The headright system, which granted land in English colonial America to anyone funding a settler’s voyage, was crucial for the success of Virginia and Maryland during the early 17th century.
The greatest problem the English faced in the early colonial period related to their need for workers to produce TOBACCO. Since local disease often devastated settlers, many of whom were indentured servants, those who wanted to export tobacco required labor for their fields. In order to encourage migration, the English devised the headright system, which gave 50 acres of land to anyone who paid his or her own way across the Atlantic and an additional 50 acres to someone who paid for the journey of another. By arranging for the shipment of servants, some of the early colonists were able to gain large tracts of land, thereby helping to establish themselves in the nascent outposts.
Further reading: Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Allan Kulikoff, From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
—David P Dewar
Henry IV (Henry of Navarre) (r. 1589-1610) king of France
A member of the Spanish house of Bourbon, the Protestant Henry, prince of Navarre, became Henry IV of France after his marriage into the Catholic house of Valois and rapidly became a focal point of religious tension within that country.
Henry of Navarre married into the French royal family as a part of the intricate matrimonial politics of Catherine de’ Medici. Catherine, widow of the French King Henry II and mother of his sons and successors Charles IX and Henry III, married her daughter Marguerite to the Protestant prince of Navarre in 1572 in an attempt to end the civil wars between the houses of Valois and Bourbon. The interconfessional union, although undertaken in a climate of limited and uneasy tolerance of Protestantism, was governed by the shifting currents of religious tolerance and violence from its very beginning. Taking advantage of the fact that thousands of members of the Huguenot nobility had gathered in Paris for the wedding, French Catholics rose up in what was possibly the greatest single act of religious violence of the era, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
When the childless King Henry III’s last surviving brother, the duke of Alenyon, died, Henry of Navarre
Became heir presumptive to the French throne. The prospect of a Protestant king on the French throne threatened the balance of power in Europe between the Protestant Elizabeth I of England and the Catholic Philip II of Spain. It also heightened religious tension within France itself. A power struggle known as the War of the Three Henries ensued, pitting Henry of Navarre, Henry of Guise (who claimed descent from Charlemagne), and the reigning Henry III against one another in a struggle for the Crown. The civil war eventually forced King Henry III into an alliance with Henry of Navarre, whom he recognized as his successor shortly before his own death in 1589.
Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV of France, remained a Protestant at the time of his accession, prompting worries at the court of Philip II that a Protestant king in France would tip the balance of power against Catholic Spain. Of more pressing concern, however, were the domestic consequences of Henry’s accession. Catholics and HuGUENOTS fought one another over the religion of Henry IV not just because of religious differences, but because they were both convinced that the salvation of France depended on the outcome. There were even divisions among French Catholics, some of whom were primarily concerned that their king be a Catholic, while others were more concerned with an orderly succession.
Conversion of the monarch seemed France’s only way out of domestic and foreign difficulties, but Henry moved slowly, determined not to alienate his Huguenot supporters. While Henry temporized on the conversion issue, he issued a declaration that he would maintain the Catholic Church in France, thus offering hope to his moderate Catholic supporters. However, such assurances did little to satisfy the members of the more extreme Catholic League, who believed that the restoration of civil order and moral harmony required the king’s conversion to Catholicism. Henry eventually bowed to personal and national necessity, and at Saint-Denis on July 25, 1593, he abjured the Protestant faith.
Although Catholic preachers inveighed against what they felt was an opportunistic conversion, the populace lent them little credence, since Henry’s conversion, sincere or not, seemed to be the only way to secure an end to decades of religious violence. Leaguers eventually accepted Henry’s conversion, hoping that the presence of a Catholic king would banish heresy from the kingdom, much as it had been banished from the person of the king. Huguenots, for their part, were secure only after the king signed the Edict of Nantes in 1598, declaring “union, concord and tranquility” for all his subjects, both Catholic and Protestant. In final analysis, Henry IV’s conversion may have been opportunistic, but it also provided long-sought domestic peace after years of civil war and restored confidence in the Crown as the guardian of order.
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Further reading: David Buisseret, Henry IV: King of France (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); Keith Cameron, From Valois to Bourbon: Dynasty, State and Society in Early Modern France (Exeter, U. K.: University of Exeter, 1989); J. H. Elliott, Europe Divided, 1559-1598 (London: Collins, 1968); Michael Wolfe, The Conversion of Henri IV: Politics, Power and Religious Belief in Early Modern France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
—Marie A. Kelleher
Henry VII (1457-1509) king of England A descendant of one of the warring factions in the English Wars of the Roses, Henry VII founded the Tudor dynasty of England, put an end to civil war in his realms, temporarily freed the Crown from dependence on PARLIAMENT, and laid the foundations for England’s political, economic, and cultural renaissance during the 16th century.
The future King Henry VII came to power at the end of the Wars of the Roses, a power struggle between contending factions of English nobles. The houses of Lancaster and York were both descended from King Edward III, and both were struggling to gain control of both Crown and countryside. Henry had inherited a tenuous claim to the throne through his mother, but his success at seizing the throne from the Yorkist Richard III and placing the house of Tudor on the English throne was due less to the legitimacy of Henry’s claims than to the unpopularity of Richard himself. At the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Henry defeated his rival, who died in battle, and became king himself, inaugurating a new dynasty to replace both the Lancastrian and Yorkist parties.
Henry did more than found a new dynasty that was to include such potent historical players as Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He also put an end to civil war in his realms. Descended from Lancastrians, the new king negotiated a marriage with Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Yorkist Edward IV, and left many Yorkists in high office in his administration. Despite these overtures, Henry had to contend with numerous Yorkist plots to retake the throne. In the end he managed to legitimize his dynasty, not just by delicately balancing the interests of domestic factions with those of the Crown, but also by conducting shrewd matrimonial negotiations with established foreign dynasties: He married his daughter Margaret to King James IV of Scotland and secured a match between his eldest son, Arthur, and Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. When Arthur died only months after the wedding, Henry salvaged the alliance with the Catholic monarchs by managing to get a papal dispensation to have Arthur’s widow married to Henry’s younger son, the future Henry VIII.
Despite Yorkist resistance to his reign, Henry managed some domestic victories. He reasserted royal control over
The king’s advisory council, and by increasing Crown revenues he released himself and the Crown from financial dependence on Parliament. Freed from these two burdens, Henry established a position that allowed the king the initiative in policy making. Henry had seized control of a Crown in chaos, and he had not completely restored order by his death in 1509. Nevertheless, he was able to pass on to his son Henry a prosperous, well-governed, and generally stable realm.
Further reading: Stanley Bertram Chrimes, Henry VII (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1991); Roger Lockyer, Henry VII, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1997).
—Marie A. Kelleher
Henry VIII (1491-1547) king of England Second king in the English Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII is famous for his many marriages and divorces, the first of which prompted his break from the Catholic Church, and his establishment of the Church of England.
As the younger son of Henry VII, Henry VIII would normally not have succeeded to the throne, but when his older brother Arthur died in 1502 only months after his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Henry stepped into his late brother’s role, both as husband to the Aragonese princess and his father’s successor to the throne in 1509.
The young Henry preferred amusing himself and others to governing and left most of the administrative work of the kingdom to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Henry also symbolically broke from his father’s policies by executing two of the latter’s chief tax collectors—a popular move, but one that, combined with Henry’s lavish spending habits, began the slow process of eroding the secure fiscal base his father had worked to establish. Henry also differed from his father in his eager involvement in foreign war. In 1511, at age 19, Henry joined the efforts of the Holy League, an alliance with the pope, Spain, Venice, and the Swiss, to drive France from northern Italy. He also captured two towns in France during this campaign, reviving England’s continental pretensions. However, both lack of money and difficulties within the alliance eventually forced him to make peace with France in 1514.
Henry remains best known for his many marriages and divorces, the first of which caused a break with the Catholic Church and the beginning of a long rivalry between Tudor England and Habsburg Spain. Henry’s efforts to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, were provoked by dynastic concerns. Catherine’s only living child was a daughter, Mary, who, because of her sex, was excluded from the succession. Around 1525, plagued with worries about the future of his dynasty as well as concerns that his marriage to his brother’s widow was in violation of church law, Henry turned his attentions to Anne Boleyn, the daughter of one of his ministers. He began the process of seeking an end to his marriage to Catherine in 1527, but when the pope refused to grant an annulment for a marriage that had required a papal dispensation to go forward in the first place, Henry broke with the church. In a series of parliaments convened between 1529 and 1536, Henry won gradual independence from Rome and was eventually recognized by Parliament as “protector and only supreme head of the English Church.” Henry’s break with the church was in vain, at least as far as the succession was concerned. Anne’s only child turned out to be a daughter as well—the future Elizabeth I—and Anne herself soon faced the executioner.
Henry Vlll’s break with the Roman Catholic Church had far-reaching consequences. His move brought England into the contest between Protestantism and Catholicism that was being waged throughout Europe at the time. Henry’s children and successors, the Catholic Mary and the Protestant Elizabeth and Edward (son of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour), spent much of their reigns dealing with their father’s ambiguous religious legacy, striving to
Henry VIII, portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger (14971543) (The Granger Collection)
Solidify a religious identity for their realm. The religious crisis also had political ramifications. At home Henry’s need for the cooperation of Parliament meant that the latter could establish itself as integral to the workings of the kingdom, putting an end to the absolutist course embarked upon during the reign of Henry VII. Abroad England was forced to forge new alliances as it shifted sides in the international conflict between Catholic and Protestant nations.
Further reading: G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1991); D. G. Newcombe, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (New York: Rout-ledge, 1995); M. D. Palmer, Henry VIII, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1983).
—Marie A. Kelleher
World History
