Board: OCR | Unit: Y107 | Component: 1 (British Period Study)
About this option
England 1547–1603: the Later Tudors covers the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I — a period of intense religious conflict, political instability, and eventual Elizabethan settlement. Students trace the oscillating Protestant and Catholic reformations of the mid-Tudor period, the consolidation of the Elizabethan Church settlement, the political challenges of the reign including Mary Queen of Scots, the Northern Rebellion, and the Armada, and the social and economic pressures of the later Elizabethan years. The option demands sustained engagement across more than fifty years of transformation.
Key themes
- Edward VI’s reign: the Protestant Reformation under Somerset and Northumberland, the 1549 rebellions, and the limits of Protestant advance
- Mary I’s reign: the Catholic restoration, the Spanish marriage, Marian persecution, and the loss of Calais
- Elizabeth I’s religious settlement: the nature and limits of the Elizabethan Church, Puritan challenges, and the Catholic threat
- Elizabethan politics: the role of the Privy Council, faction, and the management of Parliament
- The challenges to Elizabeth: Mary Queen of Scots, the Northern Rebellion, plots and papal bulls
- Foreign policy and the Armada: the Spanish threat, the Netherlands, and England’s place in European politics
- Late Elizabethan problems: Essex’s rebellion, economic difficulties, and the succession question
What the exam asks
Y107 is a period study. Questions require breadth across the full chronological range, assessing change and the ability to make comparisons across different phases of the period. Students are expected to demonstrate precise factual knowledge and to sustain arguments across the whole option rather than focusing narrowly on individual events.
Historiography
The Later Tudor period has been intensely debated by historians of religion, politics, and high politics:
- The nature of the Elizabethan religious settlement: a pragmatic political compromise or a genuine theological position? The debate between those who see Elizabeth as a committed Protestant and those who emphasise her conservatism and resistance to further reform
- The strength of Marian Catholicism: Eamon Duffy’s revisionist argument that popular Catholicism was deeply rooted and only destroyed by Elizabethan persecution, against the earlier view that Protestantism simply triumphed over a shallow and corrupt Catholic church
- Elizabethan government: was the later reign characterised by institutional failure and faction (John Guy’s ‘second reign’ thesis) or by effective royal management?
- The Armada: how decisive was the Spanish defeat, and did it mark a turning point in English national consciousness or merely a lucky escape?
Interpretations pack — coming September 2026
A teaching pack for this option is in development, covering all core historiographical debates. It will include named historians with argument summaries, paired comparison tasks built to OCR mark scheme logic, and provenance analysis prompts — all in a downloadable PDF.
£9.99 per pack · Available September 2026
