After the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudor dynasty ruled during the English Renaissance and again extended English monarchical power beyond England proper, in particular achieving the full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542. The Tudors also secured English control of Ireland, although it would continue to be ruled as a separate kingdom in personal union with England for centuries. Henry VIII triggered the English Reformation by breaking communion between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, although the doctrinal aspects of the Reformation which established the English Church as being recognizably Protestant would not be pursued in earnest until the brief reign of his young son Edward VI. Following a return to Catholicism under the similarly brief reign of Henry's eldest daughter Mary I, Mary's half-sister Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) re-established Protestantism under the terms of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, meanwhile establishing England as a great power and laying the foundations of the British Empire by claiming possessions in the New World. While Henry also pursued an aggressive foreign policy north of the border in an attempt to subjugate Scotland, Elizabeth adopted a much more conciliatory position especially in light of developments such as Scotland's own Reformation and the eventual certainty that the Scottish monarch would succeed Elizabeth.