For henry this was a personal desire which meant when Wolsey failed to achieve it, it led Henry to question his capability and power. By 1525, Catherine of Aragon was unable to bear another child thus crushing Henrys aim of keeping the Tudor line of succession through a male heir. The king also became infatuated with Anne Boleyn who resisted his gifts and kind charm, however the more she resisted the more infatuated the king became; increasing his desire for the divorce even more. With Wolsey being Cardinal, Henry presumed the divorce would be very simple due to the marriage of him and Catherine being incestuous under biblical declarations. However with Charles keeping the pope prisoner and the relations between Charles and Catherine, he declined the divorce on behalf of the pope.
As he was the king, he had thought that he had the power to make the Scots use English prayer books. The scots were so furious that they decided to fight Charles I instead. This also made him unpopular to the scots as well as the people of England. When the scots had defeated him Charles had to pay lots of tax money which he couldn’t afford. So, Charles had to recall parliament, as only tax voted by parliament got rid of the scots.
But Edward felt as though he was being dominated by Warwick and he wasn’t happy with this because he hated being dominated by anybody, he felt that to be a strong King he should be independent and make all decisions himself. Warwick went over to France to arrange a marriage for Edward but while he was overseas, Edward was acting promiscuously and the way in which he would get women into his bed was to claim that he would marry them and then when they woke in the morning he would deny saying any such thing. But this backfired on him one day when a woman called Elizabeth Woodville wouldn’t allow him to try and get out of marrying her. So, Edward and Elizabeth had a secret wedding whilst Warwick was away, but Warwick found out. Warwick felt humiliated because not only had Edward gone behind his back but Elizabeth was of low nobility.
The country faced religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants. According to the Catholics, Henry bigamously married Anne Boleyn while still married to Catherine of Eragon. Thus, they considered Elizabeth an illegitimate child and she did not deserve her place as Queen of England. Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a term because the Catholics feared that her ascension to the throne would make circumstances favorable for the Protestant population in England again. Many Catholics named her a heretic, and they conspired to kill her to avoid a Protestant revolution in the country.
Religion was a significant issue for Elizabeth, as England had been religiously divided between Catholicism and Protestantism. Whichever faith Elizabeth adopted would alienate the believers of those she did not. Protestants in England had suffered under many years of Catholic rule, including the burning of heretics at the stake. The Catholics, in any case, did not see Elizabeth as the rightful heir to the throne anyway after Henry VIII bigamously married Anne Boleyn whilst still married to Catherine of Aragon, instead believing her to be an illegitimate bastard; she had, in fact, only narrowly avoided execution because of her faith. Thus, at least at the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth was an unpopular monarch, not least because she was a woman.
Source 4 agrees with the view that Henry VIII’s foreign policy failed because he lacked the resources to fulfil his aims. From source 4 we can learn that Henry’s allies proved to be dishonest and untrustworthy as they were bribed to go against the treaty they had made with England, “His allies proved unscrupulous and unreliable. Maxamilian and Ferdinand were bribed by the French to disown their treaty obligations to England, leaving Henry to fight alone”. Henry VIII struggled to fight alone and “accepted the fact that royal finances could not support a repetition of the campaign of 1513. So instead of overthrowing the King of France, Henry made peace with him.
There is evidence to suggest that when the marriage between Mary and Phillip was proposed in 1553 people were fearful it would lead to Spanish domination. Mary was a woman and so people believed that as a man Phillip would be able to dominate her decisions. Mary received a petition against it and some historians suggest it was the cause of Wyatts rebellion. There was a great fear that Engand would be dragged into the Hapsburg-Valois wars which would drain England economically. However in 1553 when Mary proposed the marriage treaty England was economically drained and therefore vulnerable.
Additionally, suspicions had risen of radical parliamentarians and the people were reliant on Charles’ return to stop this. These reasons are the main factors for Charles’ support in 1646. Charles’ return to the throne would have meant an end to Parliament’s County Committees, which many felt were worse than living under Charles’ rule. A large portion of the population had suffered the brutal dominion of the County Committees, which only worsened as the war progressed and Parliament became more desperate to finance the war. Primarily made up of fiercely loyal Puritans, the County Committees were efficient in reaching the monthly quotas set by Parliament.
In 1567 the Council splits over Elizabeth’s decision to marry the catholic Archduke Charles of Austria. Whilst Leicester is against this suitor for Elizabeth and works hard to prevent the match, Norfolk, Sussex and Cecil are in favour of Elizabeth’s choice of suitor. Due to the conflict caused within the Council during the process of making a decision whether or not Archduke Charles is the correct suitor for Elizabeth, Elizabeth hesitates and rejects him. The conflict within the Privy Council influences Elizabeth’s decision on suitors once again during 1579-81. There was a considerable amount of negotiations held about Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to French Duke of Alencon.
With the introduction of Charles I in 1625, Scotland and England had relative peace. Charles I had hoped to combine the kingdoms of England, Scotland and also Ireland, but the English Parliamentarians were suspicious of this move. With the wars soon approaching, what were the causes of it, or were there more reasons to why the English Civil War had started? The end result of the war was countries without monarchs, who slowly tried to rebuild their political awareness. There were many events in the wars that had an effect on England, Scotland and Ireland, with these wars came many casualties and benefits and because of these facts, the wars were seen as a success or/and failure.