Tudors and Stuarts
Wales had retained a separate legal and administrative system, which had been established by Edward I in the late 13th century. Under the Tudor monarchy, which was of Welsh origin, Henry VIII of England—a son of Henry VII—replaced the laws of Wales with those of England (under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). Wales now ceased to be a personal fiefdom divided between the Prince of Wales and Earl of March, and was instead annexed to the Kingdom of England, and henceforth was represented in the Parliament of England.
During the 1530s, Henry VIII overthrew the power of the Roman Catholic Church within the kingdom, replacing the Pope as head of the English church, and seizing the church's lands, thereby beginning the creation of a new Protestant religion. This had the effect of aligning England with Scotland, which also gradually adopted a Protestant religion, whereas the most important continental powers, France and Spain, remained Roman Catholic.
In 1541, during Henry VIII's reign, the Parliament of Ireland proclaimed him King of Ireland, thereby bringing the Kingdom of Ireland into personal union with the Kingdom of England.
During the reign of Mary I of England, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, Calais—the last remaining continental possession of the kingdom—was lost: captured by the French, under Francis, Duke of Guise, on 7 January 1558.
Henry VIII's younger daughter, Elizabeth I of England, consolidated the new Protestant Church of England. She also began to build up the kingdom's naval strength, on the foundations her father had laid down. In 1588 her new navy was strong enough to defeat the Spanish Armada, which had sought to invade England in order to put a Catholic monarch on the throne in her place.
The House of Tudor ended with the death of Elizabeth I on 24 March 1603. James VI, King of Scots (a descendant of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister), from Scotland's House of Stuart, ascended the throne of England, becoming King James I of England. He was a Protestant. Despite the Union of the Crowns, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland remained separate and independent states under this personal union: a state of affairs which lasted for more than a century.
The Stuart kings, however, overestimated the power of the English monarchy, and were cast down by Parliament in 1645 and 1688. In the first instance, Charles I's introduction of new forms of taxation, in defiance of Parliament, led to the English Civil War (1641–45), in which the king was defeated, and to the consequent abolition of the monarchy under Oliver Cromwell, during the interregnum of 1649–1660. Henceforth, the monarch could reign only at the will of Parliament.
Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, an attempt by James II (a son of Charles I) to reintroduce Roman Catholicism—a century after its suppression by the Tudors—led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which he was deposed by Parliament. The Crown was then offered by Parliament to James II's daughter and son-in-law/nephew, Protestant princes of Orange, William III and Mary II.
In 1707, Acts of Union were passed by both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England, to ratify the 1706 Treaty of Union, and bring into being the new Kingdom of Great Britain. Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuart, became the first monarch of the new kingdom. The English and Scottish Parliaments were merged into the Parliament of Great Britain, located in Westminster, London. At this point England ceased to exist as a separate political entity, and since then has had no national government. The laws of England were unaffected, with the legal jurisdiction continuing to be that of England and Wales, while Scotland continued to have its own laws and law courts. This continued after the Act of Union of 1800 between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (which would later become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
Read more about this topic: Kingdom Of England