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Henry VII
The New Ideas; Part 1

The New Ideas; Part 1

It is not difficult to find the new characteristics which mark off the age of the Tudors. There is the policy of what historians call "dynastic marriages" - marriage alliances by which monarchs attempt to build up world empires, adding kingdom to kingdom by marriages, as the barons in the Wars of the Roses had added estate to estate. One development of this policy threatened to link England with Spain; another seemed likely to couple Scotland and France; a third, with more auspicious union, did join England and Scotland, and the union has not been shaken. There was the invention of printing;, and there was the new learning, the substitution of criticism for blind obedience to authority. Then there was also the moving of the waters of religion, ending in the Reformation. The realm wavered between the old faith and the new, and in the end became Protestant; that change, too, was final. Lastly, there was the abandonment of the old policy of conquering territory in France, and, in its stead, the inrush into the New World which began the making of the British Empire, our latest and greatest inheritance. Any one of these would suffice to mark a new epoch; together they cleave a huge chasm between the old and the new.

These characteristics, it is true, are not peculiar to England, nor indeed English in origin. Spain gave the earliest examples of successful dynastic marriages; she also, with Portugal, was first in the New World. The new learning had its birth in Italy. Germany led that revolt against Rome, which, with varying severity, attacked in turn every European country. Not merely does Tudor England differ widely from Plantagenet England; the same difference reveals itself between fifteenth-century Europe and sixteenth-century Europe, and to understand English history at this period we must note the change that was taking place in the states around.

Put briefly, it is the change from the old word "Christendom" to the modern word "Europe". In old times, though men of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England spoke different tongues and were of different race, yet they had some common bonds. They were all of one church, all members of Christendom, all in a sense under the headship of Pope and Emperor - the "Two Swords" to which Christ's words on Gethsemane were held to apply. The name "Christendom" had, thus, a monarchic sense; it implied a common faith, some unity of purpose, and a common obedience to Christ's Regents on earth. But the name "Europe" bears no such meaning.

It is anarchic, for Europe owns obedience to no ruler, and has no community of purpose; there is no longer even one church. Europe is a collection of independent states, each under its own government; these states are indeed joined by geography and entangled by politics, but each is seeking its own interest. This momentous change from " Christendom" to "Europe" was brought about by the appearance of a new political idea - the idea of the "nation".

Chronology

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