Practical class (History – The Tudors/ The Stuarts)

1. Answer and discuss the following questions:

1. Describe Tudor Parliament
In Tudor times most important decisions concerning government were made by the king
or queen and a small group of advisers called the Privy Council. However, before these
decisions became law, they had to be passed by Parliament.

Parliament was the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Lords
was made up of about sixty Bishops, Dukes, Earls and Barons. It was unusual for
members of the House of Lords to criticise the king’s policies. If they did so, they were
in danger of being stripped of their titles.

Members of the House of Commons were more independent as they were sometimes
elected by the people who lived in the area they represented. However, very few people
had the vote and in many cases the largest landowner in the area decided who went to
Parliament.

The Tudor monarchs did not like governing through Parliament. Henry VII had
used Parliament only for law making. He seldom called it together. Henry VIII had used
it first to raise money for his military adventures and then for his struggle with Rome.
His aim was to make sure that the powerful members from the shires and towns
supported him, because they had a great deal of control over popular feeling. Perhaps,
Henry himself didn’t realise that by inviting Parliament to make new laws for the
Reformation he was giving it a level of authority it never had before.

Tudor monarchs were certainly not more democratic than earlier kings, but by using
Parliament to strengthen their policy, they actually increased Parliament’s authority.
Parliament strengthened its position again during Edward VI’s reign by ordering the new
prayer book to be used in all churches and forbidding the Catholic mass. Only 2 things
persuaded Tudor monarchs not to get rid of Parliament altogether: they needed money
and they needed the support of the merchants and landowners.

Today Parliament must meet every year and remain “in session” for three-quarters of it.
This was not at all the case in the 16th century. In the early 16th century Parliament
only met when the monarch ordered it. Sometimes it met twice in one year, but then it
might not meet again for 6 years. In the first 44 years of Tudor rule Parliament met only
20 times. Henry VIII assembled Parliament a little more often to make the laws for
Church Reformation. But Elizabeth, like her grandfather Henry VII, tried not to use
Parliament after her Reformation Settlement of 1559 and in 44 years she only let
Parliament meet 13 times.

During the century power moved from the House of Lords to the House of
Commons. The reason for this was simple. The Members of Parliament (MPs) in the
Commons represented richer and more influential classes than the Lords. In fact, the idea
of getting rid of the House of Lords, still a real question in British politics today, was
first suggested in the 16th century.
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. His job in Tudor times was to make sure that Parliament discussed what the
monarch wanted and that it made the decision which he or she wanted.

Until the end of the Tudor period Parliament was supposed to do 3 things: agree to
the taxes needed; make the laws which the Crown suggested; and advise the Crown but
only when asked to do so. In order for Parliament to be able to do these things, the
Members of Parliament were given important rights: freedom of speech, freedom from
fear of arrest and freedom to meet and speak to the monarch.

By the end of the 16th century Parliament was beginning to show new confidence and in
the 17th century, when the gentry and merchant classes were far more aware of their
own strength, it was obvious that Parliament would challenge the Crown. Eventually
this resulted in war.

2. Dwell upon the causes and results of Civil War.

About Civil War:

The English Civil Wars occurred from 1642 through 1651. The fighting during this
period is traditionally broken into three wars: the first happened from 1642 to 1646, the
second in 1648, and the third from 1650 to 1651.

The British Civil Wars (1642-51) were primarily disputes between Crown and
Parliament about how England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed.

Between 1642 and 1646 England was torn apart by a bloody civil war. On the one hand
stood the supporters of King Charles I: the Royalists. On the other stood the supporters
of the rights and privileges of Parliament: the Parliamentarians.

Shortly before the war broke out, partisans of both sides began to apply an insulting
nickname to their opponents: to the Parliamentarians, the Royalists were ‘Cavaliers’ – a
term derived from the Spanish word ‘Caballeros’, meaning armed troopers or horsemen;
to the Royalists, the Parliamentarians were ‘Roundheads’ – a reference to the shaved
heads of the London apprentices who had been so active in demonstrating their support
for Parliament during the months before the fighting began.

The civil war which broke out in 1642 saw a broadly Royalist north and west ranged
against a broadly Parliamentarian south and east. Charles derived particular advantage
from the support of the Welsh and the Cornish, who supplied him with many of his foot
soldiers, while parliament derived still more advantage from its possession of London.

In mid-1643, it looked as if the king might be about to defeat his opponents, but later
that year the Parliamentarians concluded a military alliance with the Scots.
Following the intervention of a powerful Scottish army and the defeat of the king’s
forces at Marston Moor in 1644, Charles lost control of the north of Britain. The
following year, Charles was defeated by parliament’s New Model Army at Naseby
and it became clear that the Royalist cause was lost.
Unwilling to surrender to the Parliamentarians, the king gave himself up to the Scots
instead, but when they finally left England, the Scots handed Charles over to their
parliamentary allies. Still determined not to compromise with his enemies, the captive
king managed to stir up a new bout of violence known as the Second Civil War.

Realising that the kingdom could never be settled in peace while Charles I remained
alive, a number of radical MPs and officers in the New Model Army eventually decided
that the king had to be charged with high treason. Charles was accordingly tried, found
guilty, and beheaded in January 1649. In the wake of the king’s execution, a
republican regime was established in England, a regime which was chiefly underpinned
by the stark military power of the New Model Army.

The war was over, but the cost to ordinary people in human suffering was
immeasurable. Bled dry with taxes, they had also endured the compulsory billeting of
uncouth troops in their houses, the plundering of their animals, the theft of their food, the
disruption of their markets, the vandalisation of their churches and the destruction of
their property. The lingering effects of the war were visible wherever you turned. One-
third of the people in Gloucester were homeless; one-quarter in Bridgwater and two-
thirds in Taunton. Hundreds of maimed soldiers and destitute widows submitted
petitions to the county quarter sessions in the hope of gaining some relief. Fields lay
abandoned; bridges broken down; and road surfaces destroyed. It had indeed been an
unhappy civil war.

Causes:

The causes of the wars were complex and many-layered. At the centre of the conflict
were disagreements about religion, and discontent over the king’s use of power and
his economic policies.

 Political Tensions: Conflict between the monarchy and Parliament over the
extent of royal power and taxation rights heightened tensions. Parliament sought
to limit the king’s authority and assert its own power.

 Religious Divisions: Religious differences, particularly between Protestant

groups like Puritans and Anglicans, contributed to the conflict. Charles I’s
attempts to impose Anglicanism on Scotland and England angered many.

 Economic Discontent: Economic struggles, including high taxes and inflation,

exacerbated social unrest, particularly among the lower classes. Many felt
marginalized and economically oppressed.

Results:
  Execution of Charles I: King Charles I was tried and executed for high treason in
1649, marking the first time a reigning monarch was executed by their own
people.

 The exile of the royal family

 Establishment of the Commonwealth: England was declared a republic, known

as the Commonwealth, under Cromwell’s rule. This period saw significant
political and religious reforms.

 Suppression of Monarchy: The power of the monarchy was severely curtailed,

with Cromwell ruling as Lord Protector. The House of Lords and the monarchy
were abolished for a time.

 Religious and Social Changes: The Civil War led to the proliferation of various
religious sects and the toleration of different beliefs. It also witnessed a significant
shift in social structures and norms.

 The establishment of Britain’s first standing national army.

 An estimated 200,000 English soldiers and civilians were killed during the three
civil wars, by fighting and the disease spread by armies; the loss was
proportionate, population-wise, to that of World War I.

Overall, the British Civil War fundamentally altered the balance of power in England
and laid the groundwork for the modern constitutional monarchy.

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of

England, Scotland and Ireland, and tried (largely unsuccessfully) to consolidate broad
support behind the new republican regime amid the continued growth of radical religious
sects and widespread uneasiness about the new standing army.

After Cromwell’s death in 1658, he was succeeded as protector by his son Richard,
who abdicated just eight months later. With the continued disintegration of the republic,
the larger Parliament was reassembled, and began negotiations with Charles II to
resume the throne. The triumphant king arrived in London in May 1660, beginning the
English Restoration.

3. What is Jacobitism?
 This period characterized like the complex web of religious and political loyalties which
underpinned Jacobitism can seem alien and unsympathetic. The whole movement might be
said to span the century from the deposition of James II in the Glorious Revolution of
1688 to the lonely alcohol-sodden death of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1788.

 James (сам був католиком) decided that by promoting edicts of religious tolerance, he
would be able to re-establish Catholicism as the official faith of the British Isles. But
James's Protestant subjects who had been taught to abhor this faith completely didn’t accept
this notion. When a son was born to the King and Queen, British Protestants were faced with
 the prospect of never waking up from their worst nightmare: a Catholic dynasty. That the
reason why they turned to James's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange. In 1688 he led
a successful invasion of England. James panicked and fled. As Scotland wavered, James
wrote an utterly tactless letter to the Scottish National Convention in Edinburgh. They
declared for William.

 James's most zealous Scottish supporter, Viscount Dundee, (decided to help James) turned
to a military solution. The first Jacobite rising broke out. But it was not very popular at
all. Most Scottish nobles took the attitude of wait and see.

 Dundee's forces destroyed William's with a devastating highland charge at the battle of
Killiecrankie in 1689, but their leader died in his hour of glory. This left the movement
headless. The wait and seers kept waiting, and the rising petered out.

 William and The Union. The new King's Scottish reign was characterised by government
tactlessness and economic disasters. The most important of the latter was the Darien
Scheme. William refused all English assistance to this Scottish venture to found a colony in
Panama. When the scheme failed, leaving most of the would-be colonists dead, the King
was widely blamed.

 Thus to the die-hard believers in the hereditary right of James were added the dissatisfied.
Jacobitism became a magnet for almost anyone with a grudge against the government.
The Union of 1707 then produced what was for many Scots the grudge to end all grudges

 Treaty was being widely denounced, and Scotland was ripe for sedition(lдозріла до
заколоту) . The French, who were at war with Britain, suddenly saw an advantage to be
gained here. They would land the new Jacobite heir, James III 'The Old Pretender' in his
ancestral kingdom and start a rebellion. It was an excellent opportunity to unite much of the
nation, even many Presbyterians, on the Jacobite side against the Union.

4. When was Ireland granted legislative independence?

The Constitution of 1782 was a group of Acts passed by the Parliament of Ireland and
the Parliament of Great Britain in 1782–83 which increased the legislative and judicial
independence of the Kingdom of Ireland by reducing the ability of the Kingdom of
Great Britain to make laws and hear court cases relating to Ireland. These changes were
promoted, under the name legislative independence, by the Irish Patriot Party, a loose
alliance with Henry Grattan as its leading orator. The Parliament of Ireland as it existed
after 1782 is often called Grattan's Parliament in his honour. The Constitution did not
create a responsible executive, as the Dublin Castle administration remained under the
control of a Lord Lieutenant acting as a representative of the British government.
The granting of legislative independence to Ireland in 1782 marked the start of
what later generations would refer to as ‘Grattan’s Parliament’. In theory, the Irish
Parliament no longer had to submit draft legislation (‘heads of bills’) to the Irish and
British privy councils before being given permission to proceed with passing acts; in
practice, it was still a secondary legislature and had to defer to the combined wishes of
the ministry in London and its executive head in Ireland, the lord lieutenant. This meant
that political tension continued to exist between the two countries, and Pitt had already
given some thought to the idea of a union.
 2. Fill in the missing word, word combination or phrase.

The official name of the country under study is the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland. The official name of the country after the unification of its four
parts was the United Kingdom of Great Britain. However, it was changed into the
present variant after the Act of Union 1800, which unified Great Britain and Ireland.
The North and the West of GB are rugged? and thus sparsely populated, the South and
the East are flat? and densely populated.
Тhе national flag is nicknamed Union Jack. It is made up of three crosses ~ the cross
of St. George (red cross) for England, the cross of St. Andrew (white cross on a blue
background) for Scotland, the cross of St. Patrick (a red cross on a field of white) for
Northern Ireland. The national flag of Wales - which is a red dragon passant on the
green and white field - is not included into the Union Jack because by the time the latter
was created this part had been unified with the UK for centuries.

The national flower of England is the Rose (16), the one for Wales is the Daffodil (17),
the one for Scotland is the Thistle (Scottish Bluebell) (18), and the one for Northern
Ireland is Shamrock (19).
The national emblem is made up of a shield which pictures three gold lions (20) (the
symbol of England (21)), a yellow harp (22) (the symbol of Ireland (23)) and a red
lion (24) (the symbol of Scotland (25)). The shield is held by two supporters (26) -
unicorn (27) and lion (28).
The highest mountain of the UK is Ben Nevis (29). The longest river in the UK is is the
River Severn (30).
The average temperature of January makes up around 3°C (31), the one of July is
around 15°C (32).

3. Watch an Episode 4 “Kings and Queens of England” and create a timeline of

this period in history.

4. Watch a video “First English Civil War - The Rise of Cromwell” and discuss it
in details: make up some questions for your colleagues to check what they
remember from it.

5. Prepare a presentation on the theme:

 Father of the English Reformation
 From Mary to Elizabeth
 Golden Age
 Bloody Mary
 Language and Culture of that time
 Charles I