Chapter 3 - Effect of rebellion on legislation

Question 1

Effect of rebellion on Religious legislation.

Answer 1

• Tudors were unwilling to reverse or change their religious policies, which prompted rebellions between 1536 and 1569
  Henry VIII
• PoG made Henry VIII more determined to sever links with RCC. - Participation in revolt by mocks and abbots convinced him that their continued existence presented a security risk
  Henry VIII and Cromwell dissolved larger monasteries 1537-8
• 1538, Cromwell’s Injunctions removed saints, pilgrimages and holy days
• Henry VIII’s Six Articles saw reversal of many Protestant measures and was a reaction against acts of iconoclasm
  Edward VI
• Religious legislation forwarded Protestantism, contrary to Western but wanted by Kett’s rebels.
  Mary I
• Mary went ahead with her marriage to Catholic Philip II of Spain, in spite of Wyatt’s rebellion
• Stepped up her campaign against heretics
  Elizabeth I
• Not intimidated by reaction and rebellion of Northern Earls to her religious settlement of 1558-9
• 1571 the council introduced penal laws specifically against Catholic recusants
• Not a single religious revolt achieved its prime objective

Question 2

Effect of rebellion on Political legislation

Answer 2

Henry VII

• 1487 – Star Chamber Act established additional legal powers to deal with nobles
• After 1487 – Act of Livery and Maintenance limits number of servants and private armies
• In the aftermath of the Yorkshire revolt 1489, Surrey was rewarded by being appointed Lieutenant of the Council of the North
• 51 attainders were issued after Warbeck’s rebellion to suppress Suffolk’s supporters

Henry VIII

• Reforms to Council of the North after Amicable Grant Rising - all sheriffs and JPs to take their orders from it. Its membership was reformed
• Henry purged the bench of magistrates who had shown sympathy to PoG rebels

Edward VI

• After 1549 rebellions the Duke of Somerset was arrested and imprisoned – he was held responsible for the political crisis
• Act for the Punishment of Unlawful Assemblies and Rising of the King’s subjects” declared it high treason if 12 or more people gathered to alter existing laws or tried to kill or imprison a privy councillor or refused to disperse within one hour
• Lords lieutenants were given control of the shire levies

Elizabeth I

• Elizabethan reforms to the Council of the North after the Northern Earls rebellion:
• 1570 – magistrates purged in North

Question 3

Effect of rebellion on Economic legislation

Answer 3

Henry VII
- After 1497 the Cornish did not have to pay their war tax

Henry VIII
- After PoG the 1534 subsidy was abandoned

Elizabeth I
- After 1596 no legislation to tackle taxation which has been an issue brought on by wars against Spain.

Question 4

Effect of rebellion on Social legislation.

Answer 4

Henry VIII

• The most successful of all protests was against Wolsey’s Amicable Grant. No one paid any tax, no benevolence was received and a parliamentary subsidy that still had two if its four instalments to be collected was reassessed at more modest rates for fear of reigniting a taxpayer’s strike
• 1536-7 the earls of Sussex and Derby were instructed by the King to examine landlord-tenant relations in Kendal
• Statute of Uses replaced by new Statute of Wills in 1540 following complaints by the gentry and lesser nobility
• When Henry collected benevolences in the 1540s, he targeted the wealthier groups rather than the poor

Edward VI:

• Subsidy and vagrancy acts repealed after 1549 because they are unpopular
• Enclosure acts introduced to protect peasants from future enclosure of the commons.
• Further acts fixed grain prices, prohibited exports and maintained arable land
• It was declared a felony if 12 or more people attempted to destroy enclosures, parks, barns or grain stores and refused to disperse and it became treason if 40 or more people gathered for more than two hours

Elizabeth I

• After Oxfordshire two acts against the decaying of towns and the maintenance of tillage
• Wealthier subjects were reminded that they had a Christian duty to organise special charity collections
• 1597 the council prosecuted seven leading Oxfordshire landowners who had enclosed local common and wasteland.

Question 5

Effect of rebellion on legislation in Ireland.

Answer 5

After Silken Thomas Henry VIII:

• replaced Irish office holders in Dublin with English ones
• established a small permanent garrison
• Restrengthened border fortresses
• Seized Kildare’s lands