13. Instability and consolidation: 'the mid-Tudor Crisis'. 1547-63

The view that there was a crisis in face of combination of weak rulers, number of financial and economic problems, a series of rebellions, religious reformations, and foreign policy failures in the middle years of the sixteen century was first implicit in the writings of influential historians, such as A.F. Pollard and S.T. Bindoff and first explained by W.R.D. Jones in his book ‘The Mid-Tudor Crisis 1539-1563’.
Revisionists like David Loades, Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler, who have written under the influence of detailed research, argued this notion and even suggest that this period was actually one of success and great achievements.  Moreover there is another view of mid-Tudor crisis which suggest that both traditionalists and revisionist are wrong in their assumptions as John Matusiak  stated there was no crisis and although there were achievements in mid-Tudor England , they couldn’t be characterized as ‘years of achievement’ and  in any overarching sense both interpretations are wrong.

To begin with the years of 1547 to 1553 lies between two big reigns first of Henry VIII and the second one is the reign of Elisabeth I, who both made a fundamental changes and both enjoyed long and dramatic reigns. The line of succession was not always secure or consistent and it has been argued that Tudor monarchs were not always well suited to their role as Edward was just nine years old when he became a king in 1547 and Mary was female, and so considered at that time to be less capable of ruling the country. Furthermore Mary I had been declared illegitimate at some point by her father as Henry VIII married three times before he had a male heir, moreover none of his children had children of their own. All these led to much instability such as Edward VI, boy-king who was protected by liberal Earl of Somerset and corrupt Duke of Northumberland, who in order tried to install Lady Jane Grey and alter the legitimate line of succession. Not surprisingly political in-fighting was a problem throughout the 1500s. Factions would go in and out of favor and try to get more power. This led to a certain amount of instability as the Tudors were threatened by factions who became too powerful.

There were crushing foreign policy failures. The Duke of Somerset’s costly and ineffective campaigns in Scotland and against the French (£1 million) between 1547 and 1549 seemed to begin a precipitous slide, and then came, under the Duke of Northumberland, the Treaty of Boulogne in March 1550, which A.F.  Pollard described as ‘the most ignominious … signed by England during the century’. Mary Tudor’s loss of Calais January 1558 was seemed as a disastrous foreign policy. National pride was suffered and these contributed to the crisis as people were not happy.

During the years of 1547 to 1553 England experienced ‘as many serious rebellions in some-dozen years as there were for the whole of the rest of the Tudor era’. There were three major rebellions the Western Rebellion 1549, Kett’s rebellion 1549 and Wyatt’s rebellion, not to mention other uprisings. Most of this rebellions were in the South of England near to the capital,’the heart of Tudor power’ , making them even more worrying to the monarchy. In addition the impact of the first two was magnified by their occurrence at a time of war with Scotland and France. Furthermore these rebellions changed Somerset’s foreign policy as he withdrew troops from Scotland needed to suppress uprising, scaled down favoured policy of garrisoning Scotland and all these gave the advantage to French who in order took Boulogne in summer 1549.

Problems related to religion effected the country for almost half a century from 1530,Henry VIII’s Reformation and split from Catholic Church,  to 1580, Mary I burning around 300 Protestant ‘heretics’ in her reign of less than five years. Under Edward VI England was made Protestant but then under Mary I it was returned to Catholicism. Such quick changes from one extreme to the other caused sense of crisis, and it also could be argued that religious change may have been the main problem for the Tudors as it destabilized the roots of society and contributed to the rebellions witnessed in this period.

Throughout this period there were disastrous economic problems. Many of them were caused by debasement. This was where a small percentage of the value was removed from each coin as it was made and then used to make new coins. This helped in the short term, but led to inflation and worse problems later. This was a huge problem for peasants, who normally spent around 80% of their income on food. The population also increased from about 2.3 million in 1500 to 3 million in Edward’s reign, as well as continuous military expenditure which amounted to around 3.5 million between 1544 and 1550.All these led to huge inflation and unemployment, moreover there were lower wages and increased rents, poor harvests in 1549- 51, 1544-6, which caused migrations to cities and towns. There were also introduction of enclosure and governments ineffective attempts to resolve situation. The economic situation was worsen by a crisis in cloth trade , which led to a 15 % slump in wool exports in 1551 and a further  decline by 20 % in the following year.

Nowadays there are lots of counter- arguments amongst historians, who tried to argue the meaning of term ‘crisis’ to these years. And for many of them crisis denotes the situation involving imminent danger of systematic collapse in political, social or economic terms or in all three simultaneously. We can say at once that there was no crisis for the essential mechanisms of the state in mid-Tudor England as Parliament’s status was not destroyed, the Royal Supremacy was not overthrown during Mary’s reign retained its independence from Hapsburg Spain . The quality of Mary’s I reign has often been criticized by traditional historians like A.F. Pollard who stated that the regime was weak and unproductive, however this can be argued and there is little doubt that central and local government remained in control throughout the reigns of Edward and Mary, and furthermore it can be said that Elizabeth I inherited a fully functioning government. Although there were many rebellions throughout the Tudor period, they all were effectively suppressed and none succeeded in overthrowing the monarchy. The Privy Council, Parliament, although it was resolved in 1549, 1550, 1552 and 1553, and local administration also operated consistently and effectively throughout the middle of the century, helping to prevent crisis by remaining loyal to the monarchy. Rebellions in Edward’s reign are now radically reviewed in terms of the responses of local communities to mainly local grievances and were the result of social frustrations to alienate the aristocratic leadership and in any way they didn’t directly challenged the state. It was a social crisis but it could be attributed to the whole Tudor period.

 Reassessment of the economic dislocation of this period shows that economic crisis did appear in agrarian sector of economy. After the break with Catholic Church, there were fewer days off than there had been before. This helped the economy to keep going in difficult times. Moreover the cloth market recovered from Antwerp crash, which was one of the main factors of the agrarian crisis. During the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I reforms to the administration of Crown finances was introduced. The Duke of Northumberland had set up a commission to investigate the ways in which revenue administration may be run more efficiently and then Mary I and her councillors implemented the changes in 1554. These changes led to Lord Treasurer Winchester to took over to Exchequer both the Court of First Fruits and Tenths and the Court of Augmentations and more efficient methods introduced to the Exchequer which lasted for the rest of the Tudor period. In addition in 1558 a new Book of Rates was introduced with updated customs rates, which   substantially increased customs revenues. Moreover these changes were described by Alan Smith as’ fundamental for Elisabeth’s solvency and thus for the Elizabethan achievements as a whole’.  

According to David Loades rebellion and foreign policy crisis were not confined to mid-Tudor period. Moreover the most threatened rebellion in 16^th century was in 1536 with the Pilgrimage of grace. Some historians also argued that the situation in England cannot be described as a crisis in comparison with France that suffered a series of ‘faction-ridden civil wars’. Loads claim that the mid-Tudor years ‘should be seen on a very positive light, not as years of crisis, but as years of achievement’. In his view ‘the true significance of the reign of Edward and Mary lies less in what happened than in what did not happen’. John Matusiak introduced a new view in the debate on whether there was a crisis or not and he argued that both traditionalists and revisionists are wrong in their assumptions. His view is that there was no crisis and the achievements were not so great to describe these years as years of great achievements, he called mid-Tudor years as “Years of Trauma and Survival” and so in his words it was a time of trauma during which the state’s efforts were focused on survival rather than achievement.

Although England became close to a ‘sense of crisis’, the essential state machinery was not under threat, my view goes with post-revisionist assumptions, as it was years of huge economical and social problems, which the state tried to control by introducing sensible policies, so it wasn’t a crisis but neither there were achievements as reforms introduced needed more time to achieve result. Looking at Elizabethan reign we can deduced that Elisabeth implemented many policies worked out by Mary I and her government, for instance recoinage, according to C.E. Challis ‘Elisabeth could never have tackled the problem of the coinage either as quickly or as effectively as she did had it not been so thoroughly aired amongst government officials in the immediately preceding years’. So all in all, by examining range of relevant evidence about government, society, rebellions and religious changes it could be stated that there were no crisis as there was no ‘apocalypse’ and the state didn’t collapse.