Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More was a lawyer and judge in Renaissance England who rose to the highest appointed office of chancellor under Henry VIII, king of England. More was born in London on February 7, 1478, son of Sir John More, a prominent judge.

More studied at Oxford under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn. He returned to London around 1494 to complete his studies in law and in 1496 was admitted to the law court of Lincoln’s Inn, located in central London. He became a lawyer in 1501.

At one point in his early legal career, More seriously considered becoming a monk. While he worked at Lincoln’s Inn, he lived at a nearby monastery run by the Carthusians, taking part in their monastic life of prayer, fasting, and religious studies. Although More quit the monastery, he continued to live out many of its religious practices throughout his life.

More decided to enter a lifetime political career when he joined Parliament in 1504. Shortly after, he married Jane Colt. She bore him four children. She died at a young age in childbirth and More quickly remarried a widow named Alice Middleton to care for his children.


When More urged Parliament to decrease its appropriation of funds to King Henry VII, Henry retaliated by imprisoning More’s father until a fine was paid and More had withdrawn from political service. After the king’s death, More became active again. He was appointed undersheriff of London in 1510.

He was noted for his impartiality and speed in seeing that cases were heard in a timely fashion. More attracted the attention of King Henry VIII, who appointed him to a number of high posts and missions on behalf of the government.

He was made Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523. As Speaker he helped establish the parliamentary privilege of free speech. Henry made him chancellor in 1529. He resigned in 1532, at the height of his career and reputation.

Throughout his life, More was recognized as a reformer and scholar. He wrote and published many works in Latin and English and was friends with a number of scholars and bishops.

In 1499, the scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam first visited England and formed a lifelong friendship and correspondence with More. On subsequent visits, Erasmus lived in More’s household at Chelsea. They produced a Latin translation of Lucian’s works, which was printed at Paris in 1506.

In 1509, Erasmus wrote the Encomium moriae, or Praise of Folly (1509), dedicating it to More. During one of his diplomatic missions to Flanders in 1515, More wrote his Latin classic, Utopia, a witty political satire on the role of government and society. It became an instant bestseller throughout Europe.

In the Reformation controversy of his time, More opposed Lutheranism and was a staunch supporter of the papacy and defender of the Roman Catholic Church. He enforced government suppression of the reformed movement in England until Parliament changed the laws at Henry VIII’s instigation.

More resigned his office and withdrew from public service when Henry, with Parliament’s approval, made himself supreme head of the Church of England and enforced the Oath of Supremacy and Act of Succession.

In 1534, More was imprisoned in the Tower of London on grounds of refusing to take the oath. More defended himself as a loyal subject, but he also declared that he was bound to follow his conscience on matters of principle.

Fifteen months later, he was tried and convicted of treason. Henry allowed him a few public words on the scaffold when he was beheaded on July 6, 1535. He declared himself “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

Robert Whittinton, a contemporary of More, wrote of him in 1520, “More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.”

Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu

Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu

The baron de Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu) was an important cultural critic and political theorist of the early French enlightenment. He was a member of the hereditary nobility of French judges and lawyers known as the nobility of the robe.

As was a traditional right of his family, he served actively in the criminal division of the parlement, or high-ranking judiciary, of the French province of Guienne, at its capital, Bordeaux. His first book was Persian Letters (1721).

Because it addressed controversial subjects, the book was published with no indication of its author and a false imprint; it was credited to an imaginary publisher in Cologne when in fact, like many underground French books during the Enlightenment, it was published in the Dutch Republic. Nevertheless, the book was extremely popular. Montesquieu added material to later editions.

Persian Letters employed the literary device, very widely used during the Enlightenment, of having a fictional foreigner describe European society. It is an example of a popular genre in the 18th century, the epistolary novel, consisting of a collection of letters.


The main characters are two Persians, Usbek and Rica, touring Europe, commenting on and sometimes mocking European society as well as discussing history and institutions. (Montesquieu’s knowledge of Persian culture came mostly from contemporary travelers’ accounts.)

Europeans are not the only targets of Montesquieu’s satire, however, as Usbek, perceptive in his denunciations of tyranny in Europe, is shown in his correspondence with his household in Persia as a tyrant over the women and eunuchs of his harem.

It is the resistance of Usbek’s wife, Roxana, that provides the novel’s abrupt tragic climax. Targets of Montesquieu’s satire closer to home included the emptiness of much Parisian conversation, religious intolerance, and royal despotism.

In 1725, Montesquieu retired from the bench, then moved to Paris the following year. In 1728, he was admitted (with some controversy) to the French Academy, which had previously been a target of his satire. He spent some years traveling through Europe observing different social institutions and in 1731 began to work on his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws, first published in 1748.

It went through more than 20 editions during Montesquieu’s lifetime. (Some of the themes of The Spirit of the Laws first appeared in Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Grandeur of the Romans and the Causes of their Decline [1731].) The Spirit of the Laws is the first great comparative study of social, political, and legal institutions.

Montesquieu believed that laws and institutions should be judged not against an abstract standard of perfection but in terms of how they were adapted to different peoples. Seemingly irrational laws may well have a rational function in their society.

Given that adaptation of laws to peoples, legal reform should be undertaken very carefully. Strengthening the power of the French monarch against the nobility, for example, as many reformers of the Enlightenment wished to do, would be harmful in that it would remove a check on the monarch’s power.

The king’s increased power could lead France away from monarchy, of which Montesquieu approved, toward despotism, which he despised. Despotism differs from monarchy in that the despot has no responsibility to follow the laws.

Montesquieu’s three basic types of government are monarchy, despotism, and the republic, in which either the people rule democratically or the aristocratic state is ruled by a few. Except for despotism, which is innately corrupt, each of these governments can appear in good and in corrupt forms.

In order to protect individual freedom and guard against corruption, it is necessary that all power not lie in the same place. Montesquieu established the distinction among legislative, executive, and judicial power. He endorsed commerce as preferable to war to enrich a state.

Montesquieu’s analysis of how different types of governments are formed and maintained includes consideration of physical factors such as climate. Harsh countries are less tempting to invaders, and the hard work required to cultivate them is linked to virtue and republican government.

Montesquieu analyzes religion in The Spirit of the Laws principally in relation to its social utility—different religions are adapted to different societies, as Protestantism is to republics, Catholicism to monarchies, and Islam to despotisms.

As did other Enlightenment thinkers, Montesquieu strongly endorsed the principle of religious toleration and admired the Protestant and relatively free societies of the Dutch Republic and Great Britain. The Spirit of the Laws was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Catholic Church in 1751 but had great influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and on the founding fathers of the United States.

His theory of the distribution of powers influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Montesquieu also contributed an article on “taste” to the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - French Philosopher

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The French nobleman Michel de Montaigne was the inventor of the modern form of the personal essay and the greatest exponent of philosophical skepticism in the 16th century. His father was a rural landowner and his mother a descendant of Spanish Jews who had converted to Christianity.

His father ensured that Montaigne received a good humanist education; his tutor was directed to speak nothing but Latin to him until he reached the age of six. Montaigne was educated in the law and as an adult served in the parlement, or law court, of Bordeaux and was mayor of Bordeaux from 1581 to 1585.

The first two volumes of his essays were published in 1580, followed by a complete revised edition of three books in 1588. A third, posthumous edition with further revisions was published in 1595, and his personal journal of a trip through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy in 1580 and 1581 was published in 1774.


Montaigne is responsible for introducing the word essay, originally essai, meaning “attempt.” Unlike Sir Francis Bacon, who was greatly influenced by Montaigne as an essayist, Montaigne saw self-knowledge as a goal and dwelled on his personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences in addition to drawing from his extensive reading. Montaigne was utterly at home in the classics but wrote his essays in French. (His work has also influenced the development of the French philosophical vocabulary.)

As a skeptic, Montaigne’s motto was Que sais-je? (What do I know?). He followed the tradition of classical skeptics like the ancient Greek philosopher Roman philosophers.

As a skeptic, he held that people should be even-tempered, tolerant, and not overly invested in their opinions. Montaigne’s skepticism was also informed by the growing knowledge of foreign cultures in 16th century Europe. This knowledge led him to doubt the intrinsic superiority of his own culture.

One of his most famous essays, “On Cannibals,” is about the contrast between some Native Americans who had been brought to France and French society and suggests that the “savage” custom of eating a man after he is dead is not worse, and perhaps better, than the European practices of torturing or burning people alive for their religious opinions.

Montaigne’s longest essay, “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” is devoted to a 15th_century Spanish theologian, the author of Natural Theology, which Montaigne had read on the advice of his father. Montaigne published a translation of Sebond’s work from Latin to French in 1569.

Sebond believed that, with a proper attitude toward the Catholic faith, the knowledge of God was attainable through reason. Montaigne doubted this thesis and suggested that there are many things about the world that the human intellect is simply inadequate to understand.

Montaigne’s travels were inspired by curiosity and the pain he suffered from kidney stones and hoped to relieve in foreign spas. The journal focuses on the six months he spent in Rome. Montaigne wrote the account of his Roman stay in Italian, as he believed that one of the best ways of understanding a foreign culture was learning and using its language.

Montaigne was particularly interested in ancient monuments and other reminders of the classical Romans including place names and festivals. He was less interested in the art and culture of the contemporary Italian Renaissance.

A Catholic, Montaigne took a politique stand in the French Wars of Religion, emphasizing the importance of civil peace and national unity over religious uniformity. He was a friend and correspondent of Henri of Navarre, the leader of the Protestant faction who after Montaigne’s death converted to Catholicism and became the tolerant Henry IV, king of France and Navarre.

Despite Montaigne’s skepticism, moderation, and occasional sympathy with Protestantism, he had little trouble with the Catholic Church, perhaps because his skepticism could be turned to Catholic ends by suggesting that faith in the authority of the church was the only source of certainty. His writings were not put on the Church’s Index of Forbidden Books until 1676, and he was invited to write Catholic polemic.

Montaigne’s works were extraordinarily popular and influential, both in the original French and in the English translation by John Florio, published in 1603. William Shakespeare was among those who read Montaigne in Florio’s translation, and signs of the Frenchman’s influence can be found in Shakespeare’s later plays.

Although Montaigne’s use of French rather than Latin and of the new essay form rather than traditional philosophical genres such as the treatise or dialogue limited his effect on the community of the learned, his friend and disciple the priest Pierre Charron put forth Montaigne’s skepticism in a more systematic form aimed at refuting Protestants and atheists.

Battle of Mohács

Battle of Mohács

The Battle of Mohács, which erupted in the summer of 1526, was a major Ottoman victory over the Hungarian king Louis, marking the end of the Jagiellon dynasty. Led by Suleiman I the Magnificent, the Ottoman troops, estimated at 100,000 strong, crushed the far smaller Hungarian forces on the open plain of Mohács. Besides having numerous soldiers, the Ottomans had far superior weaponry that included artillery and highly skilled marksmen.

One of the first so-called gunpowder empires, the Ottomans effectively used cannons to stop the charging Hungarian cavalry. King Louis was killed fleeing the field, and Suleiman was said to have mourned him as a valiant opponent. Several bishops and over 20,000 Hungarian troops also perished.


Following the victory, Suleiman swiftly moved on to conquer the twin cities of Pest and Buda, the Hungarian capital on the Ottoman armies, Suleiman then led his victorious troops, laden with booty and captives, back to Istanbul for the winter.

As result of their victory, the Ottomans incorporated Hungary into their expanding empire. The Habsburgs, rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, took advantage of the destruction of most of the Hungarian nobility to increase their authority in central Europe, and the two great empires began their long struggle against one another for control of southern and central Europe.

Philip Melancthon - Religious Reformer

Philip Melancthon

Philip Melancthon was a key Lutheran reformer. He worked very closely with Martin Luther and was the author of many of the major Reformation documents, including the Augsburg Confession.

Philip Melancthon was born Philip Schwarzerd on February 16, 1547, in Bretten, Germany. A brilliant boy, he was tutored in Greek and Latin and entered the University of Heidelberg just before his 13th birthday in 1509, graduating at age 14.

The university would not allow him to study for his master’s at such a young age, so Philip moved to Tübingen, studying both philosophy and humanistic thought. He completed his master’s degree in 1514 at age 17. He was offered a position as an instructor at Tübingen and taught there until 1518.

During his time at Tübingen as an instructor, Melancthon began to study theology and continued his studies of Greek, producing a Greek grammar in 1518. Offered a position at Wittenberg as a professor of Greek in 1518, Melancthon eagerly accepted. It was there he met another professor, the monk Martin Luther, who had posted his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, on the church door at Wittenberg.


Melancthon was an early supporter of Luther, attending the debates that preceded Luther’s excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. By the time of his publishing a defense of Luther against Johann Maier von Eck in 1519, Melancthon was considered a part of the Lutheran camp.

Augsburg Confession

Melancthon was the primary author of the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530. This is a key Reformation document, explaining the Lutheran position on various theological issues. Written in Melancthon’s clear and lucid style, it represented the Lutheran position in a manner that many hoped would bring about reconciliation between the Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Melancthon would prove always to take the more moderate position in the various Reformation controversies.

Melancthon worked closely with Luther on many of Luther’s writings. He assisted in Luther’s translation of the Bible into German, revised many of Luther’s commentaries on the Bible, and assisted Luther in some of the Luther’s most important polemical works.

Yet Melancthon would not always agree with Luther. In 1537, at a meeting in Smalcald, Luther had previously prepared what are commonly called the Smalcald Articles (a part of the Book of Concord), attacking the pope virulently.

Melancthon, writing his own “Treatise on the Primacy and the Power of the Pope,” persuaded the others present to adopt his more moderate position. Melancthon married Katharina Krapp, daughter of the mayor of Wittenberg, in 1520. They had four children and their marriage lasted 37 years until Katharina’s death in 1557. They lived in Wittenberg throughout their marriage.

Melancthon had many roles at the University of Wittenberg. He gave immensely popular lectures in over 100 courses to thousands of students (some of his most popular lectures had over 2,000 in attendance). His lectures included theology, philosophy, philology, and world history. He served as rector and academic dean at various times, helping to establish the university as a leading educational institution.

Melancthon published many books. His most famous book, a systematic theology called the Loci communes, was first published in 1521 and revised several times by Melancthon.

Melancthon reached out to many church and public figures including Henry VIII, king of England; King Francis I of France; and the patriarch of Constantinople. He also counted as friends many Calvinists, including Oecolampadius, Bucer, and John Calvin himself. This would leave him open to later charges of being a crypto-Calvinist.

The most tragic event in Melancthon’s life was his role in the document called the Leipzig Interim. Soon after Luther’s death in 1546, Emperor Charles V invaded the German area of Saxony and forced the defeated princes to adopt a document that was designed to be an interim document until the theological matters were settled by the Council of Trent, which had begun recently.

The authors of the document were two Roman Catholic bishops and Luther’s old nemesis, John Agricola. The resulting document so favored Roman Catholicism that the defeated princes refused to sign it.

Melancthon was asked to improve the document to make it more palatable. This he did, but just barely. The document compromised on justification by faith, a key Lutheran tenet, and Melancthon’s association with it would unfairly brand him as a traitor to the Lutheran cause for the rest of his life.

Melancthon provided a kind of balance to Luther that Luther himself appreciated. He was not a strong leader, and many rightly accuse him of being too eager to compromise. Yet his key role in many of the Reformation documents and his personal influence and friendship with many of the reformers clearly show how essential Melancthon was in the early years of the Reformation. Melancthon died in 1560 and was buried next to Luther in the castle Church of Wittenberg.

Mehmed II - Ottoman Sultan

Mehmed II - Ottoman Sultan

Mehmed II (reigned 1444–46; 1451–81) was only 12 years old when his father, Murad II, abdicated to pursue a life of religious contemplation (following Sufi or Islamic mysticism) and appointed him sultan in 1444.

Faced with a threatening battle at Varna, Mehmed called his father back from central Anatolia to lead the troops. When his father died in 1451, Mehmed resumed the throne. Noted for the many military victories throughout his life, Mehmed was known as al-Fatih or the Conqueror.

Mehmed was only in his early 20s when he launched the successful siege of Constantinople, the Byzantine capital that the Ottomans had previously failed to conquer. In a siege that lasted over 50 days, the Ottomans mounted a major assault with over 200 ships and at least 50,000 well-trained soldiers. Ottoman cannon bombarded the walled city that had been considered impregnable.


A fortress, Rumeli Hisari, was constructed on the northwest coast of the Black Sea to prevent reinforcements from assisting the besieged city. To circumvent the long chain that blocked the waterway into the Golden Horn, Mehmed transported seafaring galleys over a long greased planked road built north of the city and used a pontoon bridge to take troops across.

After some weeks the Ottomans broke through the city walls and met with little resistance from the inhabitants, who had vainly hoped for outside reinforcements. Rather than the customary three days allotted to soldiers taking a conquered city, Mehmed only allowed his troops a few hours of pillaging in the city. He entered the city with great pomp and promptly offered prayers at the great Byzantine basilica, Aya Sophia, which was then turned into a mosque.

Although he was known, especially on the battlefield, for his furious temper, Mehmed was generous in victory, granting autonomy to the Greek Orthodox residents of city and permitting the return of those who had fled prior to the siege. Mehmed also encouraged others to move into his new capital, known to the Turks as Istanbul.

Mehmed made Istanbul a major entrepôt and center of learning and culture. He established new schools, hospitals, caravanserai, and soup kitchens. He saw himself as the heir to the Roman Empire and viewed his empire as the guardian of Islam, whose duty it was to protect Muslims everywhere. Islam was the source of legality of his new great empire.

Under Mehmed, the empire developed a centralized administration; the janissary corps was enlarged while the many religious and ethnic minorities within the empire were treated with leniency and fairness.

Mehmed also encouraged skilled artisans and intellectuals escaping Muslim Spain after it fell to the Reconquista to settle in Istanbul. He granted monopolies over the sale of basic necessities to private individuals and used these revenues to bolster the Ottoman treasury.

Well educated, Mehmed spoke numerous languages and was interested in the study of military tactics, especially the exploits of Alexander the Great. Unusually for a Muslim leader who generally eschewed physical representations, Mehmed also hired the famed Venetian artist Gentile Bellini to paint his portrait.

Under Mehmed, the Ottomans dominated all of the Balkans to the Danube River and all of Anatolia, but he failed to defeat the Mamluks in Syria. Mehmed died preparing for a campaign to take the island of Rhodes and southern Italy and was succeeded by his son Bayezid II.

Medici Family

Medici Family

Salvestro de’ Medici, in the 14th century, was the first of the family to make a bid for political power when he led the revolt of the the small artisan class against the nobility who governed the city. Salvestro overbid his hand and became virtually a dictator in Florence, causing all Florentines to unite and banish him from the city in 1382.

After Salvestro’s ejection from the city, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici was able to restore both the family’s wealth and its social standing in the community, important in the tightly knit fabric of the Italian city-states of the period. Giovanni made the Medici the richest family in Italy, perhaps in Europe.

The Medici family became paramount in Florence due to Giovanni’s son, Cosimo the First, or Cosimo the Elder (Cosimo il Vecchio). However, at first, taking advantage of the death of Giovanni in 1429, the powerful Albizzi family banished Cosimo from Florence in 1433. Cosimo’s exile was brief.

The Florentines brought Cosimo back in triumph to the city the next year. He respected the republican character of the city and did not make an obvious grab for power. However, through his great wealth and personal ability, Cosimo nevertheless became the first citizen of Florence and the virtual ruler of the city.


Indeed, Muslim pirates, or corsairs, had been preying on Venetian shipping for some time. However, boasting one of the largest navies in Renaissance Europe, the Venetians at this time were a great power at sea.

A great shift in the Italian balance of power took place when Cosimo shifted the historic Florentine support to the rival city of Milan, where the Sforza family was fighting for supremacy. While Muzio Attendolo Sforza made his name as a condottiero (mercenary leader), it was his son Franceso who became duke of Milan in 1450 with the aid of Cosimo de’ Medici.

Meanwhile, Cosimo was establishing himself as one of the great patrons of the Renaissance. Countless rare documents formed the foundation for Cosimo’s library; he also patronized the leading artists of his day.

Piero de’ Medici was a civic-minded ruler, as was his father, Cosimo. He already had experience in Florentine diplomacy and public affairs. He wed Lucrezia Tornabuoni, whose family had turned its back on its noble heritage.

Together, they had three daughters, Maria, Bianca, and Lucrezia, and two sons who would mold the future history of Florence, Lorenzo and Giuliano. Lorenzo was precocious and unusually gifted for his age. His father entrusted him with diplomatic missions throughout Italy.

However, within Florence, serious opposition was building to Medici rule. Luca Pitti, perhaps Piero’s chief adviser, was secretly planning to seize power. In March 1464, taking advantage of the death of Francesco Sforza, the conspirators made their plans.

When Piero was ill and left the city in August, they struck. Piero came back in force at the end of the month after Lorenzo had gathered loyal troops. The coup collapsed. Luca Pitti was pardoned; others were banished.

When Piero died in 1469, Lorenzo was the natural choice to take his place. Unlike Cosimo and Piero, he ruled more as a prince or an ancient Roman tyrant than a man of the people. At the same time, there was a chilling of relations between Lorenzo and the new pope, Sixtus IV.

The main reason was a struggle over the town of Imola, which Lorenzo wanted to gain for Florence because it guarded the strategic road from Rimini to Bologna. The pope wanted Imola as a gift for his nephew—possibly his son—Girolamo Riario. The cold feelings developing between Lorenzo and Sixtus led to the pope’s replacing the Medici as the papal bankers with the Pazzis, rivals of the Medici.

The enmity between Lorenzo and the pope, now allied with the Pazzis, led to one of the bloodiest incidents of the Italian Renaissance: the Pazzi Conspiracy. The conspiracy aimed at wiping out the Medici. The plotters knew too that Lorenzo suffered a serious weakness: His strong ally, Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, had been assassinated in December 1476.

The conspirators struck on Easter Sunday, April 26, 1478, while Lorenzo and Giuliano were at mass. In the bloodbath that followed, Giuliano was stabbed 19 times, but Lorenzo escaped. In a purge that followed, many of the conspirators were killed, including five who were publicly hanged. Pope Sixtus continued his campaign to oust the Medicis from Florence.

Finally, in a bold move, Lorenzo decided to make a trip and attempt to make peace with one of Florence’s most implacable enemies, King Ferrante of Naples, in December 1479. Amazed at the Medici’s bravery, Ferrante made peace with Florence, and Sixtus’s war came to an end. Lorenzo returned to Florence in triumph. Under him, Florence entered a new abad of greatness.

In January 1492, Lorenzo fell ill and died in April of that year. He was succeeded by his son Piero, who had the misfortune to rule at one of the most disastrous epochs of Italian history. King Charles VIII of France invaded northern Italy in 1494 with a large and well-equipped army.

His artillery, perhaps the most modern in Europe, destroyed Italian citadels and caused cities to surrender before he even approached them. Piero, lacking the fortitude of his father, fled Florence and died in exile.

During the next century, the rise of the family to the ranks of the Italian nobility gave proof of the singular determination of the family, and the faith of the Florentines in the Medici clan.

The Medici rise continued when Cosimo I became duke of Florence in 1537. Like Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cosimo I was young, coming to power at 18. However, like Lorenzo, he understood the art of politics but showed a ruthlessness more characteristic of a Borgia than a Medici. Cosimo I added Siena and Luca to his realm. In 1569, his rise to eminence was recognized when he became grand duke of all Tuscany.

On the death of Cosimo I in 1574, Cosimo’s son Francesco I ruled as grand duke until his death in 1587, and his rule proved to be a weak and uninspiring one. His son Ferdinand II restored luster to the Medici name. Cosimo II became grand duke in 1609 but died in 1620, never having fully recovered from a fever he had suffered in 1615. His son Ferdinand II became grand duke on his father’s death.

With the reign of Ferdinand II, the House of Medici began its period of decline. It was the misfortune of the heirs of Ferdinand II to live in the abad of the rise of the European great powers. Ironically, Marie de’ Medici (Médicis) played a role in the demise of her family’s duchy. In 1600, she married King Henry IV of France, and when he was assassinated in 1610, she served as regent for her son, King Louis XIII.

In 1735, Austria and France arranged that France would take Lorraine and Austria would seize possession of Tuscany. By this time, the Medicis were powerless to defend their ancient lands. In 1737, Austrian troops entered Florence. In the same year, in July 1737, Grand Duke Gian Gastone died without a male heir at the age of 65. The House of Medici had ceased to rule in Florence.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Massachusetts Bay Colony

In the early 17th century, England began acting on its imperial ambitions by chartering business organizations called joint-stock companies, which undertook the actual work and expense of spreading England and its institutions around the world. The system had created the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and the Council for New England, under the leadership of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.

During the 1620s, one of the council’s patents went to some Dorchester merchants to develop a fishing industry at Cape Ann on the New England coast. By 1626, the effort had failed, although John White, a Puritan minister in England associated with the project, began to see the enterprise as a potential refuge for discouraged Puritans from England.

Unfortunately for White and a group of fellow Puritans who had joined him, the Council for New England had ceased effective operation, and the group instead applied directly to the government for its own charter for the lands it already held. The charter, for a company called The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, was issued in March of 1629.


The company was to be managed by a governor and a council of 18 assistants, who were to be elected by a General Court of investors, which also had the power to legislate for the company. Not part of the charter was the usual requirement that the company conduct its business meetings in England.

This omission, quite possibly done by design, allowed the company to hold its meetings wherever it chose. In late August of 1629, in what is known as the Cambridge Agreement, the company opted to move its operations, including the charter, to New England.

When control of the company quickly passed into the hands of dedicated Puritans willing to leave England, the company started its transformation into a colony. By late 1629, the company had sent out John Endicott to assert its control over a settlement at Salem and had then supported that effort with five more ships and possibly one hundred additional settlers.

City Upon a Hill

Thus, by April of 1630, when a flotilla of 11 ships left England, the Massachusetts Bay Company was already a significant presence on the New England coast, and its conversion into a full-fledged colony assured. John Winthrop, elected the company’s governor, established the character of early Massachusetts in a sermon preached at the outset of the journey.

He stressed that the colony would be created as a covenant with God, and that religious orthodoxy would be maintained by the merging of civil and ecclesiastical power and consolidated in the hands of the colony’s leaders. His reference to Massachusetts as a “city upon a hill” to serve as an example to England of what God intended for his people further solidified the religious nature of the proposed colony.

There is no question about the success of the enterprise. The Company of the Massachusetts Bay was indistinguishable from what came to be called simply the colony of Massachusetts. And the religious nature of the colony was secured by requiring that only male church members could vote in colony elections.

There were challenges to some aspects of the colony from Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Quakers, and the freemen of the colony who demanded an elected body to represent them, but there was never any likelihood in New England that the colony would not succeed.

But that certainty was not the case in England. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, still hanging on to the remnants of the Council for New England, argued that the colony’s charter had been secretly obtained and started a campaign to have it annulled.

To the same end in 1635, the council gave up its own charter and requested that the king reassign the disputed territory to eight members of the former Council for New England. The outbreak of the English Civil War, or Puritan Revolution, in 1640, however, prevented any of the grants except the one for Maine from being made.

By the time of the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Gorges had died, the Council of New England had passed from the scene, and Massachusetts had become too powerful and too independent to be easily tamed.

Control of Commerce

With the Restoration, England commenced a colonial policy that stressed the importance of commerce in the empire and the necessity of England’s control of that commerce for the greater good of the mother country.

Massachusetts viewed such a policy as interference in its self-styled independence. When England decided to oust the Dutch from New Netherland in 1664, the leaders of the expedition were ordered to investigate the situation in New England. Their report was especially critical of Massachusetts, but through delay and avoidance the colony managed to escape serious ramifications.

England tried again in 1676, when it sent over Edward Randolph. Randolph’s report was more damaging than the previous commissioners’ account, and the English government felt compelled to act.

It ordered the colony to send representatives to negotiate a settlement, but when England determined that the colony had not lived up to its agreements, it commenced legal action against the original charter as the only method whereby Massachusetts could be brought under control.

England completed the effort in 1684, and the courts annulled the original 1629 charter. The colony existed dependently until it was incorporated into the Dominion of New England in 1686. In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution in England, Massachusetts received a new charter in 1691 as a royal colony, the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The Puritan old guard were displeased, but by the end of the 17th century the original charter had generally outlived its usefulness, as perhaps demonstrated by the Salem witchcraft trials.

The more practical and forward-looking portion of the colonists recognized that future growth and prosperity lay with a royal charter, the institution of a property qualification for the vote, and a more cooperative relationship with English authority. Those whose ancestors had migrated as Puritans under the 1629 charter had become the Yankees of the 1691 charter. They and their colony were ready for the 18th century.

Mary Tudor (Mary of France)

Mary Tudor was born in 1496, nine years after her father, Henry VII, had become king of England by defeating Richard III at Bosworth in 1485. Mary Tudor is often confused with Mary I, who was queen of England from 1553 to 1558, and with Mary, Queen of Scots. However, Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII, would be queen in her own right.

Mary was born in the age of great dynastic marriages when a king contracted for marriage of his daughter to benefit his kingdom. Mary was at first intended to wed Charles of Anjou, who would later become Charles V, the most powerful European monarch of his time.

The contract, originally made by Henry VII, was renewed on the October 17, 1513, by Henry VIII at a meeting with Margaret of Savoy at Lille, with the wedding being set for the following year.

But the Emperor Maximilian I, to whom Louis XII had proposed his daughter Renée as wife for Charles, with Brittany as a dowry, postponed the match with the English princess in a way that left no doubt of his intention to withdraw from the contract altogether.


Henry VIII succeeded to the throne when Henry VII died in April 1509. When it came time to renew the marriage agreement with Charles of Anjou, it was King Henry VIII who did so. With the customary determination of his younger years, Henry decided to invade France in June 1513 as a forceful demonstration of English might.

Henry joined the Holy League against France and went to war. While he was involved in France, his brother-in-law James IV of Scotland, who was married to his sister, Margaret Tudor, invaded the north of England. However, Henry had left the capable Thomas Howard to face any threat from Scotland. James IV was defeated and killed at Flodden on September 9, 1513.

The victories at the Spurs and Flodden made both France and the Holy Roman Emperor reconsider the marriage plans of Mary Tudor. Obviously, Henry had proved it was not wise to have him as an enemy. A diplomatic settlement was reached.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey contracted for Mary to wed King Louis XII. His queen, Anne of Brittany, had died in 1514, making him a desirable spouse for Mary. The two were wed on January 1, 1515, but Louis XII died three months later.

Mary had developed an intense love for Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. His marriage to Margaret Neville Mortimer had been annulled, and his second wife, Anne Browne, died in 1512. At the time of the Battle of the Spurs, he was engaged to an orphan girl.

Henry VIII knew about the love between Charles and Mary. Moreover, Francis I learned of it when Mary told him of her true feelings when he attempted to marry her off to one of his relatives. As Louis XII’s widow, Mary had become a valuable diplomatic asset to Henry again, and she feared that he might try to marry her to another royal suitor.

Mary was determined she and Charles would not be parted. In February 1515, they were married in Cluny Chapel in France. In May 1515, as a mark of royal favor, the couple was wed a second time in England; Henry VIII and his queen, Catherine of Aragon, were the guests of honor. For the time, peace between France and England was maintained. Mary Tudor died on June 26, 1533.