Northwest Europe (1396–1539 CE): North Sea Commons, Island Kingdoms, and Tudor Beginnings

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Northwest Europe includes the British–Irish archipelago, Iceland and the Faroes, and the ocean-facing rims of western Norway and western Denmark. Anchors span the North Atlantic fisheries (Iceland, Faroes, Shetland–Orkney), the North Sea littoral (Jutland, Yorkshire–East Anglia, Firths of Forth and Clyde), the Irish Sea and Channel approaches, and inland cores such as the Thames–Severn lowlands, Scottish Highlands/Islands, and Irish midlands. River corridors (Thames, Severn, Humber), firths, and sounds tied agrarian interiors to maritime trade, while the Norwegian fjords and Jutland bights faced wind-heavy seas.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age sharpened cold and storminess:

• North Atlantic fringe (Iceland, Faroes, west Norway): longer sea-ice seasons and harsher gales; erratic cod/herring runs shaped fishing booms and busts.

• Britain & Ireland: cooler winters, wet summers in some decades; harvest failures recurred locally; severe storms and surges disrupted coasts.

• Jutland & North Sea: shifting bars and storm surges altered havens; dunes advanced on exposed shores.
  Despite volatility, fisheries and mixed husbandry buffered many communities.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Lowland farms (England, eastern Ireland, Jutland): wheat, rye, barley, oats; cattle, sheep, and dairying; open-field systems persisted in much of England, while enclosed demesnes and pastures spread unevenly.

• Uplands & isles (Scotland, Wales, west Ireland, Norway): oats, barley, stock-rearing, and transhumant dairying; peat fuel; kelp and shore-gathering in island economies.

• Iceland & Faroes: subsistence grain marginal; livelihoods centered on cod, dried fish, seabirds, sheep, and trade with Bergen–Hanse merchants.

• Towns & ports: London (Thames) surged as a staple market; York, Bristol, Dublin, Cork, Edinburgh/Leith, Aberdeen, Bergen, and Aalborg tied hinterlands to sea lanes.

Technology & Material Culture

• Maritime craft: clinker-built hulks and cogs gave way to round-hulled naos and early caravels; North Sea sailing rigs adapted to shoals and tides; Icelandic and Norse open boats remained crucial.

• Arms & fortification: English longbow remained decisive into the mid-15th century; early handguns and field guns appeared; castles evolved toward gun-forts and, in Scotland/Ireland, tower houses.

• Print & craft: William Caxton introduced printing to England (1476); cloth finishing (East Anglia, Yorkshire), tin/lead (Cornwall), and shipwrighting expanded.

• Architecture & art: Perpendicular Gothic in England; late medieval parish art in Ireland; stave-church legacies and stone churches in west Norway; bardic manuscripts in Gaelic lands; saga copying continued in Icelandic scriptoria.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• North Sea/Irish Sea lanes: carried wool, cloth, salt fish (herring, cod), wine, salt, and iron; London, Hull, and east-coast ports linked to Hanseatic towns and Bergen’s fish market.

• Atlantic ventures: Bristol merchants probed western waters; John Cabot’s voyage (1497) opened English awareness of Newfoundland’s cod banks.

• Fjord & Jutland coasts: Bergen–Hanse convoy cycles and Jutland’s cattle/grain exports sustained Norway–Denmark’s Atlantic rim.

• Isles networks: Birlinn and galley traffic knit Hebrides, Islay, Kintyre, Man, and Ulster; inter-island lordships balanced sea power and kin ties.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Monarchy & law: English common law courts stabilized after civil war; Scottish kings balanced Highland/Lowland blocs; Gaelic lordships in Ireland maintained Brehon law and bardic patronage alongside the English Pale.

• Language & letters: Middle English matured into Tudor English; Scots literature flourished (Dunbar, Henryson); Gaelic poetry remained courtly and genealogical; Icelandic annals and sagas preserved memory.

• Devotion & reform: Late medieval piety—guild altars, pilgrimages (St. Andrews, Walsingham, St. David’s)—coexisted with early humanism; by the 1530s, England’s break with Rome began to reorder ritual and property.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Mixed portfolios: grain–livestock rotations, dairying, and woodland management hedged climatic risk; parish granaries and seigneurial stores mitigated famine.

• Fisheries & curing: salt fish, stockfish, and barrelled herring stabilized caloric intake and trade; salt-pan and coopers’ crafts were critical.

• Field systems & enclosure: commons and open fields balanced with piecemeal enclosure to protect flocks and improve yields; drainage in fens and dike work on exposed coasts guarded arable.

• Island adaptations: peat, driftwood, and turf for fuel; drying sheds and fish lofts; seasonal transhumance to shielings.

Technology & Power Shifts (Conflict Dynamics)

• Hundred Years’ War (to 1453): English chevauchées faded after Joan of Arc’s campaigns (1429); defeat at Castillon (1453) ended English rule in France, redirecting power struggles homeward.

• Wars of the Roses (1455–1487): Yorkist–Lancastrian civil war saw set-piece battles—Towton (1461), Tewkesbury (1471)—culminating in Tudor victory at Bosworth Field (1485); Henry VII stabilized crown finances and order.

• Anglo-Scottish warpoints: Border raids persisted; Scotland’s defeat at Flodden (1513) killed James IV, reshaping regency politics.

• Ireland: Tudor authority remained thin beyond the Pale; Gaelic confederacies and earldoms contested royal initiatives; intermittent wars foreshadowed later Tudor conquest.

• Scandinavia: Denmark–Norway ruled the Atlantic rim; Bergen’s Hanse links endured; the Count’s Feud (1534–1536) in Denmark–Norway (closing years of this age) ushered in the Lutheran Reformation and tighter royal control.

• Sea conflict: Privateering and piracy flickered in the Channel and North Sea; naval gunnery began to matter in convoy defense.

Transition

By 1539 CE, Northwest Europe had shifted from external continental wars to internal consolidation and oceanic horizons. England emerged under the Tudors with an embryonic navy and a royal church; Scotland balanced Franco-Scottish ties after Flodden; Ireland’s patchwork lordships and the Pale foreshadowed Tudor campaigns; Denmark–Norway steered the North Atlantic trades toward Lutheran monarchy; Iceland and the Faroes remained fishing outposts within this orbit. Fisheries, wool–cloth trades, and mixed husbandry underwrote resilience in a stormier climate, while printing and court centralization set the stage for later religious and imperial transformations.

Catherine is banished from court in 1530 and spends the remainder of her life (until her death in 1536) alone in an isolated manor home, barred from any contact with Mary (although her ladies-in-waiting help the two maintain a secret correspondence).

Their marriage is declared invalid, making Mary an illegitimate child.

Henry marries Anne Boleyn in secret in January 1533, just as his divorce from Catherine is finalized.

After this, they have a second, public wedding.

Anne soon becomes pregnant and may have already been when they wed, but on September 7, 1533, she gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth.

The king is devastated at his failure to obtain a son after all the effort it had taken to remarry.

Gradually, he comes to develop a disliking of his new queen for her strange behavior.

In 1536, when Anne is pregnant again, Henry is badly injured in a jousting accident.

Shaken by this, the queen gives birth prematurely to a stillborn boy.

By now, the king is convinced that his marriage is hexed, and having already found a new queen, Jane Seymour, he puts Anne in the Tower of London on charges of witchcraft.

She is afterward beheaded along with five men (her brother included) accused of adultery with her.

The marriage is now declared invalid, so that Elizabeth, just like her half sister, becomes a bastard.

Henry immediately marries Jane Seymour, who becomes pregnant almost as quickly.

On October 12, 1537, she gives birth to a healthy boy, Edward, which is greeted with huge celebrations.

The king's quest for a son is finally over, so long as Edward can be kept healthy.

However, the queen dies of puerperal sepsis ten days later.

Henry genuinely mourns her death, and at his own passing nine years later, will be buried next to her.

Parliament at Cromwell’s direction passes the Act in Restraint of Appeals (to Rome) in January 1533, calling for England’s break with the papacy.

Henry VIII therefore has Thomas Cranmer, newly created Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounce, without reference to the pope, the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Catherine is forced into retirement and, almost immediately, Henry weds the object of his infatuation, twenty-six-year-old Anne Boleyn, a niece of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk.

The Church of England is thus informally established as an independent national church, no longer in communion with the Roman Catholic church or the pope.

Anne gives birth on September 7, but the child is not the English king’s long-sought male heir.

The child is named Elizabeth, and Henry consoles himself with the idea that Anne will soon produce a healthy son.

Elizabeth is declared heir to the throne in place of Catherine's daughter, Mary, who is now regarded as illegitimate.

The provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Groningen, Friesland, Utrecht, Overijssel, and Gelderland form a confederation after declaring their independence.

All these duchies, lordships and counties are autonomous and have their own government, the States-Provincial.

The States General, the confederal government, are seated in The Hague and consist of representatives from each of the seven provinces.

The sparsely populated region of Drenthe is part of the republic too, although it is not considered one of the provinces.

Moreover, the Republic has come to occupy during the Eighty Years' War a number of so-called Generality Lands in Flanders, Brabant and Limburg.

Their population is mainly Roman Catholic.

These areas do not have a governmental structure of their own, and are used as a buffer zone between the Republic and the Spanish-controlled Southern Netherlands.

The Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England sympathizes with the Dutch struggle against the Spanish, and sends an army of seventy-six hundred soldiers to aid the Dutch in their war with the Catholic Spanish.

The English army, under command of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester is of no real benefit to the Dutch rebellion.

Philip II, the son of Charles V, is not prepared to let them go easily, and war continues until 1648, when Spain under King Philip IV finally recognize the independence of the seven north-western provinces in the Peace of Münster.

Parts of the southern provinces become de facto colonies of the new republican-mercantile empire.

Northwest Europe (1540–1683 CE): Religious Turmoil, Colonial Expansion, and Political Transformation

Religious Turmoil and Conflicts

Between 1540 and 1683 CE, Northwest Europe was profoundly shaped by religious upheavals stemming from the Reformation. England experienced significant turbulence under Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Mary's Catholic restoration saw persecution of Protestants, earning her the title "Bloody Mary," marked notably by the burning of two hundred and seventy-four Protestants. Elizabeth I's moderate Anglican settlement established relative stability but intensified tensions with Catholic Spain, climaxing in the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588). Scotland faced similar religious strife, culminating in the establishment of Presbyterianism under the influence of John Knox. Denmark became officially Lutheran around 1550 under King Christian III, solidifying Lutheranism's dominance throughout Scandinavia.

The English Civil War and Revolution

Political and religious tensions erupted in the English Civil War (1642–1651) between Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads), ending with the execution of King Charles I and the establishment of a brief republican Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's subsequent military campaigns in Ireland (1649–1653) resulted in catastrophic losses, significantly reshaping Irish society. The monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660, followed by political and religious instability under James II, culminating in the peaceful Glorious Revolution (1688), solidifying parliamentary authority and Protestant ascendancy.

Ireland: Conflict and Colonization

English colonization intensified significantly, notably through the Plantation of Ulster (1609) and the Tudor conquest initiated by Henry VIII's re-creation of the title King of Ireland in 1542. Irish resistance culminated in the Nine Years' War (1593–1603) and the consequential Flight of the Earls (1607). The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, particularly Cromwell’s conquest, inflicted severe demographic losses, including approximately two hundred thousand civilian deaths from famine, disease, and conflict-related displacement, and the forced indenture of fifty thousand to the West Indies.

Scottish Union and Cultural Renaissance

Scotland underwent significant religious and political upheaval leading to the Union of the Crowns (1603) under James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). Cultural and educational achievements flourished during the Scottish Renaissance, significantly enhancing Scottish literary and intellectual contributions.

Economic Expansion and Colonial Ventures

Economic transformations accelerated through colonial expansion, highlighted by English settlements such as Jamestown (1607) in North America, initiating extensive colonial activity. English immigration, particularly indentured servants, became prominent, with approximately seventy percent of arrivals between 1630–1660 as indentured labor. Trading companies, notably the East India Company (1600) and the Dutch East India Company (VOC, 1602), expanded global commerce, with London, Amsterdam, and Bristol emerging as key international trade hubs.

Scientific Revolution and Intellectual Growth

The era witnessed significant scientific breakthroughs and intellectual advancements. Figures like Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton revolutionized natural philosophy, laying foundations for modern science. Institutions such as the Royal Society (1660) systematically promoted scientific inquiry and innovation.

Cultural Flourishing and Artistic Achievements

Cultural developments flourished significantly during this period. England’s literary scene was dominated by figures like William Shakespeare, contributing profoundly to drama and literature during the Elizabethan era, a period often regarded as England's golden age. Artistic accomplishments, notably by Dutch Golden Age painters like Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer, significantly influenced European art.

Norse Territories and Scandinavian Shifts

Iceland, under Danish-Norwegian control, formally adopted Lutheranism by 1550 following the execution of Catholic Bishop Jón Arason. The island continued facing severe economic and climatic challenges, significantly affecting societal structures and stability.

Environmental Challenges and the Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age continued to exert considerable environmental pressures, severely impacting agricultural productivity across Northwest Europe. Societies adapted by diversifying economies, enhancing trade networks, and developing technological innovations to mitigate these stresses.

Social Unrest and Economic Pressures

Socio-economic disparities intensified, exacerbating rural and urban tensions, leading to frequent local uprisings and unrest. Economic shifts, agricultural crises, and urbanization pressures contributed significantly to social instability, prompting governmental interventions and reforms.

Legacy of the Age

By 1683 CE, Northwest Europe had experienced profound religious conflicts, political transformations, economic expansions, and cultural achievements. These dynamic developments deeply influenced regional identities, governance structures, economic conditions, and cultural traditions, firmly establishing frameworks that shaped modern Europe.

The return of England to Catholicism leads to the burnings of two hundred and seventy-four Protestants, which are recorded especially in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Mary then marries her cousin Philip, son of Emperor Charles V, and King of Spain when Charles abdicates in 1556.

The union is a difficult one, since Mary is already in her late thirties and Philip is a Catholic and a foreigner, so not very welcome in England.

This wedding also has the effect of provoking the hostility of the French, already at war with Spain and now alarmed at the prospect of being completely encircled by the Habsburgs.

Calais, the last English outpost on the Continent, is now taken by France.

King Philip (1527–1598) has very little power, although he does protect Elizabeth.

He is not popular in England, and spends little time there.

Mary eventually becomes pregnant, or at least believes herself to be.

In reality, she may have had uterine cancer.

Her death in November 1558 is greeted with huge celebrations in the streets of London.

The reign of Elizabeth I restores a sort of order to the realm following the turbulence of the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I when she comes to the throne following the latter's death in 1558.

The religious issue that had divided the country since Henry VIII is in a way put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which re-establishes the Church of England.

Much of Elizabeth's success is in balancing the interests of the Puritans and Catholics.

She manages to offend neither to a large extent, although she clamps down on Catholics towards the end of her reign as war with Catholic Spain looms.

Despite the need for an heir, Elizabeth declines to marry, despite offers from a number of suitors across Europe, including the Swedish king Erik XIV.

This creates endless worries over her succession, especially in the 1570s when she nearly dies of smallpox.

It has been often rumored that she had a number of lovers (including Francis Drake), but there is no hard evidence.

Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603) is the epoch in English history known as the Elizabethan era.

Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history.

The symbol of Britannia is first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspires national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over the hated Spanish foe.

This "golden age" represents the apogee of the English Renaissance and sees the flowering of poetry, music and literature.

The era is most famous for theater, as William Shakespeare and many others compose plays that break free of England's past style of theater.

It is an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation becomes more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada is repulsed.

It is also the end of the period when England is a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.

The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly largely because of the periods before and after.

It is a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that engulf the seventeenth century.

The Protestant/Catholic divide is settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and parliament is not yet strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.