From the accession of Henry VII at Bosworth Field through the English Reformation, the Elizabethan age and the Spanish Armada, the Union of the Crowns and the King James Bible, the Civil Wars and the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, the Glorious Revolution, and the Act of Union to the Hanoverian succession of 1714. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that made modern Britain.
Two months after Bosworth, Henry Tudor is crowned at Westminster as Henry VII. In January 1486 he marries Elizabeth of York, uniting the warring houses; their badge — the Tudor rose, red over white — becomes the symbol of a new England.
From the accession of Henry VII at Bosworth Field through the English Reformation, the Elizabethan age and the Spanish Armada, the Union of the Crowns and the King James Bible, the Civil Wars and the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, the Glorious Revolution, and the Act of Union to the Hanoverian succession of 1714. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that made modern Britain.
Two months after Bosworth, Henry Tudor is crowned at Westminster as Henry VII. In January 1486 he marries Elizabeth of York, uniting the warring houses; their badge — the Tudor rose, red over white — becomes the symbol of a new England.
The eighteen-year-old Henry VIII inherits his father's full treasury and marries Catherine of Aragon, widow of his elder brother Arthur. The Renaissance prince — handsome, athletic, learned, devout — is hailed across Europe as a new Achilles.
Refused his annulment by Pope Clement VII, Henry pushes through Parliament the Act of Supremacy, declaring himself 'the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England'. Thomas More and John Fisher are executed for refusing the oath.
Beginning with smaller houses in 1536 and finishing with the great abbeys in 1540, Cromwell dissolves the religious houses of England and Wales, transferring their lands — perhaps a quarter of the wealth of the kingdom — to the crown and through it to a new gentry.
On the death of her Catholic half-sister Mary I, the twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Tudor inherits a divided kingdom. Her Religious Settlement of 1559 establishes a moderate Protestant Church of England that will hold for centuries.
After nineteen years of English captivity and a string of plots in her name, Mary Stuart — Catholic, deposed queen of Scots, granddaughter of Henry VII — is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February. Elizabeth signed the warrant; she would later claim she had not meant it to be acted on.
In July and August an Armada of 130 ships and 30,000 men, sent by Philip II to invade England, is harried up the Channel by Howard, Drake, and Hawkins, scattered by fireships at Calais, mauled at Gravelines, and finally destroyed by Atlantic storms off Ireland.
Childless and dying, Elizabeth I names James VI of Scotland as her heir. He rides south to be crowned James I of England, uniting the crowns of the two ancient enemies — though not yet their parliaments — in his own person.
On 5 November Guy Fawkes is discovered beneath the House of Lords with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. The plot of a small group of Catholic gentry to blow up king and Parliament at the state opening is foiled; the conspirators are hunted down and executed.
Six committees of forty-seven scholars, working at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster for seven years, produce the Authorised Version of the Bible. It will dominate English religion and prose for three hundred years.
After a sixty-six-day Atlantic crossing, 102 English separatists land at Cape Cod and found Plymouth Colony in New England. Before disembarking they sign the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to form a 'civil body politic' under majority rule.
After eleven years of personal rule without Parliament and a failed attempt to arrest five members in the Commons, Charles I raises his standard at Nottingham in August. England divides between Royalist Cavaliers and Parliamentarian Roundheads.
On 30 January Charles I, having refused to recognise the court trying him, is beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Parliament abolishes the monarchy and the House of Lords; England is declared a Commonwealth — a republic.
After dissolving the Rump Parliament at sword-point in April and seeing the Barebones Parliament dissolve itself in December, Oliver Cromwell accepts the title of Lord Protector under a written constitution, the Instrument of Government — the first and only such document in English history.
On 29 May, his thirtieth birthday, Charles II rides into London to scenes of national rejoicing. The monarchy, the Lords, and the Church of England are restored; the theatres reopen; a Cavalier Parliament settles old scores.
In the early hours of 2 September a fire breaks out in Pudding Lane and rages for four days through the medieval City of London. Eighty-seven parish churches, including Old St Paul's, and around 13,200 houses are destroyed; remarkably, only a handful of people are confirmed dead.
Alarmed by the Catholic policies of James II and the birth of his son, seven leading politicians invite William of Orange, the Protestant Stadtholder of Holland and James's son-in-law, to invade. William lands at Brixham in Devon in November with a Dutch army; James flees to France.
After parallel Acts in London and Edinburgh, on 1 May the Kingdoms of England and Scotland are merged into the single Kingdom of Great Britain. A new Union Jack flag, combining the crosses of St George and St Andrew, flies over a single Parliament at Westminster.
Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, dies on 1 August having outlived all seventeen of her pregnancies. By the Act of Settlement (1701) the crown passes over fifty-seven Catholic claimants to the Protestant Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, who arrives in September as King George I.