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We started out discussing events and conditions in England during the 17th century. Recall from the prior week that under the Act of Supremacy (1534), King Henry VIII declared himself, not the pope, supreme head of the Church of England, or Anglican Church. Although Henry's decision was largely political and practical, the break with Rome encouraged Protestants in England who wanted a full-fledged reformation, like the one that had occurred in Germany. Edward VI, Henry's son (by a third wife, Jane Seymour), succeeded Henry upon his death in 1547, but the young Edward died in 1553. Henry's eldest daughter, Mary I ("Bloody Mary") attempted to restore Catholicism to England during her brief reign (1553-1558), and she ruthlessly persecuted diehard Protestants. However, when Mary died in 1553, she was succeeded by another of Henry's daughters, Elizabeth I. As an Anglican, Elizabeth sought to reverse Mary's policy, and sought to create an Anglican Church that remained separate from Rome yet still retained many of the rituals of Catholicism. This "Elizabethan Settlement" led to a long period of relative peace and prosperity in England, during which England developed into a major naval power and laid the groundwork for its eventual colonization of North America, beginning with the unsuccessful settlement at Roanoke in the 1580's and the successful Jamestown colony in 1607. (In 1588, the English navy defeated the Spanish Armada, signaling England's eventual rise to preeminence as a naval power.) Elizabeth died in 1603, without a direct heir. (Her "nickname," the "Virgin Queen," lent itself to the colony of Virginia.) The strongest claimant to the English throne was King James VI of Scotland, whom the English Parliament chose to succeed Elizabeth. James VI of Scotland thus became King James I of England. James, however, was neither Anglican nor Catholic. Instead he was a Presbyterian, the Protestant faith that had become Scotland's official religion. As such, James was not altogether trusted by England's growing Protestant faction, nor was he particularly well-received by the country's closet Catholics. However, James was an able politician, and during his reign (1603-1625) he was able to smooth over many of the religious differences that arose between he and his subjects. Not so with James' son, Charles I (r. 1625-1649). Charles' warm relations with the absolutist, Catholic monarchy of France, his disregard of the English Parliament, and his lavish spending antagonized the growing number of middle class Puritans, who were becoming more militant by the day. When the English Parliament demanded more powers in 1642, Charles responded with military force, touching off a full-scale Civil War. The war ultimately ended with the defeat of Charles and his royalist or cavalier supporters; Charles was beheaded in 1649. The leader of the parliamentary army, Oliver Cromwell, established himself as "Lord Protector" of England by 1653, and for five long years England was a Puritan dictatorship. With Cromwell's death in 1658, the English began to plan for a restoration of the monarchy. After all, they had missed not having a king or queen, and had begun to bristle under Cromwell's harsh discipline and Puritanical rule. In 1660, Charles I's son, Charles II, was invited to return to England and assume the throne; this is known as the Stuart Restoration. However, neither Charles II (r. 1660-1685) or his brother, James II (r. 1685-1688), were able to bring genuine stability back to England. Both were often authoritarian, and both were suspected of harboring Catholic sentiments. When James II had a son by his second wife (who was Catholic), the English rose up in revolt, sending James into permanent exile. (The English certainly did not want a Catholic to grow up and become king of England.) This Glorious Revolution in 1688 was a watershed event for England; it confirmed once and for all that the English Parliament, not the Crown, had become the supreme power in England. The English then invited Mary, James's Protestant daughter (by his first wife), and her husband William of Orange, to become king and queen (William and Mary). The foregoing social and political turmoil in England certainly determined the nature of migration to North America. During periods of Puritan ascendancy, loyal Anglicans flocked to Virginia and the Carolinas. During the repressive years of the Stuart monarchs, separatist Puritans populated Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and the other New England colonies. Moreover, tensions in England clearly spilled over into the colonies. When Massachusetts colonists learned of the Glorious Revolution in 1689 (it took a while for news to cross the Atlantic Ocean) they responded by overthrowing their own royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros. Moreover, the century of unrest that followed Elizabeth's death in 1603 meant that the English would be unable or uninterested in developing a coherent plan for the settlement of North America. Instead, colonization was haphazard; and the English would settle into a practice of benign neglect. Whereas the Spanish and French exploitation of the New World had been guided by a succession of powerful monarchs, the English colonization would be largely decentralized and chaotic. Some colonies would be established as commercial ventures, others as refuges for particular religions (Massachusetts for Puritans; Rhode Islanders for "dissenters" from Massachusetts; Pennsylvania for Quakers; Maryland for Catholics), and others, particularly Georgia, for strategic reasons. Out of this chaotic period would come not one unified nation, but instead thirteen very separate and different colonies. The struggle to unite those colonies into a meaningful whole, both before and after the war for American independence, is largely the subject of this course.
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