Henry VII [S1] was the king that England needed after a long period of (1485-1509) feudal wars. He suppressed the great families’ custom of keeping bands of private soldiers, and used the services of middle class churchmen or country-gentlemen, or lawyers, who owed everything to the king, had a university culture and were loyal servants. New classes were coming into being: the gentry, or country gentlemen; the yeomen, or minor land-owners, and the merchants, who would play such a great part in the development of English commerce and in the mercantile ventures of Elizabethan times.

Henry VIII [I1] was the ideal king of the Renaissance, since he was also a good musician and scholar, a good hunter and archer. He had a securer title to the thrown than his father. He also had more wealth than his predecessors. The most important event of this period was he breach with Rome. Many English people respected religion, but disliked clerical predominance, as the high clergy used to extort money in many ways and were often immoral and corrupt. This led some people to look to Martin Luther as an innovator. Rome’s interference seemed intolerable, among other things, because of the new nationalistic spirit, which was developing in Tudor times.

Henry VIII, who had at first defended the Pope against Luther, was finally induced to separate the Church of England from Rome for political .but also for personal reasons. In fact, he had married his brother’s widow, Catherine, who had given him a daughter, Mary. But he wanted a male heir; moreover, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting of the Queen’s. So, on the pretext that, according to the Canon Law, his marriage was illegitimate, as Catherine was his sister-in-law, he asked the Pope to declare it void. Pope Clement VII refused. The King did not accept the Pope’s authority and decided to solve the question through English churchmen and the English Parliament. Parliament declared that the king’s first marriage was void. In 1533 Henry married Anne Boleyn; England was declared an "Empire", that is a "national State"; this meant that both civil and ecclesiastical causes were to be decided without the interference of any foreign jurisdiction. Another Act of Parliament or Act of Supremacy declared the king Only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England. In 1536 Papal authority in England was declared extinguished.

Edward VI was the son of Henry VIII and of his third wife, Jane Seymour. When he ascended the throne, he was nine years old. He had been brought up in the reformed religion, and was precocious and intolerant. Owing to his youth, his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, was appointed Protector; he instructed Archbishop Cranmer to write a Book of Common Prayer, so that Church services could be in English, and no longer in Latin. When the king fell ill and died, Mary Tudor was recognised as queen of England.

Mary Tudor was one of the loneliest and unhappiest queens in English history. She had grown up brooding over the wrongs her mother, Catherine of Aragon had suffered, with the Catholic religion as her only consolation. She considered it her mission to bring Catholicism back to England. She reintroduced the. Catholic religion, restored the Latin Mass and the old ceremonies; in her sincere but fanatic zeal, she burned alive more than 300 Protestants. In 1558 Mary Tudor died, leaving behind her the hatred of a country humiliated, ill-governed, without religious unity.

In 1558, Elizabeth I, [I1][I2][F1] [F2] [S1] the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn ascended the throne of England. Once she was crowned queen, she devoted all her life, her instinctive political skill and her courage to the creation of a modern stronger England. Elizabeth re-established the Anglican Church, but, as she was tolerant and rather sceptical, she avoided the errors of fanaticism.

In 1559 she passed a second Act of Supremacy which asserted thea “no foreign prince, State or Potentate could have spiritual or temporal authority within the realm of England”. With the Act of Uniformity she stated that only Cranmer’s Prayer Book was to be used by the English people; there was little persecution; she was very severe only when Catholic plots proved a danger for her or the State. As for problems of individual conscience, Elizabeth was tolerant, leaving the individual to be master of his soul and destiny. This was the highest degree of compromise possible for those times, and it was largely accepted by the people.

The zest for adventure, exploration and colonization was at its highest in the reign of Elizabeth; in 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh founded a colony in North America, which he called "Virginia" in honour of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen". But the monopoly of colonization and commerce in Africa, Asia and America had been, since the 15th century, in the hands of Portugal and Spain. Things got worse and worse between England and Spain till the execution of Mary Stuart, Elizabeth’s cousin who hoped to introduce Catholicism into Scotland and who was supported by France and Spain. At the end of 1588 the Spanish Invincible Armada, made up of heavy ships armed for the old type of boarding warfare, attacked the English fleet. Inferior in number, but faster, easier to handle and equipped with big cannons firing a long range, the English ships prevailed over the Spanish ones, which were then finally scattered and destroyed by the stormy winds of the Scottish seas. About half of the Armada was lost. The war with Spain continued till 1603, but it was with this victory that England saved her independence and assured her future as a great sea power.