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In May 1565, Mary, Queen of Scots, married her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. This antagonised not only Elizabeth of England but also a group of Scottish noblemen. Although a son, Charles James (the future James VI), was born of the marriage in July 1566, circumstances soon escalated. Darnley was an unpopular, disease-riddled, drunk. Since her return to Scotland, Mary had relied heavily on a group of continental servants and this provoked a ... mehr
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Although Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor monarchs, she was occasionally under threat from dissident factions who sought to depose her and place an alternative monarch (usually, Mary, Queen of Scots), in her place. In 1569, the Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower for plotting to marry himself to Mary, Queen of Scots, and thus provide a strong Catholic phalanx within England. A month later, Durham was seized by the Catholic earls of ... mehr
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On 13 December 1577, Francis Drake, on board his ship the Pelican, left Plymouth on a voyage that would take him round the world. In August 1578, Drake passed through the Magellan Strait (the south of South America) and entered the Pacific Ocean. By June 1579, Drake had landed on the coast of modern California (which he claimed for England as \'New Albion\'). On 26 September 1580, the navigator returned to Plymouth in his ship, renamed as the Gol ... mehr
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From 1584, Elizabeth played an active role in assisting the Protestant Dutch rebels of the Low Countries (modern Netherlands and Belgium) to oppose their monarch, Philip II of Spain. A treaty of alliance with the Dutch, under William of Orange, had been signed as early as 1579, but it was not until 1584 that English troops were dispatched. In 1585, Elizabeth formally took the Netherlands under her protection (following the assassination in July 1 ... mehr
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In 1585, 600 English colonists, under the guidance of Walter Raleigh, were established on Roanoke Island on the Carolina Outer Banks. The colony lasted less than a year and, although a further colony was established in Virginia in 1587 (of 110 people), the threat of the Spanish Armada meant that they could not be resupplied. In 1590, when an expedition did attempt to find the settlers, they found the colony had vanished.
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On 6 July 1586, Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland (for England), and Francis Stewart, Earl Bothwell (for Scotland) secured a mutual defensive alliance between the two countries guaranteeing aide and support should either be invaded.Seen by some as a forerunner to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots - only after the treaty was signed did Walsingham \'discover\' a plot by Anthony Babington against Elizabeth - its more important purpose was to secur ... mehr
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Elizabeth\'s support for the largely Protestant Dutch rebellion against her former half-brother-in law, Philip of Spain, and her apparent connivance in raids on Spanish colonies and trade, led to war with Spain from 1585. In 1588, Philip sent an Armada - a massive force of 130 ships and 19,000 troops - from Lisbon to Calais.The English (under the admiral, Howard of Effingham and his lieutenants, Francis Drake and John Hawkins) mounted a night-tim ... mehr
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Originally from Stratford-upon-Avon, England\'s \'greatest playwright\' flourished at the end of Elizabeth I\'s reign and the beginning of James I\'s reign. Not only did Shakespeare write plays but he also acted in them and part-owned some of the theatres in which they were produced. In 1590, there are known performances of Henry VI and Titus Andronicus.
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Building on an act from the reign of Edward IV, the Poor Relief Act gave Justices of the Peace responsibility for the administration of poor relief on a local level. Local poor rates were defined. Although preference was given to assisting people within their own homes, the act of 1598 allowed for the setting up of work houses in urban areas. Along with a further act of 1601, the provisions of 1598 remained the only provision for the poor in En ... mehr
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On 31 December 1600, the East India Company was founded to challenge Dutch and Portuguese dominance in the spice trade. The major force behind British Imperial expansion throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was not really until the establishment of voyages made on a joint-stock basis and the granting of factory concessions, in the early seventeenth century, that the company began to boom.
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Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex was a dazzling courtier who captivated Elizabeth. The step-son of the Earl of Leicester (one of Elizabeth\'s earlier favourites), and the husband of Sir Philip Sidney\'s widow, he tried to draw on the legacies of those around him to increase his favour. Throughout the 1590s, Essex had played on his favour with the Queen and had risen quickly through military ranks to be appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in ... mehr
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On 24 March 1603, at Richmond Palace, Elizabeth I died. To the end, she had resolutely refused to name her heir. The administrators around her, however, were in no doubt as to her intended successor and James VI, King of Scots, was proclaimed as James I, King of England.
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Upon the death of Elizabeth I, James VI, King of Scots (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), succeeded as James I, King of England, thereupon uniting the crowns but not the governments of England and Scotland. To mark the union of the crowns, a new ensign was designed superimposing the red cross of St George on the white cross of St Andrew. Closer union of the nations parliaments, for example, was rejected by the commons and abandoned after 1607.One of ... mehr
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Charles I, unable to work with Parliament, attempted to rule without it. Eventually he was to raise his standard against the parliamentary forces, leading to civil war and his eventual judicial murder.
England was to be a republic until the collapse of Cromwell\'s Commonwealth and the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Shortly afterwards, a devastating plague swept through the country followed by the Great Fire of London.
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On 5 November 1605, a plot was discovered to blow up parliament, at its opening, with a stash of gunpowder stored in the cellars below the House of Lords. Although the event is closely linked to the name of Guy (or Guido) Fawkes, he was not the leader of the group of conspirators. Instead, Robert Catesby was acknowledged as the foremost of the Catholic conspirators.James, who had already escaped assassination attempts in Scotland (such as the 160 ... mehr
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Royal favour was shown to those companies and individuals seeking to establish settlements in North America. The first permanent British colony in North America was Jamestown, Virginia, established by Captain John Smith in 1607 with 105 pioneers. This was known as a \'tobacco\' colony. Another tobacco colony was founded in Maryland in 1632. The first British trading post in Africa was acquired in the Gambia in 1686, during the brief reign of Jame ... mehr
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The defeat of rebel Irish earls in the early 1600s, convinced James I that the only way to solve the Irish problem (which had plagued England for over three centuries) was to replace Gaelic culture with English and Scottish protestant culture. Previous attempts at plantation had largely been unsuccessful, so James organised not only settlers (from England and Scotland) but also new government administrators. Land was reserved for the Protestant C ... mehr
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The \'Authorised Version\' of the Bible (or King James Bible) was guaranteed to be found in almost all Protestant British homes from its initial publication until the nineteenth century. Copies can still be purchased today. The version was commissioned following the 1604 Hampton Court Conference between Anglicans and Puritans and took seven years to complete.
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When James left Edinburgh in 1603, he guaranteed the Scots that he would return every three years. He did not. Instead, he returned only once, between 13 May and 4 August 1617. The visit (a large part of which was spent hunting and carousing) was overshadowed by James\'s insistence on attempting to pass the \'Five Articles of Perth\' through both the Scottish Parliament and the Kirk General Assembly.These articles were seen by the strongly Presby ... mehr
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In August 1620, a group that became known as the Pilgrim Fathers and that were attempting to escape religious persecution in England, sailed from Southampton for the New World. They landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts (although they had been aiming for Virginia). Often portrayed as the founders of the modern United States, they were far from the first British settlers on the North American continent. Indeed, only a year before at Jamestown, ... mehr
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