The Mobiyuz Strip

Henry IX would ultimately prove to be merely a stopgap measure for the Kingdom of England. While his accession to becoming King did ensure a firmer relationship between England and Scotland, as well as allowing England to ensure stability following the end of the Tudor Dynasty, the man himself was hardly an ideal candidate to be the leader of a major European state. Brusque, obstinate, caustic, and generally unpleasant. Age had only worsened his demeanor, and some theorized that Mary, Queen of Scots, had only arranged for his accession to the throne of England to get him out of Scotland. More significant than his personality, however, was his ideas of government. Firmly believing in the nascent idea of the "Divine Right of Kings", his refusal to cooperate with Parliament won him many political enemies. More pertinent to the coming chaos was that he so thoroughly embraced the Anglican faith that he had grown increasingly friendly to the nascent Puritan movement, alienating and actively sidelining many of the still large Catholic minority in England.



On 11 November 1611 it came to a violent end. When Henry IX begrudgingly opened a session of Parliament, conspirators ignited a massive amount of gunpowder that had been gathered under the Palace of Westminster, killing not only him but a large part of Parliament. Within days Catholic conspirators claimed responsibility, under the leadership of Sir Thomas Salisbury, with the justification that they possessed a writ from the Pope himself to appoint him as King Thomas I, a Catholic king. Unfortunately the blast had failed to kill Henry IX's son, and as such he was quickly made King Henry X and formed a government to oppose the now full-scale Catholic uprising that tore through the country, beginning what was the first major civil war in England since the Wars of the Roses.



Not long after, Mary Queen of Scots moved to support England and Henry X in 1612, taking control of the Marcher Army to secure the border and engage with her own troops at Berwick-upon-Tweed before moving her armies south to engage the Catholics at Durham. It was here, though, that the war grew another complication. The Highland Clans of Scotland, many of them Catholic had never been fully under the control of the Scottish Crown. When news spread that Queen Mary, who was nominally still Catholic, had gone to war against other Catholics in support of the Anglican government of England, many took it as a final straw, that Queen Mary had fully betrayed the Catholic Church and as such was no longer a legitimate queen. To this end they rallied around James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, declaring him the new King of Scots.



To further complicate matters, Ireland also rose in rebellion. While the majority of its nobility were Anglo-Irish Protestants loyal to London, the vast majority of the average people were Irish and Catholic, who had long resented and seethed at English rule over Ireland and had rebelled many times in the past. Under the leadership of Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the Catholic Irish began an uprising the likes of which hadn't been seen in centuries. While the Scottish Catholics and the English Catholics had formed a loose coalition in mutual support of each other's causes, the "Irish Covenanters" stood in opposition to both England and Scotland, and so formed a third faction in what history has thus called the "War of the Three Kingdoms"



From 1612 to 1615, both England and Scotland struggled internally to contain their opposition as Ireland fell into near total anarchy, with the nominally independent Kingdom of Ireland left to its own devices as Henry X and Mary I struggled to bring their states to heel. Indeed, Mary was forced to disengage the English Catholics in order to attack the rebels in her own kingdom, and even pulled the Marcher Army away from the Borders over England's protests for this purpose. Though Scotland was small the Highlands were rough and rugged, and it took many years to even find where the Earl of Bothwell was. All the while, Mary I convened with her Privy Council and the Scottish Parliament to prepare legislation designed to "Break the Clans", by engaging in land redistribution, confiscation of titles and estates, and the general capturing and execution of traitorous clan leaders in order to finally bring the leadership of the Highland Clans to heel, and to bring the Highlands under full Royal control for the first time.



England, meanwhile, was a much more fluid situation as King Henry X now firmly embraced the Puritan movement, moving to purge the Church of England of Catholic elements and practices to create a more thoroughly Protestant church that would be English through and through, while the English Catholics received some support financially and militarily from Spain and Austria. England's terrain was flatter and easier to traverse, which is what allowed the front lines to move back and forth more rapidly. The biggest example is the Northern March, when the Catholics moved to capture everything from the Midlands to the Scottish Border within 6 months, only being stopped outside Berwick-upon-Tweed by a hastily-assembled Scottish army.



By 1616 Scotland had managed to bring the armies to heel, and Bothwell was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason as the government began the process of breaking the Highland Clans. With order restored in Scotland, Mary marched her armies south to press back on the Catholics as Henry X marched his armies north to meet them, finally meeting their forces at Manchester on 6 April 1616. And it was here that a newer issue came into being for England: having struggled financially for years due to Henry IX's mismanagement of the government, England had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy, forced to take many loans from countries around Europe. Many of these loans had come from Scotland, which had benefited both from colonial trade as well as Mary I's own skill as an administrator and who even through the crisis of the latest Highlander rebellion was able to loan money to England without going seriously into debt. Without the ability to pay off its debts and in danger of defaulting on its loans, England soon negotiated an emergency deal for Scotland to forgive its loans to England, by transferring the Isle of Man from the English Crown to the Scottish Crown. With such a major gesture, Mary I's government quickly forgave its loans to England, as the island was considered to be payment in full.



As the joint Anglo-Scottish forces moved to subdue both the English countryside and Ireland, their task was made easier with the outbreak of a new religious war in the Holy Roman Empire that drew all Catholic and Protestant attention on the mainland away from the situation in the British Isles. Cut off from outside supplies, the Anglo-Scots League was able to push through from Dublin to bring Ireland to heel and expel the Catholics from Wales. By 1618 the last major Catholic army was on the run, forced through to Cornwall and eventually crushed entirely at the Battle of Truro, where Salisbury fled to France and England was finally brought to peace, though Ireland wouldn't be fully subdued until late 1619. In the closing stages of the war, England and Scotland met to discuss the terms of the Treaty of Lancaster. In the terms, both countries agreed to a new mutual defense treaty and renewal of the Anglo-Scots Alliance, along with confirming the transfer of the Isle of Man to the Scottish Crown and covering the terms for England's repayment of loans to Scotland. After eight years of conflict, England and Scotland came to peace but in a badly damaged state, and as the new war began to rage in Europe the two turned inwards to begin recovering from the wounds of the war. Even then, there were unspoken divisions between the two, as the austere Puritans who had now ascended to influence and dominance in England proved too harsh for Queen Mary and led to efforts at ecumenism between the Anglican Church and the Scots Kirk dissipating in the coming years.