Following the virtual civil war that marked England during the War of the Roses, England found itself again reunited under the Tudor dynasty just as a change in Western thinking was sweeping through Europe. The Renaissance takes place in the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but somewhat earlier in Italy and southern Europe, somewhat later in northern Europe For English literature, Renaissance period has come to symbolize a golden period in with the works of Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and Philip Sidney.