It was under Henry VII's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth I, that the combination of the new institutions of the nation-state, and the improvements in education, brought the most dramatic results. In many ways, the reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603, was the most dynamic in English history.
Elizabeth's government carried out policies to protect and develop England's industries. In some industries, such as coal production, the rate of expansion even exceeded that which occurred during the industrial revolution of the Nineteenth century. The iron industry, which had stagnated or even declined through the reign of Henry VIII, grew four-fold over the next sixty years. The shipbuilding industry was expanded through new laws, and more rigorous enforcement of old ones. The government also protected and encouraged industries where England had previously been dependent on imports, such as paper-making, glass-making, salt production, copper mining, gunfounding, and the manufacture of gun powder.
The expansion of literacy launched by the Erasmus-More circle, continued under Elizabeth. By the end of her reign, the literacy level in England had reached around 33 percent, one of the highest rates in the world at that time. And the English language reached its highest level of development during this era, as exemplified by the works of Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible.
Although records about William Shakespeare's youth are very limited, enough is known to show that he was a product of the cultural revolution that had been launched a half-century earlier by the circle of Erasmus and Thomas More.
Shakespeare was born in March of 1564. He entered school around age five, and probably moved on to grammar school at seven. Here, he would have used William Lily's {Short Introduction to Grammar,} which was the standard Latin primer of the day.
Shakespeare's play {The Merry Wives of Windsor,} contains a parody on the Lily text, with a young boy--appropriately named William--being drilled on Latin grammar:
Parson Evans:|Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark: genitivo, hujus. Well, what is your accusative case?
William:|Accusativo, hinc.
Parson Evans:|I pray you, have your remembrance, child. Accusativo, hung, hang, hog.
Mistress Quickly:|`Hang-hog' is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.
Parson Evans:|Leave your prabbles, 'oman.--What is the focative case, William?
William: O, --vocotivo, O.
Parson Evans:|Remember, William: focative is caret.
Mistress Quickly:|And that's a good root.
Evans:|'Oman, forbear.
Mistress Page:|Peace!
Parson Evans:|What is your genitive case plural, William?
William:|Genitive case?
Parson Evans:|Ay.
William:|Genitivo: horum, harum, horum.
Mistress Quickly:|Vengeance of Jenny's case! fie on her! never name her, child, if she be a whore.
In grammar school, Shakespeare would have been taught Erasmus's Cato, and the works of Terence and Plautus. At the age of eleven, he would have graduated to works by Cicero, such as {De Officiis} and Erasmus's {De Copia.} Shakespeare's mastery of the subjects was good enough, that he is reported to have worked as a tutor is the house of Alexander Hoghton.
Beyond Shakespeare's use of Thomas More's {History of King Richard the Third,} in writing his own {Life and Death of King Richard III,} the clearest evidence of More's direct influence on Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's greatest tribute to More, is contained in the sections that Shakespeare contributed to a play on the life of More. The play, written by Anthony Munday, was rejected by the censors, and Shakespeare re-wrote several sections, trying to make it acceptable, so it could be performed. In one scene, Shakespeare shows More, as sheriff of London, calming a riot against foreign residents on May Day of 1517. Later, Shakespeare portrays More as a reflecting on his appointment as Chancellor, vowing to reject the corruption brought on by honour, high office, and wealth:
It is in heaven that I am thus and thus,
And that which we profanely term our fortunes
Is the provision of the power above,
Fitted and shaped just to that strength of nature
Which we were born withal. Good God, good God,
That I from such an humble bench of birth
Should step as 'twere up to my country's head
And give the law out there; ay, in my father's life
To take prerogative and tithe of knees
From elder kinsmen, and him bind by my place
To give the smooth and dexter way to me
That owe it him by nature! Sure these things,
Not physicked by respect, might turn our blood
To much corruption. But More, the more thou hast
Either of honour, office, wealth and calling,
Which might accite thee to embrace and hug them,
The more do thou e'en serpents' natures think them:
Fear their gay skins, with thought of their sharp stings,
And let this be thy maxim: to be great
Is, when the thread of hazard is once spun,
A bottom great wound up, greatly undone.
Thus, Shakespeare portrays More as a model for everyone: motivated by a desire to do God's work in promoting the General Welfare, and knowing that to become fixated on his own wealth and power, would bring about his own undoing. Indeed, Shakespeare's works, which have been the most widely circulated literature in the history of the English language, played a vital role in the education of the population to become this sort of citizen.
But, the world during this period was increasingly governed by the axioms created by Venetian manipulation. Europe was increasingly split into hostile blocs, rather than governed by the community of principle sought by Henry VII, Erasmus, and More.
Beginning with decisions made in the early 1580's, the Venetian financal oligarchy moved its base of operations into The Netherlands and England. In 1600, the British East India Company was formed, which grew into one of the most ugly instruments of British colonialism. A century later, this Venetian financial oligarchy was firmly in control of England.
However, even more deadly than the oligarchy's financial subversion, was its cultural subversion. In Europe and in England, itself, the culture was gradually subverted with the re-introduction of the ideology of Aristotle, this time in the guise of new forms, such as philosophical empiricism.
Finally, the flawed nature of the monarchical form of government was demonstrated, when Elizabeth picked a completely unworthy successor, James of Scotland, who became James I of England. Elizabeth, who had no children, chose a successor with no committment to the English Renaissance.
Under James I, the cultural decay accelerated. James I rejected the most important aspect of the Tudor revolution, the creation of a literate educated population. Indicative of the reactionary direction of the new regime was the rise of men like Francis Bacon, who eventually became Lord Chancellor. Bacon told King James I, that the education of the working classes would cause a shortage of farmers and artisans, and fill up the kingdom with ``indigent, idle and wanton people.'' He advised James I that there were too many grammar schools.
Ultimately, there developed in England a group of republicans committed to the principles of a nation-state dedicated to the General Welfare, which Henry VII had established as the basis for the English nation. When they found England, under the Venetian-style ruling class that had captured it, to be had taken over a hundred years earlier, beyond the grip of that oligarchy, establishing, on the shores of North America, a colony that would grow into the first true nation-state, explicitly dedicated to the principles for which Henry VII had fought. This marked the completion of the struggles waged by Henry VII and his collaborators three centuries earlier.
