Tudor England nearly doubled its population and flipped its religion five times
Between 1485 and 1603, England went from roughly 2.3 million people to about 4 million, built its first permanent navy and changed official religion with almost every monarch. Henry VIII kept Catholic doctrine without the pope, his son went strictly Protestant, Mary swung back, and Elizabeth settled somewhere in the middle.
The dynasty began when Henry VII defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field, closing the Wars of the Roses, and ended with the death of Elizabeth I. The first Tudor spent much of his reign steadying the economy and built a system of royal finance that became the basis of modern English revenue collection. His tax enforcement fell hardest on nobles and churchmen rather than the poor. Abroad he dropped the old ambition of holding French land and instead married his son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, tying England to Spain.
Growth reshaped the country. Numbers had been far higher before the Black Death, but recovery took hold, and more people meant more commercial farming, more wool exports, more trade and a bigger London. The early abundance of land and good pay gave way to scarcity and low wages, inflation widened the gap between rich and poor, possibly fuelled by New World gold, and lords began enclosing village land once open to all. John Guy nonetheless judged that the country had not been so healthy or hopeful since Roman rule.
Religion dominated the era. Henry VIII's break with Rome grew out of Pope Clement VII's refusal to annul his first marriage, and Parliament passed laws ending appeals to Rome and making the king supreme over the English church. Older historians blamed widespread disgust with a corrupt church; social historians after 1960 found that parishes around 1500 were devout, well funded and loyal to the pope, and that continental reforming pamphlets hardly reached beyond a few Cambridge scholars.
Henry is also called the father of the English navy. Inheriting seven small warships, he added two dozen by 1514, and in March 1513 watched 24 ships led by the 1,600-ton Henry Imperial carry 5,000 marines and 3,000 sailors down the Thames. He founded royal dockyards, planted trees for shipbuilding and funded the fleet from taxes as a standing force, though Geoffrey Elton argued it lacked a real strategy. Meanwhile, from 1515 to 1529, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey shaped most decisions reaching the king.
Source: Tudor period
