15th–16th Centuries Renaissance.

But this endured only for the time of the education of the commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with wings—all these had now gained their most fertile planting in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial at a later day.

The intellectual development of the nation tended first towards a religious independence, which produced two successive revolts—from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy that succeeded it.