The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (5 page)

No evidence proves that Owen Tudor and Catherine de Valois ever married,

which makes the Tudor line illegitimate. That wasn't much of a problem in

the 15th century unless, of course, you tried to claim the English throne.

Henry's claim to the throne was weak, but he got lucky at the Battle of

Bosworth in August 1485 (see Chapter 2) and, with the death of Richard III,

went on to become king. At that time at least 18 people had a better right to

the throne than Henry, including his own wife and mother. By 1510, when his

son Henry VIII was king, the figure had increased to 34! Perhaps it was this

insecurity that explains much of the changes in society that happened in the

Tudor period.

Cruising the Royal Court

The Court was much more than a building � it was the place where the king

lived with his family, where the business of government was carried out and

where key decisions were made. It was always full of people, courtiers, ser-

vants, ministers, priests, entertainers and hangers-on hoping to find fame and

fortune. Until 1603 the Court moved from one palace to another, taking every-

thing but the kitchen sink with it. Henry VIII had only one set of furniture that

went wherever he did!

Mingling with the monarch

The king or queen in Tudor England was the government. Although the mon-

archs worked through Parliament to an increasing extent, all major decisions

came from the top, and the king or queen had to be consulted at all times.

In theory, the monarch:

Appointed and dismissed ministers

Called and dismissed Parliament (in theory, the nation's representatives)

Collected taxes

Commanded the army and navy

Decided on issues like war and peace

Worked with the Church but did not run it (the Tudors soon changed that)

In practice, the monarch:

Believed in a hotline to God as `the Lord's anointed'

Set the fashion in clothes, education and entertainment

Was the chief patron, giving out lands, titles and charity Chapter 1: Touring the Time of the Tudors 13 Henry VII was the first king to be called `Your Majesty'. Before that, kings were known as `Your Grace'. Until 1485 the king was primus inter pares (first among equals) but the Tudors lifted royal status much higher. The Stuart family, who followed in 1603, tried to go further still, which resulted in the Civil War (1642� 1648) and the execution of Charles I (1649).

Breaking down the Court The Court was divided into two main parts, the Household and the Chamber, followed by various councils and a few odds and ends like the Chapel Royal, the stables, the kennels and the toils (cages for the hunting hawks).

The Tudors, like all kings before them, loved hunting (see Chapter 3), so they had a huge team of servants just to look after the wolfhounds, palfreys (saddle horses) and falcons.

Handling the Household The Household hadn't changed much since the 14th century. It had nearly 20 departments, handling every aspect of the royal family's lives. The lord steward ran the Household and the controller kept tabs on the running costs in the counting house (in 1545 Henry VIII's Court cost �47,500 to run � a huge sum at the time).

Think about your daily life and imagine an army of servants to doing all you chores for you. The various departments dressed and undressed the royals, provided water for washing, cleaned their rooms and made their beds. They prepared, cooked and served their meals and washed up afterwards. They lit candles and fires, looked after clothes and jewellery and emptied toilets (it was a messy job, but somebody had to do it).

Each department was run by a sergeant and most of the staff were men (the laundry was mostly female). Some staff were very specialist:

The yeomen of the guard were the king's bodyguard (check out the beef-

eaters at the Tower of London � they still wear Tudor-style uniforms).

The king's music were the royal orchestra.

The royal confessors were the king's chaplains or priests.

In addition doctors, chemists, scholars and artists came and went, the great- est of them increasing the reputation of the Court in the eyes of the world. Hans Holbein is perhaps the best known of these great men; playwrights like William Shakespeare never got that close to the top, but Elizabeth certainly saw some of his plays.

The Tudor Court even employed pages (little boys) to take a beating rather than a naughty prince having to receive pain! They were called whipping boys. 14 Part I: Encountering the Early Tudors

Only the more senior servants were allowed to live with their wives, which

made the Household a happy hunting ground for whores. Much of the lord

steward's time was spent shooing harlots off the premises and preventing

punch-ups between servants.

Channelling the Chamber

The Chamber was the king's personal space. This was the centre of govern-

ment and the servants there were gentlemen or even noblemen. The lord

chamberlain ran the Chamber, but individual members vied with each other

as royal favourites.

Having the `ear of the king' was very important under the Tudors. Any gentle-

man who wanted to get on or any nobleman who had ideas he wanted carried

out had to get reach the king to suggest things to him. Only the king could

issue orders that would be carried out. This naturally caused rivalry and bit-

terness at times, but it was also a way for the monarch to keep his or her staff

on their toes. In the reign of Elizabeth, for example, much of the discussion

was about the queen's marriage and a number of courtiers put themselves for-

ward as potential husbands.

Over the Tudor period, the role of the Chamber changed:

Henry VII set up a Privy (personal) Chamber of new men � servants from

relatively humble backgrounds � and dealt with his noble and gentleman

attendants separately (see Chapter 2).

Henry VIII modelled his Privy Chamber on that of the French king,

Henry's rival Francis I. The men in his Chamber were his hunting and

drinking cronies but he trusted them to carry out delicate diplomatic

missions.

Edward VI was too young to govern by himself and the closest advisers

he had were his tutors. The Privy Chamber lost its central role.

Mary and Elizabeth's accessions changed the whole set-up. Ladies in

waiting became important, but women, apart from the queen, couldn't

get involved in politics, so they tended to work on Mary and Elizabeth to

get promotions and favours for their men folk.

For more on the Privy Chamber, see the nearby sidebar `Being privy to the

Privy Chamber'.

Counting the councils

The royal Council was the fore-runner of today's Cabinet. Its members were

the great secretaries of state who advised monarchs on any matter they

considered important. We meet these advisers close up and personal in this

book, men like . . . Chapter 1: Touring the Time of the Tudors 15

Francis Walsingham

Robert Dudley

Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Seymour

Thomas Wolsey

William Cecil

. . . and many more.

But councils also existed for the North and for Wales and the West. At local

level, the government was carried out by lords lieutenants of counties

appointed by the monarch and landowners acting as justices of the peace.

The lords lieutenants:

Acted as judges in local cases

Called out the militia (part time soldiers) in case of invasion or other

emergency

Collected taxes

Kings and queens weren't bound to take the advice of their councillors. As

long as men like Wolsey and Cromwell got the job done for Henry VIII, they

were fine. But if the advisers failed, they could not only be fired but also exe-

cuted. But despite the risks of the job, some advisers were very close to their

employer: Robert Dudley was Elizabeth's lover, and Francis Walsingham died

bankrupt having spent so much of his own money to keep Elizabeth safe.

Being privy to the Privy Chamber The Privy Chamber was run by the chief gentle- worked hard to push her image as Gloriana and man or gentlewoman and was a showcase for the virgin queen, the Chamber was for court- the monarch. Under Henry VIII it was all about ship, music and poetry mixed with the harder tournaments and lavish entertainments with realities of exploring the world in her name and French or Spanish fashions the order of the keeping her safe from assassination. Under day. Under the dour Catholic Mary, it all got a each of the monarchs the Privy Chamber was bit heavy, with prayers, masses and constant also a marriage market and the main way for discussions and gossip about the queen's two kings and queens to keep in touch with the men phantom pregnancies. Under Elizabeth, who who actually ran the country at a local level.

Taking in Tudor Beliefs

In 1500 the English had a great reputation for piety. They went to mass,

which was held in Latin, visited shrines like Thomas Becket's at Canterbury

Cathedral, paid priests to say prayers for the souls of the dead and, in the

case of the rich, left legacies to the Church in their wills.

But some people began to doubt the power of the priests and others resented

the Church's huge wealth (see later in this chapter and also Chapter 6). New

ideas of the Reformation were coming from Martin Luther in Germany, and of

particular interest was the concept of solo fide (faith alone), which was about

your own beliefs in God and had nothing to do with good works.

William Tyndale's English Bible (see Chapter 6) sold in huge quantities, espe-

cially when it was backed by Henry VIII who believed everybody should read

God's word.

The Tudor era was a time of great religious change:

Henry VIII fell out with the Pope, changed the calendar and destroyed

the monasteries. Henry himself stayed Catholic, but breaking up with

Rome was the only way he could get a son to continue the Tudor line. So

he made himself supreme head of the Church and the idea lived on after

him (see Chapter 6).

Edward VI, under advice from his Protestant uncles, changed the Latin

mass to English, brought in an English prayer book and stopped indi-

vidual confession. This caused confusion and dismay for many (see

Chapter 7).

When Mary became queen she brought back the Latin mass and all the

traditional ceremonies, causing confusion and dismay to all those happy

under Edward's arrangements. Her religious package included kowtow-

ing to the Pope again and she burned opponents at Smithfield in London

(see Chapter 10).

Elizabeth's Church of 1559 was a via media (a compromise) � part

Catholic and part Protestant. She made herself supreme governor and

brought in a new English prayer book. Over time, her Church became less

and less Catholic, but she refused to bring in yet more changes demanded

by off-the-wall revolutionaries called Puritans (see Chapter 14).

England was just as Christian at the end of the Tudors' reign as it had been at

the start, but some things had changed forever:

The Pope was now the Bishop of Rome, and the Church of England was

totally independent.

Confession between priest and man had gone, as had carvings of saints,

wall paintings and pilgrimages.

Good Christians did charitable works, went to church and read their

Bibles. They did not go on pilgrimages; they did not say prayers for

the dead.

Seeing How the Masses Lived

The 16th century saw a dramatic population growth. Accurate figures don't

exist (the first census wasn't made until 1801), but from Church and tax

records historians can work out that in 1500 about 2.5 million people lived

in England and Wales (Ireland was a sort of colony and was always counted

separately) and by 1600 it was about 4 million.

Farming and agriculture were by far the most common jobs and this didn't

change over the Tudor period. About 90 per cent of people lived and worked

on the land and most towns were very small by modern standards. London

was the exception, with about 50,000 inhabitants, but that was only a quarter

of the size of, say, Venice.

Following in father's footsteps

Most boys grew up to do the job their fathers did and most girls followed

their mothers. For a minority of boys (never girls), that meant becoming

apprenticed to learn a trade; the training lasted seven years. At the end of

that time, the apprentice made a masterpiece to prove he was competent

to go it alone in the world of manufacture. Some boys entered services at

all levels, running pubs, teaching, fishing along various rivers or around the

coasts, or learning nasty, dangerous trades, such as working in the tanning

industry, which were known as stink jobs. Another tiny but growing hand-

ful became merchants dealing with the European centres like Antwerp and

organisations like the Hanse. The vast majority of boys, though, followed

their fathers to work on the land.

Visiting the average village

Historians know a lot about the lives of the majority of Tudor men and

women from The Book of Husbandry written by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert in

1523 and updated throughout the century.

Early Tudor England wasn't full of downtrodden peasants longing for the

Reform Act of 1832 to give them power. 18 Part I: Encountering the Early Tudors

The average village was made up of:

Yeomen: They rented their farms from landowners, served the com-

munity as church administrators or constables (sort of policemen, but

don't expect too many arrests!), paid taxes and often sent their sons to

school or even university.

Craftsmen: Blacksmiths, carpenters, thatchers, innkeepers and many

more provided specialist services for the village.

A parson: The local priest ran services, baptised newborns, married

betrothed couples and buried the dead.

Landless labourers: They worked for yeomen farmers and were

likely to lose their jobs if land was enclosed (see the nearby sidebar

`Encountering enclosure').

It's important to bear in mind at all times the central place of religion in

ordinary people's lives. Fitzherbert says the first thing people should do

when they get up in the morning is say their prayers (in Latin) and ask God to

`speed the plough'. Later editions drop the Latin bit in favour of the English

Lord's prayer.

The daily work was different from summer to winter, the days longer or

shorter, and therefore wages differed accordingly. But no welfare state existed

in the 16th century. Poor people relied on handouts from the local community,

but the sturdy beggars (men who were perfectly fit to work) were an ongoing

problem for Tudor law and order.

While their men folk toiled, women also had plenty to do. In the Book of

Husbandry it says that a husbandman's wife must:

Clean the house

Feed the calves

Feed the pigs

Go to market if her husband isn't available

Help her husband fill or empty the muck cart

Know how to make hay, winnow corn and malt

Look after the poultry and collect their eggs

Make clothes from wool by spinning and weaving

Make butter and cheese

Prepare all her husband's meals

Prepare the milk

Supervise the servants (if she has any)

Wake and dress the children Chapter 1: Touring the Time of the Tudors 19

Encountering enclosure The huge death rate caused by the Black profitable than growing crops). The various Death (bubonic plague), which reached 50 per local rebellions by ordinary people, such as cent in some areas, led to countryside chaos Kett's and the Oxfordshire rising (see Chapters in the 1350s. Some landowners hit upon the 7 and 8), were often about this enclosure idea of enclosing land � putting hedges or because farm labourers lost money and jobs as walls around fields � and turning the common a result. When the population began to pick up land that everyone could use into sheep farms again in the 1470s people demanded a return to for their own benefit (sheep rearing was more crop farming to grow more food.

Sound familiar? Maybe, but these women had no birth control, no vote, only

the most basic rights and no underwear worthy of the name. Women's lib

was 450 years away.

Chartering towns

The older and larger towns had charters given to them by previous kings.

Smaller ones had charters from local lords. These charters allowed towns

to hold fairs � like the Goose Fair in Nottingham or the Midsummer Fair in

Cambridge � which were opportunities to buy, sell and have a good time.

The merchant guilds in these towns (today's chambers of commerce) were

companies of skilled craftsmen, keeping out rival competition and acting as

friendly societies, paying for their members' burials and looking after widows

and orphans.

Councils under the mayor and aldermen ran the towns and you had to be a

householder or a rich merchant to be elected. Chartered towns sent two rep-

resentatives as MPs to the House of Commons in London.

Paying the price

Inflation was running at 9 per cent in Edward VI's reign and got worse again

towards the end of Elizabeth's. Wages always fell short of costs and that was

the cause of much discontent in the countryside. It didn't help that various

Tudor governments did their best to keep workers on the land (with the

Statutes of Labourers of 1549 and 1563) and keep workers' wages low. 20 Part I: Encountering the Early Tudors

In 1556, historians know from John Ponet, the Protestant Bishop of

Winchester, that:

A pound of beef cost 4 pence.

A pound of candles cost 4 pence.

A pound of butter cost 4 pence.

A pound of cheese cost 4 pence.

A whole sheep cost �1.

Two eggs cost 1 pence.

A quarter (of a ton) of wheat cost 64 shillings.

A quarter of malt cost 50 shillings or more.

People were so badly off that they used acorns to make bread and drank

water instead of beer. Ponet put all this down to the fact that Mary had

turned the country back to Catholicism.

Trading at home and overseas

In the early Tudor period, most trade was local with village people driving

their geese, cattle or sheep to market in the nearest town. Some specialist

places already existed;

Coventry made gloves and ribbons.

Nottingham made lace.

Sheffield made metal goods.

Witney made blankets.

London, as the largest city, was a huge consumer market, swallowing up vast

quantities of grain, cattle, cloth and sea coal. The market gardens of Essex

and Kent supplied vegetables, and fish was brought up the Thames for sale at

Billingsgate.

Ship yards were springing up along the coast from Newcastle in the north to

Falmouth in the south west. By the 1530s Henry VIII was building ships at the

Royal Docks at Deptford, 3 miles (5 kilometres) from London. Ships like this

traded with the great European centres such as Antwerp and Bruges.