A Timeline of Britain


Near right: Lambert Barnard's Tudor panel paintings at Chichester Cathedral. Centre: Henry VIII, painted in 1509, the year he became king. Far right: The hammerbeam ceiling of Hampton Court Palace's Great Hall


water when Henry VII died in 1509. There was a peaceful handover of power, with the country now restored to financial health. Seventeen-year-old Henry VIII was the very ideal of a


Renaissance man. Tall, handsome and auburn-haired, he was fluent in several languages, played the lute and harpsichord, sang, and was an expert jouster. He was also fun loving and extravagant, kept a glamorous court, hunted with a passion – establishing Hyde Park and St


CHRONOLOGY 1485–1509 Reign of Henry VII, first Tudor king


1496 Henry VII signs the Intercursus Magnus trade treaty with the Netherlands, the most important of a series of treaties regulating England’s foreign trade


Henry VII 1485


1487 Pretender to the throne Lambert Simnel’s rebellion is crushed at Stoke


1499 Pretender Perkin Warbeck, who proclaimed himself Richard IV, is hanged


1502 Prince Arthur dies and his brother, Henry, Duke of York, becomes heir to the throne


Henry VIII and his wives 1509


1503 James IV of Scotland marries Henry VII’s daughter, Margaret; the union gives James IV’s descendants a claim to the English crown


Perkin Warbeck


64 BRITAIN


1513 Henry VIII defeats France at the Battle of the Spurs, at Guinegate. English victory over Scottish forces at the Battle of Flodden, where James IV is killed


1515 Thomas Wolsey is appointed a cardinal and Lord Chancellor


1520 Henry VIII and Francis I of France meet for lavish diplomatic entertainments at the Field of the Cloth of Gold


Thomas Wolsey www.britain-magazine.com


1527 Henry VIII appeals to the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and his divorce crisis begins


1509–47 Reign of Henry VIII. In 1509 Henry marries Catherine of Aragon


1516 Thomas More’s Utopia, about an imagined ideal island state, is published. Birth of Princess Mary


1521 The Pope confers on Henry VIII the title Defender of the Faith


1529 Fall of Cardinal Wolsey. Sir Thomas More succeeds as Lord Chancellor


James’s Park – and ran up an annual hospitality bill equivalent to £4 million in today’s money. His hoard of paintings is the core of today’s fabulous Royal Collection. So how did this gilded youth turn into a bloated old


king, infamous for his marital merry-go-round and the cultural vandalism of the Dissolution of the Monasteries? In 1509, with a Papal blessing, Henry had married his


brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, to keep alive the Spanish alliance. But Catherine only produced one


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100