England, parted from the authority of Roman Catholicism, began to take shape.

What deserves attention is the point, often argued, that Henry’s reform was not necessarily an attempt to renew the faith itself. Whereas Luther and others in Germany questioned the very foundations of doctrine, Henry’s concern is said to have lain rather in governance and power. In fact, even after the head of the church was replaced from the Pope to the king, much of worship and doctrine retained the strong coloring of Catholic form. On the other hand, he pressed forward with the dissolution of the monasteries, and it is said that he transferred their vast lands and wealth to the crown and his supporters. This enriched the finances of royal power, while at the same time it was an event that shook the lives of those who had depended on the monasteries.

Defusing the Divisions: The Realism of Elizabeth I

After Henry’s death, England swayed back and forth over religion. Protestant-leaning rule and a swing back toward Catholicism followed one another, and it is said that under each reign, people of differing positions suffered persecution. It was an age in which the choice of religion could be a matter of life and death.

The one who passed through that stormy sea was Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Coming to the throne in 1558, she is said to have tried to settle the fierce conflict between Protestants and Catholics through a practical compromise, rather than swinging all the way toward one side or the other. While establishing the structure of the national church, she did not delve too deeply into people’s inner faith. Such flexibility, it is said, brought a measure of stability for the time being. That said, this reign too had its religious tensions and harsh crackdowns, and it must be viewed fairly that it was not wholly peaceful.

Elizabeth’s age is also known as a time when culture blossomed. It was around then that the playwright Shakespeare began his activity, and rich expression in the English language was nurtured. At the same time, the spirit of turning one’s eyes beyond the sea grew stronger. Navigators such as Francis Drake set out onto the world’s seas, and through privateering, state-sanctioned acts of piracy, they engaged in seizing wealth from Spanish ships. This was a bold, enterprising spirit, and at the same time, seen from the other side, it was nothing but plunder, and it became one cause of deepening the later conflict with Spain. Here too, light and shadow are bound together inseparably.

The Changing of Sea Power: 1588, the Confrontation with the Armada

The conflict over religion and the clashing interests over the sea gradually converged into one great collision. The Spain of that time was a great power, backed by the wealth of the New World and called ‘the empire on which the sun never sets,’ and it took upon itself the role of defender of Catholicism. Protestant-leaning England, and its provocations at sea, became something that King Philip II of Spain found hard to overlook.

In 1588, Spain sent out a great fleet, the armada later called the Invincible Armada, to invade England. Records relate that a great fleet of some one hundred thirty ships was mobilized. Against this, the English side used more nimble ships and guns, and fought in the English Channel. One of the moves regarded as decisive was the tactic of fire ships, sending vessels set ablaze into the enemy formation, by which the Spanish fleet’s formation is said to have been greatly thrown into disorder. Further, on the return voyage, the fleet was caught in storms and is said to have lost many ships and men along the coast of Ireland and elsewhere.

This event is often told as a story in which ‘a small island nation defeated a great power.’ Yet caution is also needed in that assessment. It has been pointed out that England’s victory was greatly aided not only by skillful tactics but also by the chance of weather. Moreover, this single battle did not immediately bring about Spain’s downfall or make England the master of the seas. Spain remained powerful, and the shift in the balance of sea power came only over a long span of time thereafter. Even so, it is certain that this victory gave the island’s people great confidence and helped spur the spirit of rowing out to sea.

The single century of the Tudor dynasty began with the independence of a church born from a private matter of divorce, passed through the realism that defused religious division, and arrived at a confrontation with a great power across the sea. The island parted from an outside authority called Rome and found a way forward toward the sea, sharpening that outline. Yet the force swelling out toward the wider world also drew new tension into the inside of the nation. How far does the king’s authority reach? How far may Parliament have its say? After Elizabeth’s death, when the Tudor dynasty drew its curtain, that question could no longer be put off. In the next century, the island steps into an age of head-on collision between king and Parliament: the age of civil war.