A Timeline of Britain
Near right: Hampton Court Palace in London, built for Cardinal Wolsey in 1514. Centre: Pendennis Fort in Cornwall, built by Henry VIII. Far right: The Embarkation of Henry VIII on Board the Henry Grace a Dieu, 1520, by Vincent Volpi
“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded,
survived”, runs the ditty that recalls the fate of Henry’s six wives. His second wife, Anne Boleyn, produced Princess Elizabeth, but no son, and she was duly despatched. Jane Seymour died after giving birth to the much-awaited Prince Edward. Henry was physically repulsed by Anne of Cleves, “the Flanders Mare”, and divorced her. He had Katherine Howard beheaded for cuckolding him; and lucky Catherine Parr survived him. Henry was equally cruel to his political servants once
they outlived their usefulness, as Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell found to their cost. His “reform” of monasteries and abbeys in England and Wales (1536-1540) turned into outright ransacking, bringing much-needed revenue to royal coffers.
CHRONOLOGY
1553–58 Reign of Mary I, the first woman to be crowned monarch of England in her own right
1554 Sir Thomas Wyatt leads a rebellion against Mary, provoked by her proposed marriage to Philip of Spain
1553
1555 Persecution of Protestants begins. Bishops Ridley and Latimer are executed
Persecution of Protestants
66 BRITAIN
1556 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake for heresy
1558
1557–59 War with France. England loses Calais, its last French possession, in 1558
1562 English mariners, notably Captain John Hawkins, enter into the slave trade of West African people
Arms of John Hawkins
1569 Forfeiture of O’Neill lands opens Ulster to English colonisation
1569 Northern Rebellion of earls in support of replacing Elizabeth I with Mary Stuart as Queen of England
1570 The Pope excommunicates Elizabeth I
1558–1603 Reign of Elizabeth I
1561 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots with Lord Darnley
1565–68 Mary Queen of Scots marries her cousin Lord Darnley (1565). Her secretary Rizzio is murdered (1566). Darnley is killed, Mary marries the 4th Earl of Bothwell, and, following a rebellion of Scottish nobles, she is forced to abdicate (1567) before fleeing to England (1568)
On the domestic front, Henry officially annexed Wales
to England by the 1536 Act of Union, and in 1542 declared himself King of Ireland. But he stood under constant threat of invasion from Catholic Europe. In 1520 he had strutted his stuff in front of King Francis I of France at the celebrated summit of the Field of the Cloth of Gold; but he now went on the defensive, dug into his ill-gotten wealth, and began constructing a chain of coastal forts, such as Pendennis Fort in Cornwall.
Pope Pius V
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PHOTO: VISIT BRITAIN IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/WIKIPEDIA/ALAMY
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