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The University High School Band
The History and Theory of Music

Elizabethan England

Queen Elizabeth

Henry Tudor had ended the Wars of the Roses in 1485 by defeating King Richard III and marrying Elizabeth, uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster.

His son became King Henry VIII. Henry married a Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had one daughter, Mary. After several miscarriages and a stillborn son, Henry sought to annul his marriage to Catherine; the pope refused, and Henry initated the English Reformation, destroying monasteries, executing priests, and creating his own Christian denomination called Anglicanism. After dismissing Catherine, Henry married his lover Anne Boleyn. They had one daughter, Elizabeth, but no sons; Henry had her beheaded. He then married Jane Seymour, who died giving birth to a son, Edward. After Jane's death, Henry married Anne of Cleves, but later dismissed her as well and had the marriage annulled. He then married Catherine Howard, but had her beheaded and finally married Catherine Parr, who outlived him.

Tudor Architecture

Henry was succeeded by his son, King Edward VI. Edward continued Henry's Protestant reforms; however, Edward died in 1553 at the age of 15. The English government tried to have Lady Jane Grey, one of Henry VIII's granddaughters, proclaimed queen, but after just nine days in power she was deposed by Henry's eldest daughter, who became Queen Mary. Now the first queen regnant of England, Mary attempted to return the country to Catholicism, but died just five years later in 1558. She was succeeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, Henry's daughter by his second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Queen Elizabeth returned the country to Protestantism and reigned for the next 44 years until her death in 1603. England's power continued to grow under her reign, including a shocking defeat of the Spanish navy in 1588. Being so long and stable, the "Elizabethan Era" saw the full flowering of a distinctively English culture. Writers like Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, Tudor architecture, and composers like John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, and William Byrd all flourished during this time period..