Welcome to the Tudor Age!
Welcome to one of the most exciting periods in history! Intrigue, adventure, exploration, battles, persecutions, executions – it was all going on in Tudor times!
You have no doubt heard of the most famous Tudor monarch – Henry VIII. The eighth (and last, so far) king called Henry got married SIX times, had three children, built the British navy, invented the Church of England and went to war with France, Scotland, and the Pope!
And he was just ONE of the six Tudor monarchs. These guys were one of the most powerful families in Europe, if not the world.
Keep reading for more about the Tudors, and test your knowledge in our fun quiz!
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court – Henry VIII’s famous palace on the banks of the Thames. The video below gives you a quick tour of the palace, and the gallery shows some more detail of the Tudor areas.
Henry the Executioner
Meet Henry (no, not THAT Henry), and find out about the busy life of Henry VIII’s Executioner!
Dress like a Tudor
Most Tudors didn’t dress like a King or Queen, of course. You can watch a video below on how Elizabeth would have got dressed in the morning (and it could have taken her up to 4 hours depending on how fancy she was feeling!). But normal people wouldn’t have quite so many fancy clothes. You can download a dressing up sheet and also find instructions below on how to make yourself an Elizabethan ruffle to go around your neck, in case you are feeling posh!
Dress up as a Tudor
Make a Tudor ruff
Discover the Tudor Rose
Design your own coat of arms
How the world got bigger in Tudor times
Did you know between 1485 and 1603 that the world got bigger?
Well ok, maybe not the world itself, but certainly our understanding of it.
Contrary to what you might think, people in medieval and Tudor times did not believe the earth was flat. People have known the earth is a sphere ever since the Ancient Greeks, 2500 years ago! But despite knowing the world was round, in all that time no-one had ever travelled right around the world. Not until Tudor times.
You see, when Henry VII came to the throne, Europeans (including Britain) only knew about the eastern hemisphere. That’s the half of the world that contains Europe, Africa and Asia. They knew nothing about the western hemisphere, which contains North and South America.
How the world looked in 1485:
It all started in 1492 when an Italian explorer called Christopher Columbus tried to prove that there was a quicker way to get to India. If the world is round, he reasoned, then we should be able to sail west and get there, rather than sailing east around the dangerous coastline of Africa and the Indian Ocean.
And so he got the King & Queen of Spain to pay for a voyage to discover the eastern passage to India. Columbus didn’t manage to find India, because he hit a large lump of land that was in the way. That large lump of land eventually came to be known as America!
Around 30 years after Columbus discovered America, a Portuguese adventurer called Francisco Magellan became the first person to sail right around the world. It was a dangerous and deadly mission; he left Spain in 1519 with 5 ships, 270 men and enough supplies for 2 years, and he finally reached Spain again in 1522 with one ship and only 19 men, but he finally proved that there was a way to circumnavigate the globe by sea.
How the world looked in 1603:
You can compare how much European knowledge of the earth developed in just 100 years by using the slider on this map. The maps at the end of the Tudor period might not have been very accurate compared to today, but they at least knew about most of the land masses on earth. They had even sighted the coast of Australia, although no-one had been there yet.
Of course it’s not fair to say that Europeans discovered the rest of the world. Indigenous people had discovered these lands thousands of years before Europeans ever got there. In fact Australian Aborigines are probably the oldest existing culture in the whole world, going back at least 50,000 years, and yet it was the last continent to be discovered by Europe!
So when we say that Europeans discovered these places, we mean that they brought the knowledge of them back to Europe, and began to make maps of them.
Even so, the maps remained very inaccurate – especially of the interiors of the countries – until the 19th and 20th centuries. Coastlines could be mapped from ships, but to explore the central areas of places like America, Canada and Africa was much more perilous. That’s why you’ll see some places labelled Terra Incognita, which it Latin for Unknown Land
Why was it so important to discover the world?
Great! So… now we know about the rest of the world.
But why?
Exploration was all very well and good, but why would countries spend millions of pounds (in today’s money) on discovering far-off lands? Why was it so important?
Well, just think of all the things we get today that come from other countries. The main reason people wanted to discover new lands, was for trade.
Use the presentation below to find out more! (Just click > when you’re ready to move on a page)
(presentation corrected and adapted from one by Annika Breutzmann)
What did the Tudors trade for?
How much do you know about the Tudors?
Try our quiz and find out!