Indeed yes, but it could be argued that these changes (along with the religious ones) were caused by forces beyond the control of the Tudor monarchs themselves. England as a nation underwent profound change and reform from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth.

So great are these changes, so profound, and so crucial are they in creating a new nation, that what follows can only be, by necessity, a brief overview.

In the most simplistic terms Henry VII inherited the dying ember of Medieval England, while Elizabeth passed over the earliest version of modern England to her Stuart successor.

Without going into extraordinary detail, the changes can be summarised in several broad areas and ill present a few examples of them below.

In economic terms England was engaged in the second wave of economic expansion caused by its mammoth sheep population. England had made whatever fortunes it had made in the past as a primary producer; first in the way Cornish tin and Mendip lead had exported across Europe but from the 12th to the 15th Centuries its wool trade had been the cornerstone of the nations economic fortunes. Huge quantities of wool had ended up in the workshops of medieval Europe (Flanders and northern Italy) which in turn caused a growth in the number of sheep (when Henry VII was crowned we estimate there were about 8 million sheep in England; 3 for every person).

By the 15th century however the English wooden trade had shrunk. The state sponsored monopoly on wool sales- The Merchants of the Steeple- were in decline and those duties they had (like the supply and upkeep of the English garrison in Calais) they found increasingly difficult. By the arrival of Henry VII it was still big but was fading.

By 1450 however England had ceased to be purely dependant upon the sale of raw wool and becomes a huge exporter of wooden cloth. This change in the wooden industry also saw a huge change in the way trade was conducted.

Whereas previously English merchants on the east coast could trade with relative freedom with the ports of the northern sea and Scandinavia, they now found themselves facing hostile competition from the increasingly powerful Hanse. Meanwhile south coast merchants found the end of the 100 years war had made trade increasingly difficult for them also. All of this meant that both groups ended up focusing on the one area still open to them- the Netherlands.

This created a natural bottleneck, one which merchants in the south-east and especially London exploit ruthlessly. It was from here that English merchants began to open up Antwerp to English trade; the merchants who specialises in overseas trade (known as ‘Adventurers’) began forming cells within the City Companies, allowing mutual support which crossed guilds, and focusing trade uniquely upon London.

After a while of gradual unification this led to the creation of The Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers in 1486; who sought to maintain their control over trade between London and Antwerp by charging excessive fees on any external merchant who wished in on the profits. This created a mini-crisis and while the kings intervention in 1497 seemingly saw them lose (they were forced to significantly lower the fee they charged outside merchants) it was a huge long term victory (as it recognised their right to charge such a fee).

I use this to illustrate how the Tudor period saw London begin to gain its position as the pivotal centre of English trade, starting the disproportionate power it began to hold in regard to other trading centres in the land. This began in the Tudor period, long before any religious reforms.

The Tudor era also saw a change in the balance of power in England in many profound ways; when Henry VII took the throne England had just seen how the nobility had grown so powerful they could shake the very foundations of the kingdom, dragging it into the seemingly endless and chaotic conflict known as the ‘War of the Roses’ by Tudor propagandists.

The Tudor’s were spectacularly successful in ending that situation. The nobility wings were clipped and they were never able to gain an equal measure of power again. Not that the Tudors got rid of the nobility, far from it. Rather they filled its ranks with loyalists and more than that, diffused its power; new families rose, people who owed everything to the Tudor dynasty and who were never able to consolidate power into themselves; not for this dynasty the fear of distant cousins/relatives seizing power (and even when such things seemed likely aka Lady Jane Grey, the support Mary gained was proof of the durability of the Tudor regime).

Indeed it is during the Tudor period that we begin to see the rise in the power of the House of Commons; it is during the reign of the Tudor monarchs that careful management of the ‘lower’ house begins really. One only has to look at the Reformation Parliament- Thomas Cromwell negotiates 137 statues, 32 to do with ‘the national issue’ (aka Henry VIII’s reformation) to see the start of the true foundation of crown and parliaments interdependency (this was only reinforced as time went by- the mammoth tax revenues generated by Elizabeth’s regime, especially towards the end of her reign, was only possible with the co-operation and placating of the Commons).

Also previous to 1509 one can see that England was a nation wherein political power was invested in one single figure- the king. After 1509? You had two. The king and his Minister. It is after Henry VIII takes the throne that we begin to see the great ministers of state (Wolsey, Cromwell, Cecil etc) begin to become as important as the king/queen themselves.

So economic changes and political changes. But there was more. The population was beginning to change. Henry VII brought about the first real wide spread immigration of native Welsh into England. As time went by one saw French, Dutch and German religious refugees pour into the country (many getting as far as London and remaining there). But the nation changed more drastically- the population of ‘blackamores’ (migrants from North Africa and the East’s Indies) also increased. New research reveals ever increasing numbers of slaves taken, especially during the Elizabethan era, from Spanish ships and then unceremoniously dumped in London. So great was the influx that Cecil had to strong arm the Merchant Adventurers to provide for them.

We also saw a change in the way the nation spoke. Tudor England saw the country formally cease to be bilingual in all ways; English as a language began to be developed, with the likes of John Palsgrave and Thomas Eliot beginning a movement towards the ‘correct’ pronunciation of English; this changed the traditional division of language from the vertical division (wherein ones regional dialects defined you) to the the horizontal division (where ones use of language was a class distinction).

The Tudor period saw a growth in the ‘gentleman’ class; both the rural ‘country gentleman’ and the urban lawyer and merchant Adventurers. It would still be far to soon to describe them as a ‘middle class’ but they were aspirational, conservative, educated, ambitious, loyal and represented a demographic change that began under Henry VII and bore fruit under Elizabeth.

Coupled with this the Tudor period saw the end of the idea of serfdom in England; with the dissolution of the monasteries the last vestige of the villeinage ended.

The dissolutions also created a huge change in the scale and focus of landownership in England. The former monastic lands were soon sold and a huge property boom across England was experienced under the Tudors (best seen in London, where her population more than doubled between 1500 and 1600).

I could go on. Changes in agriculture, changes in business, in social identity, all took place between Henry VII and Elizabeth’s death. The above is to merely scratch the surface of a question which deserves a seriously much more detailed answer.

Suffice to say, I believe the religious changes were merely manifestations of greater changes taking place right across the nation during the rulership of that self-destructive, passionate, driven dynasty.

Sources: *Bindhoff, S.T., “Tudor England”; 1950; Penguin.

*MacGregor, Neil; “Shakespeares Restless World”; 2013; Penguin/BBC

*Rowse, A.L.; “The Expansion of Elizabethan England”;1955; Macmillan

May I recommend Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Tudors’ as a wonderful introduction into this amazing and flawed dynasty; certainly it’s a good place to start to begin to get a feel of the changes they wrought and the interplay between the monarchs and the greater forces outside their control.