The Sixteenth Century: Characteristics of

Early Modern England

 “Early Modern” V. “Renaissance”: Which
Term Should you Use?
• First, the term Renaissance: “…is commonly applied to the
historical period which follows the Middle Ages, but when
the Middle Ages ended and when the Renaissance began
has been a source of much debate. A long accepted view
was that the Renaissance began in the latter half of the 14th
c. and that it continued throughout the 15th and 16th c. and
perhaps even later” (Dictionary of Literary Terms and
Literary Theory 739).
– There is little dispute that the ideas from the Italian
Renaissance moved from the continent to the UK. A
great example of the culture exchange and development
is the history of the English sonnet.

– The flowering and changes in art, music, science,

government, literature, drama, religion, geography,
world view, architecture, communication,
transportation, and population cannot be denied,
regardless of what its called. In the end, both words are
acceptable. Just the second term helps us see how ideas
of the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries inform
contemporary issues.
 Events that Shaped Early Modern
England (1476-1603):
• 1476: William Caxton prints an edition of The Canterbury Tales
on the first printing press in England.
• 1485: Accession of Henry VII inaugurates Tudor Dynasty
• 1492: Columbus lands in the Caribbean on his first voyage
• 1509: Accession of Henry VIII
• 1515: Sir Thomas More begins writing Utopia
• 1517: Martin Luther’s Wittenberg Theses; beginning of the
Reformation
• 1534: Henry VIII declares himself head of the English church
• 1558: Accession of Elizabeth I
• 1585-7: Colony of settlers disappears at Roanoke
• 1603: Death of Elizabeth I and accession of James I
 Cultural Issues that Shaped Early
Modern England (1476-1603)
• Renaissance
Humanism
• The Reformation
• “The New World”
and European
Expansion
• Beginning of the
Scientific Revolution
• Rise of Nations
 Renaissance Humanism
“…what is a man/If his chief
good and market of his
time/Be but to sleep and
feed? A beast, no
more./Sure he that made
us with such large
discourse,/Looking before
and after, gave us not/That
capability of godlike
reason/To fust in us
unus’d” (Hamlet IV.31-7).
 Some Characteristics of
Renaissance Humanism…
• Humanism stressed the revival of classic learning that often came at the
expense of medieval worldview and scholarship. For example Renaissaince
Humanists stressed the power individual choice over man that the medievel
world view defined as a only a subject of God's will.
– In this way Humanists, like Thomas More, understood identity as something that
could and should be “fashioned.” In this sense they were very much like us,
thinking that identity is not born by made-nurture over nature.
• In their more extreme forms, humanistic attitudes regarded man as the crown
of creation.
• In England and elsewhere, Humanism was bound up with the struggles over
the purposes of education and curriculum reform. During the Renaissance,
emphasis shifted from training students exclusively to work in the Catholic
Church to training students to be priests, lawyers, and public servants.
 Humanism and Language
• Leading scholars of the Renaissance period were called “Humanists”
because they were students of humanist literature: the literature of the
Greek and Latin poets, dramatists, philosophers, historians and
rhetoricians.
• A newly revived interest in Latin and Greek texts, along with Hebrew,
also gave rise to Humanists writing in their own vernacular, modern
langauges.
– Remember that the court langauge, the language of the nobility in
England, was French well into the 14th century. While works like Thomas
More’s Utopia and Thomas Bacon’s Essays were written in Latin, the
authors of the Elizabethean theater and court poets wrote in English. Such
authors combatted the assumption that “…the English language had
almost no pretige abroad, and there were those at home who doubted that
it could serve as a suitable medium for serious, elevated or elgant
discourse” (Norton 485).
The Printing Press
• Humanists, like Thomas More, could
not have spread their ideas as widely or
quite possibly may not have conceived
of their ideas at all without the
invention of the printing press.
• The goldsmith Johann Gutenberg first
assembled the systems involved in
Germany in 1440. Printing methods
based on Gutenberg's printing press
spread rapidly throughout Europe
replacing most block printing and
making it the progenitor of modern
movable type printing.
• William Caxton brought the press to
England in 1476-the impact of the press
on rhetoric and writing is so great that it
is difficult to overestimate.
 The Reformation
“My God, my God, thou art a direct
God, may I not say a literal
God, a God that wouldst be
understood literally and
according to the plain sense of
all that thou sayest. But thou art
also (Lord, I intend to thy glory,
and let no profane
misinterpreter abuse it to thy
diminution), thou art a
figurative, a metaphorical God
too” (John Donne).
 Life Before the Reformation

• Like the Renaissance itself, The

Reformation of the Catholic Church into
several Protestant sects in the 16th c. may
seem like it happened in just one or two
generations, but the stirring of discontent
with in the Catholic dominated Middle
Ages had long been felt.
• Catholic practice and history is too vast to summarize here,
but before Henry VIII in England there existed, “A vast
system of confession, pardons, penance, absolution,
indulgences, sacred relics, and ceremonies that gave the
unmarried male clerical hierarchy great power over their
largely illiterate flocks. The Bible, the liturgy, and most of
the theological discussions were in Latin, which few lay
people could understand; however, religious doctrine and
spirituality were mediated to them by the priests, by
beautiful church art and music, and by the liturgical
ceremonies of daily life-festivals, holy days, baptisms,
marriages, exorcisms, and funerals” (Norton 490).
Martin Luther and Some Key Dissenting
Concerns
• Though by no means the first person to
express dissenting concerns, Martin
Luther’s challenges to the Catholic
Church in 1517 turned into a revolt
very quickly.
• Luther stressed the importance of
parishioners reading the Bible for
themselves in their vernacular
languages instead of having faith
mediated to them by priests.
• “Luther charged that the pope and his
hierarchy were the servants of Satan
and that the Church had degenerated
into a corrupt, worldly conspiracy
designed to bilk the credulous and
subvert secular authority” (Norton 491).
• He stressed that people could be saved
through faith in God alone and not
through good works or indulgences.
The Reformation in England
• In England the Reformation began less
with popular dissent than with political
desire. The popular narrative is Henry
VIII wanted a legitimate son to succeed
him and his wife Catherine of Aragon,
aunt to Ferdinand I, failed to give him
one. Pope Clement VII also failed to
give Henry the divorce he wanted.
• In 1533 Henry had his marriage to
Catherine of Aragon declared invalid
on the pretence that the marriage was
never consummated and he married
Anne Boleyn.
• 1534 Henry issued The Act of
Succession which required an oath of
loyalty from all male subjects who
wished to inherit property.
• In 1534 Henry also seized all lands and
property held by the Catholic church.
 The “New World” and European
Expansion
“…on that branch which is called
Caora are a nation of people,
whose heads appear not above
their shoulders, which though it
may be a mere fable, yet for
mine own part I am resolved it is
true, because every child in the
provinces affirm the same: they
are called Ewaipanoma: they
are reported to have their eyes
in their shoulders, and their
mouths in the middle of their
breasts, & that a long train of
hair growth backward between
their shoulders” (Sir Walter
Raleigh) .
 England in Ireland

• The medieval English presence in Ireland was deeply shaken by Black

Death, which arrived in Ireland in 1348.
• From the late 15th century English rule was once again expanded in
Ireland following the Black Death, first through the efforts of the Earls
of Kildare and Ormond then through the activities of the Tudor State
under Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth.
• England saw the complete conquest of
Ireland by 1603 and the final collapse of the
Gaelic social and political superstructure at
the end of the 17th century as a result of
English and Scottish Protestant colonization
in the Plantations of Ireland, the disastrous
Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the
Williamite War in Ireland.
 England in the “Americas”
• England rejected Christopher Columbus’s requests to fund
his voyage to the “New World,” Preferring to concentrate
on their settlement of Ireland.

• In 1586 and again in 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to

establish permanent settlements on Roanoke Island. 4
years later, in 1591, all colonists had disappeared. The only
clue to their fate was the word "CROATOAN" and letters
"CRO" carved into separate tree trunks, suggesting the
possibility that they were either massacred, absorbed, or
taken away by Croatoans or perhaps another native tribe.
• England's first permanent overseas
settlement was founded in 1607 in
Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and
managed by the Virginia Company, an
offshoot of which established a colony on
Bermuda, which had been discovered in
1609.

• Plymouth was founded in 1620.

 The Beginning of the Scientific
Revolution
Like every other aspect of the
Renaissance or early modern
period, the beginning of the
Scientific Revolution is a
challenge to pin down. Though
many historians date the
Scientific Revolution to the
publication of On the Revolution
of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolas
Copernicus in 1543, they also
suggest science was in a state
of constant development till the
19th century.
 Some Significant Inventions and Discoveries
that Shaped the Renaissance:

• On The Revolution of Heavenly Spheres (1543) challenged

Church approved earth centered model of the universe
(geocentric), with the sun-centered model of the universe
(heliocentric).

• In Novum Organum (1620), Francis Bacon introduced his

“Scientific Method” that combined empirical investigation
with carefully limited and tested generalizations that could
be repeated with the same results over and over. In a direct
challenge to Aristotle, he believed this to be the best
method to investigate “nature.”
• In 1628 William Harvey published An Anatomical
Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals,
where, based on scientific methodology, he argued for the
idea that blood was pumped around the body by the heart
before retuning to the heart and being re-circulated.

• Based only on uncertain descriptions of the telescope,

invented in the Netherlands in 1608, Galileo, in that same
year, made a telescope with about 3x magnification, and
later made others with up to about 32x magnification. He
published his initial telescopic astronomical observations
in March 1610 in a short treatise entitled Sidereus Nuncius
(Starry Messenger).
 Rise of Nations out of Feudal City-States

• “For in whatever parts of the land

the sheep yield the softest and most
expensive wool, there the nobility
and gentry, yes, and even some
abbots though other wise holy men,
are not content with the old rents
that the land yielded to their
predecessors. Living in idleness and
luxury, without doing any good to
society, no longer satisfies them;
they have to do positive evil, For
they leave no land free for the plow.
They enclose every acre for pasture
they destroy houses and abolish
towns, keeping only the churches
for sheep barns” (More 12).
 Characteristics of the English Nation-
State
• Markets in early modern England expanded significantly, international trade flourished,
and cities throughout the realm experienced a rapid surge in size and importance.
London’s population in particular soared, from 60,000 in 1520, to 120,000 in 1550, to
375,000 a century later, making it the largest and fastest-growing city in Europe.
• Elizabeth also engaged in other enterprises that combined aggressive nationalism with
the pursuit of profit” in other words imperialism and empire building.
• Like most nations, when England was struggling into nationhood and to define itself,
citizens often defined “Englishness” as what is was not. Englishness was not:
– Catholics, although they all had been until recently
– Elizabethan England had a lot of foreign artisans from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and above all
France and the Netherlands living mostly in London. During the 16 th c. there were several riots
and bloody demonstrations protesting foreign artisans who were accused of taking English jobs
away from English people.
– England, and again esp. London had a small population of Jews. During the Middle Ages the
Jewish community was continually persecuted, massacred, and excommunicated in European
countries.
Sir Thomas More and Utopia

• “He likes to be dressed simple,

and does not wear silk, or
purple or gold chains, except
when it is not allowable to
dispense with them. He cares
marvelously little for those
formalities…as he does not
exact these ceremonies form
others, so he is not scrupulous
in observing them himself,
though he understand how to
use them if he thinks proper to
do so; but he holds it to be
effeminate and unworthy of a
man to waste much of his time
on such trifles”(Erasmus 127).
 Characteristics/Background: Sir
Thomas More
• Sir/Saint Thomas More was an English lawyer,
author, and statesman. During his lifetime he
earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar
and occupied many public offices, including that
of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. He very
much embodies and champoined ideas like
Renaissance Humanism and rational investigation
of the natural world.
• More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to
an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political
system he described in a book published in 1516.
• He is chiefly remembered for his principled
refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be the
supreme head of the Church of England, a
decision which ended his political career and led
to his execution as a traitor.
• In 1935 Pope Pius XI canonized St Thomas More
in the Roman Catholic Church; More was declared
Patron Saint of politicians and statesmen by Pope
John Paul II in 1980.
 Summary
• Characteristics of Early Modern English
period
• Early Modern Vs. Renaissance
• Humanism and Language
• English Reformations
• Key figures in the History