4.29 Europe: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 25/29)

Ireland

When Henry VIII had completed his separation from the Roman Church in England he bade the Irish Parliament to acknowledge him also as head of the Irish Church. It accommodated him and the spoils of the monasteries and church properties were given to various Irish chieftains who thereupon became nobles of the English king. The clan system was abolished and Ireland was declared a kingdom, with Henry VIII as its king, in 1541. But when the king died, five years later, the Irish people remained Catholic, a factor which bolstered them in their later struggle for freedom. Irish rebels, including Red Hugh O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill continued to fight for Irish independence, and the O'Neill badly defeated an English army at Yellow Ford in 1598. Spain even dispatched 4,000 troops to aid in this rebellion, landing at Kinsdale on the southern coast, but they were immediately evicted by English troops. In this century Ireland became a major ex- porter of salted butter and salt beef, the latter being used on shipboard and as food for the poor and the slaves. Salt beef even became a standard winter dish in England. (Ref. 110 , 260 )

Wales

There had been peace between England and Wales since the ascension of the Welsh Tydder (Tudor) King Henry VII and in 1536 Wales became officially incorporated into the English nation.

Scandinavia

"The Baltic is a vast, almost land-locked, frequently ice-bound area of water covering over 166,000 square miles. In early modern times it provided the great bulk of the timber, tar, pitch, hemp and flax for the ships with which England, Holland, France, Spain and Portugal were building their world trading empires; also much of the grain needed to insure the rest of the continent against poor harvests, and the copper for its everyday money."

Norway

Norway continued the docile partner of Denmark throughout the remainder of the century. The country did become an exporter of copper to Europe proper. (Ref. 292 )

Sweden (see map in section on sweden in 17th century)

In 1501, after King Hans had been defeated in -Frisia, the Union of Calmar was not officially dissolved, but it was simply "not in force" and Sten Sture was again considered Regent of Sweden. When Sten threw the Archbishop of Sweden into prison in 1520, Christian II, successor to Hans, took an army to Sweden and the Danish army, backed by some Swedish nobles, took the whole country by force. In Stortorv Square in Stockholm, after a celebration, Christian II had his soldiers murder 82 nobles of Sweden as heretics. A son of one of those so killed in this "Stockholm Bloodbath" soon thereafter got help from the peasants to assemble an army and within two years had all of Sweden under his control. This man, Gustavus Eriksson, was then crowned King of Sweden as Gustav Vasa, in 1523 and the Union of Calmar truly ended. During his reign a financial crisis developed and when the pope replied to the king's appeal for funds only in a very meager way, the king began to favor the Protestants. He commissioned a translation of the Bible into Swedish and this helped not only to transform the national religion but to promote the language itself. As in England, the king began to take over church property for his treasury and insisted that the Diet, or National Assembly, cut out the pope, eliminate confessions and give all the church property to the crown. This was another triumph of the state over the church. Gustav I Vasa was the father of modern Sweden. During his reign iron mines were expanded, trade increased. copper exported and soon there was great prosperity. Even the peasants manufactured iron, but only during the rise of the spring waters when water power was available to help in the operation of the furnaces. (Ref. 260 ) With all of this, we must not lose sight of the fact that the vast expanses of Sweden were still half-empty, with only a few settlements in a vast territory. Traveling merchants distributed horse shoes, nails, pins and religious books, among other things. (Ref. 292 )