the Elizabethan Chronology Henry VIII to Elizabeth I: Background for the Post 1550 Overseas Policy Pivot

the Elizabethan Chronology Henry VIII to Elizabeth I: Background for the Post 1550 Overseas Policy Pivot

the Pre-Pivot Political Chronicle: Henry VIII to Elizabeth his daughter

Accordingly, as Henry VIII ruled until 1547, the English were disrupted by stuff like the Protestant Reformation and Henry’s creation of the Church of England, the rise of European mercantilism (and its constant series of royal wars and economic/political competitions–the cutting edge of which was composed of Hapsburgs and Spain and Portugal), and the control he exercised over various of England’s aristocracy which had the effect of chipping and cracking into the older medieval classes into both winners and losers, as well as opening the aristocracy so that new infusion of aristocrats were able to make their start. These headline activities pushed the ongoing economic and demographic change off the attention span of commentators and those interested in English history of the period. But in no way did it check the unbalanced rise of cities, and the creation of London as England’s capital mega city.

During Henry’s reign the English economy was fragile, in transition, riddled with inflation, poverty and a Dickensian like living conditions as a new spasm of the enclosure movement appeared. Noted English economist, B. E. Supple, suggests that issues such as population concentration in London, the marginalization of smaller non-London outer port cities, and dependence on a one industry (wool) export economy led to an aggregate economy that could not sustain meaningful economic growth, jobs or prosperity. Each of these factors exacted a serious effect that resulted in the pivot of post 1550’s English overseas trade. Again, to remind the reader, it was the post-1550’s English pivot to broad overseas commerce that led to the Virginia Expedition in 1606.

Today contemporary global economic development often must contend with super-large, mega cities in the emerging world. These mega cities concentrate the poor and cannot easily rise above the never ending problems that beset them, and seriously distort and make more complex the processes of policy-making to cope. Regions external to the mega city cannot grab their share of growth and opportunity easily, as politics of the nation are dominated by the affairs of the mega city. Sixteenth century England also shared that problem.

While London began its takeoff after 1500, it left behind the slower regional and outer port cities. London’s left alone in its growth created an unbalanced English economy with population movement winding up more often than not in London and the other English regional centers watching from the outside.

…criticism of London’s position in the economy veiled an apprehension which was in the main, justified. The capital had come to condition many of the day-to-day workings of the [nation as a whole]. Quite apart from the far-flung influence of its demand for consumer goods, London as the fountain-head of privileges, the centre of government, the site of the principal law courts, the seat of the great trading companies, the crux of the land market, the main repository of trading capital, and the primary source of credit, was the inevitable controller of much economic activity in other parts of the land, and, as we shall see, the narrow bottleneck through which (to the chagrin of the provincial merchants) textiles produced in the remotest areas passed for shipment abroad [99] B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England: A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1964) p. 4

Henry VIII  By the first half 1500’s, the time of Henry VIII the transformation got a shot in the arm as Henry VIII’s version of the Protestant Reformation broke the power of the Catholic Church, confiscating their land holdings in parishes, manors and abbeys and putting their land and buildings up for sale or auction. In so doing Henry’s agenda imposed as it was on an unwilling traditional English medieval aristocracy created a new element of the aristocracy whose manors were less agricultural and more homesteads. This new element took root in the years following Henry VIII adding a new more diverse aristocracy that was less rooted in land and manors and amenable to new occupations such as ship owning,  overseas ventures and investment, active soldiering, and plantation-building abroad including global discovery and European mercantilism.

By the time of the Virginia Company after 1600, several of these aristocratic families played a very large role its tale, Participation in crown-related activities and rivalries served to strengthen the state role and dominance, but also distanced the sovereign from the lower administrative levels, leaving the counties in particular (and their relevant elites as implementers in the crown’s policy-making process. Decentralization and a level of autonomy of these lower levels increased as the lower units of government developed their own demographics, policy ambitions, and religious preferences. In this sense, the power of the Tudors magnified itself the closer one was to London, and the role of the state was more comprehensive, ambitious and wide-ranging but also dependent to a degree on the aristocratic regional elites, and the rising gentry.

The reader is, I am sure, getting the picture that previous to 1550 England’s agricultural revolution had generated social and demographic change, and that, of course, overlapped into politics. That underlying economic, social and political transformation did not capture our attention, as Henry’s parade of marriages and chopped off heads was followed on his death by instability, a more active aristocracy and woe for the following two, three successors if Lady Jane Grey counts as one, only brought about more disruption, particularly religious on the English economy, society and politics. That disruption consumed much historical interest at the expense of England’s economic growth.

In 1558, Elizabeth I became Queen and her personality dominates England’s history, dwelling on events in London, crown politics and favorites, and English high society. Elizabeth I reigned until 1603–and the Virginia Company was incorporated in 1605-6.The impact of her legacy sets the standards and processes that transition into the Stuart dynasty.  While kings and queens got the headlines, however, economic and political change unleashed by the enclosure movement, discussed above, continued largely unnoticed greatly influenced the incorporation of the Virginia Company.

Consequently it is at this point provide a relevant-to-our-purposes background on the expanded Elizabethan era. A second background outlining the development and evolution of the wool and cloth industry and incorporation of the first great trading company, the Company of Merchant Adventurers, and the one industry-overseas export that came to be the English economy at the time of the post 1550 pivot overseas.

Henry VIII died in 1547. His immediate successor, his nine year old son Edward VI, took the throne. Sickly, he died in 1553–he was only 15. A regency council chaired by two nobles ran affairs during his “reign”. Internal rivalries within families and between is shared leadership was so disruptive, if not chaotic, it made the war of the roses seem simple. The Council dealt with a rebellion, a war with Scotland, along with a troubled economy, which interrupted Edward’s chief agenda item,  transforming the Church of England from the Catholic Church into a protestant one.

On Edward’s death, an attempt to forestall the crowning of his Catholic sister, Mary, on Edward’s death, a brief, but politically disruptive effort to install Lady Jane Grey as Queen on 10 July 1553. Quickly reversed by the Privy Council on 19 July of the same year; in the following February the seventeen year old was beheaded. Crown politics during this period, including the administration of the regency, was troubled by family and noble rivalries-with several beheaded in the process. The Privy Council then awarded the crown to Henry’s legitimate daughter from his first marriage, the Catholic Mary I, who ruled until 1558. She died unexpectedly. Her attempt to return England to Catholicism, more often by terror than conversion, turned both elites and masses against her. To preserve her position Mary married Phillip II of Spain–the same sovereign, who, after her death returned to Spain and later launched a twenty year war against England.

In 1558, upon Mary’s death from illness, Elizabeth I, Henry’s illegitimate daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth would rule until her death in 1603. None of Henry’s heirs had children of their own. That math speaks for itself, however; there is a dynastic succession lying in England’s Elizabethan future. In the eleven years that passed after Henry VIII’s death England had four successors, an attempt to return to Catholicism, a Privy Council that broke the back of a near-coup by some nobles, and a successor marriage that made the Catholic and mercantilist rival king of Spain as Co-Sovereign of England.  In them meantime England’s protestant reformation gathered momentum, adding fuel to the fire of class change and the weakening of English medievalism.

Elizabeth was twenty-five on her assumption to the throne. Her early years were dependent upon brokerage advisors such as William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, and foreign politics and protestant transformation of the Church of England dominated her agenda–as well as efforts to find a husband for her. In these years religion saturated England’s internal politics, and it  spilled over into overseas affairs. It wise to mention that Elizabeth inherited the throne from her Catholic half-sister—who married the Catholic ruler of Spain, Phillip II who became co-ruler of England and that Mary  imprisoned Elizabeth for a year in the Tower of London because of her Protestantism. Phillip II went on to become the arch enemy of England, and by 1585 both Spain and England were at war.

That war that lasted for almost twenty years. England’s aristocratic-led mercenaries spent most of that war in Holland, fighting as a Dutch ally. The war provided England’s aristocracy with military experience and skills. Many of these veterans served in important positions during the Virginia Company (De la Warr, Gates, and Dale, three governors). The Spanish Armada, defeated in 1588, was only one four “invasions” attempted by the Spanish in the course of the war. The 1588 invasion, glorified as a victory led by Elizabeth, was a composite of leadership including Drake, Raleigh, Dudley and other key nobles. The Armada continued its assault on England—and Ireland, but Spain was frustrated in each attempt. Interestingly, this is the period during which Raleigh lost his first colony Roanoke.

Predictably, the war affected English overseas trade and thus did little to inspire English economic growth or prosperity–other than serve as a catalyst for English shipbuilding and the development of the Outer Ports. The Armada’s defeat was not the end of the war with Spain. It went on for nearly sixteen more years. During the 1590’s, Drake in particular mounted, a serious English counterattack against Spain. Terribly expensive, these raids were not successful. England did not win the war with Spain in 1588, nor did she win it in 1604. One could charitably call the war an expensive stalemate. Thanks to Hollywood and our shared language and heritage, Americans, often fail to realize that Spain and Portugal got a headstart on England and in that period their Hapsburg dynasties were the masters of pre-1500 Europe. As late as 1600, England had not caught up.

Thus England’s overseas trade and foreign policy were underdogs, and the non-existent English navy meant naval wars were conducted by private ships and privateer ship captains for the most part. Through much of the sixteenth century England’s former naval warriors were the core of a following era in which pirates turned the West Indies, Central America and the Caribbean into a maritime guerilla war. England was neither bold, nor adventurous during these years, despite an image we Americans have concocted through media, novels and movies. Had we spoke and wrote in French we never would have formed these images.

The navy, in large measure the consequence of the kingdom’s limited resources and fiscal capacity, expanded somewhat in the course of the war, but the burden of naval action was borne by maritime private shipowners and adventurers. Through most of the war these private ships conducted raids, troop transport and attacks on Spanish shipping and ports. For those of us who identify England with rule over seas upon which the sun never sets, guarding the global British Empire, the Tudor period is just the reverse.

There is no British Empire, nor a Britain for that matter. England’s “navy”  was a hodge-podge militia volunteer-privateer entity, and thus privately owned commercial ships outfitted for war and led its ships and sailors; England’s so-called navy fought for its own reasons, on its own dime, with their own recruited sailors and ships. In peace this hodge-podge would, in theory at least, convert to a private and surprisingly autonomous  merchant marine that carried on board a number of convenient flags to fly.

It is very evident England was not a rich and prosperous nation that could spend sums even for her own defense. The Crown was always in search for funds because they were had to come by as England’s economy had not grown to a level sufficient to sustain her internal requirements, nevermind finance aspirations for an empire. The lack of fiscal resources is characteristic of England in these years, supporting my assertion in Chapter 1 that the pivot to increased overseas trade and commerce was as much, if not more, an economic development story than a drive for personal wealth by the adventurers. It should come as little surprise that when the idea to found a colony hit the taverns, the Crown had little to spend on that priority, and would turn as it always had to the private sector to both carry it out and pay for it.

While not alone in her political-social-and economic instability, England, a relatively small island with limited resources, was sensitive to her perceived vulnerability. However,  the cloth/wool merchant community was ambitious and aggressively forged a cloth/wool manufacturing cluster on their own initiative—they labeled themselves as “merchant adventurers” for a reason.  They will be the the focus of our attention as their leadership over England’s post 1500 one crop overseas trade, yielded at best a boom or bust, long term stagnation without sufficient muscle and staying power to create discretionary investment income that could be used to generate England’s economic breakout. The search for economic take off was the Holy Grail behind England’s post 1550 pivot to aggressive overseas commerce that provided the context for England’s later halfcocked idea to start colonies in North America.