Years 1500-1555
The high Renaissance to Shakespeare's birth
- 1500 London has a population of about 60,000.
- 1503 Margaret Tudor marries James IV of Scotland; Sir Thomas Wyatt is born; Erasmus publishes Enchiridion Militis Christiani, in which he attacks superstition, the adoration of relics, pilgrimages, and stresses inward spirituality.
- 1504 Papal permission is given for translation of Henry VI's body to Westminster (which is never carried out), in view of coming canonization. As stories of Henry miracles multiply, people begin to forget his incompetence.
- [1505]Thomas Tallis is born.
- 1507 Pope Julius II issues indulgence for reconstruction of St. Peter's.
- 1508 Luther studies and teaches at the University of Wittenberg which eventually becames the cradle of the Reformation.
- 1509John Calvin is born; Henry VII dies; Henry VIII becomes king and marries Catherine of Aragon.
- 1510 Boticelli dies.
- [1513] William Lyly's Latin Grammar is published.
- 1515Roger Ascham is born. Martin Luther posts his 95 theses at the castle church of Wittenberg.
- 1516 Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
- 1517 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey is born.
- 1518 Paladdio is born.
- 1519 Leonardo da Vinci dies; Henry VII's Chapel is completed at Westminster Abbey, prepared to celebrate sainthood of Henry VII which is never conferred because of the split with Rome..
- 1520 Raphael dies.
- 1524 Thomas Linacre dies.
- 1526 A royal proclamation orders the undoing of all enclosures made since Henry VII's accession.
- 1527 Niccolò Machiavelli dies.
- 1528 Albrecht Dürer dies.
- 1529 John Skelton dies.
- 1530 Cardinal Wolsey dies in disgrace.
- 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot's Book of the Governour. Parliament confirms by statute severe punishments for vagrancy.
- 1533Montaigne is born; Ariosto dies; Henry VIII divorces Catherine of Aragon and marries Anne Boleyn.
- 1534 Act of Supremacy: Parliament declares Henry VIII supreme head of Church of England. Act requires oath to the lawfulness of Henry's second marriage.
- 1535 Sir Thomas More is executed; Coverdale publishes the first complete English Bible. Plague breaks out for the first of five consecutive years.
- 1536 Erasmus dies; Henry VIII orders the dissolution of the monasteries in England; Hans Holbein the elder becomes court painter to Henry VIII.
- 1538 Mercator bases his first map of the world on Ptolemy's map. All parishes are required to keep records of baptisms, marriages and deaths. Henry VIII eliminates the Friday fast. Thomas à Becket's Canterbury shrine is destroyed and Becket is proclaimed a traitor.
- 1542 Sir Thomas Wyatt dies.
- 1543 Copernicus' treatise on a geocentric universe is published; death of Copernicus; William Byrd is born.
- 1546Martin Luther dies; Sir Thomas Elyot dies.
- 1547 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey dies; Henry VIII dies; Edward VI becomes king; Parliament, distressed by the growing number of wandering poor, orders that vagrants be enslaved (but the Act is not enforced). A compulsory poor rate is instituted in London and some other cities for the assistance of those temporarily unemployed.
- 1548 Roger Ascham is appointed tutor to Princess Elizabeth.
- 1549 Parliament passes a poll tax on sheep to discourage enclosure. The first of 3 successive years of bad harvests; outbreaks of plague occur in the same years.
- 1551 William Camden is born.
- 1552Edmund Spenser is born; Sir Walter Raleigh is born.
- 1553 François Rabelais dies; Edward VI dies; Mary becomes queen after a nine-day reign by Lady Jane Grey.
- 1554 Wyatt's Rebellion; Mary I imprisons Elizabeth in the Tower; Sir Philip Sidney is born.
- 1555 Harvest failure caused by heavy rainfall coincides with an influenza epidemic; Roman Catholicism is officially reestablished by Mary.