Oliver Cromwell and his Republic

The Parliamentarian army was led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's family originated from Wales. It began to rise during the reign of Henry VIII whose minister was Thomas Cromwell, the uncle of Oliver's great-great-grandfather. Oliver was born on April 25,1599. He was educated in Huntington by Thomas Beard, a Puritan. Later he attended the Puri­tan Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, and studied law in London. After his marriage he returned to his estate in Huntington and became a farmer. In 1628-1629 he was a member of Parliament. He returned to Parliament in 1640, when the crisis between King and Par­liament was at its height. Oliver raised a regiment of cavalry and began to fight on the Parliamentary side. He proved to be a talented command­er. He created a New Model Army, the first regular military force from which the British army of today developed. Oliver was against negotia­tions with Charles I. He sided with the army against Parliament's at­tempt to renew talks with the king and defeated the Royalists. He en­couraged that third part of Parliament which voted for the execution of Charles I for treason. The rest two-thirds of the MPs were forced to leave Parliament.

Cromwell and his helpers formed the government, named the coun­try a republic, and made himself Lord Protector. Britain was a republic in 1649-1660. Oliver Cromwell was a dictator who established a severe government supported by the army. He sent his soldiers to Ireland t: punish the Irish for killing 3000 Protestants in 1641. As the result about 6000 people were killed. Later Cromwell defeated a rebellion in Scot­land in a similar way.

Oliver Cromwell had disagreements with Parliament and in 1653 it resulted in its dissolution.

Oliver Cromwell died on September 3,1658 and was buried in West­minster Abbey. He had named his son Richard as his successor, but Ri­chard was not a good leader and very soon the army commanders, Gen­eral George Monk in particular, took control of the country. The MPs voted for returning Charles I, the lawful heir to the British throne.

The Age of Chivalry

Edward III and his eldest son, the Black Prince, were greatly admired in England for their courage on the battlefield and for their courtly manners. They became symbols of the "code of chivalry", the way in which a perfect knight should behave. During the reign of Edward interest grew in the legendary King Arthur. Arthur, if he ever existed, was probably a Celtic ruler who fought the Anglo-Saxons, but we know nothing more about him. The fourteenth-century legend created around Arthur included both the imagined magic and mystery of the Celts, and also the knightly values of the court of Edward III.

According to the code of chivalry, the perfect knight fought for his good name if insulted, served God and the king, and defended any lady in need. These ideas were expressed in the legend of the Round Table, around which King Arthur and his knights sat as equals in holy brotherhood.

Edward introduced the idea of chivalry into his court. Once, a lady at court accidentally dropped her garter and Edward III noticed some of his courtiers laughing at her. He picked up the garter and tied it to his own leg, saying in French, "Honi soit qui mal y pense," which meant "Let him be ashamed who sees wrong in it." From this strange yet probably true story, the Order of the Garter was founded in 1348. Edward chose as members of the order twenty-four knights, the same number the legendary Arthur had chosen. They met once a year on St George's Day at Windsor Castle, where King Arthur's Round Table was supposed to have been. The custom is still followed, and Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense is still the motto of the royal family.

Chivalry was a useful way of persuading men to fight by creating the idea that war was a noble and glorious thing. War could also, of course, be profitable. But in fact cruelty, death, destruction and theft were the reality of war, as they are today. The Black Prince, who was the living example of chivalry in England, was feared in France for his cruelty.

The century of plagues

The year 1348 brought an event of far greater importance than the creation of a new order of chivalry. This was the terrible plague, known as the Black Death, which reached almost every part of Britain during 1348-9. Probably more than one-third of the entire population of Britain died, and fewer than one person in ten who caught the plague managed to survive it. Whole villages disappeared, and some towns were almost completely deserted until the plague itself died out.

The dramatic fall in population, however, was not entirely a bad thing. At the end of the thirteenth century the sharp rise in prices had led an increasing number of landlords to stop paying workers for their labour, and to go back to serf labour in order to avoid losses. In return villagers were given land to farm, but this tenanted land was often the poorest land of the manorial estate. After the Black Death there were so few people to work on the land that the remaining workers could ask formore money for their labour. We know they did this because the king and Parliament tried again and again to control wage increases. We also know from these repeated efforts that they cannot have been successful..

Because of the shortage and expense of labour, landlords returned to the twelfth-century practice of letting out their land to energetic freeman farmers who bit by bit added to their own land. In the twelfth century, however, the practice of letting out farms had been a way of increasing the landlord's profits. Now it became a way of avoiding losses. Many "firma" agreements were for a whole life span, and some for several life spans. By the mid-fifteenth century few landlords had home farms at all. These smaller farmers who rented the manorial lands slowly became a new class, known as the "yeomen". They became an important part of the agricultural economy, and have always remained so.

Overall, agricultural land production shrank, but those who survived the disasters of the fourteenth century enjoyed a greater share of the agricultural economy.

The Church Reformation

When Julius II died in 1513, the Church was seemingly in better health than at any time in the past two hundred years and could look forward to a period of tranquil consolidation under his successor Leo X. The Papal States were once more firmly in hand. Efficient and comparatively honest administration had filled the papal treasury, and in Rome the pope had inspired a host of ambitious artistic projects, of which the building of the new St. Peter's was only the most obvious. In the last year of his reign, the pope had even called a council aimed at reforming some of the more flagrant abuses within the Church. Leo's election promised a peaceful continuation of these policies. The son of Lorenzo de'Medici, he was a gentle man, cultivated in his tastes, generous in his support of the arts. Like Julius himself, he had been among the minority of cardinals that Alexander VI had been unable to bribe.

Hardly ten years later, however, all this had changed. The authority of the Church and many of its fundamental doctrines were under attack. In Germany, the religious issue had touched off a bloody civil war. French and Imperial armies had made Italy a battleground. The papal treasury was again empty, and the survival of the Church itself — as a unified, international institution — appeared to be in question. What had caused this drastic change was the beginning of the Reformation. The Reformation was the product of a variety of complex forces, not only religious but political, economic, social. More than most great historic movements, however, it found a focus and a voice in one man, Martin Luther (1483-1546). Leo's virtues were ill-matched against so determined an opponent.

Early in Leo's reign, powerful family connections had secured the appointment of a young German prince, Albert of Hohenzollern. as archbishop of Magdeburg, then as bishop of Halberstadt and archbishop of Mainz — lucrative and politically influential territories that took in much of northern and western Germany.

The growth of government

William the Conqueror had governed England and Normandy by travelling from one place to another to make sure that his authority was accepted. He, and the kings after him, raised some of the money they needed by trying cases and fining people in the royal courts. The king's "household" was the government, and it was always on the move. There was no real capital of the kingdom as there is today. Kings were crowned in Westminster, but their treasury stayed in the old Wessex capital, Winchester. When William and the kings after him moved around the country staying in towns and castles, they were accompanied by a large number of followers. Wherever they went the local people had to give them food and somewhere to stay. It could have a terrible effect. Food ran out, and prices rose.

This form of government could only work well for a small kingdom. By the time the English kings were ruling half of France as well they could no longer travel everywhere themselves. Instead, they sent nobles and knights from the royal household to act as sheriffs. But even this system needed people who could administer taxation, justice, and carry out the king's instructions. It was obviously not practical for all these people to follow the king everywhere. At first this "administration" was based in Winchester, but by the time of Edward I, in 1290, it had moved to Westminster. It is still there today. However, even though the administration was in Westminster the real capital of England was still "in the king's saddle".

The king kept all his records in Westminster, including the Domesday Book. The king's administration kept a careful watch on noble families. It made sure the king claimed money every time a young noble took over the lands of his father, or when a noble's daughter married. In every possible way the king always "had his hand in his subject's pocket". The administration also checked the towns and the ports to make sure that taxes were paid, and kept a record of the fines made by the king's court.

The Invaders

At first the Germanic tribes only raided Britain, but after AD 430 they began to settle. We owe our knowledge of this period mainly to an English monk named Bede, who lived three hundred years later. His story of events in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People has been proved generally correct by archaeological evidence.

Bede tells us that the invaders came from three powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes. The Jutes settled mainly in Kent and along the south coast, and were soon considered no different from the Angles and Saxons. The Angles settled in the east, and also in the north Midlands, while the Saxons settled between the Jutes and the Angles in a band of land from the Thames Estuary westwards. The Anglo-Saxon migrations gave the larger part of Britain its new name, England, “the land of the Angles”.

The British Celts fought the raiders and settlers from Germany as well as they could. However, during the next hundred years they were slowly pushed westwards until by 570 they were forced west of Gloucester. Finally most were driven into the mountains in the far west, which the Saxons called "Weallas", or "Wales", meaning "the land of die foreigners". Some Celts were driven into Cornwall, where they later accepted the rule of Saxon lords. In the north, other Celts were driven into the lowlands of the country which became known as Scotland. Some Celts stayed behind, and many became slaves of the Saxons. Hardly anything is left of Celtic language or culture in England, except for the names of some rivers, Thames, Mersey, Severn and Avon, and two large cities, London and Leeds.

The Anglo-Saxons established a number of kingdoms, some of which still exist in county or regional names to this day: Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Middlesex (probably a kingdom of Middle Saxons), East Anglia (East Angles). By the middle of the seventh century the three largest kingdoms, those of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, were the most powerful.

The Irish Problem

In 1920 Ireland was divided into two parts. Northern Ireland be­longed to the United Kingdom, as well as it does nowadays. The basic religion in the UK is Protestantism, in Ireland it is Catholicism. In Ul­ster, Northern Ireland, there were 67 per cent of Protestants, the rest were Catholics. Catholics were dissatisfied with their rights. The Brit­ish government favoured the Protestants and discriminated against the Catholics. Many Catholics were even unable to vote. In the late 1960s people, both Catholics and Protestants, began to gather in the streets and demand a fairer system. There were several bloody fights in the streets. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) appeared again after a long period of inaction. Catholics demanded withdrawal of the British troops and the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Eire in the south. In the 70s Protestant extremist organizations began a campaign of violence against Catholics. In 1969 in Belfast 97 people were injured during the battles between Catholics and Protestants. On September 8, 1969 a Protestant was killed in clashes. On 14 September 1969 a British soldier was shot dead. On July 21,1972 fifteen Catholics were killed in a bar by a Protestant extremist bomb.

In August 1971 the North Irish government ordered to arrest the people suspected of terrorism. They arrested 342 Catholics. The IRA responded by more attacks. On January 30, 1972 British soldiers fired into the demonstration of people in Londonderry killing 13 people. This day was called "Bloody Sunday". Since that time London set a direct rule over Northern Ireland, it was the end of the Irish parliament.

Betty Williams and Maired Corrigan organized a Peace Movement in Northern Ireland. After that the number of killings diminished.

In 1981 ten IRA prisoners starved themselves to death in a hunger strike. In November 1974a bomb exploded in Birmingham killing 21 peo­ple. Then there were explosions in Guilford and Woolwich.

The New Foreign Policy

Elizabeth continued Henry VII’s work and encouraged foreign trade. She considered Spain her main trade rival and enemy. Spain at that time ruled the Netherlands, where many people were Protestant and were fighting for their independence from Catholic Spanish rule. To reach the Netherlands from Spain by sea, Spanish soldiers had to sail through the English Channel. Elizabeth helped the Dutch Protestants by allowing their ships to use English harbours from which they could attack Spanish ships, often with the help of the English. When the Dutch rebels lost the city of Antwerp in 1585, Elizabeth helped them with money and soldiers. It was almost an open declaration of war on Spain.

English ships had already been attacking Spanish ships as they returned from America loaded with silver and gold. Although these English ships belonged to private people, the treasure was shared with the queen. These seamen were traders as well as pirates and adventurers. The most famous of them were John Hawkins, Francis Drake and Walter Raleig.

The Spanish king Philip decided that he had to conquer England if he wanted to defeat the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands. He hoped that enough Catholics in England would be willing to help him. He built a great fleet of ships, an Armada. But in 1587 Francis Drake attacked and destroyed part of this fleet in Cadiz harbour.

Philip started again and built a new Armada, a still larger fleet. But most of the ships were designed to carry soldiers, and the few fighting ships were not as good as the English ones. English ships were longer and narrower, so they were faster, and besides, their guns could shoot further than the Spanish ones. The Spanish Armada was defeated more by bad weather than by English guns. Some Spanish ships were sunk, but most were blown northwards by the wind, and many of them were wrecked on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland. For England it was a glorious moment.

The Protestant-Catholic Struggle

Henry died in 1547, leaving three children. Mary, the eldest, was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. Elizabeth was the daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, whom he had executed because she was unfaithful. Nine-year-old Edward was the son of Jane Seymour, the only wife whom Henry had really loved but who had died giving birth to his only son.

Edward VI, Henry VIII's son, was only a child of 9 years old when he became king, so the country was ruled by a council. All the members of the council were representatives of the new nobility created by the Tudors. They were keen Protestant Reformers because they had benefited from the sale of monastery lands. Indeed, all the new landowners knew that they could only be sure of keeping their new lands if they made England truly Protestant.

Most English people still believed in the old Catholic religion. Less than half the English were Protestant by belief, but these people controlled religious matters. In 1552 a new prayer book was introduced to make sure that all churches followed the new Protestant religion.

Mary, the Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, became queen when Edward, aged sixteen, died in 1553. Mary was unwise and made mistakes in her policy. For political, religious and family reasons, she married King Philip of Spain. It was a bad choice. The English people disliked the marriage. They were afraid that this marriage would place England under foreign control. Parliament agreed to Mary's marriage unwillingly and made a condition that Philip would be regarded as King of England only during Mary's lifetime.

Mary's marriage to Philip was the first mistake of her unfortunate reign. Then she began burning Protestants. Three hundred people died in this way during her five-year reign. For these mass executions she was called Bloody Mary.

The struggle in France

When Henry IV died in 1413 he passed on to his son Henry V a kingdom that was peaceful and united. Henry V was a brave and intelligent man, and like Richard I, he became one of England's favourite kings.

Since the situation was peaceful at home Henry V felt able to begin fighting the French again. His French war was as popular as Edward Ill's had been. Henry had a great advantage because the king of France was mad, and his nobles were quarrelsome. The war began again in 1415 when Henry renewed Edward Ill's claim to the throne of France. Burgundy again supported England, and the English army was able to prove once more that it was far better in battle than the French army. At Agincourt the same year the English defeated a French army three times its own size. The English were more skilful, and had better weapons.

Between 1417 and 1420 Henry managed to capture most of Normandy and the nearby areas. By the treaty of Troyes in 1420 Henry was recognized as heir to the mad king, and he married Katherine of Valois, the king's daughter. But Henry V never became king of France because he died a few months before the French king in 1422. His nine-month-old baby son, Henry VI, inherited the thrones of England and France.

As with Scotland and Wales, England found it was easier to invade and conquer France than to keep it. At first Henry V's brother, John duke of Bedford, continued to enlarge the area under English control. But soon the French began to fight back. Foreign invasion had created for the first time strong French national feeling. The English army was twice defeated by the French, who were inspired by a mysterious peasant girl called Joan of Arc, who claimed to hear heavenly voices. Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, and given to the English. The English gave her to the Church in Rouen which burnt her as a witch in 1431.

The Wars of the Roses

Henry VI, who had become king as a baby, grew up to be simple-minded and book-loving. But he was a civilised and gentle man. He founded two places of learning that still exist, Eton College not far from London, and King's College in Cambridge But Henry's simple-mindedness gave way to periods of mental illness.

The discontented nobility were divided between those who remained loyal to Henry VI, the "Lancastrians", and those who supported the duke of York, the "Yorkists". The duke of York was the heir of the earl of March, who had lost the competition for the throne when Richard II was deposed in 1399. In 1460 the duke of York claimed the throne for himself. After his death in battle, his son Edward took up the struggle and won the throne in 1461.

But when Edward IV died in 1483, his own two sons, the twelve-year-old Edward V and his younger brother, were put in the Tower by Richard of Gloucester. Richard took the Crown and became King Richard III. A month later the two princes were murdered.

Richard III was not popular. Lancastrians and Yorkists both disliked him. In 1485 a challenger with a very distant claim to royal blood through John of Gaunt landed in England with Breton soldiers to claim the throne. Many discontented lords, both Lancastrians and Yorkists, .joined him. His name was Henry Tudor, duke of Richmond, and he was half Welsh. He met Richard III at Bosworth. Half of Richard's army changed sides, and the battle quickly ended in his defeat and death. Henry Tudor was crowned king immediately, on the battlefield.

The war had finally ended, though this could not have been clear at the time. Much later, in the nineteenth century, the novelist Walter Scott named these wars the "Wars of the Roses", because York's symbol was a white rose, and Lancaster's a red one.

Tudor Parliaments

The Tudor monarchs did not like governing through parliament. Henry VII used Parliament only for introducing new laws. Henry VIII used it to raise money for war and for his struggle with Rome.

The Tudor monarchs were certainly not more democratic than the kings that had ruled the country before them. In the early 16^th century Parliament only met when the monarch ordered it. Sometimes it met twice in one year, but then it might not meet again for six years. Henry VIII assembled Parliament to make the laws for Church reformation. In forty-five years of Elizabeth's reign she only let Parliament meet fourteen times.

Only two things persuaded the Tudor monarchs not to get rid of Parliament altogether: they needed money and they needed the support of the merchants and landowners, whose representatives sat in Parliament. But by using Parliament to support their own policy, the Tudors actually increased Parliament's authority.

During the 16^th century real power in Parliament moved from the House of Lords to the House of Commons. The reason for this was simple. The Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons represented richer and more influential classes than the Lords. In fact, the idea of getting rid of the House of Lords, a question which is still discussed in British politics today, was first suggested in the 16^th century.

Parliament did not really represent the people. The monarchy used its influence to make Parliament sup-port royal policy. In order to control discussion in Parliament, the Crown appointed a Speaker. Even today the Speaker is responsible for good behaviour during debates in the House of Commons.

The growing authority of Parliament led to the question about the limits of its power. MPs were beginning to think that they had a right to discuss more and more questions. By the end of the 16 century, when the gentry and merchant classes realized their strength, it was obvious that sooner or later Parliament would challenge the Crown, Eventually it resulted in war.