Download كلية الاداب قسم : اللغة الإنجليزية الفرقة : الثالثة المادة :تاريخ ادب

‫تاريخ ادب‬: ‫ الثالثة المادة‬: ‫ اللغة اإلنجليزية الفرقة‬: ‫كلية االداب قسم‬
-----------------------------------------------------------------1121-1122
‫امتحان الفصل الدراسى االول للعام الجامعى‬
===============================================
Answer THREE ONLY of the following questions:
1. Write an essay about the Republican government in England
ending with the death of Charles II.
2. Write an essay about the eighteenth century England,
discussing George I , George II and George III.
3.
Write brief notes about TWO Only of the following:
Mary Tudor – Elizabeth I – James VI -
(4) Write an essay about Queen Ann and the foundation of the
British empire.
(1) Republican Government in England (1649- 1660)
Charles I sincerely believed that he died in the cause of law and the Church. His death
may have been thought of by Cromwell as a political necessity, but it created an
atmosphere that was to haunt his own efforts to build a new godly society. When his
Parliament, the Rump, abolished the monarchy, on the grounds that it was unnecessary,
burdensome and dangerous, and then meted out the same fate to the House of Lords, for
being useless as well as dangerous, it was destroying more than a thousand years of
English history. Yet for many, even these measures had not gone far enough; the socalled Levellers wanted more, wishing for biennial parliaments with strictly limited
powers, a vast increase in the electorate and no established church or doctrine.
The demands of the Levellers put them way ahead of their time. Cromwell was
determined to crush them in a show of force. Determined to bring in an era of firm
government, he quickly and forcibly suppressed any revolts and attempts at challenging
his authority. He also had to deal with the Scots, seething with anger at the execution of
their King whom he had promised to preserve and defend by the Solemn League and
Covenant of 1644.
Cromwell had come to Edinburgh to receive a hero's welcome, but the news of the
unprecedented execution of Charles, a few days later, sent a tidal wave of dismay over
much of Scotland. After all, the unfortunate man had been king of their country, too. And
regicide was still an act against God. Taking immediate action, Argyll continued the
strange alliance of King and Convenanter and had the 18 year-old Prince Charles
proclaimed King at Edinburgh
In 1650, Charles II duly arrived in Scotland to claim his Kingdom. Eventhough, in an
opportune "conversion," he had allowed himself to be crowned by the more powerful
Presbyterian faction, this was totally unacceptable to Oliver Cromwell, who had assumed
the title of Lord Protector. Cromwell invaded Scotland, defeated the Scots under General
Leslie at Dunbar and marched on Edinburgh. The Covenanters, no doubt trusting that
God would preserve their cause, would not admit defeat and on New Year's Day, 1651
they crowned Charles II at Scone and raised a sizeable army to defend him. Mainly
composed of Highlanders, it was utterly defeated by the more disciplined, better trained
Roundheads
at
Inverkeithing.
Cromwell now occupied all of Scotland south of the Firth of Forth. He then departed to
deal with the Scottish army that had been looking for support in England, leaving General
Monck in charge. Cromwell caught up with the Scottish army at Worcester on September
3, 1651. He destroyed it. A few days earlier, Monck had captured the Committee of the
Estates (the remnant of the Scottish Parliament and had occupied Dundee). The continent
now became a refuge for yet another Scottish monarch, as Charles II fled to France in the
time-honored fashion of so many Scots rulers. He was to return after nine years in exile.
It is interesting to note that General George Monck is on record as being "the first
professional soldier of the unique school which believes that the military arm should be
subordinate to the civil" a doctrine followed by non other than General Eisenhower
during his presidency of the United States some three hundred years later.
While the king in exile "went on his travels," as he put it, Cromwell was busy setting up
an efficient system of government in both kingdoms. He saw that a Treaty of Union in
1652 united Scotland with England and made it part of the Commonwealth. At the
beginning of his "reign," sanctioned by the Parliament, he had dealt severely with Ireland,
where his cruelty and butchery in reducing the towns of Drogheda and Wexford made his
name so hated.
Cromwell was determined to prevent any of the Stuarts from gaining a foothold in
Ireland. Through his ruthless campaigning, he forced it to accept the authority of the
rulers of England. Following the precedent set by James l's land grants at the expense of
the native Irish, many more English landowners were able to take advantage of the
confiscation and sale of sizable Irish properties, a situation that was later to lead to the
blight known as "Absentee Landlordism." One result, however was that his military
successes made it possible to integrate Scottish, Welsh, English and Irish MP's into a
truly British Parliament, a remarkable achievement that lasted until the first quarter of the
20th century.
Under Cromwell, England was also able to strengthen its position abroad. As the signs of
civil strife became apparent, Charles l had married his daughter Mary, to William,
perhaps to show his commitment to Protestantism. Like the Scots, the Dutch people were
horrified at the news of the king's execution. To propose a union between the two
republics, the Rump Parliament sent envoys to Holland who were deliberately insulted
and thus the opportunity and the excuse was presented for English commercial interests
to engage in a trade war.
Consequently, the Rump passed a Navigation Act in 1654 designed to cripple Dutch
trade. The resulting war brought forth one of England's great military leaders, Admiral
Blake, who blockaded the Dutch ports and defeated and killed Admiral van Tromp in a
sea battle before peace came in 1654. War with Spain a year later resulted in the British
capture of Jamaica and the destruction of a large Spanish fleet at Tenerife.
In retrospect, Cromwell has been seen as an evil genius, at odds with the other impression
that saw him as a godly man, interested in the establishment of a lasting democracy that
practiced tolerance. He was certainly a man caught between opposing forces. He had
gained his power through the army, yet he wished to rule through a much less radical
parliament. He truly found himself "sitting on bayonets," as one historian has remarked.
In 1653, unable to satisfy the demands of both factions, in true monarchical fashion, he
even dissolved Parliament, but after the lack of progress of the interim "Barebones"
Parliament, he resumed his power as head of the government of a nation that consisted of
England and Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
On 12 December, 1653, after he had refused an offer of the Crown, "Old Noll" Cromwell,
virtual dictator of England, received the title of Lord Protector. He instigated a period of
government remarkable for its religious tolerance to all except Roman Catholics, still
regarded as enemies of the realm. Under his protectorate, Jews were allowed back into
England for the first time since their expulsion under Edward I. Many Jewish families
were to do much to support later English governments financially. The Society of Friends
or Quakers, began to flourish under the inspired leadership of George Fox. Perhaps more
remarkable was the permission granted to congregations to choose their own form of
worship, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was replaced by the Directory of
Worship.
Even these measures were not enough to satisfy everyone. In 1655, a Royalist uprising
forced Cromwell to divide England into eleven military districts to keep down
insurrection and to rigidly enforce the laws of the Commonwealth. Many of these leaders
were responsible for the so-called "blue laws" creating a land of joyless conformity,
where not only drinking, swearing and gambling became punishable offences, but in
some districts, even going for a walk on Sundays. The unpopularity of these puritanical
justices,
mostly
army
colonels,
led
to
their
dismissal
in
1657.
The same year saw Parliament nominate Cromwell's son Richard as his successor, an
unfortunate choice, for the young man, nicknamed "Tumbledown Dick," didn‫ح‬t have the
experience nor the desire to govern the nation. When he retired to his farm in the country,
a period of great confusion between the various political factions and indecisive
government resulted in the decision of General Monck to intervene. Always a Cavalier at
heart "Old George" Monck brought his army from Scotland to London, where he quickly
assembled a parliament and invited Charles ll to take over the reigns of the kingdom. The
Republic
of
Great
Britain
and
Ireland
came
to
an
end.
Charles ll (1660-1685)
Though a London mob had thrown down a statue of Charles l outside the Royal
Exchange and placed the words "Exit Tyrannus" over the empty space, the same mob was
to lustily cheer "God Bless King Charles ll" at the arrival of General Monck's army. The
people had never been happy at the interregnum. The great diarist Samuel Pepys has
adequately described the rejoicing when the monarchy, "laid aside at the expense of so
much blood, returned without the shedding of one drop." Charles must have thought that
the tumultuous welcome accorded him gave him carte blanche to govern as he thought
fit; it did not. There was still Parliament.
The king got off to a good start. England was tired of being without a king, such an
integral part of their history and a source of great national pride when things went well.
Charles was crowned in April 1660 and within the same year married Catherine, the
daughter of the King of Portugal, an act, nevertheless, which did nothing to diminish his
reputation as a philanderer. Sadly enough, though he sired at least fourteen illegitimate
children, but he was not able to produce a legitimate heir. A cynic in morals and a
pragmatist in politics, he was shrewd enough to change his beliefs when he saw an
advantage. In his earlier attempts at winning the throne, he had courted the Scots
Presbyterians, but in later life, he reverted to his Catholic preferences.
Charles could not, of course, claim to rule by divine right. That era in English history had
gone forever. The Crown could not enforce taxes without the consent of Parliament, nor
could it arbitrarily arrest M.P.'s as Charles l had attempted. The two houses of
Parliament, Lords and Commons were restored, as was the Church of England and the
bishoprics. Many of those who had plotted against Charles l, known as "regicides" were
executed, but there was no orgy of revenge and many prominent anti-Royalists, such as
the poet John Milton, were allowed to escape punishment. The restoration of the
supremacy of the Anglican Church, however, meant the upswelling of resistance from
those outside its embrace.
Protestants were grouped together under many names. There were Baptists,
Congregationalists and Quakers, all of who resisted strenuous efforts to get them to toe
the line by conforming to the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Action against them came in the
form of the Clarendon Code, a collection of different restrictive measures completed
during 1664-5, that cut off the dissenters from professional advancement in all the
professions, except business. Perhaps this may have led to the close alliance of Dissent
and the world of Business that so characterized later England and has been seen as the
foundation for its commercial success. In any case, it only strengthened the desire of the
new and various Protestant sects to worship in the way they pleased.
Unlicensed preachers became a thorn in the side of government who regarded them as
something akin to traitors. In 1660, John Bunyan, who preached, as he stated so
emphatically, by invitation of God, and not of any bishop, went to prison for twelve
years. The result was first, "Grace Abounding" and then "Pilgrim's Progress" completed
in 1675. The pious, humble Quakers were particularly singled out for ridicule and harsh
treatment. But the worst fears, and most severe recriminations were reserved for the
Catholics.
During the period known as Carolingian England, after Charles had made his triumphant
return from the Continent, it seems that there was no end to the anti-papal processions in
London, the burning of the pope and cardinals in effigy, the hunting down of Catholic
priests, the closing of their schools and search for their secret meeting places. Great
Catholic families had been particularly loyal to Charles l; they had become anathema
during the inter-regnum, and there was little that Charles II could do to restore their
former dignity and favor. Catholic priests went into hiding, in constant death or were
forced
to
fall
to
the
Continent.
After 1668, Charles began to turn more and more toward the Catholic religion. He
concluded treaties with Louis XIV of France and agreed to reconcile himself with the
"Church of Rome." In 1672, he issued a Declaration of Indulgence allowing freedom of
religion for Catholics as well as non-conformists (Dissenters). He then joined the French
king in a war against the Dutch, who flooded their lands successfully and resisted
invasion. The failure caused a return of English resentment of Catholics and the passing
of the Test Act of 1673 compelling public office holders to take the sacrament of the
Church
of
England.
In 1678, when Protestant Clergyman Titus Oates, known as an habitual liar, heard rumors
of the possible conversion of England to Catholicism by an invasion of French troops, he
whipped up public feeling to frenzied heights by graphically embellishing the false tale.
(Note: in World War II, the author as a small boy remembers the rumors being put about
of an invasion of German paratroopers who had, it was said, already landed in Scotland:
it was probably started when Nazi leader Hess parachuted into Scotland to give himself
up to British authorities).
In the orgy created by rumors of plots to kill Charles and burn down Parliament,
Catholics were hunted down and killed, and the legitimate heir, James Duke of York, was
excluded from the throne by Parliament because he was a Catholic. Those who supported
him were called "Tories" after Catholic outlaws in Ireland. Those who opposed James
were the "Whigs" after Whiggamores, fiercely Protestant Scottish drovers. The Whigs
supported the claim of The Protestant Duke of Monmouth, one of Charles' illegitimate
sons. Another civil war seemed imminent before anti-Catholic feelings managed to die
down in the absence of the "threatened" invasion. Yet, Charles continued his secret
intrigues with the King of France.
Fortunately for the profligate, but Machiavellian English King, when a Whig plot to
murder him and James, he had a reason to execute his opponents. Popular opinion then
allowed him to bring back James to England where he regained his earlier position as
Lord High Admiral. Charles was then able to live out the rest of his reign in peace mainly
free from the political and religious struggles that had occupied so much of his reign.
These struggles, mostly involving the degree to which Protestantism had taken hold in
Britain, had been particularly manifest in England's relations with Scotland. Alas, like his
father, the new king had little interest in Scotland, preferring to govern it through a Privy
Council situated in Edinburgh and a Secretary at London. Despite his early support by the
Scots Presbyterians, he considered Presbytery as "not a religion for gentlemen." It is a
constant source of astonishment to the modern reader how little Charles knew about how
deep the roots of Presbyterianism had been planted in Scotland and how strongly the
Covenanters would fight all attempts to return Scotland to episcopacy. His years in exile
had
taught
him
very
little.
As King of Scotland, Charles had signed two Covenants in 1649 merely to secure his
own coronation. When he restored James VI's method of choosing the Committee of
Articles, he had the intention, not only of strengthening his position in relation to
Parliament, but also of bringing back the bishops and restoring the system of patronage
that chose ministers. All ministers chosen since 1649 were required to resign and to
reapply for their posts from the bishops and lairds. One third of all Scottish ministers
refused and held services in defiance of the law. Troops were sent to enforce the
regulations but made the Calvinist Covenanters even more eager to serve God in their
own way. In 1679, claiming to be obeying a command from on high, they murdered
Archbishop Sharp.
The government decided to intervene to bring the rebels to heel. An army was sent to
deal with them under the command of James, Duke of Monmouth. He defeated the
Covenanters at Bothwell Brig and the survivors were dealt with severely. The reaction
and counter-reactions that followed gave the period of the 1680's the title of "The Killing
Time." The troubles continued when Charles died in 1685 to be succeeded by his brother
James VIl (James ll of England) an openly-avowed Catholic who was welcomed in the
Highlands, ever true to the legitimate monarch. And thus the seeds were sown for the
Jacobite opposition that blossomed under the next king, the Dutchman, William of
Orange.
Before the accession of James II, however, we have to mention the three great disasters
that befell the England of Charles: plague, fire and war, all of which took place in three
consecutive years, and all of which were recorded in graphic detail by diarist Pepys. The
great outbreak of plague began in 1665, bringing London to a standstill and causing panic
at the numbers of dead and the lack of any knowledge as to how to deal with the terrible
scourge. Those who could afford to, simply packed up and went to live in the country.
The Great Fire of London, catastrophic as it was to the city, may have helped destroy the
dwelling places of the brown rat, the carrier of the deadly fleas and thus brought the
plague to an end. Though it destroyed the massive St. Paul's cathedral, it gave a chance
for architects such as Christopher Wren to rebuild, transforming the old, unhealthy
medieval, infested warrens into a city worthy of being a nation's capital, with fine, wide
streets, memorable public buildings and above all, its magnificent new churches,
including the present St. Paul's.
The third catastrophe was the continuation of the war against Holland. This time, with the
Royal Navy mutinous over poor pay and atrocious conditions aboard its ships, the Dutch
navy was able to sail with impunity into the Medway at the mouth of the Thames and
burn many of the English ships moored at idle anchor. After the triumphs of Admiral
Blake in the First Dutch War (1652-4), the Second Dutch War (1665-7) was a national
disgrace.
Charles II died in February 1685 of a heart attack no doubt brought on by a life style that
today' medical men (and religious leaders) would style nothing less than debauched. Of
his reign, and that of his successor, more than one historian has seen all the political
struggles, culminating in the Revolution of 1688 and the triumph of Parliament over the
Crown, as springing partly from their attempts to grant to Catholics a greater degree of
tolerance than would be countenanced by their other English subjects. They came to a
head during the reign of James II.
(2) Eighteenth Century England
The Electress of Hanover, Sophia, died the same year as Anne. When her son George left
Hanover to come to England, knowing but a few words of the English language, there
were many who wished a restoration of the Stuart monarchy. In this period of rapid
Anglicization of Scotland and the acceptance, through the Union, of the political and
economic situation that prevailed in Protestant England, the Stuarts were not yet finished.
In 1708, their hopes were raised once again when an invasion of Scotland, launched from
France managed to avoid the British fleet. Unfortunately, and by now predictably, the
opportunity was lost; the troops landed too far north to be effective in taking Edinburgh.
Then, in 1715, James II's son, James Edward Stuart, who was James III to his supporters
was persuaded to undertake an invasion of England, "the fifteen."
It had been highly apparent that attempts at restoring the Stuarts would have meant the
replacement of a Protestant monarchy, however foreign and dull it appeared, with a
Roman Catholic dynasty, for one thing, and it was far too late for that. For another, the
restoration would have to be accomplished by a foreign (and Catholic) army of
occupation. The Stuarts were backed by France, Britain's most obvious and strongest
enemy, a Popish enemy at that. The British press was full of the horrors of life in the
Catholic states of Europe and the blessings that the island nation enjoyed under its
Protestant rulers. Despite the nostalgia and the romanticism attached to the exiled Stuarts,
and their wide support in Scotland, it was unthinkable for most Britons to contemplate
their return. The majority of people in the nation were not in the mood for what surely
would be a bloody and prolonged civil war. They certainly did not welcome the idea of a
Jacobite army that would be mainly composed of French troops marauding through their
land. In addition, it seemed as if the struggle of Whig against Tory that had brought the
country to the verge of civil war had exhausted everyone. The attempt of the Pretender to
regain the throne for the Stuarts in 1715 thus fizzled out like a damp squib.
George I (1714-1727)
The first great crisis of the reign of George I, that fool of a king (who was ridiculed for
his eccentric behavior and poor English), was the Jacobite Rebellion. He was lucky that
his nation was in no mood for another civil war. James Stuart was sent back to France
after failing to rally Scotland behind him. It was left to the Young Pretender, Charles
Edward to try again during the reign of George II. The other crisis that affected the reign
of the first Hanoverian monarch of England was known as the South Sea Bubble.
Briefly, the South Sea Company, founded in 1711, had acquired a monopoly in the
lucrative Spanish slave trade and other trading ventures in South America. Prices of its
shares increased dramatically when the government announced that the company, and not
the Bank of England, should finance the National Debt. Dozens of irrational schemes
came into being as the result of the high prices of company shares. They all crashed in
October of 1720 when shares began to tumble; many investors were ruined.
The fiasco, involving many government ministers, needed someone to straighten things
out, and the right person appeared in Robert Walpole, who defended the ministers and the
Crown, being rewarded with the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer and leading the
House of Commons for 20 years. Walpole straightaway reduced import and export duties
to encourage trade and took care of the financial crisis by amalgamating the South Sea
Company stock with that of the Bank of England and the East India Company. An astute
business man, he kept England at peace and he increased the powers and privileges of
Parliament.
At the Act of Settlement of 1701, Parliament had insisted that there should be a Privy
Council of 80 members. King George reduced it to 30, and from these, a smaller group
formed the cabinet, and an even smaller group, the inner cabinet. And it was here that the
important decisions were made. As "German George" knew little English, understood
practically nothing of the English constitution and stayed away from cabinet meetings,
Walpole rose to a position of chief minister. He continued his leading role after the death
of George I in 1727. Walpole's day-to-day supervision of the administration of the
country, unhampered by royal interference, gave him such influence that he is
remembered as England's first Prime Minister (The title originated as a term of abuse
when his opponents mockingly used it to describe his extraordinary power).
George II (1727-1760)
Among the many events that took place during the reign of George II, there were two that
were to have a profound influence, not only upon his kingdom of Britain, but upon much
of the world outside its borders. The first of these events began in 1728 when Yorkshire
carpenter John Harrison created a working model of a practical, spring-driven timekeeper
that would win the prize offered by the London's Board of Longitude to solve a centuriesold puzzle; how to make the accurate determining of longitude possible. (In 1676, the
Greenwich Observatory had been established to study the position of the moon among
the fixed stars and to set a standard time to help sailors fix their longitude). In 1730, John
Hadley invented the reflecting quadrant that made it possible to determine latitude at
noon or by night
In 1736, Harrison presented his ship's chronometer to London's Board of Longitude;
accurate to with one-tenth of a second per day. Made weatherproof and placed aboard
ships, along with the observations of astronomer Nevil Maskelyne, published in 1763 that
calculated longitude at sea from lunar distances, the chronometer was to revolutionize the
world's shipping. It was to prove of particular importance to English navigators in their
constant, unending search for new markets for English products, new trading centers and
eventually, new lands to settle her surplus criminals and poor, unemployed citizens.
The second major event began at Oxford University, also in 1728, when a group of
students began to call divinity student Charles Wesly a "Methodist," because of his
methodical study habits. Charles was to help found a holy club with his brother John and
others for strict observance of sacrament and the Sabbath, along with reading the New
Testament and undergoing fasting. Brother John was to begin preaching Methodism at
Bristol in 1739.
The first conference of Methodists was held in 1744. From then on, the movement, aided
by his indefatigable preaching and wide spread travels in the British Isles, spread rapidly.
The new religious ideas were to take root in North America where ideas of political
independence from Britain were to merge with ideas of religious independence from the
Church of England.
At home, as strong-willed as George II seemed to be, he could be controlled by his wife,
Caroline of Anspach, whose influence ensured that Walpole keep his position as prime
minister in the new regime. When Caroline died in 1737, it was increasingly difficult for
Walpole to keep England out of war with Spain, brought about by the continual
harassment of British trading ships by the Spanish. When a certain Captain Jenkins
presented the sight of his sun-dried (or pickled) ear, supposedly cut off by the Spanish in
1731, Parliament was enraged and demanded action. Walpole was unable to effect a
compromise and England went to war in 1739.
Because George II feared a French invasion of his beloved Duchy of Hanover, England
was forced to involve itself in the war that primarily involved the coalition of Central
European powers, supported by France, to despoil Maria Theresa, the new Arch Duchess
of Austria, of her possessions. To the dismay of the jingoistic Parliament, George signed
a treaty with France to protect Hanover, Walpole was held responsible and defeated in
Parliament after losing support of the Commons. Walpole had coined the term "balance
of power" in a speech in Parliament in June 1741; it gave expression to the principle that
was to guide British foreign policy for decades to come.
Despite King George's attempts to stay neutral in the European conflict, he had to fight.
At Dettingen, he personally led his forces, and won a great victory over the French. When
France declared war on England in 1744, believing that she was the cause of most of her
troubles, Parliament was forced on the defensive. As so many times before in the island
nation's history, however, the notorious British weather helped destroy a French invasion
in 1744. It was now time for the Jacobite Cause to resurrect itself.
The Last Gasp of the Jacobites
Incredibly enough, after the farce of the last attempt to regain the throne, the Stuarts were
to try again. Despite having endured so many years of ill-fortune, the Jacobite cause was
still powerful enough to be considered the greatest threat to Britain in mid-century. In
1718, the Spanish government, in the conflict with Britain for control of trade, had
sponsored an abortive raid on Scotland. Though the attempt ended in a defeat for the
Highlanders at Glenshiel, an English newspaper argued in 1723 that the people of the
Scottish Highlands "will never fail to join with foreign Popish powers..."
As if to fulfill this prophecy, 22 years later, Charles Edward seized his opportunity. At a
time when George II was away in his beloved Hanover and the bulk of the British Army
fighting in Flanders and Germany, the Stuart prince landed in the Hebrides in July 1745.
He was encouraged by promise of support from France, and indeed some ships did reach
Scotland with supplies and artillery. By September, Charles had rallied thousands of
Highlanders, was aided by the Provost's who had secretly left a gate open and had taken
the city of Edinburgh (where he assured the Presbyterian clergy of religious toleration),
captured Carlisle, and defeated a small British force at Prestonpans where his soldiers
employed their broadswords in the famous Highland charge.
Flushed with victory over the obviously ill-trained and ill-prepared British force of
General Cope, the Scottish army marched south to England, hoping to rally support all
along the way. Yet, it soon became apparent that Charles Edward was not going to be
successful in raising the men and money necessary to sustain the invasion. Even in the
Scottish Lowlands, support had not been forthcoming. Interests of commerce overrode
those of patriotism. Despite Charles Edward's bold plans to advance on London, Lord
Murray argued for a return to Scotland. The Prince reluctantly admitted the lack of
support from English Jacobites. In addition, misleading reports about the strength of the
English forces convinced the majority of the Council to return to Scotland.
An English force that caught up with the retreating Scottish army was soundly defeated at
Clifton, the last battle to be fought on English soil. Once again, a concentrated Highland
charge managed to dislodge British dragoons. Scottish success, however, only
strengthened the resolve of the pursuing troops under Cumberland, who was determined
to use his superior fire power and strength of numbers to his advantage the next time. The
battle also led to a feeling among the Highlanders that they were invincible in a charge
involving hand-to-hand fighting. They were almost correct. On the bumpy, uneven
pasture lands of Culloden in April 1745 with a considerable distance to cover under fire
before they could reach the ranks of the English troops, the bravery of the charging
Highlanders would not be enough.
The enormous casualties suffered by the Highlanders in their futile charges against the
entrenched infantry, and the slaughter of their wounded was followed by a brutal
aftermath. "Bliadna Thearlaich," Charlie's Year to the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, was
finished. The Jacobites were left without any hope of reorganizing, though they still
hoped for support from the Bourbons in Spain and France. This was not forthcoming, for
struggles in Europe were shifting to those for control of North America.
Scotland was ready to play a major role in the expansion of the British Empire. In
particular, the fighting qualities and heroic traditions of the Highlanders were put to good
use in British armies sent to fight in Europe and further afield. The Seven Years War
(1756-63) that closely followed the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion was the most
dramatically successful war ever fought by Britain. Success followed success (mostly at
the expense of France) in Canada, India, West Africa and the West Indies, and the tiny
North Atlantic island of Britain found itself at the head of a vast, world empire in which
the Scots played a leading part.
An New Role for the Island Kingdom
The War of the Austrian Succession was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
But Britain was still anxious to fight for possession of new lands and trade routes. After
Walpole's resignation, the country was led by William Pitt ("the elder"), a man who
believed that the strength of the nation's economy depended upon overseas expansion as
well as the defence of its trading outposts. Thus Britain found itself at war with France
again, only the theatres of war were now primarily in North America and India. In the
Seven Years War, England's ally Prussia was relied upon to conduct operations against
France and Austria in Europe. In the sub-continent of India, Robert Clive won important
victories to establish British presence at the expense of the French.
In other areas, at first, the wars went badly. Admiral Byng was disgraced when he lost
Minorca to the French in 1757. In North America, the British colonists suffered defeats at
the hands of the French, who began Fort Duquesne; in Europe, the French occupied
Hanover. Then William Pitt took over, the person described by Frederick the Great as
having been "a man brought forth by England's labor," and under his direction of
Parliament, his countries' armed forces began victories that made them seem invincible.
In 1747 James Lind had reported on the success of citrus juice in combating scurvy, and
ten years later The Royal Navy received the new sextant created by John Campbell. (In
1775, upon his return from the Pacific, Captain James Cook received a medal from the
Royal Society for finally conquering scurvy; he had brought 118 men "through all
climates for three years with the loss of only one man.)
In North America, British troops captured Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt (later
Pittsburgh); other victories occurred at Senegal, the centre of the French West African
slave trade and at Guadeloupe in the West Indies. In Canada, General Wolfe captured
Louisburg and then Quebec, in 1759, a victory that was followed up by General Amherst
to complete the surrender of Canada to Britain.
At the time of King George II's death in 1760, England was growing rich from profits
made in sugar, tobacco, sea-island cotton and other products produced by slave labor. A
new leisured class was rapidly developing that would eventually demand its say in
government. Britain's prosperity had come about despite the favoring of Hanover by King
George; it reflected the growing influence of the mercantile classes in Parliament. It also
reflected the indomitable energy and initiative of William Pitt.
Pitt gathered all power into his own hands; he controlled finance, administration and the
military. He understood fully the threat from France for hegemony in North America, and
he took the vital steps to counter it. His war with France has been seen by many
historians as the First World War; it certainly involved more than a mere redistribution of
strategic forts and a re-shuffling of frontiers. It also took considerable toll on England's
resources and a general war-weariness gave fodder to those enemies of Pitt who worked
for
his
downfall.
George III (1760-1820)
The new king saw himself as a kind of savior; freeing the country from the tyranny of a
corrupt Parliament and restoring it into the hands of a virtuous, honorable, "thoroughly
English" monarch, one who was perfectly capable of choosing his own ministers. Lord
Bute was more to his liking than William Pitt. When peace negotiations began with
France, Pitt refused to desert Prussia. France then turned to Spain for an alliance to help
her regain her North American possessions. Pitt's urging of war with Spain met with
fierce resistance in the Commons and he was forced to resign.
Seen by historian Carlyle, as "King of England for four years," William Pitt undoubtedly
was one of England's great leaders, a true statesman with a vision expanding far beyond
the political boundaries of England. His successor in Parliament, Lord Bute, had nothing
of Pitt's political acumen, wide-ranging vision or experience. Only months after Pitt's
resignation, England was forced to declare war on Spain, but despite a series of
overwhelming victories, including those by Admiral Rodney in the Caribbean, that made
her mistress of the world and master of the seas, Bute did not wish to further antagonize a
severely weakened France and Spain. Besides, the king wished to end what he called " a
bloody and expensive war."
Britain gained handsomely at the Treaty of Paris of 1763, yet France and Spain came off
rather well. It took a considerable amount of political chicanery and bribery to ensure the
ratification of the treaty by Parliament, for it was denounced by Pitt as giving too much
away and for containing the seeds of future war. Britain did gain Canada, Nova Scotia,
Cape Breton; the right to navigate the Mississippi; the West Indian Islands of Grenada,
St. Vincent, Dominica and Tobago in the West Indies; Florida (from Spain); Senegal in
Africa; and the preservation in India of the East India Company's monopoly; and in
Europe, Minorca.
To Pitt's dismay and fears for the future, France was appeased with the islands of St.
Pierre and Miquelon, islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, fishing rights off
Newfoundland (the nursery of the French navy, later to play such a decisive role in the
American War of Independence) and the rich sugar islands of Guadeloupe and
Martinique. Spain, in turn, received Havana, which controlled the sea-going trade in the
Caribbean and Manila, a center of the trade with China. Thus France's naval power had
been left untouched. Britain was later to pay dearly in the loss of its American colonies.
As George insisted on picking his own ministers, he appointed four different men to lead
the country in the 1760's: the Earl of Bute, George Grenville, the Marquee of
Rockingham, and the Elder Pitt. His last choice, his personal favorite, was Lord North.
They lost America.
(3) Mary Tudor (1553-1558)
Mary took her throne with high hopes of restoring England to Catholicism. It has been
said that she took her religion too seriously. In any case, she was too late, the
Reformation had taken firm root throughout Northern Europe and in much of England,
where her sacred duty to return the country to the Catholic fold was sure to be violently
opposed. There were not too many in England who wished to return to a church that, as
late as 1514, had condemned a dead man for heresy. To further her aims, Mary, already
middle-aged, married Philip of Spain, the son of Charles V, who had defended her
mother Catherine's marital rights. To most Englishmen, this act presaged an inevitable
submission of their country to foreign rule. It was not a popular marriage.
Pious Mary then set about having Parliament repeal the Act of Supremacy, reinstate
heresy laws and petition for reunion with Rome; the Latin Mass was restored and
Catholic bishops reinstated. Rebellion was inevitable, and though easily crushed, the
peasant uprising of Thomas Wyatt convinced the Queen that obedience to the throne had
to be established by fire and sword. The orgy of burnings of heretics began.
The fires that Mary ordered to be lit at Smithfield put to death such Protestant leaders and
men of influence as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper, but also hundreds of lesser
men who refused to adopt the Catholic faith. The entire country became enraged and
fearful. Mary's failure as Queen was ensured. Her marriage to Philip only made matters
worse for it intensified the English hatred of foreigners, and by this time, of Catholicism
in general. Parliament was rushed to declare that should Mary die without an heir, Philip
would have no claim to the English throne. The Hapsburg Philip himself spent as little
time in "obstinate" England as possible, got himself all involved in war with France in
which Calais, England's last continental outpost, was lost forever. Calais hadn't been
much of a possession but its loss was a grievous insult to the English nation. When
"Bloody Mary" died in November, 1558, it seemed as if the whole country rejoiced.
The Virgin Queen, Elizabeth l (1558-1603)
Elizabeth became Queen of England at the age of twenty-five determined to show that it
was neither unholy nor unnatural for "a woman to reign and have empire above men."
She had many problems to settle, for the whole nation had gone through a period of
social discord, political shenanigans and international failures, and was still in a state of
revulsion over the Smithfield martyrs. Fortunately, the determined, charismatic and
reasoned woman was adequately equipped for the enormous tasks ahead of her.
Furthermore, though insistent on restoring royal supremacy and severing the ties with
Rome, she was also willing to compromise on certain religious issues, putting her in
another league from the late unmourned Mary.
The new queen was astute enough to realize that she needed the support of the common
people, the majority of whom were overwhelmingly Protestant and anti-Rome. Her own
feelings had to be put aside, though she did allow some of the ceremonies associated with
Catholicism to remain. The communion service could be a Mass for those who wished.
The religious settlement may have not satisfied everyone, but it satisfied most; above all,
there was to be no return to the great distress and acrimony of Queen Mary's unfortunate
reign. Even the rebellion of the Catholic nobility in the North created no great trauma for
the Queen, for her nobles were better Englishmen than Catholics. Loyalty to England,
expressed through her Queen, was stronger than loyalty to Rome. Those who bucked the
trend, such as the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland paid for their insolence
with their heads.
Elizabeth was served well by loyal citizens. One of her greatest assets was her ability to
choose the right people to carry out her policies. In this, she had the luck of her father
Henry, but unlike him, she was also able to have such men serve her loyally and
efficiently for life, rather than carry out their own self-serving policies. She was
particularly fortunate in finding William Cecil, who served first as her principal secretary
and later as her lord treasurer. He was a man of amazing talents and industry; quite
simply, he made governing into an honored profession. It has been astutely pointed out
that, unlike Lords Leicester and Essex and the others who flattered the Queen, Cecil was
no court ornament. His ability to compromise in matters of religion also stood him in
good stead, and put him, like Elizabeth herself, slightly ahead of his time.
It was obvious to Elizabeth that in order to govern effectively, she needed to find a
middle way between the extremes of Geneva and Rome. As Queen, she insisted on the
retention of royal privilege. Her anti-Catholicism was heavily influenced by her desire to
keep her country free from domination by Spain, rather than by any personal dictates of
conscience. She thus chose the middle way of the Anglican Church, rather than accept the
harsh doctrines of such men as Calvin and Knox, who would destroy much that was
precious and holy in men's minds.
John Knox had arrived back in Scotland in 1544 carrying his huge two-handed sword
along with his Bible. From the teachings and intractability of such men, the Reformation
in Scotland had taken a much different path than it was to take in England after Mary, for
Elizabeth was no Calvinist. Remaining the head of the Church, she promised not to
"make windows into men's souls," and her Supremacy Bill and the Uniformity Bills of
1559, that made the Church of England law, substituted fines and penalties for
disobedience, not the usual burnings and banishment.
One irritating and persistent problem that Elizabeth had to face was that of Mary, Queen
of Scots. We have noted the success of John Knox in Scotland, and when the Protestant
Nobles attacked the French-backed government forces of Mary, Elizabeth was naturally
delighted when the French were driven out of Scotland. Queen Mary was not so happy.
In 1548, the Auld Alliance had been immeasurably strengthened when as little Princess
Mary, she had ended her period of moving from place to place for safety by going to
France as future bride of the Dauphin. "France and Scotland," stated the French King,
(reportedly leaping 'for blitheness') are now one country."
Catholic Mary returned to Scotland as Queen in August 1561. Widowed at age eighteen,
she was no longer Queen of France, but thoroughly French in outlook and education.
Scotland had undergone a major transformation in her absence. Knox had done his work
well. The Queen's sprightly, impulsive (and apparently highly-sexed) nature quickly put
her at odds with the austere, Puritan divines who wished to keep a tight hold on the hearts
and minds of the newly-converted majority of Scottish people.
Edward VI protestant reforms book of common prayer catholic sir thomas moore john
dudley lady jane grey mary tudor act of supremacy bloody mary virgin queen Elizabeth I
smithfield martyrs william cecil john knox church of england auld alliance mary queen of
scots In 1565, Mary's complete lack of foresight caused her to marry her younger cousin,
Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who had practically nothing to commend him either as
husband or king. It wasn't only Protestants who were furious. When Darnley, immature
and seemingly completely lacking in wisdom and intelligence, stabbed to death Mary's
Italian secretary Riccio in a fit of teenage jealousy, the fires were lit for a never-ending
saga of intrigue and misfortune. In 1567, Darnley's body was found in the wreckage of
his house at Kirk o Field which had been destroyed in a mysterious explosion. He had
been strangled to death.
Heavily implicated in the murder was a "bold, reckless Protestant of considerable charm"
James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, Lord High Admiral of Scotland. Mary then
made her second grievous error: she married Bothwell. Now it was the turn of Mary's
Catholic subjects to be furious. The young Queen, upon whom so many hopes had
depended, had managed to alienate everybody. A Protestant army was raised to force
Mary to abdicate and at age twenty-four, after she had been led in humiliation through the
streets of Edinburgh, Mary Queen of Scots gave up her throne in favor of her baby son,
who was immediately crowned as James VI. Bothwell's life was saved only by his escape
to Norway. The Earl of Moray, Mary's half-brother James Stewart, now became Regent.
Mary, who had been held prisoner by the Scottish lords, made her escape from Lochleven
Castle, but the small army she managed to raise was defeated by Moray. She then made
another grievous error when she fled to England to seek refuge with the proud and easily
jealous Queen Elizabeth who promptly imprisoned her unfortunate cousin. Mary should
have gone to France, for as long as she lived, her own claim to the English throne made
her a potentially deadly rival to Elizabeth l. Her endless schemes to recover the Scottish
throne and to depose Elizabeth, including the Ridolfi Plot that got the unwise Duke of
Norfolk executed for complicity, and the Throgmorton Plot, in which Pope Gregory XIII
may have been involved, finally ensured her execution in 1587.
Elizabeth had far less trouble with Wales, peaceably incorporated into the realm of
England by the Acts of Union under Henry VIII. Welsh men were found in strategic
positions in court, specially favored by the Queen. Welshman William Cecil and others
were included in the partnership that was forming a new and imperial British identity. In
the expansion of England overseas, Welshman John Dee played an important part, for his
accounts of Prince Madoc's supposed voyages to the New World were eagerly seized by
Elizabeth's Court officials as justification for their war against Spain and proof of their
legitimacy of their involvement in the Americas. Dee claimed that Elizabeth was rightful
sovereign of the Atlantic Empire.
Welsh people were proud of their contributions to the nation. They were also people of
"the Book," having received the Holy Bible in their own language and any attempts to
make the Counter-Reformation productive in Wales failed miserably. William Salesbury
had published his translation of the main texts of the Prayer Book into Welsh in 1551.
When John Penry pleaded with the Queen and her Parliament to have the whole Bible
translated, he found a sympathetic audience, for by this method, Protestantism could be
firmly established in Wales, a country that formed a natural bulwark between England
and the ever-rebellious Ireland.
Wales got her Bible in 1588, the brilliant achievement of Bishop William Morgan eleven
years after Jesus College had been founded at Oxford to channel the flood of Welsh
scholars flocking to the universities. With its own Bible and its language secure, there
was little need for the Welsh to join in the fight to try to restore England to Catholicism.
Besides, in the Tudors, they had members of their own national clan in firm charge of the
whole nation.
The difficulties with Wales and Scotland were smoothed out. Ireland remained a
problem. It was a far different country, almost a different world, one in which time had
stood still for centuries. Fiercely tribal, loyal to the Catholic Church, it was a country that
resisted all attempts to impose Protestantism. It was a country that England did not know
how to govern, for it was a country that did not know how to govern itself. Yet, England's
war with Spain meant that Ireland had to be controlled somehow, and it was somehow
that Elizabeth extended her authority over a wide area of her Western neighbor.
Sorrowfully, the Elizabethan dream of creating a loyal, modernized state of Ireland,
perhaps in the Welsh model, completely failed despite the well-intended efforts of some
of her most able men.
The great Irish chieftains were courted by Elizabeth in the hope that they could be used to
bridge the gap between the native Irish and those that were sent from England on their
"civilizing" mission. One of them, Hugh O'Neill, the second Earl of Tyrone (who was a
personal friend of Sir Philip Sydney), in return for his loyalty to the Crown, demanded
that chieftain rule be preserved and that the Irish people should be allowed freedom of
worship as Roman Catholics. Elizabeth's refusal forced Tyrone to appeal to Philip of
Spain for help.
Though the armada sent by Philip was turned back by storms, it encouraged the Irish to
rebellion, driving out the English from all their lands except the Pale, a small strip along
the east coast. The Queen's response to this threat of an independent Ireland under
Spanish patronage was to send the Earl of Essex at the head of a large army. He failed
miserably and returned to England in disgrace. It was left to Charles Blount, Lord
Mountjoy, to restore the situation, and his successful attempts at pacification and the
surrender of Tyrone in 1603 completed the Elizabethan subjugation of Ireland. The best
we can say about the whole sorry adventure is that those who were busy trying to bring
civil order to Ireland used the experience in their planting and colonizing of the New
World, where they found a population far less able to withstand these ventures.
Alongside that of the ever-troublesome, unsolvable Irish question, how to deal with
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the problem of the religious settlement, Elizabeth also had the
task of defending the realm. This meant a twenty-year war against Spain, the most
powerful nation in Europe. The Queen of England was lucky, for Philip II of Spain had
proved his incompetence as a ruler. He had practically ruined Spain in material resources,
despite the bounty of wealth streaming in from South and Central America.
The theocracy that was Spain, decadent and moribund, despite its large armies and
uncountable wealth, would prove no match for the vibrant, economically self-sufficient,
fiercely proud and loyal island nation that was England under Elizabeth. Her navy, grown
modern and efficient under Henry VIII was able to run rings around the cumbersome, illled, poorly trained forces put out by Philip in his attempt to conquer England. In 1588,
the defeat of the seemingly-invincible Armada, though aided by the intolerable English
weather, was inevitable. Its defeat also sealed the fate of any Catholic revival in England;
from now on, a return to Rome would be out of the question. (A lesson that the later
Catholic Stuarts were slow to learn).
It was thus that England was saved from domination by foreign powers, be they that of
Rome or that of Spain (or a combination of both) or even Scotland. Elizabeth's long reign
also saw her country undergo a remarkable economic growth, and a complete sea-change
from the financial and political chaos (in addition to the religious quagmire) that had been
the norm when she first took the Crown. Industry and trade prospered under the guidance
of men such as Secretary Cecil (later Lord Burghley), one of the most efficient
administrators that England was ever privileged to enjoy. His son Robert was one of the
chief ministers responsible for carrying out the policies of James l. And in an interesting
note, one of the same family, Lord Cranborne, a senior hereditary peer in the House of
Lords, was dismissed from the shadow cabinet of that august body by Tory leader
William Hague in December, 1998 for agreeing to a compromise deal with Labour leader
Tony Blair over the reform of the House.
Remarkably free from corruption, Cecil became rich and prosperous in the service of the
Crown and his loyalty was assured. It didn't do his economic policies any harm either,
when the Duke of Alva began his reign of terror in the Netherlands, for the bankers and
capitalists of Antwerp flocked to London to find a new and more secure international
money and credit market. Only a year after the Northern Rising, Thomas Gresham had
opened his new institution in London, the Royal Exchange, later to make the city the
financial capital of the world. Cecil also encouraged the fishing industry, the source of
England's navy and backbone of its sea power. Compulsory weekly fish days were
increased from two to three "so the sea coast should be strong with men and the fleet
flourish."
With such encouragement, English sailors began their mastery of the world's oceans. If
William Cecil can be regarded as the great conservator of the Queen's strength, her
seamen can be seen as its great expanders. It can be safely said that whatever Cecil did as
pilot of the ship of state was made possible through English sailors. Though little more
than pirates, these seamen laid the foundations of their nation's naval superiority which
was to last, with few exceptions, for centuries and which later led to the acquisition of
Britain's vast overseas empire. One of them, Sir John Hawkins, from the Plymouth family
of sailor adventurers, was the first to show that English mariners could outmatch those of
Spain, and it was not too long before the so-called Spanish monopoly in the New World
was successfully challenged. The papal grant of 1493 that had divided newly-discovered
lands and oceans between Spain and Portugal was conveniently ignored by Englishmen,
and
not
just
for
religious
reasons.
Hawkins was no John Cabot, who had discovered Newfoundland in 1497 in search of a
Northwest Passage; he was no more than a slave trader, in search of riches. But so was
Martin Frobisher, who made a series of voyages to Canada in the 1570's. So were those
intrepid sailors and merchants who braved the Baltic to establish the Muscovy Company
in 1555 to trade with Russia. On one of his voyages of plunder, some of Hawkins' ships
had been captured in the Gulf of Mexico by the Spanish viceroy. Only two ships escaped,
but one of them had young Francis Drake aboard.
A Spanish embargo then had the effect of the English rag-tag navy playing havoc with
Spanish merchandise and shipping in the English Channel. Drake, now an experienced
mariner grown bold, and others of his ilk then turned their attentions to disrupt the
Spanish treasure fleets returning from South America. There followed a veritable
explosion of English maritime achievements. For example, Drake's search for treasures
led to his circumnavigating the globe (1577-78), Sir Humphrey Gilbert took settlers to
Newfoundland in 1583; Sir Walter Raleigh organized his expedition to Virginia four
years later, John Davis travelled into the northern regions of the world, John Cavendish
emulated Drake's epic voyage by sailing around the world, the East India Company was
founded and English culture and ideas spread east and west.
In the midst of all these successes, in which England thought of herself as divinely
favored, perhaps we should also point out, that the passage of the Elizabethan Poor Law
of 1601 showed only too well that in the midst of prosperity and the rise of a wealthy
middle class, poverty was everywhere rearing its ugly head in the land. The transition of
the English landscape by the enclosures of land (mainly to aid the wool industry) had
thrown
the
traditional
life
of
the
yeoman
farmer
into
turmoil.
The large market for English cloth on the Continent, brought in through Antwerp,
increased the speed of land enclosures. The acquisition of vast land holding became a
commercial venture and unemployment became rife. Thousands of landless peasants
were now thronging into the cities and towns looking for handouts. It is astonishing that
the Queen and her Council were able to ride out the climate in which a major revolt
seemed inevitable. Fear of foreign intervention played its part in keeping England
internally peaceful. It had also experienced a remarkable artistic renaissance, perhaps
made possible by the growth of a large, new lawyer and gentry class.
Young Henry VIII had been considered a "Renaissance Prince," skilled in the military
arts, deeply interested in music, theology and learning. Under Elizabeth, herself skilled in
music and master of more than a few languages, courtiers became patrons of the arts,
inviting great European artists such as Holbein and Hillard to paint their portraits.
Traditional medieval music gave way to new forms of composition and performance
under the skilled guidance of William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. Great houses such as
Longleat, Hatfield, Hardwick Hall followed Wolsey's magnificent palace at Hampton
Court, in which to show off the new paintings, decorative arts and advances in
architectural technique. There were great achievements in literature and drama.
Poetry was led by Edmund Spenser (1552-99) whose masterpiece The Faerie Queen was
inspired by Elizabeth herself, and in which she is portrayed as a symbol of the English
nation. In addition to producing Spenser, her reign was the age of Shakespeare, Marlowe,
Raleigh, Sir Philip Sydney, Francis Bacon and John Donnne, to mention a few of those
who would have been great in any age. In the midst of this outpouring of talent, the
Virgin Queen found herself replacing the Virgin Mary as an object of devotion among
many of her English subjects.
A Golden Age indeed, yet at the time of Elizabeth's death in 1603, it was possible to see
the end of the Tudor system of government. The high costs of wars, years of depression
brought on by high taxes, bad harvests, soaring prices, peasant unrest and the resulting
growth of parliamentary influence and prestige in becoming the instrument by which the
will of the landed classes could not only be heard but carried out against the royal
prerogative meant that great political changes were afoot in the land. The Stuarts were to
suffer from the increase in Parliamentary power and the diminution of the royal
prerogative.
James VI (1603-1625)
Elizabeth's reign finally came to an end. The mighty Queen was laid to rest in March
1603 with James of Scotland declared as rightful heir. James journeyed to London to
claim what he had longed for all his life, the throne of England. He greatly favored a
union of the two kingdoms and the new national flag, the Union Jack, bore the crosses of
St. Andrew and St. George. But though the Estates passed an Act of Union in 1607, it
was a hundred years before a treaty was signed. After the glorious successes enjoyed
under Elizabeth, marred by the failure to bring Ireland into her fold, there were many in
England who had no wish to merge their identity with what they considered to be yet
another inferior nation, let alone one that had been allied with Spain and France for such
long periods in its history.
Whatever the English thought of their northern neighbors, the Scottish king had taken the
throne of England without rancor. James VI was perfectly happy in the seat of power at
Whitehall. His troubles with the Scottish Presbyterians, however, were nowhere near at
an end. James' attempt to impose the Five Articles on the Scots, dealing with matters of
worship and religious observances was met with strong opposition. He went ahead
anyway, and pushed through his reforms at a in 1618. Typically, they were systematically
ignored throughout Scotland.
It is important to remember that during the reign of James as King of both Scotland and
England, the two nations retained their separate parliaments and privy councils. They
passed their own laws and enjoyed their own law courts, had their own national church,
their own ways of levying taxes and regulating trade and to a certain extent, they could
pursue their own foreign policies. Scotland itself was practically two distinct nations.
There was a huge division between Highland and Lowland. James‫ ح‬attempts to persuade
the clan chiefs to adopt the Protestant faith was a failure. They clung to the military
habits of their ancestors and continued the Gaelic tongue when most of Scotland had
abandoned it in favor of English.
Despite such setbacks, James' twenty-year experience as the King of Scotland should
have put him in good stead as monarch in London. But England was not Scotland; its
government had progressed along different lines. In particular, the concept of the divine
right of kings was not a major belief of those who held power at Westminster. There, it
was king and Parliament that was the source of all laws, not the king alone. There was
also the continuing religious problem, with both Catholic and Protestant factions vying
for his support. James called an early conference at Hampton Court to listen to their
arguments.
In Scotland, James had insisted that his powers were divinely bestowed as one way of
counteracting the demands of both Presbyterians and Catholics. He carried this idea with
him when he came south. He did not wish to have the English state made subordinate to
any Church, whatever its religious preference. The example of Scottish Presbytery still
rankled and the English Puritans' demand for a "reduced episcopacy" made him
suspicious of their desires. James stated emphatically, "No bishop, no king."
Accordingly, the convocation of the clergy insisted on excommunicating anyone who
impugned the royal authority, the Anglican prayer books, or the Thirty-Nine Articles that
had been confirmed by statute in 1571 during Elizabeth's reign. For the age, these were
moderate demands indeed. What was more important was the decision to issue a new
translation of the Bible, and in 1611 the world received that most magnificent of all its
holy books, the so-called King James Bible, the Authorized Version.
Moderate as James considered himself in matters of religion, he still promised to harry
the Puritans out of the land. The consequent flight of many so-called Pilgrims to the
Netherlands, and in 1630 their voyage from there to the New World, along with many of
their compatriots from England, led to the establishment of the New England colonies.
But more of this later. In the meanwhile, the Catholics in England were not as
accommodating. When James reintroduced the recusancy laws that meted out penalties
for not attending Church of England services, a group of Catholics took action. Their
failure, in the notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when they tried to blow up king and
Parliament did more than merely ensure the commemoration by burning Guy Fawkes in
effigy every November 5th, but also led to the demands for an oath of allegiance from
Catholic recusants. This was a severe setback to their cause and an increase in the hatred
of the Catholic religion in England and those who continued to practice it.
It is to James that we can attribute much of the sorry mess in Ireland that also continues
to divide Catholics and Protestants, Nationalists and Loyalists. Anxious to expand
Scotland's influence overseas, as well as to try to establish some sense of order in a
country not willing to join Wales and Scotland as part of the British nation, the king
unwisely encouraged the plantation of Ulster, beginning in 1610. Thousands of Scots
settled on lands that rightly belonged to the native Catholic population. Their influence
gave Ulster that staunchly Presbyterian character that so strongly resists attempts at Irish
reunification today. James also encouraged Scottish emigration to Arcadia, one of the
maritime provinces of Canada, part of which became Nova Scotia (New Scotland).
It wasn't only the matter of a religion, nor the vexing problem of what to do with Ireland
which James had to deal. It was during his reign that the House of Commons first began
to question the rights of the monarchy on matters of privilege. Elizabeth had replied most
forcibly to the Common's interference on matters touching her prerogative and yet by the
end of James' reign, the situation had changed altogether. The House of Commons now
not merely being a legislative body performing this task for the monarch, or giving
advice, or granting such taxes as he needed, but possessing remarkable administrative and
legislative powers of its own. The change had come about gradually but the writing on
the wall was set firmly in place even at the very beginning of James' reign in the matter
of "Goodwin v. Fortescue."
Goodwin had been denied his place in the Commons by the Court of Chancery. When the
Commons vigorously protested, James had to back down from his position that the whole
institution of Parliament was dependent upon the royal powers. Following the Goodwin
case and one concerning another Member of the Commons, Sir Thomas Shirley, the
Commons were led to state what they considered to be their privileges in "The Form of
Apology and Satisfaction." In it, they stated that James, as a foreign king, did not
understand their rights which they enjoyed by precedent and not by royal favor. It was a
sign of things to come in the long struggle between king and parliament that came to a
head
in
the
reign
of
Charles
l.
Most of the troubles that beset James in his fight with Parliament, apart from his sexual
preferences for men such as George Villiers, whom he appointed to many high offices,
concerned the raising of money. The king's extravagance became legendary and the costs
of running the Court and the war with Spain, which James at least had the foresight to
end in 1604, led to the levying of additional customs duties. The matter of John Bate, a
merchant who had refused to pay an imposition caused a deep split between those who
believed that impositions were part or the king's absolute power and those who
considered them to be a parliamentary privilege.
In the dispute, Chief Justice Edward Coke thought that the judges should mediate
between king and parliament. His insistence on "a higher law background," that is the
preference of common law (common right and reason) over an act of Parliament, had an
enormous effect on the future direction of law both in England and in the American
Colonies, where a supreme court could annul legislation or executive acts as contrary to a
constitution. The king could dissolve parliament, or call it "addled," but it had to be
recalled when the need arose once more to finance England's entry into European
conflict.
James tried hard to keep the peace in Europe. His daughter Princess Elizabeth married
Frederick the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. He also wished to marry his surviving son
Charles, to the Spanish princess Donna Maria, but the German Catholic League,
supported by Spain, drove the Protestant Frederick out of his lands. The Commons
wanted a war with Spain, and a new dispute arose as to the exercise of free speech in
Parliament when James resisted their efforts to discuss foreign policy.
To avoid war, Prince Charles visited Madrid to court the Infanta but returned humiliated
along with Villiers, now Duke of Buckingham, who urged immediate war. James then
turned to France to arrange a marriage between Charles and the French Catholic Princess
Henrietta Maria (James' oldest son, Prince Henry, had died in 1612). The Thirty Years'
War began with England's disastrous attempt to recover the Palatinate for Frederick and
Elizabeth. The scholarly and intelligent James, the most learned of all who sat on the
throne of England, so full of promise when he came to the throne, and so disappointed by
so many failures at the end of his reign, died in 1625. The failures on the Continent, and
in the struggle with Parliament continued in the reign of Charles l. The success of The
Authorized Version , however, remained a magnificent legacy of the James l, the
unfortunate monarch.
(4) Queen Anne (1702-14) The Foundations of Empire
It was evident during the reign of dull, gouty Anne that Britain was also fast becoming a
nation thoroughly Protestant, though the inevitable differences in worship continued.
Anne was an Anglican, a member of the Established Church of England. King James had
been forced to make a number of concessions to the Nonconformists (or Dissenters) in
order to win political support. Though the times were not yet ripe for complete religious
toleration, the Toleration Act of 1689 had broken the monopoly of English Protestantism
The rise of the Dissenters and the spread of Unitarianism accompanied the so-called
Scientific Revolution in England associated with the upsetting (to Churchmen)
discoveries of such men as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle. The Established Church no
longer played a major role in national politics. The accession of William had been
instrumental in helping sever that special relationship long enjoyed between Church and
Crown.
Though the quarrels within and without the Church continued, in an age noted for the
prolific rise in pamphleteering and electioneering chicanery, the time of Daniel Defoe
and Dean Swift and the intense and bitter political between Whigs and Tories, it was the
war with France that dominated Queen Anne's reign. William's accession had meant that
the island nation of England had become inextricably part of the Continent. The war
brought forth one of England's great military leaders, John Churchill, the husband of
Queen Anne's close friend Sarah.
Churchill succeeded King William as leader of the English and Dutch forces in the Grand
Alliance. Under his leadership as the Duke of Marlborough, England became the leading
military power in Europe for the first time since the Hundred Years' War. Though the
Dutch feared an invasion by France, Marlborough went ahead and attacked the French
army at Blenheim, a name that is remembered in England as one of the greatest victories
in its long history.
The annihilation of the French army at Blenheim was followed by the English capture of
Gibralter in 1704; another smashing victory at Ramillies was then followed by additional
successes at Oudenarde and Malplaquet. A grateful nation built Blenheim Palace for the
Duke (a sumptuous residence in which Winston Churchill, a direct descendant of John
Churchill, was born in 1874). The victorious Wellington was satirized by Scot John
Arbuthnot in his "The History of John Bull" (1712) that introduced the name John Bull as
a symbol of England.
England
and
the
New
World:
An
Expanding
Empire
In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht firmly established England's commercial and colonial
supremacy, for it gave her new possessions in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Minorca
as well as Gibralter and the sole right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies. Britain's
interests in the New World had begun early. An indication of its eventual triumph in
Virginia had been the founding of the College of William and Mary in 1693.
Success in colonizing North America had not come without its terrible costs, yet in
retrospect it seemed extremely rapid. It is a sobering fact that the first voyage of
Christopher Columbus took place only 20 years after Scotland had finally acquired the
Orkneys and Shetlands from Norway. Columbus had visited England in 1477 to try to
obtain backing for a voyage to discover a new route to the Indies but had been turned
down (his brother Bartholomew was also rejected by the English Court in 1485). Yet
only five years after Columbus had landed in the Bahamas, John Cabot reached Labrador
aboard the Matthew. His 35 day voyage marks the beginning of British domination of
North America.
In 1496, John and Sebastian Cabot, sailing from Bristol, took their little fleet along the
coasts of what were later called Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Some English scholars
maintain that the name America comes from Richard Amerik, a Bristol merchant and
Customs officer, who helped finance the Cabot voyages. The elder Cabot recorded the
vast fishing grounds.
Interest in finding new lands may have been initiated by the publication of "Utopia" by
Thomas More in 1515, that described the benefits of a new land. It must certainly have
been influenced by the Spanish discoveries of maize, tobacco and the potato, all of which
they introduced in Europe, along with oranges from the Orient. Another deciding factor
was the planting of the French flag in the Gaspe Peninsular, Canada and on lands along
the St. Lawrence River, by Jacques Cartier in 1534. Much of Britain's investment in
North America may have been simply to prevent French influence.
Further interest in the New World was surely sparked by the explorations of Franciscan
missionary de Niza who returned to Spain in 1539 with glowing accounts of the "seven
cities of Cibola." One year later, Dutchman Jo Greenlander discovered that early settlers
had been in what was later named Greenland. Hernando de Soto landed at Tampa Bay
and Coronado explored the American southwest. In 1541 Pizarro completed his conquest
of Peru and de Soto discovered the Mississippi. Perhaps the most consequential discovery
was that of the silver mine at Potosi by the Spanish in 1545 that fueled the commercial
activity of Europe during the following century.
The efforts of Spain and Portugal in the same area also spurred further English interest in
the Americas. It was especially so since the writings of Welshman John Dee had claimed
the New World for Elizabeth I as Queen of an Atlantic Empire, and successor to Madoc,
a Welsh prince purported to have landed in what later became known as Mobile Bay in
the 12th century and whose followers, it was claimed, intermingled with the Mandans in
the upper Mississippi Valley.
England's own era of exploration, initiated by the Cabots, was expanded by the journeys
of Hugh Willoughby to seek a Northeast Passage to China and the spice trade. He
reached Moscow by way of the White Sea and Archangel in 1553. As a result, the
Muscovy Company was founded by Richard Chancellor to trade with Russia in 1555.
One year later, in what many non-smokers now consider "a year of infamy," tobacco
seeds reached Europe, brought from Brazil by a Franciscan monk.
In 1561, Jean Nicot (who gave his name to nicotine) sent seeds and powdered leaves of
the tobacco plant to France. Such imports to Europe seized the imagination of John
Hawkins who began his career of high-jacking Portuguese and Spanish ships in 1562.
Hawkins' exploits, along with similar exploits of his fellow mariners, led to England's
entering the Slave Trade despite Queen Elizabeth's dramatic speech against it (she later
took shares in his company and even lent him a ship).
Tobacco found its way to England when John Hawkins brought some home from Florida
in 1565. Three years later, David Ingram explored from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada
and reported finding vines with grapes as large as a man's thumbs. A great boost to
exploration then came from the publication, in 1569, of the Flemish geographer
Mercator's projection map of the world which represented the meridians of longitude by
equally spaced parallel lines and which greatly increased the accuracy of navigational
maps. English mariner Francis Drake then undertook his daring voyage of 1572 to
capture the Spanish treasure fleet returning from Peru, a feat surpassed by his even
greater haul one year later.
English exploration of North America continued in 1576 when Martin Frobisher
discovered Baffin's Land and Frobisher's Bay on his search for a Northwest Passage to
China. Two years later Queen Elizabeth gave a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert to
"inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not in the actual
possession of any Christian prince." The search for the famed Northwest Passage
continued unabated.
In 1580, Drake arrived back in Plymouth having circumnavigated the globe in the
Pelican, renamed the Golden Hinde after the gallant ship had passed through the Straits
of Magellan. Drake was then knighted by the Queen after capturing the richest prize ever
taken at sea. Gilbert then tried unsuccessfully to create the first English settlement in the
New World at Newfoundland. The Virginia colony was established in 1584 at Roanoke
by Sir Walter Raleigh. One year later, Chesapeake Bay was discovered by Ralph Lane
and Davis Strait by John Davis.
In 1585, the first oriental spice to be grown in the New World, Jamaican ginger, arrived
in Europe. In 1586, Sir Richard Cavendish became the third man to circumnavigate the
globe when his ship the Desire reached England after a voyage of over two years. During
the same year, Raleigh planted potatoes on his estate near Cork, Ireland; and Virginia
Dare was born on Roanoke Island, the first English child to be born in North America.
In 1594, after deaths from scurvy in the Royal Navy had become epidemic, Sir Richard
Hawkins recommended orange and lemon juice as antiscorbutics. It eventually became
standard practice in the Royal Navy to add citrus juice to the diet (conquest of scurvy
played a big part in England's later domination of the seas). When the Portuguese closed
its spice market in Lisbon to Dutch and English traders, the Dutch East India Company
was created to obtain spices directly from the Orient.
English exploration of the New World continued, receiving a bonus when Richard
Hakluyt produced a recognizable map in 1599. In 1600, the Honourable East India
Company was chartered to make annual voyages to the Indies and to challenge Dutch
control of the spice trade. The smoking of tobacco became fashionable in London this
year. When the first spice fleet leaving for the Orient arrived at the Cape of Good Hope,
James Lancaster dosed his sailors with lemon juice to make them the only crew in the
entire. Coffee joined tobacco as a London fad.
In 1602, English sailor Bartholomew Gosnold explored what was later to be called "New
England." He brought sassafras back, but left smallpox behind to decimate many of the
native peoples, mistakenly called "Indians." After James I had made peace with Spain in
1604, he re-directed England's efforts at colonizing North America, and the Plymouth
and London Companies sent ships and colonists. Jamestown, Virginia was founded in
1607. During the same year, Henry Hudson sought a route to China and sailed round the
Eastern Shore of Greenland to reach Spitzbergen. In 1610, Hudson's ship Discovery
reached the strait later to be known as Hudson Bay, Canada.
In 1612, John Smith published his "Map of Virginia" describing the colony, which
eventually managed to produce an extremely profitable export commodity in tobacco. In
1614, Smith also explored the New England coast and renamed a native village, calling it
Plymouth. Next, when he ventured to a latitude of over 77 degrees north to seek the
Northwest Passage, William Baffin sailed farther north than any other explorer for the
next 236 years. In 1616, John Smith published his "Description of New England",
providing a further impetus to would-be settlers.
In 1618, the first legislative body in the New World convened at Jamestown, the Virginia
House of Burgesses. This was also a year in which small pox ravaged the native
population of the English North American colonies, including Chief Powhatan. One year
later, the first black slaves arrived in Virginia, and the first American day of
Thanksgiving was celebrated on the English ship Margaret at the mouth of the James
River.
In 1620, the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod with 100 Pilgrims and two children born at
sea. The Plymouth Colony celebrated its first Thanksgiving Day, but the colonists did not
entertain their Indian guests at the dinner until the following year. In 1628 John Endicott
arrived as the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thousands more English
settlers went to the American colonies during the reign of Charles l. In 1632, Maryland
received its charter by a grant from King Charles to Cecil Calvert. Four years later,
Providence was founded as a Rhode Island settlement by Roger Williams, and Harvard
College came into existence.
In 1639 the first Smithfield hams arrived in England from Virginia, now starting to
thrive, and the following year, Massachusetts Bay Colony began to export codfish. In the
West Indies, sugar cane was grown for profit, supplying Britain with a substitute for
honey, now rare after the dissolution of the monasteries, which had produced most of
British honey for centuries. The manufacture of Rum from sugar cane was established in
Barbados. Britain began to concentrate on the West Indies and the Americas, leaving the
East Indies to the Dutch, but competing with France (and to some extent the Dutch) for
North
America.
In 1649, after the defeat of the armies of King Charles l, many Royalists emigrated to
Virginia. In 1655, Admiral Penn captured Jamaica from the Spanish. In 1664, Amsterdam
was renamed New York after its capture from the Dutch. A year later, the New Jersey
Colony was founded by English colonists. The Treaty of Westminster of 1674 returned
New York to England, freeing the English to expand their trade and grow prosperous on
it.
In 1681, Pennsylvania had its beginning in the land grant given to Admiral Penn's son,
the Quaker William, who wished to call it New Wales, but settled for the Welsh word for
head (Pen) and the Latin for woods (Sylvania). The Frame of Government for the new
colony contained an explicit clause that permitted amendments, an innovation that made
it a self-adjusting constitution, as the US Constitution itself later came to be.
In a move that has been ignored by many historians, England readmitted Roman
Catholics to the army in 1686, thus allowing many thousands of Irish peasants and Scots
Highlanders to join the forces that would be needed to expand and control England's
ever-growing empire. In 1696, William Dampier published his general survey of the
Pacific, "Voyage Round the World." One year later, Parliament opened the slave trade to
British merchants who began their triangular trade from taking rum from New England to
Africa, slaves to the Caribbean and sugar and molasses to New England. In 1698,
Dampier sailed on his Pacific expedition to explore the West Coast of Australia.
Further emigration from England to the American Colonies was encouraged during
Queen Anne's reign by the 1702 publication of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi
Americana," a history of New England designed to show that God was at work in the
colonies. A French-Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, however, was a precursor
of the later war to come. Queen Anne, of a most "ordinary" character, and the last
monarch of the ill-fortuned House of Stuart, died in 1714. She was succeeded by
Hanover's Prince George Louis, a great-grandson of James I. During her reign,
developments had taken place in England that were to make it the world's leading
industrial power. But first came political union with Scotland.
The
Act
of
Union
with
Scotland:
May
1,
1707
James II's daughter Anne, whose last child, Princess Anne did not survive; thus there was
no direct successor to the throne. London was afraid that unless a formal, political union
with Scotland was firmly in place, as distinct from the existing dynastic union (which had
been established with the accession of the Stuart James VI of Scotland as James I of
England in 1603), the country might choose James Edward Stuart, Anne's Catholic halfbrother.
The English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701 to ensure that Anne's heir
was to be the Electress Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James l. Consequently,
when William died in 1702, he was succeeded by Queen Anne, a true daughter of the last
legitimate monarch, James II. On William's deathbed he had recommended union with
Scotland. In 1703, the Scottish Parliament passed the Act of Security that provided for a
Protestant Stuart succession upon Anne's death, unless the Scottish government was freed
from "English or any foreign influence."
The English Parliament responded with an Alien's Act that prohibited all Scottish imports
to England unless the Scots accepted the Hanoverian succession. When union was
strongly urged by Lord Godolphin, the Scots reluctantly acquiesced in order to gain the
advantage of free trade with the new British common market; the Act of Union merely
cemented what had been a growing interdependence between the two countries. Union
with Scotland became official on May 1, 1707 by act of Parliament. There were
advantages for both countries in the Union, seen in retrospect as an act of policy, not of
affection.
Sometimes overlooked while discussing the reasons for Scotland's agreeing to the union
is the terrible beating taken by that unfortunate nation in the Darien affair. The Scottish
Parliament's grandiose scheme to finance a rival to the East India Company and its
attempt to found a colony on the isthmus of Darien, or Panama, met with hostility from
the English Parliament. Disease and Spanish interference brought a quick and sad end to
the scheme, in which practically the whole Scottish nation had shown interest. Much of
the blame was cast upon "Dutch William" and his English advisors, but Scottish
mercantile interests were forced by the experience to find a workable solution. Perhaps it
would be better, they reasoned, to give up a separate and divergent economic policy in
favor of a merger that would be of equal benefit to both Parliaments. Not all on either
side were happy with the Union that many historians see as a result of "judicious
bribery". The mercantile interests in Edinburgh did not represent the whole nation. The
people of the Highlands certainly were not consulted in the matter. In particular, the
nation had to balance the loss of its ancient independence against the need to open itself
up to a wider world and greater opportunities than it could provide by itself. For its part,
England gained a much-needed security, for no longer could European powers use
Scotland as a base for an attack on its southern neighbor.
Scotland kept its legal system and the Presbyterian Kirk, but gave up its Parliament in
exchange for 45 seats in the House of Commons and 16 seats in the House of Lords. The
Act proclaimed that there would be "one United Kingdom by the name of Great Britain"
with one Protestant ruler, one legislature and one system of free trade. The Act of Union
settled the boundaries of a state known as Great Britain whose people, despite their
differences in traditions, cultures and languages, were held together simply because they
felt different from people in other countries.
The people of Britain also felt superior; they were constantly being compared with those
of other countries in Europe as being better fed, better housed and better governed. Part
of the feeling of superiority came from the acquisition of so much overseas territory; part
came from government propaganda and the need to suppress dissent, part came from
technical advances that already heralded the coming of both the agricultural and
industrial revolutions.