The period between 1485 and 1660 – from the end of the War of the Roses to the Restoration of the monarchy – may be termed the English Renaissance. Though the European Renaissance dates from a much earlier period (roughly the late 14th to the 16th centuries), its full effect on England becomes visible only in the 16th century, reaching a peak with the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. John Milton (1608–1674) is often described as the last Renaissance poet of England.

The English language grew during the 16th century. While Latin and Greek words had always influenced words in English (especially in terms of etymology), the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian languages had contributed to it too. But, with the geographical expansion of the world, words from the languages of Africa, Asia and North America also entered the lexicon (language historians have suggested that 12,000 new words entered the English language between 1500 and 1650). The period also invented new ways of using words. Prefixes such as ‘nonsense’, ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘disrobe’, suffixes such as ‘laughable’ and ‘immaturity’, and compound words such as ‘Frenchwoman’ and ‘heaven-sent’ began to appear during this period. Shakespeare's contribution to this re-invention and expansion of the English language was, as can be imagined (and as Frank Kermode has demonstrated in his Shakespeare's Language, 2000), spectacular.

Early Tudor Period (1485–1550)

The most important writings of the early Tudor period were prose histories (commonly called Chronicles), biographies, religious and polemical (i.e., argumentative) tracts, and poetry.