The House Stuart

1603 to 1714

The Stuart Dynasty, the English Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate and the Restoration

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Headlines are in brown.

Dates are in red.

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Context and local history are in purple.

Geographical context is in green.

The Tudors

1603

The Stuart Line, 1603-1714

Stuart is the English spelling of the Scottish Stewarts.

James I, 1603-1625

The lack of an heir left by Elizabeth meant that the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the 37 year of James VI of Scotland, with his protestant upbringing, was welcomed with relief.

On 24 March 1603, James VI, King of Scotland, was proclaimed King of England (as James I) in London by the English Privy Council, shortly after the death of the childless Elizabeth I. The Union of the Crowns created a personal union where one monarch ruled two separate kingdoms, each retaining its own parliament, laws, and church. James’ ambition was to make Scotland and England a single Great Britain and he introduced a union flag, and common coinage. A new 22 shilling piece bore the motto, faciem eos in gentem unam, I will make them one nation.

James, influenced by the French and Scottish styles, had a natural dislike of English institutions, including Parliament and was surprised that his forebears had allowed such an institution.

The Union of the Crowns did not prevent Scottish invasions, and the establishment of plantations of Scottish and English settlers in Ulster was unpopular in Ireland.

James’ eccentricities were widely mocked, though not hated. Many of these stemmed from his tumultuous childhood. He tolerated religious diversity, but he had a fixation on the threat of witches and dark magic, which was amplified after a storm delayed his wife's journey to Scotland in 1589, an event blamed on sorcery. He personally participated in the interrogation of accused witches during the North Berwick trials and wrote a book on the subject, Daemonologie in 1597, which served as a manual for witch-hunters and influenced cultural works like Shakespeare's Macbeth. He had a weak and ungainly walk, often leaning on the shoulders of attendants. He was notoriously lavish with money, honours, and gifts.

James held a firm belief in the absolute power of the monarchy, considering himself answerable only to the divine. This unwavering belief put him at odds with the English Parliament, which sought to check royal power and control national finances.

There was a bubonic plague outbreak in London which coincided with James’ accession to the throne. It was one of the most severe outbreaks, killing about a quarter of London's population. In response, authorities implemented quarantine measures, including shutting down theatres, quarantining infected houses, and creating a book of orders for plague control.

1604

In 1604 there were 3,512 deaths from the plague in York, which represented a mortality rate of about a third of York’s estimated population of 10,000. This was the worst plague in York's history.

James had a strong dislike for tobacco and was one of history's first anti-smoking campaigners. He wrote a pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, in which he described smoking as a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.

1605

The Gunpowder Plot

Disappointed by James’ lack of momentum to restore Catholic freedoms, this was a plot of young Catholic gentlemen to blow up the entire seat of government by a planned explosion of 367 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords. The Gunpowder Plot in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholic associates conspired to blow up King James VI and I and England’s Parliament was perhaps inspired by the attempt to blow up James’ father, Darnley, in Edinburgh in 1567.

Born in York in April 1570 to Protestant parents, Fawkes was raised in the Church of England. After his father died when Fawkes was eight, his mother remarried a Catholic named Dionis Bainbrigge. This, along with his education at St. Peter's School in York where some staff and students came from recusant Catholic families, influenced his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. Facing persecution for his faith, Fawkes left England in 1593 to fight for the Catholic Spanish army against the Protestant Dutch in the Eighty Years' War. He gained a reputation as a brave and skilled soldier, becoming an expert in the use of gunpowder and adopting the Italian version of his name, Guido.

In 1604, Fawkes was recruited by Robert Catesby, the plot's mastermind, who sought a military expert unknown to the English authorities to help with the assassination plan. The conspirators leased a cellar directly beneath the House of Lords. Fawkes was tasked with procuring and guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder and lighting the fuse during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605.

An anonymous letter warned a Catholic nobleman, Lord Monteagle, to stay away from Parliament that day, leading to a search of the cellars. In the early hours of 5 November, Fawkes was discovered with the gunpowder and arrested. He initially gave a false name, John Johnson, but was eventually identified.

Fawkes was tortured on the rack at the Tower, enduring several days of pain before confessing and revealing the names of his co-conspirators. He was tried for high treason, found guilty, and sentenced to execution by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. On 31 January 1606, to avoid the agony of the execution, Fawkes jumped from the gallows ladder and broke his neck, dying instantly.

The plot was not generally supported by the Catholic population and so it did not lead to a period of general persecution.

1606

The adoption of the first Union Flag occurred in 1606 by royal decree of James I, three years after the Union of the Crowns, was intended to symbolise the regal union between the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland. The flag combined the St George’s Cross of England and the St Andrew’s Cross of Scotland. Wales was already a principality of England by this time and was considered to be represented within the English flag, so it was not given a separate emblem in the design.

Virginia and Jamestown

James I granted a proprietary charter to two competing branches of the Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company and the London Company. By the terms of the charter, the Plymouth Company was permitted to establish a colony of 160 km square between the 38th parallel and the 45th parallel, roughly between Chesapeake Bay and the current Canadian border. The London Company was permitted to establish a colony between the 34th parallel and the 41st parallel, between Cape Fear and Long Island Sound. In the area of overlap, the two companies were not permitted to establish colonies within one hundred miles of each other. During 1606, each company organised expeditions to establish settlements within the area of their rights.

1607

The London Company hired Captain Christopher Newport to lead its expedition. On 20 December 1606, he set sail from England with his flagship, the Susan Constant, and two smaller ships, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, with 105 men and boys, plus 39 sailors. After an long voyage of 144 days, they arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and came ashore at the point where the southern side of the bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, an event that has come to be called the First Landing. They erected a cross and named the point of land Cape Henry in honour of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King James. On 14 May 1607 Jamestown was founded in Virginia and was the first permanent English colony in the Americas.

1611

John Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain included the first set of county maps of England and Wales. Published in 1611 or 1612, it combines cartography with historical information on counties and towns. It was dedicated to James I to promote the idea of a unified British Empire.

The publication of the King James Bible provided the English speaking world with a scholarly and universally accepted English translation of the Bible.

1612

On 6 November 1612, James’ eldest son and heir, Henry Frederick died of typhoid fever. His unexpected death was a national tragedy, as he was a popular and promising heir. His younger and physically weaker brother, Charles, became the new heir apparent.

1616

William Shakespeare died at New Place, his large family home in Stratford-upon-Avon, on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.

1618

In 1618, the Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa was granted a monopoly by James I for trade with Gynney and Bynney (Guinea and Binnay). Despite suffering financial difficulties, the company's early activities focused on establishing a trade presence and gaining a monopoly on exporting goods from West Africa to England. However, the company faced early opposition, and its monopoly was declared a grievance by Parliament in 1624.

The Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) broke out in Prague and renewed the Papish threat from the Continent. It was fought primarily in central Europe, a religious struggle between Catholics and Protestants, but evolved into a wider political war for dominance among European powers. It began with the Defenestration of Prague. It is generally divided into four phases: the Bohemian, Danish, Swedish, and French. The Habsburgs crushed religious and political liberties. English and Scottish Protestants enthusiastically supported the European Protestants, rather as in the Spanish civil war of the 1930s, and a significant part of the gentry thereby gained military experience. There is an In Our Time podcast, the Thirty Years War.

1620

By 1620, religious minorities were attracted to the new colonies in America. The Pilgrim Fathers sailed for America on the Mayflower to establish Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. There is an In Our Time podcast about the Pilgrim Fathers and why their 1620 voyage on the Mayflower has become iconic in the American imagination.

Jacobite rebels, reprieved slaves, the imperious (who sold bondage to pay for passage) and those offered transportation as an alternative to the gallows, emigrated to America. The immigrant population in America doubled every 25 years. The settlers were self consciously English and later British.

1621

James sought to stay out of the Thirty Years War. When Parliament petitioned for war with Spain, James insisted that Parliament’s privileged rested solely upon his will. James wished instead to gain closer ties with Europe through a suitable marriage of his son Charles. By staying aloof, England profited from trade with both sides.

1625

In 1625, Charles married Louis XIII’s sister, the Catholic princess, Henriette Marie. Despite an initial rocky relationship, they grew close after the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628 and had nine children together, including two future kings, Charles II and James II. The marriage was controversial due to Henrietta Maria's Catholicism, and she remained unpopular, eventually fleeing to France in 1644 during the Civil War.

Charles I, 1625-1649

Like his father, Charles saw parliament as archaic.

Charles had a natural reserve and was instinctively secretive. His skills as a politician and statesman were inept.

Charles struggled with three principal issues: (1) Religious struggles and hardly anyone wishing to keep things as they were; (2) Elizabeth had kept peace by avoiding the unpopularity of raising onerous taxes, which left a problem for her successors exacerbated by inflationary pressures; (3) How to govern the three very different kingdoms with Catholicism was spreading in Ireland and Calvinism in Scotland.

1626

Around 1626, Mrs Thomasin Farrer noticed a stream of iron-rich, acidic water bubbling from the cliffs in the South Bay at Scarborough. She tasted it and found it had beneficial health properties. Scarborough began to develop from a fishing town to England’s first seaside resort, based on the benefits of taking the waters.

1629

Charles was outraged by Parliament’s refusal to agree to taxation and their criticism of his religious policies. He ordered the Commons to adjourn, but the MPs held the speaker down and locked the door to keep out the royal messenger, whilst passing resolutions criticising the Kling’s policy. This has given rise to the ceremony of Black Rod, establishing an independence from executive power which is rarely used in practice.

The Eleven Years Tyranny

Charles’ Personal Rule, also known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny, was the period from 1629 to 1640 when King Charles I ruled as an autocratic absolute monarch without recourse to Parliament. Charles claimed that he was entitled to do this under the royal prerogative and that he had a divine right. There is an In Our Time podcast, the Divine Right of Kings. Parliamentary taxation only accounted for about 7% of the Crown’s revenue at this time, the rest coming from feudal dues, local rates, fines etc and Charles increased this income by an aggressive use of the royal prerogative and the extension of ship money which was supposed to be an emergency levy to fund naval defences.

The absence of Parliament cooled the political temperature.

Charles strengthened military and naval defences.

His Book of Orders required local magistrates to report to him regularly and he ordered a protection of common rights against landowners.

1630

The estimated population of England in 1630 was approximately 5.2 million people. The population of England and Wales combined was estimated at around 5.6 million.

Public stagecoaches began to operate within a radius of about thirty miles of London. The coaches took their name from the stages or stopping points along a route, typically every 10 to 15 miles. At these coaching inns, fresh horses were provided, and passengers could get refreshments.

Charles faced a serious religious challenge, with a growing intensity of feeling about religion.

The parish had become the social cohesion of local communities, about 500 to 600 folk bound together, which reflected the social and political as well as religious hierarchy.

Puritanism

Puritanism was the name given to the godly by their opponents. They were mostly Calvinists who followed the theological tradition of the reformer John Calvin. They believed in the sovereignty of God, predestination, and the authority of the Bible and that God controlled everything that happened. In some ways they reinforced existing hierarchies. Their followers amongst the gentry imposed strict order on the idle and drunk. They also appealed to subversives, who saw themselves as godly with a right to oppose and reprimand their ungodly superiors. Their beliefs caused psychological stress in the religious complications of the realm.

Arminianism

Arminianism took its name from Jacobus Arminius, and favoured free will, in direct opposition to the Puritans. They did not see the Catholics as a false religion. This was the focus of Charles I and William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. There were fears that Charles was getting to close to Catholicism and this was reinforced by his Queen Henrietta Maria’s practice of her Catholicism.

Charles tended to be tolerant of religious matters and no one burned for heresy during his reign. Indeed 1569 to 1642 was a time when there was no rebellion.

Meantime Scotland, a more turbulent and militarised society, had been left to govern itself since 1603 and there was a growth of a Calvinist model of Scottish Presbyterianism, run by committees of lay elders and clergy and without the rule of bishops.

1637

In 1637, Archbishop Laud ordered the use of Cranmer‘s Book of Common Prayer by the Church of Scotland, which came to be known as the Scottish Prayer Book or Laud’s Liturgy. It aimed to align Scottish worship more closely with the High Anglican practices favoured by King Charles I and Laud, moving away from the established Presbyterian traditions of the Kirk. In July 1637, there was outrage and resistance at St Giles in Edinburgh.

1638

The Covenanters

By 1638 a committee of lairds, burgesses and ministers had drafted a Covenant to uphold the Scottish kirk and resist popery. The Covenanters were seen as rebels by Charles. There is an In Our Time podcast, the Covenanters, Scottish Presbyterian pledges to advance their beliefs in the face of episcopacy and Roman Catholicism, and their impact across Britain and Ireland.

1640

By 1640, Charles needed funds. He had no option but to call a parliament in April 1640. It refused the taxes he needed and he dissolved it.

In August 1640 a Covenanter army from Scotland invaded and came as far south as Yorkshire. The Covenanters, led by the experienced General Alexander Leslie, launched a pre-emptive strike, crossing the River Tweed into England with a force of around 20,000 men on 20 August 1640. After the Battle of Newburn Ford, the occupation of northern England placed immense pressure on Charles I, who was running low on funds and unable to dislodge the Covenanters.

In October 1640, Charles was forced to negotiate the interim Treaty of Ripon, agreeing to pay the Scottish army's daily expenses while they continued to occupy the northern counties pending a final peace settlement. Unable to raise the necessary funds on his own, Charles was compelled to recall the English Parliament in November 1640, the first full Parliament since 1629.

The Long Parliament

Charles was forced to call another parliament, which was also to some extent forced upon him by leading critics of royal policy. Since it lasted on and off for 20 years, including during the Civil War, it was later called the Long Parliament.

The most influential challenger to royal policy was John Pym, a Puritan from Somerset who refused to fund the King's war and instead found opportunity in the new circumstances.

Pym entered into discussions with the Scots and their demands against popery and royal tyranny and used their leverage to make their own demands. They impeached Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and voted his death by a Bill of Attainder. His last words were I wish that every man would lay his hand on his heart and consider seriously whether the beginnings of the people's happiness should be written in letters of blood.

1641

The Protestation Oath required adult males to declare allegiance to the King, Parliament and the Protestant religion. About a third of the returns, known as Protestation Returns, survive. The oath aimed to unite Protestants.

The Protestation Returns for Yorkshire detail English men over 18 who swore an oath of loyalty to the true Protestant religion and Parliamentary liberties. These returns are organised by parish within Yorkshire's three ridings and are valuable for local historians and genealogists studying population, surname distribution, and individuals who refused or were absent for the oath.

In October 1641 there was rebellion in Ireland. Angered by the plantations, there was a cycle of extreme violence, matched only in Europe at the time by events which were occurring in Ukraine. The rebellion escalated into the Irish Confederate Wars.

The violence from Scotland and in Ireland raised the possibility of civil war in England.

The parliamentarians wanted to raise an army to deal with the violence in Ireland. However they had lost faith in Charles.

The Commons drew up the Grand Remonstrance, a lengthy assault on Charles whole reign. It criticised the King's use of prerogative, illegal taxation, and his ministers, blaming a Catholic conspiracy for many problems and calling for ministers to be approved by Parliament and for church reform. Passed by a narrow margin on 22 November 1641, it was a major propaganda tool for Parliament and escalated tensions.

There was also concern in the general population about the extremism of the Puritans in parliament. Charles was therefore welcomed in a triumphal march into London on 26 November 1641.

1642

Thus encouraged, on 4 January 1642, Charles took a bodyguard and armed courtiers to Parliament to arrest Lord Kimbolton and five MPs. However they were tipped off and escaped.

Charles’ action provoked hostility in the streets.

Charles left London 5 days after this humiliation.

In his absence John Pym and his allies pushed through in March 1642 the Militia Ordinance (not an Act because it never received the Royal Assent), which placed the command of each county's armed forces in the hands of their supporters.

Charles issued his own commissions of array assigning his followers to organise their own armed forces in the counties.

The seeds of civil war were sown.

English Civil War (1642–1651)

As the Civil War broke out, there was no established armed force on either side, so each side began to raise an armed force in order to strengthen their bargaining position. Parliament voted on 12 July 1642 to raise a force under the command of the Third Earl of Essex and required an oath of allegiance. The King issued commissions of array to allow the raising of militias and raised his flag at Nottingham on 22 August 1642.

Each side seized towns, strongpoints and military stores. The King was locked out of the largest military depot at Hull.

Counties petitioned for compromise. Counties such as Yorkshire dragged their feet.

It is too simplistic that the war was just a fight between liberty on the part of the Parliamentarians against the tyranny of Stuart absolutism. Nor was it primarily about class struggle. The ancient peerages tended to back the Parliamentarians as they disliked the novelties of Stuart government. Religion was the clearest dividing line, but religious spectrums were fluid and nearly everyone belonged to the Church of England. A third of Puritans in 1643 were Royalist. Instead there was division everywhere and every town and village and many families were divided. Most fought because they were conscripted. Families split. There were shifting coalitions and people changed sides.

The Parliamentarians didn’t seeing themselves as fighting against the King, but rather rescuing him from his own councillors.

Officers were mainly gentlemen. Each side carried banners into battle which provided focus for rally. Parliamentarian banners tended to be religious, Royalist banners were more subdued. The terms Cavalier and Roundhead dated from 1640.

Royalist Wales and Cornwall were the only solid regional loyalties who sided with the King and even in East Anglia and London there were many royalists. Shropshire weavers who traded with the Mediterranean tended to be royalist. William Davenport called on his Cheshire tenants to support the King, but most did not wish to challenge the Parliamentarians and the Earl of Derby, Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire found some of his tenants turned against him. (Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 221 to 226).

All theatres closed to prevent public disorder.

In August 1642, there were early outbreaks of fighting at Colchester.

The first Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire on 23 October 1642 was inconclusive.

The Battles of the Civil War

After Edgehill Charles marched on London, but was halted at Turnham Green on 13 November 1642. He withdrew to Oxford which became the Royalist base.

During the early phase of the War the Royalists had military superiority although the Parliamentarians had London. The Royalists had more popular support, better leadership and more sophisticated tactics.

1643

The Royalists took Bristol, an important port town, in July 1643.

The Battle of Roundway Down, near Devizes, was fought on 13 July 1643. The Royalists won a costly victory.

The First Battle of Newbury was fought on 20 September 1643. After a long march, Essex surprised the Royalists and forced them away from Gloucester before beginning a retreat to London. Charles rallied his forces and pursued Essex, overtaking the Parliamentarian army at Newbury and forcing them to march past the Royalist force to continue their retreat. Reasons for the Royalist failure to defeat the Parliamentarians include shortage of ammunition, the relative lack of professionalism of their soldiers and the tactics of Essex.

In desperation, the Parliamentarians negotiated with the Scottish Convention and in September 1643 agreed a Solemn League and Covenant, an agreement between the Scottish Covenanters and the leaders of the English Parliamentarians, bringing the two nations close to union. On 17 August 1643, the Church of Scotland (the Kirk) accepted the Covenant and on 25 September 1643 so did the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly.

1644

By 1644, there were eight armies fighting in fifteen regional theatres.

In January 1644, 21,500 Scots marched into England under Alexander Leslie, the First Earl of Leven. The military balance was reversed.

The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on 27 October 1644, in Speen, adjoining Newbury in Berkshire. The battle was fought close to the site of the First Battle of Newbury, which took place in late September the previous year.

The Royalists were defeated by Parliamentary troops at the Battle of Marston Moor, which was fought on 2 July 1644. The combined forces of the English Parliamentarians under Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester and the Scottish Covenanters under the Earl of Leven defeated the Royalists commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the Marquess of Newcastle.

During the summer of 1644, the Covenanters and Parliamentarians had been besieging York, which was defended by the Marquess of Newcastle. Rupert had gathered an army which marched through the northwest of England, gathering reinforcements and fresh recruits on the way, and across the Pennines to relieve the city. Rupert’s force of 17,000 men faced an Allied force of 27,000. The convergence of these forces made the ensuing battle the largest of the civil wars.

On 1 July, Rupert outmanoeuvred the Covenanters and Parliamentarians to relieve the city.

On 2 July 1644, he sought battle with them even though he was outnumbered. He was dissuaded from attacking immediately and during the day both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, an expanse of wild meadow west of York. Towards evening, the Covenanters and Parliamentarians themselves launched a surprise attack. After a confused fight lasting two hours, Parliamentarian cavalry under Oliver Cromwell routed the Royalist cavalry from the field and, with Leven's infantry, annihilated the remaining Royalist infantry.

Over 6,000 died in probably the largest battle fought on British soil.

After their defeat the Royalists effectively abandoned Northern England, losing much of the manpower from the northern counties of England (which were strongly Royalist in sympathy) and also losing access to the European continent through the ports on the North Sea coast. Although they partially retrieved their fortunes with victories later in the year in Southern England, the loss of the north was to prove a fatal handicap the next year, when they tried unsuccessfully to link up with the Scottish Royalists under the Marquess of Montrose.

Parliament had control over northern England.

As the war dragged on a peace movement emerged. The clubmen of the countryside were bands of local defence vigilantes who tried to protect their localities against the excesses of the armies of both sides in the war. They sought to join together to prevent their wives and daughters being raped by soldiers of both sides, themselves being forcibly conscripted to fight by one side or the other, their crops and property being damaged or seized by the armies and their lives threatened or intimidated by soldiers, battle followers, looters, deserters or refugees. As their name suggests, they were mostly armed with cudgels, flails, scythes and sickles fastened to long poles. They were otherwise unarmed.

In November 1644 Parliament offered peace terms. After the alliance with Scotland, these terms included the establishment of Scottish Presbyterianism and waging war against the Irish Catholics and in Europe. These terms were rejected.

In December 1644, a New Model Army of 22,000 men was formed by the Parliamentarians under Lord General Sir Thomas Fairfax. This was England’s first professional army. There was a new officer corps. The Self Denying Ordinance removed MPs from military command, though with the notable exception of the MP Oliver Cromwell, who was given command. The army was detached from civilian society. Harsh discipline was imposed with penalties for drunkenness and blasphemy.

Sir Thomas Fairfax came from came from a Yorkshire gentry family. The Fairfaxes were among Parliament's leading supporters in northern England.

1645

In 1645, the war intensified. An Act of Attainder condemned the imprisoned Archbishop Laud who was beheaded on 10 January 1645.

The Battle of Naseby took place on 14 June 1645, near the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire. The Parliamentarian New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, destroyed the main Royalist army under Charles I and Prince Rupert. Defeat ended any real hope of royalist victory, although Charles did not finally surrender until May 1646.

The Battle of Langport took place on 10 July 1645, near Langport in Somerset. Following its success at Naseby in June, the New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax destroyed the last Royalist field army, led by Lord Goring. Parliamentarian victory allowed them to besiege the Royalist port of Bristol, which surrendered in September. The last Royalist field army was decimated.

One of the last royalist positions was at Basing House, which was bombarded and stormed by Oliver Cromwell on 16 October 1645.

Nevertheless the Civil War was marked by a degree of restraint. Encounters were generally followed by negotiation. Surrender terms were generally respected and civilians tended not to be harmed.

Charles was handed over and initially held in Leicester.

At this stage, Charles still held a relatively strong negotiating position. Public opinion remained relatively pro Royalist.

There was factionalism amongst the Parliamentarians. The Scottish Alliance had brought with it the threat of an authoritarian system based on Scottish Presbyterianism. A faction of Independents emerged within the Parliamentarians who sought liberty of conscience. Many in the Army supported the Independents.

The New Model Army was becoming a problem. Its cost and the need for taxation was causing resentment. The army was coming to be hated by the civilian population. But disbanding it was also a problem with significant arrears of pay, amounting to £3M. The army itself was seeking their own terms including protection from being sent to fight in Ireland and indemnity from prosecution for acts during the war.

However Charles remained stubborn and fatally overplayed his hand.

1647

In July 1647, the army commanders offered conciliatory terms, Heads of Proposals, which included tolerance for the Anglicans. Charles was initially conciliatory, but eventually rejected the terms. Charles was taken to Hampton Court.

Active political debates were started in political instability following the end of the civil war. The Putney Debates were held from 28 October to 8 November 1647 which discussed such ideas as every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Putney Debates of 1647, when factions of the New Model Army considered a possible new constitution for England.

The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the Civil War, led by John Lilburne, and were most influential immediately before the start of the Second Civil War (1648–49). Leveller views and support were found in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model Army. The Levellers wanted limited government, though Lilburn denied that he wanted to level all men’s estates. Their ideas were presented in their manifesto, Agreement of the People. In contrast to the Diggers, the Levellers opposed common ownership, except in cases of mutual agreement of the property owners. They were committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populism, as shown by its emphasis on equal natural rights, and their practice of reaching the public through pamphlets, petitions and vocal appeals to the crowd. Cromwell tried to ally with the Levellers.

In general these emerging radical ideas tended not to envisage democratic freedoms, since they recognised a need for strong central authority and high taxation.

In 1647, the London Corporation of the Poor was established by an ordinance to provide relief and employment for the poor, leading to the creation of workhouses to employ and punish the poor and vagrants. The Corporation secured two former royal properties, Heydon House and the Wardrobe building, to set up its initial workhouses.

Charles escaped from Hampton Court on 11 November 1647 and fled to Carisbrooke House on the Isle of Wight.

1648

The Second Civil War (1648 to 1649)

Fighting broke out again In London, Kent, South Wales and East Anglia. The main struggle was at Colchester. The Royalists captured Berwick.

In June 1648 Royalists sneaked into Pontefract castle and took control. The Castle was an important base for the Royalists, and raiding parties harried Parliamentarians in the area. Oliver Cromwell led the final siege of Pontefract Castle in November 1648. Charles I was executed in January, and Pontefract's garrison came to an agreement and Colonel Morrice handed over the castle to Major General John Lambert on 24 March 1649. Following requests from the townspeople, the grand jury at York, and Major General Lambert, on 27 March Parliament gave orders that Pontefract Castle should be totally demolished & levelled to the ground and materials from the castle would be sold off. Piecemeal dismantling thereafter may have further contributed to the castle's ruined state.

A Royalist Scottish army invaded in July 1648, but were crushed by Cromwell who then marched into Scotland and forced the removal of royalist sympathisers from the Edinburgh government.

The army and the Parliamentarians concluded that they could not trust Charles. The army also decided that they needed to bring Parliament to heel.

On 6 December 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride occupied the Place of Westminster and arrested 41 MPs. Pride’s Purge then reduced the House to 150 MPs acceptable to the army, reducing it to a rump. The Rump Parliament was the English Parliament which followed. The army then demanded their right to try the King.

The Thirty Years War in central Europe ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which weakened the Holy Roman Empire, recognised the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland, established modern state boundaries, and shifted political power in Europe.

1649

On 20 January 1649, the trial of Charles I began at Westminster Hall. The president was John Bradshaw, who wore an armoured hat. Charles was charged with unlawfully using an unlimited and tyrannical power. Most people saw the trial as illegal and sacrilegious. Sir Thomas Fairfax kept away. When his name was called, his wife replied from the public gallery, He has more wit than to be here.

Charles refused to recognise what he saw as an arbitrary and illegal court. He commented for if power without law may make laws, I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life, or anything that he calls his own.

Only 59 of the 135 members of the court would sign the death warrant. Noone would write out the order itself, so Cromwell did so. There is an In Our Time podcast on the trial of Charles I, recounting the high drama in Westminster Hall and the ideas that led to the execution.

A scaffold was erected outside the banqueting house. On 30 January 1649, wearing two shirts to stop him shivering and suggesting fear in the cold air, Charles made his final speech. Truly I desire liberty and freedom as much as anybody whatsoever, but … liberty consists in having government … It is not their having a share in the government … a subject and a sovereign are clear different things.

He was beheaded at two o’clock.

The Commonwealth, 1649 to 1653

England became a Republic by an Act of 150 MPs of the Rump Parliament. The proclamation of a successor to Charles was forbidden. The Rump Parliament became sovereign. The speaker became the Head of State. It became high treason to deny Parliament’s authority.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Interregnum (1649 to 1660) between the execution of Charles I and restoration of Charles II including the impact in Scotland and, infamously, Ireland. There is another In Our Time podcast on how English republicanism has developed from Cromwell to the present day, and examines whether it is embedded as a sentiment deep within the culture of England.

Ireland was considered to belong to the new British State. Scotland came under military government of General Monck.

The Regicide prompted religious fervour. The largest group were the Quakers. The Diggers appeared in Surrey in April 1649, led by Gerrad Winstanley, who condemned land ownership from the days of the Norman yoke. Lord General Fairfax concluded that they were not dangerous. The Fifth Columnists led by Major Generals Overton and Harrison, drew support from London labourers and servants. The Muggletonians founded by Lodowick Muggleton, foresaw the end of the world. The Adamites were biblical fundamentalists. These new sects were feared by many.

Mutinies started in the army, including in Oxfordshire in May 1649.

In 1649, Thomas Hobbes, a Royalist in exile in Paris, wrote Leviathan, which he later presented to Charles II. Its premise was that humans originally lived in a barbarous state of nature, but emerged by yielding individual rights to an all powerful sovereign. In practice he upset both camps and copies of Leviathan were burned in Oxford. It has subsequently been regarded as a masterpiece of political philosophy, insofar as it is regarded as a statement on the sovereignty of the state and the law rather than the person of a prince.

On the Parliamentary side of the argument, John Milton (including Paradise Lost), Sir Henry Vane, the Younger and Algernon Sidney wrote their treatises.

Charles II was proclaimed king in Edinburgh and Dublin, though he did not become the undisputed king of England until the Restoration in 1660.

In August 1649, Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland with a potent armed force. He began to besiege Royalist held ports. The Republicans stormed Drogheda on 11 September 1649. There was similar slaughter in Wexford in October 1649. After capturing the strongpoints, the Republicans fought a guerilla war against bands of toraigh, or Tories and there was devastation and epidemics. An Act for the Settlement of Ireland gave rise to the confiscation of land from the Catholic gentry redistributed to 5,000 soldiers and investors.

1650

In September 1650, Cromwell turned to Scotland and destroyed the Scottish army at the Battle of Dunbar.

1651

In January 1651, Charles was crowned at Scone and led his remaining Scottish army into England. The Battle of Worcester ended the English Civil War. The Scottish army was defeated and Charles fled. Charels’ wanderings became legendry. He was harboured in Shropshire and Staffordshire. He hid in the royal oak at Boscobel House in Shropshire. He escaped to France through Dorset disguised as a servant by Jane Lane.

It is suggested that 86,000 were killed in the Civil War and 129,000 died from disease. Relative to population size, about 4 to 5 million, these losses were heavier than in the First World War.

In 1651 the Navigation Acts gave a near monopoly of trade to British ships.

1652

The First Anglo-Dutch War, fought mostly at sea. It arose over trade disputes, primarily caused by England's Navigation Act of 1651, which aimed to limit Dutch shipping. After initial English attacks on Dutch merchant ships, and a series of battles, the English navy gained dominance, although the Dutch inflicted damage using privateers. The war ended with the Treaty of Westminster in 1654, through which the Dutch paid compensation and agreed to abide by the Navigation Act, while a secret clause excluded the House of Orange from being Stadtholder.

1653

The Protectorate, 1653-1660

The army grew impatient with the Rump Parliament. On 20 April 1653, General Cromwell called on his soldiers to break up the debate (“I will put an end to your prating”) and installed the Sanhedrin of the Goldy, Barebone’s Parliament, but it did not much change matters.

In December 1653, the Instrument of Government, made Oliver Cromwell a reluctant Lord Protector. The 'Instrument of Government' (the new written constitution of 1653) placed great power in the executive formed by the 'Protector' (the role of national governor set out in the Instrument) and the 'Council of State', many of whose members were military commanders.

Oliver Cromwell was known for trickiness and hypocrisy., He was though a conciliator and he sought consensus. He favoured freedom of conscience and respect for other religious beliefs, but not for Catholics. He did not however have long term vision.

The Protectorate was a godly dictatorship, backed by the army. Cromwell said that it was for the people’s good, not what pleases them. Niceties of law and procedure had to give way to the direction of authority. Its strength came from the dominance of the military and from having more funds available than the Stuart Kings.

The first public stagecoach services reached Yorkshire in 1653, with the initial London to York route beginning then. Regular service between these two cities was established by a stage company in 1706.

1654

In 1654 Cromwell made peace with the Dutch and French and launched an attack on Spain.

1655

British captured Jamaica from the Spanish. However his forces were defeated at Santo Domingo, fought between April 23, 1655 to April 30, 1655 at the Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo. A force of 2,400 Spanish troops led by Governor Don Bernardino Meneses y Bracamonte, Count of Peñalba, successfully resisted a force of 13,120 troops and 34 ships of the English Commonwealth Navy led by Admiral Sir William Penn.

The Rule of the Major Generals. From 1655 Cromwell ordered that each County in England be governed by a Major-General. This was a form of military government which was an attempt to provide better law enforcement in the country as well as to reform the nation’s morals. One of their responsibilities was to punish those who had fought for the King. They were to punish all manner of vice. Including drunkenness, wearing and fornication. It was a repressive regime. Racehorses, fighting cocks, bears and dogs were banned.

Nothing sickened the people of the rule of the Sergeant Majors so much as their cruel habit of examining little boys vice voce. For this purpose the unfortunate children were dressed in their most uncomfortable satins and placed on a stool. The Sergeant Major would then ask such difficult questions as “How’s your father” and “Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?” and those who could not answer were given a cruel medicine called Pride’s Purge. All this was called the Commonwealth and was right but repulsive (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

A Decimation Tax at the rate of 10% of income was imposed on former royalists.

The sanctions on Catholics inspired more fury than terror.

1657

In March 1657, Cromwell was offered kingship, but he refused. This may be seen as a restraint of his ambition, but it would probably have restricted is powers.

1658

Oliver Cromwell died suddenly in September 1658. His son Richard Cromwell was easily persuaded not to assume his succession.

1659

In May 1659, the army recalled the Rump Parliament, but only 42 turned up and it ceased to function. For a week the nation had no central government.

1660

In February 1660 General George Monck arrived in London from his post in Scotland. Monck called on MPs to resume their seats and to begin a transition to monarchy.

Charles II in Holland issued a conciliatory Declaration of Breda. The Declaration promised a general amnesty, liberty of conscience, a fair settlement of land disputes, and payment for the army in return for his restoration to the throne. It was a moderate and conciliatory document that addressed major issues of the time and left the specifics to be decided by a future, free Parliament. This convinced many that the monarchy could be restored.

Charles II, 1660 to 1685

On 8 May 1660 a Convention Parliament unanimously declared that Charles II had been the lawful King of England since the moment of his father's execution in January 1649. This public declaration officially marked the end of the Interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy. There is an In Our Time podcast about the reign of Charles II which discusses whether the Restoration brought peace and prosperity to England or was an unstable period that culminated in revolution.

On 25 May 1660 Charles arrived in Dover on his flagship Naseby, renamed Royal Charles.

The Commonwealth had left huge debts.

In August 1660 the Act of General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion recognised changes in ownership of land, and gave an amnesty covering the Civil War except for the surviving regicides, of whom nine were executed in the coming years and Cromwell’s body dug up, hanged and beheaded.

Most of Charles’ witty remarks were of an unbridled nature and therefore (fortunately) not memorable. He instituted however a number of witty Acts of Parliament. Amongst these were (1) The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, which said that everyone should pay an indemnity to the King and then forget that he had paid it; (2) The Act of Uniformity, which said that everyone had to be the same as everyone else; (3) The Five Mile Act, which said that no schoolmasters or clergymen were to go within five miles of each other (this was obviously a Good Thing); (4) The Corporation Act, which said that everyone had to be as fat as possible (except Nell Glyn). After each of these Charles became merrier still and though some of them, particularly the Corporation Act, were considered rather unfair, he made up by passing a new Habeas Corpus Act which said that all people might keep their bodies, and thus everyone was contented. Later, Charles became even merrier and made a Declaration of Indulgence saying that people could do anything they liked and a Test Act was passed soon after to see if they had done it (and if so, what) (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

The Royal Society was founded on 28 November 1660 by a group of twelve natural philosophers, physicians, and mathematicians who met at Gresham College in London after a lecture by astronomer Christopher Wren. The aims of the Society were to promote discussion about scientific subjects.

Samuel Pepys’ diary began in January 1660. The diary, which ran from 1660 to 1669, detailed major historical events like the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London and everyday details of his personal and professional life as a Royal Navy administrator. The diary is considered a crucial historical document for its detailed, eyewitness observations on politics, social life, and the economy of the period.

The Tenures Abolition Act abolished the feudal system of land tenure in England, replacing feudal obligations like military service and wardship with a system of monetary payment to the Crown. It converted all future land tenures granted by the King into free and common socage, which simplified landholding and diminished the feudal system by ending burdens like wardship and the requirement of providing knights' service. In return, the Act provided the King with a fixed annual revenue, partly from a tax on alcohol.

A poll tax was levied on all men and women over 16 years old annually until 1697. It was a graduated tax designed to raise immediate funds for the disbanding the New Model Army, which had served the Commonwealth during the English Civil War. It was a levy assessed by social rank and estate rather than a flat, universal rate. With higher rates paid by the gentry, unmarried persons over the age of 16 paid 12d (1s).

The Standing Army and the Royal Navy

The first regular standing army established. Before 1660, England did not have a permanent, professional army in peacetime, relying instead on local militias. During the English Civil War, Parliament had created the New Model Army. However, after the war, this powerful army came to dominate politics during the Interregnum, leading to public anxiety over military rule, high costs, and fears that an army under a monarch's control could be used to suppress Parliament, so the New Model Army was disbanded. Concurrently, Charles II, who had seen the advantages of a standing army during his exile in Europe, established a new royal force for his own security and to maintain order. This new army was the first permanent, professional military establishment in English history that existed in peacetime. The English Army was officially created by royal warrant on 26 January 1661, although the initial steps began in late 1660. The new force was small, initially about 5,000 men known as the King's Guards and Garrisons. It incorporated loyal Royalist units that had served Charles in exile including the King's Troop of Horse Guards, now The Life Guards.

The English Navy became the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy's formation in 1660 was the formal establishment of a modern, permanent naval force by Charles II after the English Restoration. He inherited the large fleet from the interregnum period and used royal authority and parliamentary legislation to define and institutionalise the navy, linking its development closely to the English state and laying the foundation for the modern professional navy.

1661

The Corporations Act 1661 excluded religious dissenters from town government. It restricted public offices in England to members of the Church of England, requiring officials of municipal corporations to take an oath and repudiate the Solemn League and Covenant.

1662

The Quaker Act of 1662 was an Act of the Parliament of England that aimed to suppress the Quaker religious movement and other nonconformist groups by mandating an unconditional oath of allegiance to the King and restricting their religious assemblies.

The Act of Uniformity 1662 required all clergymen, college fellows, and schoolmasters to accept the revised Book of Common Prayer. By August 1662, more than one thousand ministers had refused to conform to the Act of Uniformity and were ejected from the Church of England. The Book of Common Prayer included a prohibited marriage list, A Table of Kindred and Affinity, wherein whosoever are related are forbidden by the Church of England to marry together, which prohibited marriages between a wide range of individuals related by blood (consanguinity) and marriage (affinity).

The Poor Relief Act 1662, also known as the Settlement Act severely restricted the mobility of poor people by legally assigning them to a specific parish responsible for their financial support if they required poor relief. The provisions also made it easier to evict newcomers if a complaint was made within forty days of their arrival. This reduced the mobility of the poorer classes and discouraged the search for work elsewhere.

The Hearth Tax of 1662, also known as chimney money, was a property tax levied in England and Wales to provide a stable, perpetual source of income for the newly restored Charles II. The tax was widely unpopular and a significant source of contention throughout its existence until its repeal in 1689. The Hearth Tax was paid at the rate of 1s to be paid twice a year at Michaelmas (29 September) and Lady Day (25 March) for every hearth or stove in all domestic buildings. From 1663, hearths were listed.

The surviving Hearth Tax records, particularly those from 1662 to 1666 and 1669 to 1674 when direct government control meant better record keeping, are an invaluable source for historians and genealogists. They provide a near census of householders, offering insights into seventeenth century population distribution, social structure, and wealth inequality based on house size.

Charles sold the recently acquired Dunkirk to his cousin, King Louis XIV of France, for five million livres (around £320,000). Dunkirk had been captured from the Spanish by a combined Anglo-French force in 1658, during the English Commonwealth period under Oliver Cromwell, and was awarded to England as part of a peace settlement. Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, possession of Dunkirk passed to Charles II. Charles II's decision to sell the town was driven primarily by financial necessity.

1663

The first turnpike road on the Great North Road was established in 1663, authorised by a Parliamentary Act in 1663, between Wadesmill in Hertfordshire and Stilton in Huntingdonshire. This act allowed a section of the road to be financed by tolls collected at turnpike gates, with the revenue used for road upkeep, marking the beginning of a system that would later expand to improve and maintain Britain's road network.

Over the next hundred years turnpikes were introduced along the length of the Great North Road from London to Edinburgh stimulating investment and facilitating faster travel. Along with improvements in road building, vehicle design and horse breeding, the turnpikes played a role in growth of the stage coach network, reduced freight costs and provided a baseline for industrial growth. They also caused a lot of resentment amongst those forced to pay tolls.

1664

The Conventicle Act forbade religious meetings of more than five people to discourage non conformity. About 1,000 ministers (a sixth) and 2,000 clergy and teachers were ejected from their posts. The act was part of the Clarendon Code and aimed to suppress religious nonconformity.

The Second Anglo Dutch War, 1664 to 1667, was a primarily naval conflict driven by commercial rivalry, which ultimately ended in a Dutch victory sealed by the humiliating English financial collapse which followed the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London and the successful Dutch Raid on the Medway.

Impressment into the Royal Navy began as a legal right claimed by the Crown to force seafaring men into service, first formally regulated in Elizabethan times under laws like the Naval Act of 1563. In 1664, impressment into the Royal Navy became a formal system for conscripting men to meet manpower needs, especially during wartime. Press gangs of naval officers and thugs would forcibly seize eligible men of seafaring habits aged 18 to 55, including merchant sailors, from ports and taverns to crew warships. While legal sanction for impressment existed much earlier, this period saw the practice vigorously enforced through physical coercion to fill naval ranks.

1665

The Great Plague was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague in England, killing an estimated 100,000 people in London alone, about a quarter of the city's population. Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, spread by rat fleas, it devastated the capital before subsiding in the cold winter of 1665 to 1666 and ending around the time of the Great Fire of London in September 1666. During Charles II’s reign the Great Plague happened in London. This was caused by some rats which had left a sinking ship on its way from China, and was very fortune for the Londoners, since there were too many people in London at the time, so that they were always in bad health (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

The Oxford Gazette (which later became the London Gazette) was first published on 7 November 1665, in Oxford, after Charles II and his court relocated there to escape the Great Plague of London. It was established as the official, authoritative government newspaper to provide reliable news and counter the scurrilous gossip and rumour prevalent in unlicensed pamphlets.

1666

The Great Fire of London was a blaze that swept through London from September 2 to 6 September 1666, starting in a bakery on Pudding Lane. Fuelled by dry conditions and a strong wind, it destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 churches, 4 bridges, landmarks like the medieval St Paul's Cathedral, as well as treasures if art and literature leaving most of the city in ruins and 250,000 people homeless. The fire was eventually stopped by creating firebreaks, and London was rebuilt using more fire resistant materials like stone and brick. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Great Fire of London in 1666 and how the city rose from the ashes. In the following year, therefore, London was set on fire in case anyone should be left over from the Plague, and St Paul’s Cathedral was built instead. This was a Good Thing and was the cause of Sir Christopher Wren, the memorable architect (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

The Burial in Wool Act mandated that all corpses be buried in woollen shrouds to boost the English wool industry, as linen and silk imports were perceived as a threat. Exceptions were made for plague victims and the poor, and non-compliance resulted in a £5 fine. The Act was strengthened in later amendments, requiring an affidavit to be sworn before a Justice of the Peace to confirm the burial was in wool. The Act was not repealed until 1814.

1667

The Battle of Medway was a Dutch raid on the English fleet at Chatham during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, resulting in a humiliating English defeat. The Dutch navy broke through defences, destroyed or captured over a dozen English ships, and towed the flagship, HMS Royal Charles, back to the Netherlands as a trophy. The raid caused panic in London and forced Charles II to sign the Treaty of Breda and end the war.

The earliest surviving Royal Navy ship muster books date back to 1667 and are preserved as historical records for pay and accounting purposes. They are considered the closest equivalent to formal service records for ordinary seamen before a standardised system was established in the mid nineteenth century.

John Milton's Paradise Lost was first published in 1667 as a ten book epic poem in blank verse. It recounts the biblical story of the Fall of Man, from Satan's rebellion to Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The publication was released in late October 1667, with a revised and expanded second edition in 1674, which rearranged the narrative into twelve books.

1670

The estimated population of England in 1670 was about 5.4 million people. This was a time of low overall population growth, bordering on stagnation, after steady growth earlier in the seventeenth century.

European politics started to dominate domestic affairs again. Charles was close to France and admired the young Louis XIV. He was attracted by Catholicism which promised the absolute dignity of Kings.

1671

The Board of Customs was established in England and Wales in 1671 by Charles II, primarily to replace the inefficient and often corrupt farming system for collecting customs revenues. Under the farming system rights were rented to individuals or syndicates (known as farmers) for a fixed annual fee. The new system intended a more systematic and efficient collection of duties, which were a crucial source of revenue for the Crown. The new system aimed to reduce widespread corruption and evasion of duties, particularly through smuggling, which was a persistent problem.

The Board of Customs operated as a separate department until it was eventually merged with the Board of Excise in 1909 to form the Board of Customs and Excise.

1672

The Test Act 1672, An act for preventing dangers which may happen from popish recusants, required all public employees to take an oath of allegiance. They also had to sign a declaration explicitly denying the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine in the Eucharist become the actual body and blood of Christ. It barred Roman Catholics and Protestant nonconformists from holding any civil or military office under the Crown.

Charles II signed the Treaty of Dover with France in anticipation of a joint war against the Dutch. England was duped into lending aid to French aggression.

In 1672 a French army attacked the Dutch Republic, with English naval support. During the Third Anglo Dutch War, the army was increased to 10,000. Parliament refused to finance the Dutch war and peace was signed in 1674. Charles prorogued Parliament and relied on French subsidies, assuring Louis of his continuing support. In this context there was a revival of anti papal feelings.

Popery was as much a political idea as a religious one. Feelings were aimed as much against France as Catholicism.

1675

John Ogilby’s Britannia Illustrata included 100 strip maps of roads in England and Wales. Plate 7 covers Tuxford to York via Doncaster. Plate 8 covers York to Chester le Street via Northallerton. Plate 49 covers Barnsley to Richmond. Plate 88 covers York to Lancaster. Plate 99 covers Whitby to Tinmouth via Lythe, Guisborough and Durham. Plate 100 covers York to Scarborough via New Malton, Pickering and Whitby.

1678

Dissenters went underground. John Bunyan, imprisoned for illegal teaching, wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress, a work on Puritan piety.

The Titus Oates plot in August 1678 amounted to a conspiracy theory suggesting a popish plot with French support to assassinate Charles. Catholics were executed for treason. The Earl of Shaftsbury took the lead and demanded the exclusion of Catholics from Parliament. Shaftsbury also sought to exclude Charles’ brother, James from the throne, who left for Brussels. There is an In Our Time podcast on Titus Oates and his Popish Plot.

1679

The Exclusion Crisis was a political struggle from 1679 to 1681 over whether to exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Catholic. Whilst the matter of James's exclusion was not decided in Parliament during Charles II's reign, it would come to a head only three years after James II took the throne, when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Finally, the Act of Settlement 1701 decided definitively that Catholics were to be excluded from the English, Scottish and Irish thrones, now the British throne.

Shaftesbury urged Charles to make his illegitimate son also James, Duke on Monmouth, a Protestant, his heir. James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, 1st Duke of Buccleuch, KG, PC (9 April 1649 – 15 July 1685) was a Dutch-born English nobleman and military officer. Originally called James Crofts or James Fitzroy, he was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II of England with his mistress Lucy Walter.

The Whigs and the Tories

Two new parties formed. The Tories were opposed to the exclusion of James II. The derogatory term Tory came from the toraigh, the Irish Catholic rebels. The Country Party, who were soon to be called the Whigs, supported the exclusion. The derogatory term Whig came from the whiggamore, Scottish Presbyterian rebels.

The Civil War camps were the foundation of the evolution of British politics and a trend towards what has later been referred to as a Whig History.

This was also the start of the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.

1680

Headstones began to be widely used to mark a place of burial. Individual, upright headstones becoming prevalent in churchyards and cemeteries, moving beyond the previous practice of unmarked graves for the majority of the population.

The Great Comet was first identified by telescope. It was a spectacular, long-period, sungrazing comet that was widely observed across England, most notably by leading scientists like Isaac Newton and John Flamsteed. In his seminal work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), Newton used the comet's trajectory to demonstrate that comets, like planets, follow predictable, conic-section orbits, a parabolic orbit in this case, around the Sun under the influence of gravity.

1681

The first English settlers arrived in Pennsylvania. The first inhabitants of the region that became Pennsylvania were Native American tribes, primarily the Lenape and Susquehannock. The first European settlers were Swedes and Finns in 1643, followed by the Dutch, and finally the English under William Penn in 1681. The English seized all Dutch territory in 1664. In 1681, King Charles II granted a massive land charter to William Penn to repay a debt owed to Penn's father. Penn, a Quaker, established the Province of Pennsylvania as a haven for religious freedom, attracting diverse groups including English quakers, German immigrants and Scots-Irish.

1682

Charles appealed for loyalty and Shaftesbury fled overseas.

John Locke wrote two Treatises of Government, asserting the right to resist monarchs. He asserted that legitimate government arises from a social contract where people consent to be ruled to protect their natural rights including to life, liberty, and property. The work refuted the divine right of kings, advocating instead for a government with a separation of powers and a government that ultimately serves the people. He held that the people have the right to resist and overthrow a government that fails to protect their rights or becomes tyrannical.

There was a backlash against the Whigs, a direct consequence of their failed attempts to pass the Exclusion Bill, which aimed to prevent the Catholic Duke of York, James, from succeeding to the throne. The Tory Reaction was characterized by Charles II's campaign of political and legal repression against leading Whigs and Dissenters, effectively allowing him to rule without Parliament.

Celia Fiennes travelled extensively around England between 1685 and 1712, covering every county by horseback, often side-saddle. Her journeys, which included a Great Journey to Newcastle and Cornwall, were meticulously documented in her journals. She recorded her observations of rural and urban landscapes, on certain English towns, stately homes, industries like mining, and local customs, providing valuable historical insights into seventeenth century England.

1683

The Great Frost of 1683 to 1684 was the most severe freeze ever recorded in England, part of a period known as the Little Ice Age. It caused widespread hardship but also led to the most famous of the River Thames frost fairs, a temporary carnival on the frozen river.

1685

Charles II died on 6 February 1685 after a sudden illness that began with an apoplectic fit four days earlier. He was 54 years old and was succeeded by his openly Catholic brother, James, Duke of York..

James II, 1685 to 1689

The accession of the Catholic James II and VIII stirred the old issues that had plagued the century up all over again.

Titus Oates was formally exposed as a fraud and convicted of perjury in May 1685, after the Catholic James II succeeded his brother Charles II to the throne. The hysteria surrounding the Popish Plot he fabricated in 1678 had largely faded by 1681.

James had ambition to make England a Catholic state. He was more authoritarian than Charles, but less intelligent. Protestantism was being eliminated across Europe in Italy, Spain, Hungary and France.

Almost immediately there was a Whig-Protestant attempt on the throne, led by the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth’s Rebellion was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset.

The Bloody Assizes followed. Lord Justice Jefferies heard 1,336 cases. The first batch were hung, drawn and quartered, and James then made them all suffer the bloody executions.

Parliament was alarmed at the threat of another civil war. James was appeased with money and an army.

James then legalised Catholicism in law.

Concurrently in Europe, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes of 1598 which had guaranteed the French Protestants a freedom to practice their religion. 50,000 protestant refugees, the Huguenots, flooded into England.

1687

The Settlement Act of 1662 was amended so that it was necessary to establish settlement by occupying property valued at over £10 per annum for more than 40 days.

1688

James allowed Catholics to freely practice their religion by the Declaration of Indulgence of 1688.

On 10 June 1688 James II and his second wife, Mary of Modena, had a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, who was baptised a Catholic. This meant that James’ policies would not end with his death.

Meantime, Princess Mary, James’ daughter with his first wife, Anne Hyde, was now aged 26 and wife of Willem II van Oranje, William of Orange, leader of the resistance against France. Another war was looming between France and Holland.

On 30 June 1688, five Whigs and two Tories, later called the Immortal Seven, wrote to Willem and promised support if he intervened to secure a free Parliament. On 19 October 1688 the biggest seaborne invasion force before D Day sailed from the Dutch Republic and after a couple of abortive attempts, reached Torbay with 463 ships, 5,000 horses and a multinational force of 20,000. The force marched on London to confront James’ larger force of 53,000.

The Second Interregnum 1688 to 1689

Fearful of another civil war, there was hesitation. Towns and counties started to turn against James. Rather than rally popular support, James abandoned his troops.

The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution was the overthrow of James II, replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband, William of Orange. This event led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in England, where Parliament's power was significantly enhanced over the monarch. It was called glorious because it was largely bloodless and marked a major turning point in the development of British democracy and parliamentary supremacy. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Glorious Revolution of 1688. With the benefit of retrospect, the Glorious Revolution began a somewhat calmer period that the centuries that had preceded it.

There remained rival claimants to the thrones of the three nations and the Dutch war against France, into which England was now drawn, meant that Louis XIV had an interest to reignite the old tensions in Scotland and Ireland.

This was the start of a war with France that lasted 127 years until 1815, sometimes called the Second Hundred Years War. This period of war with France comprised the Nine Years War 1688 to 1697; the War of Spanish Succession 1701 to 1713; the Seven Years War 1755 to 1763; the French Revolutionary War 1792 to 1802; and the Napoleonic Wars 1803 to 1815.

It was from this point that Britain started to appear more prominently on the global stage. The English language spread, as did the culture and manners of Britain. London started to become more cosmopolitan, a global bazaar. Economically, politically, culturally, Britain became a major player in world history.

Although generally welcomed as a solution, William was not widely accepted and Archbishop Sancroft refused to crown William and Mary or to swear allegiance to them. The Church and the Tories were still strong supporters of the divine right of the Stuarts, while the Whigs gave support to the new regime.

This conflict between Whigs and Tories became institutionalised. Generally each camp was evenly represented within the elite. Party politics spread to counties and boroughs and news and propaganda circulated in the coffee houses.

The Nine Years War 1688 to 1697 was a major conflict between France, led by Louis XIV, and a European coalition known as the Grand Alliance, which included England, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Savoy, and the Holy Roman Empire. Sparked by French territorial expansion into the Rhineland, the war involved extensive campaigns across Europe and led to King William's War in North America and the Williamite War in Ireland. The conflict concluded with the Treaty of Ryswick, which resulted in no significant territorial gains for either side and ended hostilities but left underlying tensions unresolved.

1689

A Convention Parliament met in January 1689.Willem and Mary were declared regents.

William was dour and taciturn. He spoke English imperfectly and spent much of his reign outside England. He didn’t feel the English people were created for him, or him for them. However he had overwhelmingly changed the course of English and British history by his perilous invasion and his anti French alliance prevented France from becoming the dominant force in Europe.

The House of Stuart and Orange, 1689 to 1714

William III and Mary, 1689-1702

In response to the 1688 revolution, the French invaded Ireland in March 1689 with a naval squadron, led by James II. The intention was to invade Scotland from Ireland and thence to London.

In 1689, the English government passed an act to encourage domestic gin consumption, primarily driven by a desire to support English agriculture and weaken France during wartime. The legislation aimed to replace imported French brandy with domestically produced gin. A 1690 Act followed the 1689 measures, which effectively broke the monopoly of the London Guild of Distillers, allowing almost anyone to distil spirits by simply giving public notice ten days in advance. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Gin Craze in the 18th Century and the moves to control it.

Steps were taken over the next few years to reinforce the Crown’s subjection to law and to have Parliament take the centre stage of state. A series of legislative acts established a constitutional monarchy, permanently shifting the balance of power from the Crown to Parliament and ensuring the monarch was subject to the law. The challenges of concurrent wars meant that Parliament was more than every relied upon to provide ever increasing taxation needs.

Parliament has met every year since 1689.

The Bill of Rights 1689 embraced a right of petition; free debate in Parliament; freedom of election; trial by jury; the right to bear arms; and the frequency of Parliament.

The wars promoted a requirement for a larger more professional army, evolving out of the New Model Army of Cromwell. Civil War was an incentive for the control of military force and military service was not popular. This meant that there was increased reliance upon a professional army, honed for serious fighting.

The Mutiny Act 1689 made the army’s existence dependant upon Parliament’s consent.

1690

James met William at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690. This was a European battle, with French, Dutch, English, German, Irish and Danish soldiers. The invading force was defeated. However the guerilla war continued. Penal Laws were passed in Dublin to break up the Jacobite aristocracy.

1692

The Massacre at Glencoe was the brutal, state sanctioned murder of at least 38 members of the Clan MacDonald by government troops whom they had hosted for nearly two weeks. It took place on 13 February 1692, in the remote Scottish Highlands valley of Glencoe, and remains a potent symbol of betrayal in Scottish history. To pacify the still loyal Jacobite Highland clans, the new government under King William demanded all chiefs swear an oath of allegiance by 1 January 1692, promising a pardon and money to those who complied and punishment to those who did not. The chief of the Glencoe MacDonalds, MacIain, was late in taking the oath. This was partly due to delays in receiving permission from the exiled King James and then a procedural issue, as no magistrate was available at Fort William to receive the oath. He finally swore allegiance on 6 January 1692, believing it had been accepted. John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair and Secretary of State for Scotland, seized upon this delay to make an example of the lawless MacDonalds of Glencoe. He secured an order, counter-signed by King William, to extirpate that sect of thieves. In late January 1692, about 120 government soldiers from the Earl of Argyll's Regiment of Foot, commanded by Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, were billeted in Glencoe. For almost two weeks, the soldiers were housed and fed by the MacDonalds in accordance with the strict Highland code of hospitality. On the evening of 12 February, Campbell received written orders to fall upon the Rebells, the McDonalds of Glenco, and putt all to the sword under Seventy. At dawn on 13 February, the soldiers turned on their unsuspecting hosts. MacIain was shot dead in his bed. At least 38 members of the clan were murdered, including men, women, and children. Many more died of exposure in the bitter winter weather after fleeing into the mountains as their homes were burned.

The Royal Hospital at Chelsea was established to provide a dignified retirement and care home for British Army veterans who were broken by age and war. The King was inspired by the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris and wanted to honour the service of his soldiers.

During the 1690s the Whigs set up a new Country Party which promoted resentment of ever increasing taxes, and found some favour from Tories. It feared that despotism was being replaced by corruption. The party would later become the Whig Party. In the early to middle 1700s it was taken up by opponents of the Whig Walpole ministry, which they claimed was acting tyrannically and against the interest of the British nation and its people.

1694

The Bank of England was founded by the Scot, William Paterson, in 1694 by a Royal Charter to raise £1.2 million for the government to fund the war against France. It was based on the Bank of Amsterdam. Public investors, including King William and Queen Mary, bought shares in the new Governor and Company of the Bank of England, which lent the money to the Crown at an 8% interest rate. The bank received its charter in exchange for this funding and was given privileges that allowed it to function as the government's banker and issue banknotes, a pivotal step in the development of modern central banking. It immediately acted to prevent a debt crisis to save a collapsed in government credit.

The Triennial Act 1694 required general elections to take place every three years.

The eldest daughter of James II, William’s Queen, Mary, died childless in 1694.

1695

There was large scale emigration from Scotland following famine. Many settled in Ireland.

In 1695 the Darien Scheme aimed to establish a Scottish colony in Panama, called Caledonia. The scheme's architect, Scottish financier William Paterson, a co-founder of the Bank of England, proposed establishing a settlement in Darien, a location he believed was the ideal door of the seas and the key of the universe for an overland trade route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This ambitious plan aimed to make Scotland a major global commercial power, bypassing the treacherous route around Cape Horn. It was funded by the Company of Scotland, established by a Scottish Parliament act in 1695.

1696

In 1696, an Act of Parliament required county sheriffs to maintain an official record of voters in parliamentary elections, formalising a practice that previously had been sporadic. The primary goal was to minimise election fraud and resolve disputes over the results.

Another offshoot of concurrent warfighting was the spiralling of taxes, which trebled between 1688 and 1713. In 1696 an Inspector General was appointed to levy customs and excise duties. The Land Tax created in 1688 was administered locally by JPs.

A Window Tax replaced the Hearth Tax and led to widespread bricking up of windows. It was a property tax to raise revenue for the government without creating a controversial income tax. It charged a flat rate per house plus an additional variable tax based on the number of windows. The practice of taxing natural light is widely believed to be the origin of the phrase daylight robbery. Despite growing criticism, the tax remained in place for 155 years until it was finally repealed in 1851 and replaced by a general house duty.

There is a perception of eighteenth century administration as corrupt, but there is no real evidence of that and in contrast to Continental Europe, there was a tendency to trust and accept the administration, accepting the need for national defence, albeit reluctantly. Taxation was generally regarded as fair and compliance was high.

However taxation alone was not sufficient. Public debt grew from £3M in the 1680s to £100M in 1760. This was the catalyst for a new more efficient financial system.

Simple IOUs were replaced by more sophisticated long term low interest bonds. In the 1690s, there were studies of Dutch and Venetian banking systems. Parliament’s guarantee made default unlikely, as long as land lasts and beer is drunk, there was little worry of default. Domestic and foreign savers were eager to lend. The rate of interest fell from 14% in 1693 to 3% in 1731. Britain became a fiscal military state. New professions arose such as bankers and lenders emerged. (The English and their History, Robert Tombs, 2023, pages 307-308).

1697

The Poor Relief Act 1697, sometimes referred to as the Badging Act, established specific, strict requirements for individuals and families receiving parish assistance in England, intended to stigmatise dependency and deter people from seeking aid unless absolutely desperate. Paupers were required to wear badges.

The inscription of waymarkers, particularly the Guide Stoops, was mandated from 1697, requiring basic directional information, the names of nearby towns or locations and the distances to them, often in miles.

1698

The First Darian Expedition in 1698 comprised five ships carrying around 1,200 settlers which sailed from Leith in July 1698 and arrived in November. They established Fort St Andrew and the settlement of New Edinburgh, but the colonists were ill-prepared for the tropical climate and conditions. Agriculture proved difficult, the trade goods, like combs and wigs, were useless for trading with local Kuna people, and disease including malaria, dysentery and yellow fever, spread rapidly. William III had ordered English colonies not to assist them to avoid conflict with Spain. Facing starvation, disease, and a lack of support, the surviving settlers abandoned the colony after just eight months.

The Darian Scheme was a catastrophic failure. Over 2,000 settlers died, and the financial losses effectively bankrupted Scotland's economy. The disaster had major political ramifications and it weakened Scottish resistance to a full union with England. As part of the negotiations for the Act of Union 1707, England agreed to compensate the Darien investors for their losses with a payment, known as the Equivalent, of nearly £400,000. This financial incentive helped secure support for the Union in the Scottish parliament, leading to the creation of Great Britain. The institution established to manage this compensation eventually became the Royal Bank of Scotland.

1699

Unaware of the first expedition's failure, a second Darian Scheme fleet carrying over 1,000 more people arrived in November 1699 to find the settlement deserted. They attempted to rebuild but faced the same problems, in addition to an eventual Spanish siege and blockade. The remaining colonists surrendered and left in March 1700.

The first recorded slave ship to sail from England left Liverpool in 1699, the Liverpool Merchant. The voyage marked the beginning of Liverpool's deep and profitable involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, which would grow rapidly over the following decades.

The Standing Army was limited to 7,000 native born men.

1701

The estimated population of England in 1700 was 5.2 to 5.65 million people. This was a time of relatively slow or stagnant population growth following the rapid expansion of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. There was a period of stagnation or very slow growth until the mid-eighteenth century.

Another succession crisis arose in 1701. The eldest daughter of James II, William’s Queen, Mary, had died childless in 1694. The heir was James II’s younger daughter, Mary’s sister, Anne, who was an Anglican and therefore acceptable to many. After Anne, the successor to the throne would have been the Catholic descendants of James II by his second marriage.

The Act of Settlement in June 1701 (which remains in force) excluded the many Catholic claimants to the throne in favour of a granddaughter of James I, the Electress Sophia of Hanover. So whilst the Stuart Queen Anne would succeed William, the throne was set in due course to become Hanoverian.

The War of Spanish Succession 1701 to 1714 was a major European conflict triggered by the death of the Spanish King Charles II without an heir. It pitted the House of Bourbon against the House of Habsburg, with France backing the Bourbon candidate Philip of Anjou and the Grand Alliance, including England, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire, supporting the Habsburg candidate, Archduke Charles. The war was fought over who would control the vast Spanish Empire and was a struggle to maintain the European balance of power, particularly to prevent the Spanish empire falling to the French. Enormous armies fought bloody battles across lengthy lines of defence, anticipating the horrors of the First World War.

1702

William died on 1702 after falling off his horse in Richmond Park.

Queen Anne, 1702-1714

Anne was the last true Stuart Queen. She has been misogynistically described as popular, plump and unthreatening, but she made broad political decisions and was the last monarch to try to refuse consent to legislation. Her reign transformed the monarchy into the symbolic, popular and familiar institution that it became.

The first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was published in Fleet Street on 11 March 1702. It was a single-page, factual publication focused solely on foreign news, with advertisements on the reverse side. It began to allow readers to form their own opinions. It later merged with the Daily Gazetteer.

1704

The Battle of Blenheim on 13 August 1704 was a decisive victory for the Grand Alliance (English, Dutch, and Austrian forces) led by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, over the Franco-Bavarian army. This pivotal event in the War of the Spanish Succession saved Vienna from a threatened capture, prevented the collapse of the alliance, and shattered the myth of French invincibility. The Allied victory was a result of superb strategic coordination, logistics, and battlefield tactics. John Churchill, later the Duke of Marlborough, an outstanding general, led a largely German army into southern Germany. The defeat of the French army was the first French defeat for generations and the first significant victory since 1588.

A Deeds Registry was established in Wakefield as the first public registry of its kind in England, primarily to provide reliable evidence of land ownership in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It soon comprised over a million records of property ownership, followed by records in the East Riding in 1708 and North Riding in 1735.

1706

Marlborough’s victory at the Battle of Ramillies on 12 May 1706 was a decisive victory for the Grand Alliance forces against the French army. As significant as Blenheim, Marlborough used a tactical ruse, creating a weak point in his line and a strong centre to lure the French into reinforcing their flanks. He then concentrated his attack on the now weakened French centre, leading to a complete rout and the capture of most of the Spanish Netherlands. The consequence was to exclude France from the Spanish Netherlands and led to the later fall of the fortress at Lille.

1707

The Act of Union established the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Glorious Revolution had unleashed in Scotland a violent contest between the Calvanists focused in the Lowlands and the Episcopalians focused in the feudal Highlands. The disastrous Darian Project had involved Scotland in war with Spain, when England was at peace with Spain. The colony collapsed in 1699. The Act of Settlement of 1701 did not apply in Scotland. The government in England brought things to a head and forced a choice between union or separation. The Act of Union 1707 was passed in both parliaments, in Westminster without a vote. The wish of James VI and I a century before, the unification of a United Kingdom of Great Britain with a single Parliament at Westminster, was realised. Ireland remained a separate kingdom. There was little controversy and it was felt, certainly south of the border, that nothing need change.

Scottish intellectuals, including Hume, Smith and Boswell played an active role in the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Scotland retained a separate legal and education system, and its own religious establishment.

As long as England had existed the lands to the north had played an important part in its politics, especially during the Civil War. It was hoped that Union would stabilise matters. The union established a common market and single sovereign Parliament. However there remained religious boundaries, an established Presbyterian Church in Scotland; Catholicism and then Methodism in Wales; and cultural divisions.

There was no ambition to create a single nation. This gave rise over time to a mixed identify of English and British. The idea of Britishness mostly emerged in imperial contexts and in institutions like the army.

At this stage the English colonies were not as significant to the new Britain as the colonial interests of Spain, Portugal and Holland. There was nothing yet to suggest a British imperial destiny. The priority was national security and the growth of maritime trade. There remained an element of fear, especially for France. British overseas interests had a commercial interest, in the hands of chartered trading companies, the East India Company, chartered in 1600; the London company and the Plymouth Company, charted in 1606; and the Ohio Company chartered in 1747.

(Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 329 to 330, 335 to 336).

The Sacheverell affair of 1709 to 1710 reflected ongoing religious tensions. Henry Sacheverell was a high church Tory Anglican who preached two sermons that described what he saw as threats to the Church of England. The threat from Catholics was dealt with in three minutes, but the rest of the one and a half hour sermon was an attack on Nonconformists and the false brethren who aided them in menacing Church and State. His target was the Whig party. His sermons brought to the fore the tensions that existed between Whig and Tory across the country at that time. Sacheverell was tried by the House of Lords at Whig instigation, and accused of preaching against the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The House found that his sermons should be publicly burned and he should be banned from preaching for three years. This made him a martyr in the eyes of many Tory supporters, and triggered the riots.

1708

The earliest artillery muster rolls predate the formal establishment of the Royal Artillery in 1716, and were pay lists and accounts managed by the Board of Ordnance.

The winter of 1708 to 1709, known in England as the Great Frost, was the coldest European winter in 500 years. The extreme cold, which began in late 1708 and intensified in January 1709, persisted for three months and caused widespread devastation and economic ruin.

1709

The Battle of Malplaquet on 11 September 1709 in the Spanish Netherlands, was the bloodiest battle of the War of the Spanish Succession, resulting in a narrow victory for the Allied army led by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene over the French forces commanded by Marshal Villars. It was a costly victory for the Allies, who suffered over 20,000 casualties to the French 11,000 to 14,000. The death toll was comparable to the first day of the Somme. The losses led to a decline in Marlborough's popularity. Despite the heavy losses, the Allies captured of the French town of Mons allowed them to continue their invasion of France.

Suspicions grew about how the Whigs were pursuing the war and there were suspicions that it was being pursued for personal gain. There was also alarm at the significant wealth built up by Marlborough.

Poor harvests across Europe, following the Great Frost, led to bread riots in Britain.

1710

A pro peace Tory government was formed. An idea emerged that Britain’s best interest was to create a balance of power in Europe, and not necessarily weaken France too much. However France, as a universal monarchy with intentions to reimpose Stuart rule to Britain, continued to be the significant threat.

1712

Thomas Newcomen’s steam driven piston engine provided efficient pumping of mines. It was the first practical and commercially successful atmospheric steam engine. It was primarily designed to pump water out of deep mines, enabling the mining of more coal and minerals and becoming a key driver of the Industrial Revolution.

1713

The Tories were not committed to the war with France. They tended to take the Country Party view against high taxation. They unilaterally concluded an armistice with France, the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain ceded Gibraltar and France ceded Newfoundland to Britain. The Spanish Netherlands were ceded to the Habsburgs. There followed a long truce into the 1720s and 1730s.

1714

Queen Anne died in August 1714.

Following the process of the Act of Settlement 1701, the electoral prince of Hanover, George Ludwig von Braunschweig - Luneburg, became George I.

The House of Hanover