G.M Trevelyan - SHE - Chapter IV
[alert-success] TUDOR ENGLAND: END OF MIDDLE AGES?
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[alert-primary] The End of Middle Ages? [/alert-primary]
[alert-primary] The End of Middle Ages? [/alert-primary]
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New era emerged in Europe and
in England towards the end of the Fifteenth Century and at the beginning of the
Sixteenth Century. The new society that emerged was completely different from
the existing society. G.M. Trevelyan in this chapter tries to find “when the
Middle Ages came to an end”.
Dates and periods are important to
the study and discussion of history. They show how things happened by the
sequence of events. Historic dates are different from ‘Periods’ and ‘Era’. ‘Periods’ are not facts, unlike dates. They
are just abstract ideas about past events based on what we know now. They can
help focus a discussion, but they often lead us away from the truth.
Mostly ‘periods’ have usually
been put together for purely political reasons: "the age of the
Tudors," "the age of Louis XIV," and so on. It is harder to
think of economic and social history in ‘periods’ because they coexist in the
same country for generations or even centuries.
G.M. Trevelyan asks, if we are to
name a date or a time “when the Middle Ages came to an end”, what could we
say?. He answers, Certainly not "1485," the year that Tudor rule
began.
The reason behind is that in the
real year 1485, when Henry Tudor and his men had killed Richard III at
Bosworth, they had no idea that a new era was about to start. They just thought
that they had won again in the endless and boring Wars of Roses. Moreover, the
English society stayed the same for 50 years after 1485. until Henry's son took
control of the Pope and the monastic wealth.
Henry VII was very committed to
orthodoxy, and they were not afraid to call out heretics. He often used bishops
as his state counsellors. Cardinal Wolsey was an important figure, who showed
the pride and power of the Middle Ages church on a huge scale. William Tyndale
wanted to be more radical, so he translated the Bible into words of power and
beauty that millions of people could be benefited.
In the secular spheres, Henry VII
restored order to the country side, and put down retrainers. Parliament was in
serious danger of dying out under Henry VII and Wolsey because it wasn't being
used.
But Henry VIII, Henry VII’s son,
restored Medieval Parliament for modern purposes. English trade was growing through
its old mediaeval channels at the beginning of the 1600s.
It is a waste of time to try to
find a date or even a time period when the Middle Ages "ended" in
England. Because, Medieval institutions like the monarchy, the peerage, the
English Common Law, the courts of justice interpreting the rule of law, the established
church's hierarchy, the parish system, universities, public schools, and
grammar schools are still around today. Conservatism and liberalism have
their roots in the Middle Ages and are strong in trade unions still today.The pattern
of history is indeed a tangled web.
No simple diagram can be drawn to
find the date and time of the end of the Middle Age. Life has become more mechanised;
people have changed more in the last hundred years than in the previous
thousand. So, it's not too unlikely that the Industrial Revolution will be seen
as the real start of "modern times" rather than the Renaissance and
Reformation.
People usually think of the
Renaissance and the Reformation when they say the Middle Ages ended in the
1600s. In the areas of thought and religion, as well as clerical power and
privilege, it is possible to say that the mediaeval way of doing things was
thrown out in Tudor England.
The Elizabethan system, was a victory for both the Renaissance and the
Reformation which is the "grand finale" or "Tudor triumph".
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