Лекции по "Истории Англии"

     Lecture №6

     Henry VI was a child, when the gained part of England’s France were lost. He was crowned in 1430 aged 10, but never returned, and he wouldn’t contemplate leaving an army there. Few French people took the coronation of the foreign king seriously. Even had he been fully grown, the outcome would probably have remained much the same. // Henry lacked the fashion/passion for war, actually he didn’t like war at all. But his grandfather and his father both had liked war very much.

     It was his peacable nature that earned him the affection of the people and the contempt of his wife Margaret and the warrior nobles. His interests lay in academia and it was he who found both Eton College (an exclusive private school for boys, situated near Windsor) in 1440 and also he founded King’s College in Cambridge a year later.

     Although there were some military success for the English, France consolidated its strength. The tide turned against the English and by 1463 their coast utterly lost. It was the same year that Henry VI was struck down by the same madness that got his maternal grandfather.

     Calais was held until 1558, although the claim of the French throne by the English Monarchy was dropped once and forever. The lost of possessions in France was a serious blow to English prestige. The memories of discontent were finally translateded into a fully pledged rebellion by Richard, duke of York, in 1455. He was descended from the third son of Edward III, while Henry VI’s claim to the throne was through his forth son, John of Gorned, duke of Lancaster.

     The dispute between the two sides was to last for very long 30 years and is known in the history as the War of Roses, because of the antagonists’ emblems: a Red Rose for the “Lancastrians” and a White Rose for the “Yorkists”. The impact of the Civil War on ordinary folk was not great, although there were battles in eight counties with campaigns, which in total accounted for about fifteen months out of three decades. Worse effected where the noblemen as it became customary to execute aristocrats, prisoners of war.

     Richard, duke of York, scored an immediate success by forcing the King to accept him, as Regent. Then a son was born to the ambitious queen Margaret nicknamed the Shewolf of France. Now there was an heir to the throne, a very unwelcome complication, as far as the Yorkists were concerned, but a rarely/railing point for the Lancastrians. When Richard was killed at the battle of Wakefield[1460], his son, Edward, assumed leadership of the Yorkists cause. His forces defeated the Lancastrians in a battle, which was fought in blizzard conditions at Towton, in Yorlshire, in 1461. Henry and his queen escaped to Scotland and plotted a come to revolt.

     When the plot to overturn Edward failed in Northumbria land, Margaret and the Prince of Wales only very narrowly escaped capture. It is said that ambitious robber, who ////// them, took pity on the Queen and her young son and spared them not wishing to have Royal blood on his hands. In 1474 the Lancastrians repeated the King only for the thing to be defated of Hecstam. Margaret and her son fled to France, while Henry disguised himself as a madder and wanted the hills of Yorkshire until he was reconsidered and taken to the Prison(the Tower of London).

     By then Edward was safely on the throne. As which in alligiance by the powerful Richard Nevil, earl of Warwick, helped to oust Edward in 1470. The earl, whose ///// earned him the title of Kingmaker, was called like that because of Edward’s choice of bride. The handsome king had fallen in love with Elisabeth Woodwill, a law-born widow of Lancastrian stoughwhat. When Edward began to favour her family about/above the earls, Richard Nevil decided to change the sides and he received aid from king Louis XI of France and placed Henry once more on the throne.

     It didn’t take the exiled Edward long to find assistance from Charles the Bald, duke of Burgundy, and returned from Holland with a very huge army, which took London in 1471. On a foggy Easter day Edward fought a battle at Dornet, in which the earl of Warwick was slaved. On May, 4 the same year a battle was fought in Glocesshire at a site, which was afterwards cristioned as the Bloody Meadow, where the Prince of Wales was killed and Henry VI was captured and commited once again to the Tower of London. And within the three weeks he had spent there, he was found dead. Although the cause of death was officially given as pure displeasure and melancholy, but the historians undoubtably say that he was murded, probably even by Edward’s brother Richard, while he[Henry] was praying in a small chapel in the Tower. And every year on May, 21 the authorities of Eton School mark the anniversary by placing a wreath of lilies and roses on the very spot, where he had died.

     The dispute between Yorkists and Lancastrians wasn’t over yet. Edward IV died in 1483. His reign perhaps best marked by the construction of St. George’s Chapel, a fine building, which is situated at Windsor Castle, which he had built to outshine Henry VI’s Chapel at Eton. Next in line was his son, Edward V, who just also was a boy, he was only twelve years old. He was King for 77 days, before his uncle Richard, duke of Glocester, took the crown. Richard cloaked[to cover or hide sth with sth else] it as concern for the boy-king, nevertheless Richard was popular and there was little distance [dista-a-ance].

     It was algy with the safely of the young Edward and his 10-year-old brother Richard, duke of York in mind, that the pair were dispached to the Tower of London. After that they never had been seen alive again. It is believed that the boys were killed in the Tower of London, at a place known ever since then as the Bloody Tower. Bones of two children were discovered in the decimity in 1674 and they were removed and buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1933 examinations of those bones revealed that they belonged to two boys; what was more, they were brothers aged 12 and 10. Later findings had all same bones belonged to younger children, who were perhaps girls. In short we can say that nobody knows for sure the state of the little princess.

     There are a lot of theories about the means of the murder. Most populary accepted is the theory that Richard killed them or had them killed. Having declared himself King, he would have been unwilling to hand over the rule to his nephew. He never denyed being responsible for the murders of the princes, even when he was openly accused of them by the French people and the French king. For the future Henry VII had been responsible for the killing the little princes. He already had desires of the throne and would, like Richard, have had to make way for the young Edward, when he came off age. Supporting /// Richard claimed the Tudors blackened his name to disguise Henry’s complicity in the killings. And with Henry VII, a new dinasty, the Tudors’ age comes to power.

     Henry VII was determined to bring peace to his land. He decided to unite the Lancastrians and the Yorkists by marrying Edward IV’s daughter, Elisabeth. Diplomatically, he adopted as his own emblem a Double Rose, a very famous symbol, the famous Tudor Rose, landed with White and Red Roses with the colours of the two warring houses. The Age of the Tudors has left its impact on Anglo-American minds as a watershed in British History. Hollowest a tradition native patriotism had united to swell our appreciation of the period as a true Golden Age for the British Isles.

     By his careful management Henry VII brought about new prosperity, not least to his own purse. Mindful of waste he insisted upon checking every receipt, which was issued by the treasure. He forced a trade with foreign country while protecting the domestic market very much. When he died in 1509, he was a millionaire and at that time it meant a very rich person.

     One outstanding problem remained - the succession. His oldest son and heir to the throne had already died. Arthur, Prince of Wales, was an important instrument of the new European union. He had been married to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinant and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain. Within five months of the marriage, unfortunately, he was dead.  Now the so-certain son would be king, but first there was a dilemma to resolve. Henry VII had been delighted as the political match made by his eldest son and decided it was too good an opportunity to rule, not least of her wealth. It was his intention that the widow should wed again, this time to Henry, the brother of her dead husband. That way, the politically valuable union with Spain was maintained. And Henry got to keep his huge fortune, that Catherine had brought with her. The problem lay with the Church, which opposed a man marrying his dead brother’s wife. However, Pope Julius II, was persuaded to grant[to allow smb to do sth] for the marriage, which finally went ahead.

     Henry[VIII] succeded to the throne and married in 1509. At first this person seemed like a breath of fresh air to the British Isles. When the 18-year-old Henry VIII became King, he was extremely popular in his own land, for he had all the qualities that his people admired. Foreigners reported that he was the best dressed King in Europe and that his chief interests were, of course, girls and hunting. But this was only half the truth. First of all, he distrusted foreigners as most Englishmen did at that time; he spoke three foreign languages; he was a first-classed horseman and he was a first-class musician. He could discuss religion and ship-building with equal skill. He was a very clever politician, who first of all trusted his own Parliament, and he made full use of it. Most important of all he thoroughly understood the hearts and minds of his own people. He ruled not through the House of Lords, but through the House of Commons, without an army, and his people remained loyal to him through all the difficult years of a very important time in England’s history and it is the Reformation.

     For the first 20 years of his rule Henry was contempt to enjoy life and to leave all the government business to his chief minister, Thomas Wolsey[1475? – 1530]. Wolsey was the son of a small trader, but he was a very clever person and he was the most ambitious churchman that history has ever seen. In his private houses at Hampton Court and Whitehall he lived more luxuriously than the Hing himself. He wasn’t contempt to be a chief minister and Archbishop. His aim was muxh more important, his aim was to become the ///. At first he wanted to become Pope. At first everything went all right, he kept a balance of power in Europe so that no country should become stong enough to threaten England’s Church. And this had been England’s official aim ever since then.

     In 1513 both the French and their Scottish friends were heavily defeated in battle, but this led France to weak. Wolsey now gained/gazed his support to Charles V, the German Emperor, who was also Charles I of Spain, as he hoped that Charles would help Wolsey to become Pope. It was too late when he realized that the balance of power was broken and that Spain had become strong enough to destroy England. But Henry VIII was much wiser than his minister. He saw that England’s safety must now depend on sea power rather than on politics. His interest in ships and guns produced a Navy, that not only defeated Spain, but influenced English History for centuries ahead.

     During all these years both Henry and Wolsey had kept a strong hold on the Church and church affairs. Of course, they supported the Pope, but they saw that the Church badly needed reforms. Wolsey want all bishops and their /// leaders to improve their discipline. He stopped the appointment of any more unofficial churchmen, and unofficial churchmen were those class/clerks who had known leaders’ duty but who claimed freedom from the Public Court. He closed thirty abbeys under the Pope’s approval and used their wealth to build Christ Church[spelling] College, which is in Oxford.

     Henry took no action against the Church, but he was ready to support those people, who did it.  When Parliament declared that criminal clerks must be tried in public courts, Wolsey wanted to refer the case to Rome, but Henry VIII said firmly “No”. “The kings of England, he said, have never had any master but God alone.” He was a great friend of More[Sir Thomas More] and Calais and he descended/defended Calais against the attacks of angry bishops. His quarrel was with the Church’s behaviour, not with its faith. He wrote a book against the German reformer, Martin Luther and the Pope gave him the Latin title – [Fidei Defensor,] Defender of the Faith. This title may still be seen on every English coin[F.D.].

     When Henry became king, he married Catherine and she gave him a daughter, Mary. But all his sons died at birth, and Henry badly needed a son to follow him. He began to feel that God hadn’t approved of his marriage and that the Pope had been wrong to allow the marriage to the wife of his brother. There was only one possible remedy: the Pope must declare that the marriage had been allowed by mistake and the marriage was unlawful. Then Henry would be free to marry again. Wolsey and his bishops supported Henry’s view. The Pope could easily have agreed as he had done for two recent kings of France in similar cases, but Emperor Charles V was Catherine’s nephew and his army had seized Rome. The Pope was in his power and the Pope didn’s dare to annoy Charles by helping Henry. Instead, he asked Henry VIII to visit him. As you can guess, Henry became extremely angry. He defeated Wolsey on spot and made More his chief minister. Then he called a new Parliament, he still had no/now wish to break away from the Roman Church, which is now commonly called the Cathiloc Church. But he wanted a reformed National Church within the Catholic tramework.

     For the next five years he did his best to persuade the Pope to accept his ///. But the Pope remained under Charles’ influence and all Henry’s efforts were in vain. Henry’s trouble/struggle over his marriage made him realize something that most English people had known for years: the foreign influence in English affairs had gone too far and it must be stopped forever. The Parliament of 1529 felt this moment most strongly. In seven years it destroyed the feudal power of the Church completely. The Church Council accepted Henry as the Head of the Church. Archbishop Grammar [какое странное имя, не находите?? J]declared that his marriage to Catherine[of Aragon] was  unlawful and accepted his new wife, Anne Boleyn, as his new queen.

     And at last, when all attempts and agreements failed, Parliament passed laws which cut its least size with Rome. Most of the bishops accepted these changes without difficulties. The bishops had been appointed by the king and many of them served as state officials. And actually there was no change of faith, there was only a change of the viligity and the change, actually, the way out of the Roman Church. But it was different for the abbeys. They had always taken their orders directly from Rome, and now few of them served any useful purpose. They no longer supplied the only books or teachers for the printing press, and the grammar school had taken their place. Children were started to deport not in the abbeys, but at grammar schools. Most of them were too far from a town to provide religious services for a people. Yet, they still had the six hundred separate houses and the yearly profit from their land was worth 2 million pounds in modern money. So the abbeys were much richer than the King himself. Half of the abbeys consequently were closed by order of Parliament, and the rest closed one by one. The old monks were given enough to lead/live on in retirement, the best of the young ones became “parish” priests.

     Female education suffered the most seculiar laws. For religious women were the only girl’s school and these were now closed. The best boys’ schools were kept open by the King and any money was sent aside to pay for them. Some modern public schools like the King’s School at Canterbury were ancient abbey schools before Henry gave them new life and a new title.

     Two third of the abbey land were sold, the rest was kept by the France.  New teachers replaced the old monks at the Universities and new colleges were built for the rapidly increasing number[она почему-то member говорит… и кто её знает…] of students. However, church sevices went on as usual, except that they were in English, instead of the Latin language. Those, who wanted to change any part of the Faith were called “Protestants”, but still they had very little influence. The king in Parliament wanted the Old Faith under the New Rule. They killed some Protestants, who attacked the Faith and they killed some Catholics, who attacked the New Rule, so the balance was seen. They had even hanged a man as he had eaten meat on Friday. But in general the changes were made without much violence.

     Henry’s trust in Parliament allowed the House of Commons to develop rapidly. During these busy years its members gained experience, which hepled them to form good customs for the future. One of these customs demanded that the King sould always listen to their complains before they allowed his requests for money. If the council proposed bad laws, the House of Commons was ready to change them or to rescuse/reuse, rescue-?? them in time. If lambeth were free from arrest and speech at that time was free, for Henry knew the value of sincere priests. – смысл этого предложения мне кто-нить объяснит??