Dietz

Rebellions in Tudor England Tudor society was inherently unequal, with four very defined social classes, each with its own sphere of influence. These classes were defined by a contemporary, Sir Thomas Smith, in a book about social structure. The four classes were the gentry, the townsfolk, the yeomen, and the commons. Social mobility at the time was the ability to move from one class to another (Tudor Rebellions). The gentry were the aristocrats, and the wealthy country gentlemen. They lived on country estates, with commoners, and tenants working their land. They controlled much of the money at that time. This group in general had the most power in England. The townsfolk, as a class had the second most power, although there was a large gap. They, as is obvious from their name, were the people who dwelled in urban and suburban environments, and were generally merchants or craftsmen. They were roughly the second wealthiest, with a large disparity in that as well. The yeomen were the independent farmers. They were fairly well off, while at least technically not exercising as much power as the townsfolk, but when, as was common, there was no resident gentleman in a county, a particularly prosperous yeoman would assume that role. The fourth class were your basic laborers, who would typically act as tenants on a gentleman's farm. They had no power in English government at all (Tudor Rebellions). We can glean helpful information about Tudor society by looking at the fact that Sir Tomas brushed over the townsfolk, seeing the world as an inherently agrarian place, while the towns were relatively speaking, disharmonious. Some of this can be viewed as the inherent bias Sir Thomas had because of his status as a gentleman, presumably with country estates of his own. He also had the gentleman's view of the commons, that they were fickle stupid, and irrational. The view that is not stated is that they were also viewed as extremely dangerous. In part this is because the commons had no power, so when presented with a situation they desired to change, their only recourse was open rebellion. Not to mention that if they rebelled, the miniscule standing forces could not be counted on to deal with them, since they were as likely to side with the rebels as aid the government, assuming they did anything (Tudor Rebellions). In general in Tudor England there were two kinds of politics, high and low. High politics was characterized by personal and dynastic feuds having much more to do with what went on than any political agreements. One example of this is the War of the Roses, which started because of Henry VI's incompetence, and Richard's incredible and ruthless favoritism of certain regions. The Protestant Reformation acted as an accelerant for this already volatile mix, by interjecting the issue of faith into an already murky and violent situation. High politics in general was about who ran the government, not about what it did, insofar as it did not affect the profits of the powerful. In general there were less than 1500 participants in this brand of politics, bringing personal feelings to the forefront of the conflict, and making the entire business very much about who you were related to, and family histories (Tudor Rebellions). Low politics was that practiced by the commoners and the yeomen in general. The wealthier yeomen in general were the leaders in low politics. They also typically lead any rebellions. Low politics was also typically charged with righteous and religious indignation, because the yeoman produced a disproportionately huge number of the clergy of England. Low politics was about how the country was run, being more concerned with injustice, and the ill treatment of the citizenry, normally not really caring about who was in charge. In general the successful rebellions all combined high and low politics, with the nobles acting as a leadership caste, and the commoners providing the force for the rebellion to be successful (Tudor Rebellions). While the popular view of this period would indicate that the power of the nobles was in sharp decline that is almost entirely untrue. That belief is based on an exaggerated idea of the noble's power during the medieval ages. Nobles were not absolute rulers within their fiefs, so there relative decline was no where near as significant as portrayed. That is not to say that their power was undiminished, which later evidence will show it most certainly was. Part of the impression of the noble's power being crippled is also based on their growing lack of participation in government. What this overlooks is the fact that the nobles did not want to be involved in the government on a day to day basis. They just wanted to be part of decision relating to war, and royal marriages. There are several exceptions, but in general the civil service ran the country on a day to day basis (Power and Politics in Tudor England). Part of the seeming lack of power on the nobles part is their lack of resistance to the crown. This is because the nobles did not want to rebel, because the resulting disturbances, even if they were successful, would deeply cut into their profits, and pocketbooks. The nobles in fact were actually bastions of order, as it was in their interest to maintain the status quo. The nobles also indirectly exercised power, since they were depended on to be the military officers and leaders in other aspects of the military. The Tudors, also contrary to popular belief, never set out on a campaign to limit the power of the nobles, because that theory is based on the assumption that there was a concerted campaign to form Great Britain. While England was by far the wealthiest of the British nations, they did not have sufficient resources to subdue, much less conquer Scotland or Ireland, so there was no reason for the Tudor kings to limit the power of the border lords to exploit a growing empire (Power and Politics in Tudor England). The Tudors focused on preventing popular uprisings because, in general, it was much cheaper and easier to prevent them than to deal with them. The Tudors helped forestall the rebellions by creating a cult of authority based on the Divine Right of Kings. This reinforced the moral sense and political obligation of the commons with the ideas of submission, nonresistance, and their obligations. This created the idea that they had to do what ever the king said, because he was God's official on earth, and that authority extended to his officials. The Tudors also made sure that there were many examples of failed rebellions paraded about, like the Peasant's Rebellion in Germany, or having sermons about what happened to the Israelites who rebelled against Moses preached. This create a kind of subliminal resistance to rebelliousness. The Tudors also suppressed all knowledge of successful rebellions, so as not to provide any encouragement (Tudor Rebellions). The Tudors also avoided defining their power specifically in any way if at all possible. This is because people would assume they had powers they did not, as long as their power was undefined, but they would be able to get away with a lot less if their powers became precisely defined (Twp Tudor Conspiracies). Taxes were actually a very common cause of rebellions, because people don't like their money being taken away. Taxes were limited, since the king could only get them during times of war, or special circumstances, and he had to have Parliament's permission. Parliament could also control how much could be raised, and how, which meant that it was difficult for the kingt to pass large taxes, although if he did it was usually a source of great unrest (Tudor Rebellions). A few examples of these are the Yorkshire rebellion of 1489, the Cornish rebellion of 1497, and the rejection of the Amiable Grant. The Yorkshire rebellion started when Northumberland was appointed the king's tax collector to help raise funds to support combatants against eh French in Brittany. The Yorkish didn't like that so they rose up, Northumberland was found dead, the king's army approached the rebels, and they dispersed. In Cornwall in 1497 the king wanted taxes to pay for a war with Scotland. The Cornish didn't feel particularly threatened by the Scottish. So they rose up and marched on London to make their grievances felt. They had a couple of skirmishes with the army the king diverted from the fight with Scotland to deal with them. And then their army was surrounded and crushed horribly (Tudor Rebellions). The rejection of the Amicable Grant deserves a special mention, as it is one of only four successful rebellions against a Tudor government. In 1513-1525, the king wanted money to fight the French and the Scottish. So he proposed a truly ridiculous cum of money, something around 800000 pounds back then. To provide some perspective he ended up collecting around 80000 pounds, and around 50000 or 60000 pounds was normal. Everybody simply refused to pay this ridiculous tax, and the gentry and the commons were united. The king eventually gave in, and realized how important to his reign his relation with the commons was (Tudor Rebellions). There were several examples of rebellions against Queen Mary. The one I will mention is a conspiracy centered on an agreement that Mary would marry the Spanish king. The nationalistic aristocrats advanced Courtenay, the Earl of Devon, as an alternative candidate, mainly because they did not want it to be the Spanish king. Queen Mary could not be dissuaded from her choice by any arguments about policy or expediency, because it had been a personal decision on her part. Quite a few English feared that if the Spanish came they would do whatever they wanted which offended some people's patriotic natures. And more importantly to the nobles, most likely the Spanish nobles would get the profits for government positions, which were currently going to those selfsame English gentlemen (Two Tudor conspiracies). In general there were two option available to the conspirators. They could launch a palace revolution, and size the government buildings, and the queen, and simply install a new government, or they could launch a popular uprising, which would be like using a bludgeon rather than a dagger. They realized that they had insufficient other nobles supporting them to launch a palace revolution, so they had no choice but to opt for the popular revolution. They all agreed that in the end Mary had to be removed, but they could not determine whether to just exile her, dethrone her, or kill her. They did all agree that they would marry Elizabeth to Courtenay, and put them on the throne. Elizabeth avoided becoming implicated in the conspiracy, so she was still around after it failed (Two Tudor Conspiracies). The nobles decided that they really wanted and needed French aid for their plan to work, but they could not use French troops, because to the majority of English that would be at least as bad as Spanish troops. The ended up settling on the French seizing the channel and preventing Spanish aid from reaching England. The conspiracy suffered a grievous blow when it was forced to tip its hand much sooner than expected by Mary receiving a tip off when someone noticed a French fleet massing near Brittany. The conspirators higher ups were all summoned to with the Privy Council, forcing them to act (Two Tudor Conspiracies). Suffolk fled to his county seat at Leicestershire, which served little purpose, since everyone new where he was, making it hard to hide. The Tudors acted quickly and decisively, undaunted by the fact that Suffolk was in his home county, where support for him was presumably the strongest. Suffolk issued a public declaration saying he would kill anyone who tried to harm the queen, and that he was a perfectly loyal subject. This did almost nothing. Suffolk had almost no followers, and almost no money, so his rebellion collapsed. It was not well planned, and was executed just as badly, if not worse. It was not helped when one of the possible critical supporters sided with the queen, because it would help his personal agenda. The Leicestershire rebellion was essentially a personal rebellion of Suffolk and his relatives, with almost no popular backing (Two Tudor Conspiracies). The same summons that caused Suffolk to flee to Leicestershire caused Carew to move quickly, but he did not reveal his cards right away. He started spreading rumors that the Spanish king was bringing a huge fleet, and that it was going to land at Devon. The county sheriff realized that there was probably an ulterior motive for the rumors. Carew had been feeling out the Protestant gentry, but the sheriff caught on to the fact that Carew was trying to create a country faction with the aid of church officials. The Privy Council declared the rumors false, mitigating their effect. Carew needed to try to usurp the local power of the sheriff to secure control of the county. His rebellion also floundered because it had no rallying point, the anti-Spanish propaganda just causing alarm, without being an issue with large popular support amongst the patriotic Catholics of the region (Two Tudor Conspiracies). Elizabeth succeeded to the throne backed by resounding enthusiasm, mainly because it was a peaceful succession, which was welcome in a country ravaged by several decades of turmoil. But the problem was that Elizabeth was an unknown quantity when it came to policy. When she succeeded to the throne the Anglican churches power had been crippled by the return of Catholicism, and Catholicism's power was ruined by association with the corrupt Papacy, meaning there was no strong religious organization in England at the time. The Protestant exiles who had fled to Germany and Switzerland had developed new ways of thinking in those freer environments, developing Puritanism. This lead to significant religious tension between the conservative Catholics, and the radical Protestants who wanted England to become a New Jerusalem, all with Elizabeth as a religious unknown (Politics and Nation). Elizabeth had learned several very valuable lessons from watching her sister's mistakes. Elizabeth made sure to never give passionate support to an unpopular decision, which in general produced an atmosphere of non-cooperation rather than outright resistance. She also realized that she needed the backing of the country gentry to effectively govern England since they had almost all of the power (Politics and Nation). Many disparate and conflicting hopes centimeter on Elizabeth when she rose to power. It was a given that she would pull farther away from the Hapsburgs, and end the religious persecution or the Protestants, but other than that anything was fair game. At the start of her reign she was at war with France, with the French king Henri freely traveling from Calais to Scotland and back. The English needed the Spanish's aid, so they could not radically alter England's religious policy. Elizabeth cared much more about who was head of the church, than what the faith was. She wanted the English monarchs to be in charge of the church. Elizabeth restrained the Protestants who wanted it to be forbidden to wear Catholic vestments, which Elizabeth was not willing to do. She did this because the Protestants were trying to take control of the church away from her at that time, while the Catholics were an ineffective opposition to her power since they had no opposition party at that time. But in the end the Catholics refused to allow the queen to be head of the church, so she had to turn to the Protestants (Politics and Nation). Elizabeth negotiated peace with France, removing Henri's daughter's claim to the throne, which limited the need for Spanish aid. This coupled with the fact that Spain's friendship was a political calculation, allowed Elizabeth to reform the church. For the first time ever Parliament had its own party, the Puritans, who were willing to use methods of persuasion to achieve their goals. They were a threat to Elizabeth's authority, which she resolved through the simple expedient of joining that party. This allowed her to work with a creative minority, giving her government a creative energy that had not been enjoyed by and English government in quite some time. Elizabeth was able to gain popularity, confidence, and support simply by always assuming that she had the full support of the aristocracy at all times. This was a generally safe assumption given the lack of a Catholic opposition party (Politics and Nation). Elizabeth had one policy which encouraged instability, while being perfectly understandable, which was her refusal to marry or declare an heir. Her reasons were understandable, but they also encouraged others to take matters into their own hands. Elizabeth really just didn't have any suitable marriage options. She couldn’t marry a foreigner since that would upset nationalistic pride, and any suitable domestic spouses were inadvisable because of politics intense factionalism (Politics and Nation). Elizabeth also had a conflict between her foreign policy, and the conservative ideas of the aristocracy. Her policy was a little more adventurous than the aristocracy would have like, such as the seizing of a Spanish treasure fleet. Elizabeth had also been hurting the northern nobles profits with her policies, and more unrest was cause when Mary Stuart arrived in the region (Politics and Nation). The northern nobles decided to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Stuart, to reassert their power and profits. T hey wanted as much foreign aid as possible, going so far as to contact Alva in the Lowlands. The earls of the region were coerced into rebellion through fear tactics. They were implicated in causing the unrest, and they decided they were just as likely to be punished if they turned back then as if they forged ahead. Once again the Privy Council precipitated the uprising by summoning a couple of the higher ranking rebels. The rebellion was localized in one or two counties, and their forces marched through a couple of cities reestablishing the mass, and taking one fort, and then collapsing due to lack of popular support. The error they had made was based on the old belief that if a lord was in his county seat his tenants would support hi, and he was almost untouchable, but the increasingly centralized power of the state obsoleted that idea, as did the increasing individual loyalty to the crown rather than a local noble (Politics and Nation). Shakespeare's plays, in particular the histories show lots of tension between the old ideas of honor and loyalty and the more pragmatic noble that was developing at that time (Shakespeare's Ideas). Richard III was portrayed as a cynical political murderer, who would do anything to advance his own ends. This is an interesting glimpse of popular opinion of nobles at that time (To Entrap the Wisest). Shakespeare's writing also shows the Great Chain of Being in full swing, constantly being broken and then restored, like in //Macbeth//. Shakespeare also portrayed the good and sympathetic nobles as those who were loyal to, and put before themselves, the king and their country. He also shows the pragmatic killers as being bombarded with the consequences of their actions, and suffering for them, while the good always triumph in the end (Shakespeare's Ideas). In general the rebellions during the Tudor time period failed because they were rebellions by isolated groups of nobles, with little popular support. They were also generally poorly executed, and were based on increasingly outdated premises, although the still did contribute greatly to the disorder of the time period, this just reinforces the impression we get through Shakespeare and other literary works that stability was highly valued at that time.