1.

BEFORE ROMANS IBERIAN AND CELT BRITAIN

it was probably just after the glacial epoch that Britain was first inhabited by homo sapiens; it was then still connected
to the Continent by the land-bridge;
when Britain became an island it was soon a tempting place for invasions having rich soil and moderate climate; iron
and other metals, timber, fresh water;
the earliest people who came to Britain were Neolithic people (3000-2000 BC),
then Megalithic people built great stone circles (which served either as temples or astronomical observatories, or
both), - like Stonehenge in Salisbury Plain (built 1800-1400 BC)
there pre-Celt inhabitants of the land, dark-haired, who we can call Iberians; most of them remained in remote and
hostile regions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland;
the Celts, tall men, fair and red-haired, entered Britain mostly in two waves: 800 BC and 600BC; they imposed
themselves as aristocracy on previous inhabitants of Britain, and the races mixed;
like the Iberians, the Celts did not develop any state organisation, remaining in tribes;
we dont know much about their religious beliefs: in spirits, fairies etc.; religion was organised by their priests called
the Druids;
the descendants of Iberians and Celts now live mostly in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall;
2. ROMAN TIMES
the Roman occupation took place between the coming of the Celts and the Saxons (delaying the latter by 200 years);
the Celts, later the Saxons and the Danes came to slaughter the inhabitants and settle in their place, but the Romans
came to exploit and govern by the right of superior civilisation;
the Romans did not leave as much in Britain as they did in the Gaul (France), they did not latinise it;
the first Roman attempt to invade Britain was made by Julius Caesar in 54 BC, but his expedition was no great success;
the actual conquest of the island took place under the Emperor Claudius, AD 43, the country was quite easily submitted
to Romans, partly because of internal struggles and better organisation of Roman army;
the exception to this easy submission was the rising of Boadicea (Boudicca); the Celtic queen, AD 61; according to
tradition, 70,000 men were killed in the uprising; she committed suicide (?); now is a symbol, a statue in London
the Romans did not bother much to conquer mountainous regions of the country; they were confined to England and
Wales;
the Romans improved the country; they built towns (developing London) where they kept garrisons called castra;
many Roman garrisons may be recognised by the names: Chester, Manchester, Chichester, Doncaster, Gloucester,
Exeter;
Roman towns had defensive walls, a forum, baths, market place, temple and theatres;
They built defensive walls from sea to sea in the north: Antoninus Wall in Scotland, and Hadrians Wall (partly exists)
which runs from Carlisle to Newcastle (built 123 AD);
- the Romans had to leave Britain in AD 410 when Rome was threatened with an invasion of Germanic peoples;
the three things that the Romans left:
- the traditional importance of certain new city sites (esp. London founded in a very attractive site on the river
Thames)
- the Roman roads no one made any more hard roads until the 18th cent.; the roads increased the speed of Saxon,
Danish and Norman conquests; aided the unification of England by Saxon and Norman kings;
- Welsh Christianity
However, the Latin life of the cities, the villas, the arts, the language, the political organisation all that has gone;
3. ANGLO-SAXON INVASION
- the first attacks of Anglo-Saxon raiders (pirates) from the continent began around 250 AD; it started a number of
waves of Nordic invasions (people from Scandinavia, present day Denmark and Germany Germanic peoples) that
lasted until 1020 AD;
- at the beginning the east coast of Great Britain was fortified, even the Romans built a fleet to protect the coast, but
soon the situation grew worse, especially after the Roman withdrawal
- the Nordic invasions are more important than Roman conquest and even than the later Norman conquest there were
few Romans and Norman-French people settled mainly in aristocracy; the Nordic conquest had more serious permanent
results as it was accompanied by a general displacement of Celtic by Nordic people from richest agricultural parts of the
island;
- in the first wave there were three main Nordic peoples:
- Jutes (northern Denmark) established their kingdom in Kent
- Saxons (northern Germany) kingdoms in Sussex, Wessex and Essex

- Angles (southern Denmark) most numerous landed in East Anglia, kingdoms of Deira, Mercia, Bernicia,
Northumbria;
(map Trevelyan 41)
- about 613 the new country, consisting of many small states (Northumbria was the largest) became to be known as
Engle-land or England (because the majority were Angles their dialect gradually became the common language of all
people);
- the Anglo-Saxons had a different form of government more limited form of despotism, a very primitive form of
democracy based on tribal customs tie of kinship between all members of the clan; war leaders became kings; the
king had an advisory council Witan and every village a moot meeting place where local affairs were discussed; the
law was customary and became known as Common Law
- although the Anglo-Saxons used a Runic alphabet, their culture was lower than that of Romanised Britons; an orderly
Roman-Celtic world began to fall into chaos in the 4th century AD; life and property became less and less secure
- the Anglo-Saxons were bloody-minded pirates rejoicing to destroy the civilisation higher than their own and later
attempting to settle on its land themselves;
- the early Anglo-Saxons were not city-dwellers: they destroyed the Roman cities and villas instead of living in them;
- another general result of this conquest was destroying the peace and unity of Roman province frequent wars within
the country
- also wars with the Welsh, who were removed from their best lands;
- Anglo-Saxons were rural people lived in villages, cultivated the land, fishermen, smiths, weavers,
- lived in houses called halls; one room, hearth (fire) in the middle, smoke coming through the hole in the thatched roof;
tables, beds, places for domestic animals in the halls; small windows in the upper parts;
- heathens names of their gods are registered in English names of the weekdays; fatalists the Fate called Wyrd;
melancholic; sad poetry (alliterative) stories of Germanic heroes
- the times of Anglo-Saxon conquest were depicted by Bede:
BEDE: commonly known as the Venerable Bede (Czcigodny Beda), (c. 672 735) was a monk at the Northumbrian
monastery. He is well known as an author and scholar, whose best-known work is Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The father of English History"
history from the time of Caesar to the date of its completion (731)
4. CHRISTIANISATION
- after the legalisation of Christian religion in the Roman Empire (Constantine, 313), there was quite a number of
Christians in Britain: hermits and missionaries; their names commemorated in many place names (St. Ive, St. Endelion);
- when the Anglo-Saxon invasions began, it was for the British Celts not only the problem of national survival, but also
a problem of defence of Christianity associated with higher civilisation of Rome;
- the leader of British against the Anglo-Saxon; became the symbol of Christianity, the defender of faith: Artorius called
Arthur;
Arthur, king of the Britons: important figure in the mythology of Great Britain; the central character in Arthurian
legends
presented by Welsh chronicles as victorious leader; the picture of Our Lady on his shield; his victory over the English at
Baton Hill (516) stopped the English for about 50 years;
- some people believe that the mythical hero Arthur is based on the real war leader (not necessarily a king) of RomanoBritish origin;
- another school of thought believes that Arthur is a half-forgotten Celtic deity devolved into a personage;
- Arthur first appears in Welsh literature since 6th cent.
- he later appears in medieval romances (starting from AD 1133, Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a manuscript called
the Historia Regum Britanniae); renewed interest in the Arthurian Legend in Norman times (possibly anti-Saxon
reasons)
- in these versions, which gained popularity beginning in the 12th century, Arthur gathered the Knights of the Round
Table (Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and others). At his court, most often held at Camelot, could sometimes be found
the wizard Merlin. Arthur's knights engaged in fabulous quests, famously including one for the Holy Grail. Other
stories from the Celtic world came to be associated with Arthur, such as the tale of Tristan and Isolde. In the late prose
romances the love affair between Arthur's champion, Lancelot, and the Queen, Guinevere, becomes the central reason
for the fall of the Arthurian world;
- Christianity was strange to the Nordic mind: it taught charity, humility, self-discipline, spiritual concern, soul-body
distinction, fear and hope about the next life;
- Nordic religion was the worship of Odin and Thor, warriors religion; advocating manliness, generosity, loyalty, rough
honesty; sacrifice of cattle, horses or even slaves; not religion of dread, it taught not to be afraid of death; fatalistic,
even gods were in the hands of Fate (Wyrd);

- the first place where Christianity flourished on the British Isles was Ireland, which was baptised by St. Patrick
(Romanised Briton missionary probably Welsh) date not certain 432-460 (?);
- then the Irish began colonising Western Scotland and going there as missionaries; most important St. Columba
landed on Iona island and founded there a church and monastery in 563;
- later the Scoto-Irish Christianity managed to convert Northumbria;
- the other wing of Christian invasion to the island: the south: 597 the Roman mission to England led by St. Augustine
lands in Kent (a tool of the pope Gregory the Great); Benedictine monks
- often Nordic kings were persuaded by their Christian wives to convert to Christianity e.g. king Ethelbert (wife
Bertha), later founding a church in Canterbury;
- then Christianity started spreading into England; e.g. Paulinus converted King Edwin of Northumbria; later replaced
by the mission of Aidan from Iona;
- it began the dispute between the Celtic and Roman churches (different church organisations, different holiday dates
etc.); it was resolved by the Synod of Whitby (664) summoned by Northumbrian king Oswy; giving Rome rights as the
inheritor of St. Peter;
- this decision to adhere to Roman system of religion gave impetus to the movement towards racial unity, kingly and
feudal power, centralisation, systematic administration, legislation and taxation against tribal politics;
- subsequent growth of church organisation, many parish churches; difficult to distinguish clearly between the Church
and the State;
- Christianity also meant for England an advance in culture; it brought the Latin alphabet (easily adopted to the English
language, only a few symbols added);
- the alphabet made the school education possible,
- the Bible opened to people the heritage of Christian and Oriental culture;
- interestingly, until the middle of 7th cent. main power in Saxon England was in the North (which never claimed the
leadership later, perhaps until the industrial revolution); it was only later, after the coming of the Danes that the city of
London became the leader of England
5. THE DANISH INVASION
- a hundred years after settling in Britain, Nordic people forgot their sea-faring skills, devoted themselves to farming
life;
- the invaders came actually both from Denmark as well as from Scandinavian fiords;
- the Vikings were called sons of the creek landed on an inlet of water near the sea, built a fort and began to raid a
country;
- they were strong, violent men, looking for adventure, bloodshed, gold, drink and women their raids were the result
of rumours of rich west as well as infertile lands and polygamy producing many landless solitary young men;
- in their raids, the Vikings went as far as Piraeus or Constantinople;
- around 787 the Danes first invaded Northumbria; purely destructive raids;
- around 867 they organised so-called Great Army and after defeating Northumbrian, divided it among themselves;
- 871 Danish chief Guthrum sailed up the Thames and tried to conquer Wessex but was opposed by the new young king
Alfred Alfred the Great; Alfred bought peace for 5 years, later was attacked and defeated but managed to escape and
reorganise the army
- 878 Alfred defeats the Danes in the battle of the Valley of White Horse; knowing he was unable to drive the Danes out
of England he signs a Treaty of Wedmore, establishing Danelaw (Northumbria, Eastern Mercia, leaving Wessex
free), area where the Danes may settle and live according to their customs, but accepting Christianity;
- Alfred well used the years of peace until his death (901); reorganised the army, created the navy, established the rules
of law, introduced school system, many books translated from Latin
- only northern part of Northumbria (north of the Tyne) was not conquered by the Vikings; it remained the Saxon
kingdom of Northumberland (for a few centuries between England and Scotland);
- around 860 Kenneth MacAlpine became the King of the united Picts and Scots in the north;
- Alfreds son, Edward the Elder started the re-conquest of the Danelaw, it was completed by his successor Athlestan,
- 973, Edgar, a grandson of Alfred, was crowned as the king of the whole united England, which consisted of Wessex
and also included Mercia and Northumbria (Danelaw);
- it was easy to incorporate the Danes from Danelaw as they were, just as Anglo-Saxons, of Nordic origin, and did not
come to Britain to establish their kingdom;
- the life in late Anglo-Saxon England marked the breakdown of the tribal and clan social organisation, rise of feudal
system, together with some specialisation of social functions;

- there was a distinction between a peasant and a warrior; below the king there was a class of thegns (thanes) feudal
lords whose function was to protect their freeholders, thralls and serfs in times of frequent wars, they worked for him;
- this differentiation led far from equality but enabled settled order, civilisation and wealth;
- every man must have a lord to be answerable in court for his misdoings (previously it was his kinsmen);
- the kings had actually little control over thegns in local matters, needed them only for national defence
- in general the prestige of the Crown rose when the Kings of Wessex became the Kings of all England
- definitely some decentralising feudal tendencies, but they were to be postponed until much later;
- United England was administered in four or six Earldoms
- about the end of 10th cent. the second wave of Danish invaders came to England in the times of an incompetent king
Ethelred the Redeless (Unready);
- they obviously did not attack Danelaw, but the south of England Wessex
- Ethelred was not eager to fight the Danes but he preferred buying peace with so-called Danegeld: it began to be paid
in Alfreds times, and amounted to extraordinary sums, contributing to the decline of English lower classes (heavy
taxation);
- soon after Ethelreds death there was a struggle for the throne between his son Edmund Ironside and Canute, son of
Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard; Edmund soon died and the Saxon Witan had to choose his successor so they chose
Canute (1016); who actually proved to be a fortunate choice for a king
- this was the example of the elective character of English monarchy at that time; Canutes successors, Harold and
William the Conqueror, had none of them legal title to the throne;
- during the times of later Danish wars the role of London as a city rose immensely; it was fortified and colonised by
Alfred, in times of Ethelred it was centre of English resistance; it was initially opposing Canute, but later he turned out
to be a good ruler also for London;
- London was an important port, and Danish rule increased the safety of sea trade (pirates) in the North Sea;
- the Danish merchants became the leading citizens of London;
- Canute at first was a foreign conqueror in England, holding his throne by the sword;
- since 1020 he began the policy of reconciling the two races on a basis of equality and also started his alliance with the
Church;
- both Anglo-Saxon and Danish were official languages of the kings court
- he established a navy and a professional army of housecarls
- Canute could have established a strong Nordic empire (England, Norway, Denmark) but he died at forty (1035) and
his empire soon dissolved for lack of adequate strong successors;
- after Canutes death his kingdom broke up between two sons; they both died soon and the Witan gave the throne to
Edward the Confessor, the descendent of Ethelred, who was brought up in French Normandy;
- Edward was a childless, pious king who was mainly interested in building Westminster Abbey (he was buried there
and his throne is still used for the purposes of coronation)
- Edwards interest was no longer directed towards the Nordic Empire but rather to Normandy, which resulted in
preparing way for the Norman Conquest and Britains long link with France
6. THE NORMAN CONQUEST
- before, the influences that governed England came from Scandinavia, but dating from the accession of Edward the
Confessor (1042), for the next hundred years they were to come from Normandy;
- the Norman aristocracy were Scandinavian by origin (part of Normandy was similar to Danelaw in England), and kept
the Viking energy in colonisation and war, but become converts to Latin culture and Christianity;
- they had one quality which Scandinavians and English lacked the instinct for political unity and administrative
consolidation;
- the Norman State established by Danes and Norsemen was different from other Viking states, and also different from
French Paris-based state; most of peasants were French, Scandinavians included fishermen, merchants and aristocracy
- new method of fighting: instead of fighting on foot with the battle-axe, they fought from the horse-saddle with the
spear and sword, cavalry; more private castles
- after the French model, Norman feudalism was strictly territorial, fixed and heritable
- on the top was the Duke, then the barons, under each of them the knights and under them peasants: serfs bound to the
soil and to his lord who owned the soil; they were not able to be transferred, unlike in England, which resulted in more
stable and better organised structure;
- the barons owed military service to the Duke on account of the lands they held from him (unlike in England where
thegns did so by personal or national obligation); the knights had a similar obligation to barons;
- the power of the Duke was very strong, he had his own administrative and tax officers; the power was supported
strongly by the Church

- the Normans, nonetheless, were not so much civilised: not learned, barbarian in treating subjects and enemies;
- after Canutes death his kingdom broke up between two sons; they both died soon and the Witan gave the throne to
Edward the Confessor (1042), the descendent of Ethelred, who was brought up in French Normandy, and was more of a
French monk than an English king;
- Edward was a childless, pious king who prepared the way for the Norman Conquest and Britains long link with
France;
- Edward brought many Normans into high positions in English State and Church (a number of bishops);
- he moved the kings capital from Winchester to London;
- Edwards England was a weak country divided into six great Earldoms with powerful rulers, the most powerful Earl
Godwin (Wessex, his daughter married Edward)
- 1066 Edward dies, and Harold, Godwins son (blood of Scandinavian kings) is elected king;
- but his right to the throne was disputed and in the autumn of 1066 England was attacked in two separate invasions: by
Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, and William, Duke of Normandy (distant relative to the Ethelred the old king),
though bastard;
- William claimed that once Edward named him as his successor (though last Edwards will was that Harold should take
over)
- William prepared the way for his invasion of England by diplomacy and propaganda in many countries;
- William had no power under feudal law to call out his vassals to a foreign campaign for longer than 40 days; but many
of barons from Normandy, Brittany and Flanders voluntarily engaged in it;
- the power of the army lay not in size but in training; there were at most 12,000 men, half of which cavalry; that they
could conquer a country of 1.5 million people tells about political and military backwardness of the English system
- the element of luck that William had was that England was attacked simultaneously in the north (Harald Hardrada,
King of Norway) and Harold, after a victorious battle in the north (Stamford Bridge) had to rush to the southern coast,
where the Norman landed;
- the battle took place near Hastings (14 October 1066); two armies represented different systems; Harolds
housecarls were infantry (sometimes on horseback) fighting with battle-axes, William had cavalry fighting with spear
and sword, also archers with bows;
- in the evening the battle ended, won by Duke William
- the battle had surprisingly hardly any effect in terms of resistance: earls, thegns, bishops and sheriffs thought that, like
under Canute, they will retain their privileges and wanted to make easy peace with the conqueror;
- on Christmas Day 1066, in Westminster William the Conqueror was crowned as lawful king of England (heir of
Edward the Confessor);
- the conquest, however, had different effects from previous invasions: it was an invasion of a group of barons who
attacked the country to divide it among themselves and draw income from the land and work of Anglo-Saxon peasants;
- in 1069 the Dukes of Mercia and Northumbria rebelled against William but were soon overpowered;
- the last opposition was defeated by William in 1071 siege of the Isle of Ely (Fens marshland)
7. NORMAN INSTITUTIONS ESTABLISHED
- the conquest resulted in replacing old Anglo-Saxon form of feudalism with the new, Norman one (described before);
- it put an end to the separation of the country into northern Danelaw and southern Wessex;
- the Danish freeman became the villein of the manor (subject of the lord);
- the English earls and thegns were replaced by the Norman barons
- new administrative divisions of the country; old English shire replaced by Norman County;
- establishing a rigorously feudal system, William prevented England from falling into general European anarchy of
political feudalism
- he prepared the ground for the gradual development of monarchical bureaucracy far from despotic power
- William swore to observe old Saxon laws;
- it was a duty of a feudal king to consult his main tenants (who held land directly from him); it gave rise to royal
Council or Court of William, which was the predecessor of the Parliament;
- in 1086 William organised the Domesday Survey, preparing the Domesday Book collection of facts made for fiscal
purpose an inventory of land, people, animals, crops etc.
- in place of old Danegeld, the Norman King and Council imposed a heavy tax sum on each shire (county);
- obviously taxation strengthened the royal power
- William brought his won bishops and imposed them on the Church;
- four centuries of splendid ecclesiastical architecture began: the Norman builders replaced old Saxon churches with
more magnificent structures;

- the compulsory celibacy of priests was introduced at the bidding of the Pope;
- one other reform of the Conqueror was the division of the spiritual from the secular courts; this enabled the
development of English Common Law (it would not be possible with Roman Church courts of law);
- William the Conquerors successor, William Rufus, claimed the right to appoint bishops but often failed to do so in
order to draw income from vacant bishops seats;
- he was not as prudent monarch as his father, ruthless and despotic;
- Rufus was generally hated and killed while hunting
- Rufus brother, Henry I, seized the throne, although it belonged to his brother Robert, who was on a crusade a cause
for war;
- Henry renounced the power of appointing bishops, giving it to the Pope; although he still had the tactical right of
choice and was officially their liege;
- the final outcome of the Norman Conquest was the making of the English language;
- the barons were French-speaking, so was the court influence of French on English language (visible now)
- the Anglo-Saxon tongue, the language of Alfred and Bede was exiled from the hall, from court and cloister and
despised as peasants jargon; it almost ceased to be the written language;
- the gentry talked French and the clergy talked Latin;
- because the English language was spoken by plain people for 3 centuries, its grammar easily simplified
- at the same time, the vocabulary became enriched by the French; esp. in words relating to war, politics, justice,
religion, cooking, hunting and art;
- improved in this way, English re-entered more learned society;
8. THE EARLY PLANTAGENET KINGS HENRY II
- the medieval period (Middle Ages) as distinct from Dark Ages may be said to begin with the First Crusade (1095);
growth from barbarism to civilisation; advance from despotic form of government, from Empire;
- the characteristic institution of the Middle Ages was feudalism; the unit of power was the barony, the manor; good
military, political and judicial organisation of power;
- after the death of Henry Is son, William, there was a period of anarchy under the reign of Stephen de Blois (Henrys
nephew);
- these were the years of a disputed succession between Stephen and Henrys daughter; the country was tortured by the
atrocities of feuds; simple people exhausted by work to build great stone castles;
- finally, Stephen was succeeded by son of Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet (1154), Henry Plantagenet;
- Henry II was actually French, came from Anjou (central France); he ruled both England as well as the western part of
France, up to the Pyrenees; England was his largest province; his court moved often from place to place;
- Henry developed strong monarchy;
- from Henry II times the stabilisation, progress of civilisation, arts, crafts and wealth: French-speaking Kings prevented
constant invasions like in Anglo-Saxon period and stopped private wars within the country (typical of Medieval
Europe);
- the knights were no longer called out for feudal military service: it was hard for a foreign king to take them to France
if he could do it only for 40 days; instead, the nobles started paying so-called shield-money for which the king bought
mercenaries (both English and foreign); actually some knights became mercenaries themselves, fighting in France,
Scotland and elsewhere
- the knight lost his interest in warfare, turning it to agricultural local matters: the predecessor of the figure of English
country gentleman;
- Henry II demolished many unlicensed stone castles and ordered the building of stone manor-houses; it had a walled
courtyard at the front and one gateway protected by moss; defensible against a mob or a troop on horse but nor really
against a serious siege (like a castle could be);
- the rule of primogeniture adopted for land, to avoid dividing it among the sons, all goes to the eldest son; younger sons
were sent to Europe to seek fortunes;
- the growth of a leisured class: more and more land under plough, increasing population of peasants, manorial system
of agriculture, disinheritance of younger brothers all increased the wealth of the knights: they spent the surplus of it on
comforts and amenities in manor-houses, on arts and minstrels in the hall, they engaged in sports, hunting etc.
- the wealth of the feudal classes caused the rise of towns, new middle classes engaged in manufacture and trade;
- the peasants: a freeman (freeholder) very few of them, proportionally; and villein (serf): half-slave, bound to the soil
by birth and inheritance, he and his family were sold together with the estate, could not migrate, had to work a number
of days a year on lords domain with his team of oxen to plough;

- villeins work was supervised by lords bailiff; but lord did not have any claim on him on some days, villein could
share the use and profit of village meadow, pasture, woodland and waste where they kept swine and geese;
- the lords took some care of villeins, counting on their willing work; they were to a certain extent protected by law; the
lords, e.g. could not raise the rent more than it was in the customary law;
- the system flourished in England, in the Domesday Book times (1086) there were about 1.5 million inhabitants, it
grew to the time of Black Death (1349) to 4 million;
- the serf was quite primitive, fearful, ignorant, superstitious;
- cattle and sheep were eaten only by lords, for peasants were pigs, fish and birds;
- apart from farming: carpenters (built houses and furniture), thatchers (roofs), blacksmiths, women and children were
spinsters (weavers); coarse clothing, often made of animal hide;
- peasants lived in primitive wooden-clay houses, often without windows and chimneys, surrounded by a small orchard,
garden or yard;
- West and North small hamlets of a few dozen farms; East and Middle England large villages of 200-500 people;
- lord, freeman and villein cultivated common field which had stripes belonging to each of them; one third of the field
lay fallow each year; (MANORIAL VILLAGE PICTURE: TREVELYAN p. 151);
- windmills uncommon, rather water mills;
- Henry II had a conflict with Thomas Becket: it was initially his friend and Henry appointed him Archbishop of
Canterbury, wanting to have some control over church through him;
- 1164 Henry proclaimed the Constitutions of Clarendon: they subjected churchmen to royal courts, forbade the church
to excommunicate people without kings permission and forbade the clergy to appeal to Rome;
- but Becket refused to accept the Constitutions and opposed Henry;
- Henrys anger inspired four knights to murder Becket in Canterbury Cathedral; (T.S. Eliot Murder in the Cathedral)
- Becket became a symbolical famous martyr, the state had to suffer problems; people started pilgrimages to Canterbury
(Chaucers Canterbury Tales);
- the greatest benefits that England had from Henry II was the legal reform;
- Henry recognised the old Anglo-Danish tradition of Common Law as a basis for legal system rather than Roman Law;
- the Common Law was reworked in the new fashion
- Henry II abolished old-fashioned barbarous methods of trial: compurgation (a man bringing his friends and family
to support his oath); ordeal by hot iron (heathen originally but later performed by priests); trial by battle;
- instead, he introduced the trial by jury
- established the Central Court of Justice and the Appeal Court;
9. THE CRUSADES, MAGNA CARTA, BEGINNINGS OF PARLIAMENT
- improved warfare: feudal cavalry; self-confidence of Christian feudal kingdoms; many victories and regaining power
(with Vikings, Spanish Moors, etc);
- the Crusades satisfied the demands for piety as well as for exploration and plunder;
- obviously, for England the Crusades were not a national movement (like e.g. for France), but for individual knights;
- First Crusade with little involvement of the English (1095-1099)
- Third Crusade English King took part in it, taking with him a number of knights; Richard Coeur de Lion (the LionHearted);
- the legend made Richard a model of chivalry; W. Scotts Ivanhoe
- he was not a successful king: negligent, absent, imposing heavy taxes on people;
- quarrels with fellow-crusaders led to imprisonment in Austria; high ransom had to be paid for him;
- leaving for a Crusade, Richard left the power in the hands of Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his
brother John (called John Lackland);
- John tried to take kings power when Richard was absent, but with the help of Hubert his treason was suppressed;
- after releasing him, Richard soon left England again and died wounded by some knight a few years later (1199)
- John became Richards successor;
- not a successful king, either; oppressed people through taxation;
- the reign of John was the time of the movement of constitutional resistance, first only the demands of the Barons, then
embracing all classes of freemen;
- John was actually the man causing this: false, selfish, cruel, but without a good political strategy;
- John started selling municipal independence to towns, they were becoming self-governed, London was the first city to
elect their own Mayor;
- John spent a lot on unsuccessful attempts to defend his French inheritance against the rising power of kings of France;
- Johns coalition with German allies was defeated in 1214 in the battle of Bouvines loss of Normandy; gradual loss of
connections with France;

- the Barons, the bishops (led by Archbishop Stephen Langton) and the thanes combined and forced king John to sign
Magna Carta Libertatum (the Great Charter of Liberties) 1215; a kind of constitution; but more technical and less
general than later constitutions
- it gave the church freedom of electing bishops
- the barons and the towns were granted participation in fixing the amount of taxes;
- no freeman could be imprisoned (or persecuted) unless tried by his peers and found guilty; - individual liberty
- a council of 25 barons appointed to see that the points of charter were obeyed: a rather clumsy instrument, but barons
did not have any idea of Parliamentary institutions;
- the idea behind barons changes was not to undermine Henry IIs feudalism, but to put it under common control;
- later Magna Carta became very symbolic liberty, roots of democracy etc.
- a year later king John died (1216)
- succeeded by Henry III; the struggle for the Charter, period of civil war and constitution-making;
- in 1258 a group of barons, led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, forced King Henry III to accept a new form
of government in which power was placed in the hands of a council of 15 members who were to supervise ministerial
appointments, local administration and the custody of royal castles. Parliament, which was to meet three times a year,
would monitor the performance of this council
- the document was called Provisions of Oxford and was significantly written not only in French and Latin but also in
English
- Henry III broke the agreement in 1261 and Civil war broke out; Simon de Montfort's army met and defeated the royal
forces at the Battle of Lewes in 1264;
- in 1265 Simon de Montfort became the leader of the Parliament; he summoned not only the knights but also
representatives from other social classes;
- but it was soon dissolved after Simon was killed at the battle of Evesham in 1265; (this time was later compared to
Cromwellian revolution)
10. EDWARDIAN TIMES: THE DEVELOPMENT OF INSTITUTIONS
- in the Middle Ages a human being in England had actually no human rights, personal freedom had to wait for the
Renaissance and Reformation which, freeing the villeins, gave basis for new economic system
- four new great institutions had increasing power in those times: A. the Universities; B. the orders of friars (travelling
monks), C. the lawyers incorporated in the Inns of Court, D. the Parliament (the House of Commons)
A. Universities
- Universities were the invention of Middle Ages, ancient learning and wisdom did not organise in this way
- for long centuries the Church had all the knowledge in cloisters and cathedrals;
- 12th century: new intentions for learning: partly owing to contacts set up by the Crusades (Arabic numerals
mathematics), partly to study of classical Latin and Greek philosophy and learning;
- universities spread in Europe in 12th and 13th centuries;
- partly because of the trouble between Henry II and the king of France, the English students at the University of Paris
were forbidden by Henry to study there (1167), they migrated to their native island and founded a University at Oxford
(not possible to establish an accurate date, since some teaching had already taken place there even in 11 th century)
- convenient location spot: easy access to the south and west of England; houses for lodging, taverns, etc.
- following the murder of two students accused of rape in 1209, the University was disbanded (leading to the foundation
of the University of Cambridge). In 1214, the University returned to Oxford
- Cambridge was a convenient spot as well: meeting-place of waterways and Roman roads from the north and east of
England;
- Scottish people went to Paris and Padua until they founded their own university at St. Andrews (1410)
- medieval Oxford and Cambridge were not for the upper classes: barons and knights considered themselves above
this education
- the villeins obviously were below it
- a typical student came from the middle-class: a yeoman (farmer owning his ground), craftsman, tradesman; he studied
from the age of 14 to 21;
- university education opened the path to promotion in the Church and also to become a civil servant, secretary of a
nobleman, physician, architect or lawyer;
- the organisation of Universities depended on Colleges
B. Friars
- coming from the continent in the 13th cent.; two orders: Dominicans and Franciscans;
- made a great religious revival among the poor

- they addressed the poorest, the most neglected, the diseased, those who were not sufficiently provided for by the
parish system
- before the friars, religion was addressed to more well-off, especially sacraments, friars made them more available
- the movement connected with monasteries limited Gods garden to the area behind the monastery walls;
- the theory was that friars could not hold any property; in practice, they had some libraries and churches;
- in the 14th century the friars were considered enemies by the parish churches;
- in the 14th and 15th centuries money-lending passed into English hands as a result of the expulsion of the Jews
- the Jews came to England after William the Conqueror; they were used by the king and barons to borrow money for
interest; this practice was forbidden by the Christian church;
- the only protector of the Jews was the king, they were otherwise hated, especially for their fortunes, often suffered
horrible pogroms
- Edward I drove the Jews out of England (~1290)
- money-lending business passed into the hands of the Flemings and Italians, later of the English capitalist;
C. Legal reform
- Edward I has been called the English Justinian (Roman emperor who codified the law)
- under his reign the institutions of the medieval state began to flourish;
- the years of Edward I saw the beginning of Statute Law: the legal-minded king passed many Statutes through his
Parliament;
- the Statutes were new, changed the substance of the law; before: old law, common law, Anglo-Danish, customary,
unwritten; feudal law, customary; case law made by decisions of famous royal judges;
- the Statutes mostly defined the feudal land law
- furthermore, Edward was responsible for defining the law courts;
- the courts of Common Law were manned by secular people; new class of people, educated at Universities;
- as the English Universities developed Colleges, the lawyers built their Inns of Court; they grouped their halls, libraries
and dwelling places in one place, halfway between the commercial centre of London and the political capital at
Westminster;
D. Parliament
- Englands Parliament was not a fruit of any revolution but a gradual development;
- during the times of three Edwards the Parliament acquired something like its present form
- after the experiences of de Montfort, Edward I saw in frequent national gatherings the essence of government
- Edwards object was not to limit the royal power, but to make it more efficient by keeping in tough with the life of the
governed;
- around 1295 he accepted the composition of Model Parliament, the complete image of the nation: barons, bishops,
2 members chosen by each city, shire and diocese)
- the Parliament was not divided into 2 houses, the House of Commons originated in the times of Edward III;
- no taxation without representation motto; one of Edwardian purposes was collecting money for his wars with
Scotland and France;
- the king also used the Parliament to check the misdeeds of local officials; people could bring petitions and complaints
11. IRELAND, SCOTLAND, WALES (EDWARDIAN TIMES): SAXONS AND NORMANS VS. THE CELTS
Ireland
- before: the times of the beginning of Christianity; monasticism
- the invasions of the Vikings: the Danes conquered some land and founded port cities (e.g. Dublin),
- the Irish were regarded as savages, as they were not controlled by the Pope
- Adrian IV (the only English Pope) gave Henry II the right to conquer Ireland to bring it to Roman Christianity
- Henry II was too busy on the continent, the conquest was began by private adventurers led by Richard de Clare, Earl
of Pembroke, nicknamed Strongbow (coming from Wales);
- the Danes were soon defeated and brought out of the country
- the basis of Anglo-Norman rule in Ireland was the building of stone castles;
- the natives were weaker, more primitive fighting methods, not united for the lack of feeling of national identity; living
in tribes
- Henry II did not have enough power to control the conquest and it continued slowly
- a part of Ireland under English influence around Dublin was called Pale, the rest was a mixture of English feudal
influences and Celtic chiefs
- in the times of Edward I a period of prosperity more attention paid by the king
- Edward II: clashes with the Scots, the Bruce brothers invaded Ireland through Ulster; English influence weakened for
2 centuries;

- The Hundred Years War distracted Englands attention from Ireland, Richard II in the interval of this war came with
his army to Ireland and was defeated: for a long time no English king set foot in Ireland;
- times of the War of The Two Roses: further neglect: return of Celtic tribalism on the island outside the Pale, Irish
language and customs spreading through the island, even among the English in the Pale;
- however, the theoretical presence of England on the island prevented the forming of a state there; no strong national
unity; the claims of the English king prevented the union of the country under Anglo-Irish barons;
- in the 15th century there were attempts to form an independent government in Ireland but unsuccessful;
- England was too weak to conquer and govern Ireland but strong enough to prevent her from governing herself;
- neglecting Ireland for ages and involving elsewhere proved wrong historically for England;
Wales
- the mountains in Wales brought Saxon conquest to a halt, but also prevented the union of the Welsh;
- from William the Conqueror to Edward I, most successful attempts to conquer Wales were made by Marcher Lords,
lords with private armies, representing rather English economic penetration than English monarchy;
- once a Marcher Lord conquered a small area, he built a castle and imposed feudal dues on the inhabitants; brought
English-speaking colonists
- Anglo-Normans conquered the lowlands and valleys;
- the remaining Welsh were tribal, pastoral people,
- civilisation brought by Marcher Lords meant progress for the Welsh: permanent houses, market-towns, etc.; yet the
Welsh preserved their tongue;
- early 13th cent. Welsh national revival: some territories were re-conquered from Marcher Lords, led by Llewelyn
princes
- Edward I defeated the Welsh (1280s), gave to his son the title of Prince of Wales (Principality established)
- Principality was part of Wales (and it retained some Welsh customs), the rest was the territories of Lords Marcher;
- in 14th and 15th centuries Welsh was a scene of many tribal feuds, wars meant to re-conquer Wales by the Welsh, as
well as wars between Marcher Lords;
Scotland
- in the Dark Ages (before 10th cent.) Scotland was a Celtic Kingdom, bordering with Anglo-Saxon England;
- it became one state after the union of the Picts and the Scots under Kenneth Macalpine (844)
- later Lothian (northern part of Saxon Northumbria, south of Edinburgh) was integrated with Scotland, as a result of the
dissolution of Northumbria; 1018
- Lothian was a rich agricultural land with rock-fortress of Edinburgh; it helped develop feudal system of AngloNorman monarchy of Scotland (English language adopted)
- as a result, Scotland was not so Celtic in its character as Ireland or Wales; even though it formed an independent state
for a longer time;
- during the reign of Malcolm III and his wife Margaret (who did much to strengthen the English language) a period
of English influence, especially connected with many Saxon/Nordic refugees after the lost battle of Hastings;
- their son, David I, built Scotland anew in the form of a Norman feudal monarchy and took some disputed territories on
the border with England;
- David I brought a number of knights from England, giving them land, as he wanted to strengthen the feudal system
and get rid of old Celtic tribalism
- 12th and 13th centuries is also a period of development of the church, influenced by the English church, flourishing
architecture;
- the old Celtic tribal organisation shrank, concentrating only in the northern highlands;
- 1286 Alexander III was carried over a sea-cliff by a horse and died; his heiress was grand-daughter Margaret; whe was
supposed to marry Edward Is son Edward II, which would have united both states, but died
- dispute over the Scottish throne, Edward I supported Balliol, who soon became his puppet but renounced allegiance to
Edward;
- 1296 Edward easily marched with his army into Scotland and pronounced himself King of Scotland;
- 1297 uprising began with William Wallace as a leader
- Scottish aristocracy supported the English king (many of them owned land in England), but Wallace based his support
on peasants and small gentry;
- they began the guerrilla war, even though the English won many battles, they could not control the country as all
peasants were potential warriors;
- another leader of the Scottish became Robert Bruce, coming from aristocracy he added the feudal element to the fight
- after the death of Edward I, the Scottish were winning more and more castles; the crowning victory of Bannockburn
(1314), it finally give Scotland independence

10

- but it became a poor, savage country of feudal anarchy, private wars, corrupt Church, no flourishing cities and weak
institutions;
12. THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR
- the wars of medieval Europe were more local than since 16th century: involved mostly knights, the king could not
afford to engage agricultural labour into war; inferior methods of transportation of the armies,
- the wars were frequent, continuous, but on a small scale
- the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) was perhaps the first national war in Europe
- after Norman conquest England was a rising power, strong monarchy, no involvement in conflicts,
- English knights began plundering their continental neighbours; simply because they were more powerful
- the fact that Edward III and Henry V had genealogical claims to the French throne was but an excuse for robbing
- the war was not a result of dynastic ambitions but a national matter, supported by the institutions (Parliament)
- it was much more profitable for an English knight to go to France to plunder than to poor Scotland
- thats why in the early reign of Edward III English ambitions were redirected from Scotland to France; besides,
Edward III spoke French, so he felt more at home there;
- French resistance against the English was actually weaker than Scottish: France did not have a spirit of the nation, was
just a collection of lords;
- the war against France was also fuelled by the conflicts between English and French merchants who sold wool to
Flanders
- first great action of the war: battle of Sluys (1340) won by the English merchant navy;
- Edward III claimed the rights to the French throne and was, as the first English king, supported by the society, the
Parliament; it rested on the hatred of the French in English-speaking common folk;
- the basis for the advantage of the English was a better social organisation: the French peasant serfs were strongly
exploited and often rebelled; the English had a larger proportion of freemen, from whom the Edwards organised a
trained army;
- the 14th century became the age of the longbow as a preferred, most powerful weapon; using it was practised by the
English since early years (actually Edward III banned other sports: handball, football, hockey);
- English skilled archers could send an arrow through plates of armour
- English fighting strategy also included changing cavalry into infantry: dismounting from horses;
- the French were defeated by these tactics at Crecy (1346) (12,000 English against 30-40,000 French) after which
Edward created his dominion in northern France and Poitiers (1356); both battles were led by Edward the Black Prince
(son of Edward III), who died in France and his son Richard II was the next king;
- the advantage of the English strategy was that it was defensive; later France was liberated by Du Guesclin, who
changed the French strategy of blind attacks; English castles in France were successfully besieged with the use of
cannon;
- Richard II found rival in his cousin, John Gaunts son, Hereford; he was murdered in his prison in 1400;
- Hereford was crowned as Henry IV in 1399 and opens the period of the Lancasters on the English throne (descendants
of John de Gaunt) and the Yorks (descendants of his brother, Duke of York)
- Henry V, on his accession to the throne 1413, revived Edward IIIs pretensions to the French Crown;
- using the strategy of the Black Prince he fought the French at Agincourt and decisively won 1415; 5,900 English
against 35,000 French (!);
- 1420 Henry V was acknowledged heir to the French Crown by the Treaty of Troyes;
- 1422 he died, leaving his inheritance for his son, Henry VI;
- during the times of Henry VI came the second French revival, following the tactits of Du Guesclin;
- it was also the time of Jeanne DArc (Joan of Arc), a 17-year-old shepherdess who claimed to hearing the voice of
God, persuaded him to take action, she had a flair for persuasion but no actual tactical, strategic or leadership ability
- together with Charles de Dauphin, Joan started the siege of Orleans (1429); it was successful for them; The French
victory at Orleans was a major turning point for the French in the Hundred Years War
- Jeanne D'Arc was captured by the Burgundians, and turned over to the English, who found her innocent of witchcraft
but guilty of schism (going against the Papacy and Church dogma by following the voice of God directly), and executed
her
- later more victories of the French, but it took them more than 20 years until they drove the English away
Results of the war:
- the break-up of English medieval society and a period of anarchy

11

- gaining the port of Calais for a hundred years after the war;
- bringing strong national self-consciousness;
- new patriotic feeling raised as racial hatred against the French (in the times of Elisabeth I these feelings turned against
Spaniards)
- six years after Poitiers (1362), a statute was passed through Parliament that all judgements of English courts should be
given in English and Latin (to replace French);
- also English became the language taught at schools to the upper class
- it prepared way for English-tongue literature: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton;
13. THE BLACK DEATH, EMANCIPATION OF VILLEINS
- the English (and in general European) population was decimated by the Black Death in 1348-9 (bubonic plague
duma dymienicza, spread by fleas and rats) (theories: anthrax or Ebola-like virus)
- in sixteen months the number of population decreased from 4 million to 2.5 million
- the war in France was not stopped
- the market value of labour force rose
- the labourer who was free demanded more for his work, the villein started to struggle against the demands of the
bailiff, asking full freedom
- lords and bailiffs were in a dilemma: no people to work on their farmland: it was partly solved by using soil for sheeppastures; raw wool was exported to Flanders looms;
- the Parliament passed the Statute of Labourers (restoring the old institution of villeins, under heavy penalties)
- new ideology for peasants, agitation, gradually brought more and more protests;
- free labourers went on strike, villeins often left their land,
- Peasant Revolt began in June 1381,
- times of Richard II, his incompetent government wanted to collect taxes for the war in France (unpopular at the
moment);
- among the leaders of the revolt were John Ball (priest) and Wat Tyler;
- the peasants organised in an army and marched on London
- King Richard II and the Mayor of London gave them a lot of promises and the Mayor treacherously killed Wat Tyler
- after the rebels dispersed, the promises were never kept, but the participants of the revolt were persecuted;
- despite the defeat of the revolt, it was very important for the later process of the emancipation of the villeins, who
mostly bought their freedom; the process took place in the 15th century and finished under the Tudors
- the emancipated villein changed into a small farmer called yeoman
- the emancipation gave basis for modern economy, growth of trade, manufacture and colonisation
- 14th and 15th centuries also saw the loss of moral and intellectual leadership of the Church; the failure of the
cosmopolitan church of the Middle Ages;
- persecution was an integral part of medieval Christianity, it was natural to persecute people disobeying the church
- the basis for revolutionary Reformation were inherent in the structure of the medieval church, especially in the
following:
- unfair distribution of ecclesiastical wealth among priests
- celibacy
- choosing Popes favourites, often from foreign countries, to occupy main posts in the church
- sale of pardons and relics (superstitious) that revolted the better part of the society;
- church courts spied on people in hope of extracting money as fines for sin
- the Church of England was in no position to reform herself all officials were subject not to English bishops but
directly to Rome
- Pope-appointed favourites were foreigners treating England as source of income
- it was all the basis for movement started by John Wycliffe, an Oxford don
- he found a theoretic basis for denying the Papal authority: theory of dominion the Popes power was derived from
Caesars of Rome, not from Christ and Peter;
- he was involved in politics, in the contest between the state and the church
- he demanded the service in English and produced the first full English translation of the Bible;
- he was considered the precursor of the Protestant Reformation; the movement he started was called Lollardry;
14. PARLIAMENTARY DEVELOPMENT, WARS OF TWO ROSES

12

- in the times of Richard II the Commons had no policy of its own but were the instrument of higher aristocratic powers
in the strife with one another
- in the 15th century the premature experiment in Parliamentary control of the executive ended in the aristocratic
anarchy: the Wars of the Roses.
- later, finally, skilfull Tudor monarchs used Parliament as the instrument of a revolution in Church and State;
- in the times of The Hundred Years War the kings had to continually ask the Parliament to support heavy taxation: it
resulted in increasing the powers of the Parliament;
- the medieval English Parliament was not only an assembly voting taxes and making laws (Statutes), it also functioned
as the High Court of Parliament a judiciary function;
- this enabled to regard the king himself as subject to law and not the absolute monarch;
- the Revolution of 1399 (starting the Lancasterian period with Henry IV) gave more powers to the two Houses of
Parliament, the Lancaster kings ruled by Parliamentary title and the powers and privileges of both Houses had to be
respected by them
- the battlefield for quarrels of the gentry was the Kings Council, where the executive power was lodged;
- the nobles regarded the Council as a body representative of the forces of the State, but the King believed it was his
personal body, to be filled with whomever he liked: a wise King would put trained experts there, a foolish King his
favourites;
- in the times of Henry VI the Council fell into the hands of the nobles; Henry became King when he was a few months
old, England was ruled by regency government, until Henry was 16;
- the supremacy of the nobles in the Council continued and the conflicts finally started the Wars of the Roses (1455)
- the Council and the Parliament were both controlled by the same aristocratic cliques whose only contests were against
one another
- the last of the English were driven out of France after the Hundred Years War in 1453, just two years before the Wars
of the Roses began: the return of the armies filled England with knights and archers accustomed to war and plunder,
willing to fight;
- many conflicts between the gentry, abuses of law, intimidating juries, besieging manor houses, etc. - anarchy
- savage customs; arranged marriages of children; foundation of new schools: Winchester, Eton;
- the Wars of the Roses was an intermittent civil war fought over the throne of England between adherents of the House
of Lancaster and the House of York
- both houses were branches of the Plantagenet royal house, tracing their descent from King Edward III
- the name Wars of the Roses was not used at the time, but has its origins in the badges chosen by the two royal houses,
the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York.
- the reason of the conflict was the want for power, wealth and ultimately the Crown
- Henry VI (Lancaster) was considered a weak, ineffectual King after losing all French territories won by his
predecessors; he was also known for episodes of mental illness
- in 1453 after the attack of Henrys illness, a Council of Regency was set up with Lord Protector: Richard Plantagenet
(head of House of York);
- but in 1455 Henry recovered and his power was taken by his strong wife Margaret of Anjou;
- Richard wanted to oppose her and resorted to armed conflict, starting the first Battle of St. Albans;
- on each side there was a group of great nobles, knights, lawyers and clergy
- but changing of the sides and remaining neutral was very popular: most cities remained neutral and in return the
armies were not destructive;
- the neutral majority of the society suffered little and trade went on as before;
- the combatants suffered severely; the fighting nobles were savage in their treatment of one another;
- the war was a bleeding operation performed by the nobility upon their own body. To the nation it was a blessing in
disguise.
- like in France: the strategy: archers and infantry
- the victorious figure was Edward IV from the House of York, whose restoration as King in 1471 was by some
considered the end of the war
- the Yorkist king died suddenly in 1483, and political and dynastic turmoil erupted again;
- at the time of Edward's sudden and premature death, his heir, Edward V, was only 12 years old;
- Edward V was kept in the Tower of London, where he was later joined by his younger brother Richard
- Parliament gave the throne to Richard III (also York)
- the two princes in the tower disappeared and were possibly murdered (mystery not finally resolved)
- Lancastrian hopes now centred on Henry Tudor, whose father had been an illegitimate half-brother of Henry VI;

13

- Henry Tudor's forces defeated Richard's at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and Henry Tudor became King Henry
VII of England
- Henry strengthened his position by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and the best surviving Yorkist
claimant
- He reunited the two royal houses, merging the rival symbols of the red and white roses into the new emblem of the red
and white Tudor Rose
15. RENAISSANCE: THE BEGINNING OF THE TUDORS: HENRY VII, THE NEW MONARCHY
- new era of individual rebirth, Renaissance and Reformation;
- the Medieval Corporation all separate states the same: clergy, nobles, villeins; no individual freedom,
- the roots of the changes to be found in 14th and 15th centuries: the emancipation of villeins, the growth of London (and
cities), the rise of educated classes, the spread of cloth manufacture, the rise of Parliament, the adoption of the English
language by the educated classes, the victory of archers over the mounted aristocrat, the invention of the cannon to
defeat the aristocratic stronghold of the castle, the invention of printing press to shatter churchmans monopoly of
learning, the discovery of the ocean trade routes and of America (the New World); - it all was responsible for dissolving
the fabric of medieval society in England;
- in France, Spain, Portugal: increasing power of the King based on the old Church, in England new church, but old
Parliament;
- Henry VII is remembered as the English counterpart of Louis XI, cautious, thrifty, opening his heart for nobody;
- after the Wars of the Roses England expected no more chivalry and wars, but peace and the enforcement of order
- Henry VII kept no standing army, occasionally he hired foreign mercenaries;
- he preserved old medieval institutions (Kings Council, Parliament, Common Law, Justices of the Peace and jury), but
made them instruments of royal power instead of French of Spanish way of despotic power of monarch
- the centre of new constitutional power became Kings Council (Privy Council)
- Kings Council was the field of aristocratic fights before, now Henry VII (and VIII) excluded all nobles who could be
disobedient
- the members of Privy Council under Henry VII were middle-class clergy, new civil servants; after Henry VIII the
clergy were replaced by lawyers, coming from middle class but with aristocratic aspirations, devoted to the King, they
had University legal education and experience from foreign travel loyal and efficient
- the Council had a legislative power: through ordinances and proclamations directly, suggesting Statutes and Bills to
the Parliament
- the Parliament was not very important under Henry VII, its importance rose in times of Henry VIIIs Reformation
- Privy Council delegated a sub-committee of its own members, for judicial matters, Star Chamber;
- Star Chamber was the highest court in the state, it became popular as it protected the weak from the strong, being
Henry VIIs chief instrument of controlling illegal riots and similar activities;
- through the influence of the Star Chamber local courts regained their independence; juries became no longer afraid of
giving verdicts against powerful neighbours,
- because it was not possible for the King to impose heavy taxation, he had to limit the expenditure: a way of doing it
was imposing more and more administrative duties on the unpaid Justices of the Peace (magistrates)
- the function of JPs was to exercise the local powers given them by the Privy Council, they tried small offences,
arrested criminals, kept prisons, roads and bridges, licensed ale-houses, became agents of economic control of the state;
- obviously the political changes of the Tudor rule limited the role of aristocracy: it was possible because of the Wars of
the Roses they limited the number of aristocrats, led to confiscation some of their wealth by the crown, and persuaded
lower classes to follow the King;
- the change from medieval to modern England may be seen on the example of cloth trading
- first English wool was exported to Flanders and Italy to the looms: it gave basis for trading wealth of Plantagenet
England;
- a large number of Flemish weavers started coming to England since the times of Edward III, partly in connection with
the Hundred Years War, then a big wave of religious refugees in Elizabethan times
- the weaving manufacturing developed in the 15th and 16th centuries especially in East Anglia, in cities (Norwich) but
also in rural areas;
- it gave basis for the trade of wool products: Baltic sea, East and West Indies, America; this, in turn, developed the
navy
- cloth trade gave rise to the new middle class

14

- apart from the positive effect, cloth trade had some negative impact on rural development
- in certain districts it caused enclosure (of permanent walls or hedges) of open fields (arable or unused) of the village
for pastures for sheep it meant the eviction of many ploughmen to make room for a small number of shepherds
- evicted ploughmen wandered around the country as beggars or rogues, robbers and outlaws;
- enclosure had a positive effect, too: it secured compact farms of yeomen, stopping border conflicts and litigations
- still, primogeniture secured some large farms for the lords; it left younger sons for liberal professions or foreign
adventure;
- the 15th century was an intellectually barren period: suppression of freedom during wars, no great literature after
Chaucer;
- the restoration of peace and order was a favourable condition for intellectual revival
- the revival of Lollardry: started by John Wycliffe, religious movement; anti-clerical, stress on Bible-reading,
translating it into the vernacular;
- the movement was forbidden, quite a few Lollards went to the stake, but it survived in secret;
- Renaissance coming from Italy: interest in Greek and Roman literature and culture; changing the Middle Ages attitude
to learning
- through Greek and Hebrew new interest and understanding of the Bible; John Colet lectures on St. Paul
- English Renaissance more closely connected with religion than Italian or French
- Henry VII was little interested in knowledge, but the court of Henry VIII included a number of learned men
- the age of sea voyage: western European countries sent ships to Asia, discovering America and parts of Africa;
- the pope drew the line down the globe from pole to pole to divide all discoverable land between Spain (west) and
Portugal (east) 1493;
- the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci,
- in Henry VIIs reign, the Cabots (John and his son Sebastian) sailed to Labrador, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia;
- England did not promote maritime adventure yet, not to lay hands on Spanish heritage;
- Henry VIII made possible the future liberation of his countrys energies by means of founding a Royal Navy
- building royal fleet was started in times of the Hundred Years War by Henry V, but later neglected
- Henry VIII built an effective fleet of royal fighting ships
- he also founded Trinity House: a corporation taking care of lighthouses, providing aid to navigation and caring after
safety, welfare and training of mariners;
- the ships were new and modern: well adapted to ocean voyage, to manoeuvring in battle; they were longer and not so
round as old-fashioned Spanish ships; with cannons mounted;
- 1545 a French armada attempted to invade England, but was foiled by the Royal Navy;
16. HENRY VIII AND REFORMATION
- in Tudor England there was no clear distinction between Catholic and Protestant parties, the opinions of people were
forming, not ready
- Reformation was the change from medieval to modern society in the sphere of religion
- England was the country of John Wycliffe and Lollards;
- the best background for the Protestant movement was anti-clerical mood in the society, powerful at the beginning of
the 16th century;
- in some people this anti-clericalism meant a greedy desire to plunder the church, but in general it was the critical
attitude to churchmen, who used the doctrine for their own individual goals
- critical attitude to selling indulgencies
- Henry VIII burnt Protestants, while he hanged and beheaded the Catholic opponents of anti-clerical revolution
- the prelude to Henrys breach with the Pope was the German Reformation under Martin Luther (1518);
- it for some years annihilated the prestige of Rome as a centre of religious authority; it was sacked by the armies of
Charles V, Emperor in Germany and King of Spain
- after being proclaimed at Wittenberg, Lutheran doctrines soon became popular (although banned) in England, they
absorbed Lollards into the Protestant movement
- while young men eagerly joined the new movement, many older, even open-minded, remained orthodox (like sir
Thomas More)
- Oxford was more orthodox, Cambridge circles were more open to Protestantism, students discussed the ideas

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- educated in Cambridge, archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was one of the main church followers of Henrys
Reformation, he was not so uncompromising like others, who lost Kings regard soon, Cranmer remained with Henry
till his very death
- Cranmer replaced archbishop Wolsey, a former head of church (acting as head of state in times of Henrys youth);
Wolsey did not want to follow Henrys reformatory ideas so he was ousted and died in disgrace;
- at the time of the sack of Rome, Henry, 36, reached a point in which he wanted to switch his interests from hunting
and tournaments into politics, government and state administration; as he was an energetic person, he poured all his
energy into it
- one of the formal reasons for his breach with Rome was the necessity for a divorce;
- he was married to Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had only a daughter, Princess Mary; but as there was no
tradition of a Queen in England, he wanted to secure a male heir to avoid conflicts;
- he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, his court mistress;
- technically, it was not actually a question of divorce, but of whether Henry had been at all properly married to
Catherine, who had been married before
- the Pope denied Henry divorce; actually granting a divorce for a King, for reasons of state only, was done and popular
in those days, but Pope, after the sack of Rome, was under the influence of Charles V, Catherines nephew and
protector
- Henry could not tolerate that the interests of England should be subjected, through the Pope, to the will of the Emperor
Charles; in the age of strong English nationalism, he wanted for the state full independence;
- the English people sympathised with Catherine rather than Anne, but the political and ecclesiastical side took over the
personal one: the spirit of nationalism combined with anti-clericalism;
- the persecution that followed was Catholic anti-clericalism: many people were sent to scaffold for refusal to repudiate
Papal authority (like sir Thomas More), but at the same time Protestants died at the stakes for other reasons
- the religious persecution seems more harsh nowadays, in fact people saw it then as a government keeping order in
church and state, besides, much more people died in religious wars in France, Holland and Germany
- Henry gained the title Defender of Faith, e.g. for writing a pamphlet accusing Martin Luther of heresy;
- the instrument for Henrys Royal Reformation was the Parliament
- it was not an ecclesiastical assembly called Convocation (there were two: Canterbury and York), as they did not have
any representation of the laity;
- the clergy accepted being subjected to the King without much ado, it was for them just the change of the supreme
power (from the Pope to the King), but they retained most of their privileges; in effect the Reformation was not a cause
of a religious war in England
- in 1531 Convocation acknowledged that Henry was Supreme Head of the Church of England, but so far as the law of
Christ allows (this phrase was given up later)
- before, in the times of Henry VII, the Parliament lost much of its previous power, now it was to regain part of it
- the Reformation Parliament sat for 7 years: 1529-1536; in a series of Royal Parliamentary Statues (prepared by the
Privy Council, but voted over by both Houses) it revolutionised the fundamental law of Church and State;
- first acts reforming certain Church abusive practices were passed in November 1529
- 1534 the Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy: stating that Henry VIII was 'the only supreme head in earth of the
Church of England' and that the English crown shall enjoy "all honours, dignities, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities,
immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity".
- furthermore, the Act decided that any act of allegiance to the Pope was to be considered treason
- the economic aspect of Reformation was the suppression of orders of monks and friars and the secularisation of their
property, called Dissolution of the Monasteries (Suppression of the Monasteries);
- In 1534 Henry authorised Thomas Cromwell, a layman in his service, to "visit" all the monasteries, ("Visitation of the
Monasteries"),
- the Visitations results stated that monks and nuns were sinful hypocritical sorcerers, often leading scandalous
lives;
- the process of dissolution took part 1536-1540;
- Some of the confiscated church buildings were destroyed by having the valuable lead removed from roofs and stone
reused for secular buildings. Some of the smaller houses were taken over as parish churches, and were even bought for
the purpose by wealthy parishes;
- Other losses to posterity included widespread destruction of many valuable books held in the monastic libraries. It is
believed that many of the earliest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were lost at this time. Monastic schools and hospitals were
also lost, with serious consequences locally
- Henry VIII sold great part of the confiscated Abbey lands to aristocrats, public servants and merchants, who resold
much of it to smaller men; Henry sold the lands too hastily, so he could have earned more for it;

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- the monks and old religion received most support in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (centres of feudal medieval society),
the result was the rising, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536; but the King received strong support from the rest of the
country;
- the monks and friars did not receive any support from parish priests who saw them as their rivals who exploited
them and evaded the law;
- Henry VIII, as Supreme Head of the Church, reformed the religion
- relic worship was forbidden, relics were discarded and pilgrimages discouraged
- the shrine and cult of Thomas Becket (the centre of European pilgrimage) was suppressed;
- many forms of superstition were stopped, like image-worship or pardon-mongering;
- the Bible in English circulated freely and was ordered for every parish, the Lords Prayer, the Commandments were
taught in English
- at some point Henry decided that it was going too far, he beheaded some of his ostracising advisors, like Cromwell
(1540) (partly because his bride Anne of Cleves brought by Cromwell from Germany was of a disagreeable appearance)
- still, some hostility in the last years of Henrys reign remained (e.g. a man was hanged in London for eating meat on
Friday, The Act of Six Articles decreed death for denying clerical celibacy or the necessity of auricular confession)
- Henry VIII is also historically famous for having six wives; it was partly connected with his obsession that he will die
without the male heir (which sort of actually came true)
1. Catherine of Aragon: a couple of miscarriages or prematurely dead children including three sons; one surviving
daughter Mary (Queen Mary I) divorced (marriage declared non-valid)
2. Anne Boleyn: two dead sons and daughter Elisabeth (Queen Elisabeth I) accused of adultery (five lovers) and
incest (with brother) and beheaded;
3. Jane Seymour: a son Edward (king Edward VI) died two weeks after delivering the son
4. Anne of Cleves brought from Germany and advertised by Cromwell but found very unattractive by Henry,
marriage soon annulled as not consummated;
5. Catherine Howard (cousin of Anne Boleyn) probably had an affair with a courtier, appointed her ex-fianc as
secretary; accused of adultery = treason and beheaded
6. Catherine Parr initially Protestant, but submissive, helped Henry reconcile with two daughters; survived
divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived
- Henry died (obesity, syphilis?, ulcerating wound) 1547
17. EDWARD VI AND MARY TUDOR
- all the political achievements of the early Tudors (Henry VII and VIII) had not been secured after the death of Henry
VIII
- the state was in debt and the religious conflicts were about to break, losing their suppression
- the problems needed a strong monarch, and were eventually solved by Elizabeth, but in 12 years before her accession,
the country was in chaos
- Edward VI (son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour) was 9 at his accession (1547);
- Edward was a sick and weak child, but very well developed intellectually
- he appointed his uncle Edward Seymour to serve as Lord Protector Somerset during his minority and rule the state in
his name; Somerset was a rash man, proud and selfish, but also honest
- Edwards reign was also dominated by Archbishop Cranmer, who prepared Prayer Book, based on his translations
from Latin into English; it appealed to the population and gave solid basis of anti-clerical revolution (it was later found
triumphant in Elizabethan times)
- another influential figure was Hugh Latimer, also a man of church; he was a Protestant and in the times of Henry VIII
had to give up his position; his rough skilful sermons converted many people to Protestantism
- Latimer believed in the importance of education in the society; so he supported re-establishing King Edward
Grammar Schools in the place of abolished monastery schools
- the Protector Somerset supported the Parliaments change of most oppressive of Henry VIIIs laws
- he persecuted neither Catholics nor Protestants and permitted free discussion of religious differences, also published
the first issue of Prayer Book
- these acts of liberalism led to religious conflicts getting hotter
- there were serious religion-based disturbances in various parts of the country
- to follow, there were also agrarian protests (caused also by the rising prices in Henrys times)
- 1549: armed peasants revolted under their leader Kett (famously killing and eating 20,000 sheep in Mousehold Heath)

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- the rising was suppressed by better organised classes its result was pressure for stronger government and the fall of
liberal Somerset who was soon overthrown by the Council
- Somerset was replaced by Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later of Northumberland
- he did not have his own strong religious opinions but decided to work with Protestants and gave more impetus to the
Reformation
- Dudley returned some Henrys strict laws, but this time against Catholics: some of them were deprived or imprisoned,
but not killed
- Dudley was unpopular as a ruler, and he deserved it; his rule are the times of corruption and greed among courtiers;
the country was weak, there was no King to solve the problem
- as Edward was close to death, Dudley planned to exclude both Henrys daughters and plant on the throne his daughterin-law, Lady Jane Grey, a distant heir
- when Edward VI died (tuberculosis, arsenic poisoning or syphilis from his father), the plan was not successful, and
Mary became Queen July 1553
- Dudley renounced his Protestantism, but was nevertheless beheaded on Tower Hill, as was Lady Jane Grey later
- After Edward's death rumours of his survival persisted, several impostors were put forward as rightful Kings even in
Marys and Elizabeth's reign;
- Mary I began her reign (37) in an atmosphere of popular enthusiasm, which was, however, dissipated very quickly
- she was, typically of Tudors, effective and brave in the times of danger, and had no personal vindictiveness
- the problem was her religious views
- daughter of Catherine of Aragon, she was brought up in the Catholic religion of her mother, important was her
mothers Spanish origin
- Mary cared mostly for the souls of the English, believing they could be safer in Italian or Spanish hands, but returning
to old Christian religion
- at that time Protestantism was associated with violence, unrest, robbing the churches etc.
- if would have been safe and popular for Mary to return to religious compromise, to restore the Latin Mass and perhaps
kill a few Protestants
- but Mary decided to marry Philip of Spain, making England Spanish vassal
- then, in her religious zeal, she decided to revive the jurisdiction of the Pope over England and burnt 300 Protestants in
4 years (earning a name Bloody Mary)
- these acts made the Catholic religion appear to the English nation as a cruel, unpatriotic, foreign creed;
- unfortunately, the Parliament, which supported the accession of Mary, had no constitutional power to prevent her from
marrying the Spanish prince;
- the national feeling was expressed by the rising in Kent under Thomas Wyatt (1554) (son of the poet of the same
name)
- Wyatt was defeated at the gates of London, then executed and Mary married Philip
- Philip was titled as King of England, he signed documents with Mary; he found his wife (11 years older) physically
unattractive and when she thought she was pregnant, left her and went to Spain
- then Mary turned to religious matters, reuniting with Rome and bringing back Popes supremacy
- persecution followed earning her Bloody Mary epithet;
- having inherited Spanish throne Philip came to England and persuaded Mary that England should join Spain in a war
against France
- the result was the capture of Calais by the French (the last possession in the continent, from the times of Hundred
Years War)
- this obviously contributed to rising unpopularity of Mary
- Mary had problems with getting pregnant, suffered from phantom pregnancy several times, probably due to some
ovarian disease
- Mary died at the age of 42 of influenza, uterine cancer or ovarian cancer on 17 November 1558
- she was hated by the people of England, left by her husband who already started favouring her sister
- she left the country in a bad condition: ill-governed, without arms and leaders, without unity and spirit, a vassal of the
Spanish Empire
18. ELIZABETHAN ERA
- Mary attempted to re-establish the rule of the cosmopolitan church, with a foreign language
- it was popular with the clergy, with semi-feudal society of Northern England, but highly unpopular with Londoners
- Elizabeth soon re-established the supremacy of the national, laic State with a national church

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- the political-religious conflict finally ended in a maritime war against Spain (the head of the Catholic reaction in
Europe)
- the struggle for the independence of the island united the peoples of England and Scotland, then it gave basis to the
conquest of Catholic Ireland
- when Elizabeth became Queen, at the age of 25 (Nov. 1558), the country was in no condition to resist a foreign
invader
- it was divided by religious conflicts, it had been dependent on Spain for several years, was very weak financially
- Philip of Spain protected the Queen and her rule, even though she was not Catholic
- the reason was the next heir to the English throne: Mary Queen of Scots Catholic but married to the Dauphin of
France
- for many years during Elizabeths reign the independence of heretic England was secured by the rivalry between
two Catholic superpowers: France and Spain
- Elizabeth did not admit that she owed anything to him, she said she owed everything to the English people
- she stressed the fact of being purely English, not having any foreign ancestry, Im mere English
- Elizabeth mastered the skill of attracting her people to her: her learning (Greek, Latin, Italian) endeared her to the
Universities, her courage to the soldiers and sailors, her coquetry to the nobles and courtiers; her popularity was
strengthened by her love of hunting, dancing and theatre
- the Parliament of 1559 restored the Reformation in its Anglican form by passing the Act of Supremacy (which
abolished the Papal power giving it to the monarch) and the Act of Uniformity (which made the Prayer Book the only
legal form of worship)
- the Reformation was done with the support of the Queen and the Commons, the House of Lords was against it, esp.
the bishops,
- the church was controlled by the Queen by means of Commissioners and Bishops who inspected and administered it
- in her decisions upon religion Elizabeth largely depended on advice from Sir William Cecil
- She appointed an entirely new Privy Council, removing many Roman Catholic Counsellors
- her reason for never marrying is unclear:
- she may have felt repulsed by the mistreatment of Henry VIII's wives
- Alternatively, she may have been psychologically scarred by her rumoured childhood relationship with Lord Seymour
- gossip: she had suffered from a physical defect that she was afraid to reveal, perhaps scarring from smallpox
- or perhaps Elizabeth did not wish to share the power of the Crown with another
- finally, she was remembered as the Virgin Queen;
- 1559 was also the date of Scotlands Reformation and breach with Rome
- it caused the alliance of both countries in mutual defence; in 1558 England was a Catholic country dependent on
Spain, and Scotland a Catholic country dependent on France;
- before, in 1540s the Catholic party lad the national resistance against the English: King Henry VIII wanted to unite the
whole island, enforcing it on the Scots, this policy was followed by Protector Somerset;
- to save the little girl Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, the Scots sent her to France;
- with French support Mary declared herself Queen of England, part of the agreement of France was the presence of
French army in Scotland many people hated it
- when Mary was 16 she was married to the Dauphin of France (1558); in case of her death without heirs the country
was to be given to French Crown
- 1557 Scottish nobles formed the Congregation of the Lord, to protect new Protestant religion,
- 1559 a democratic religious revolution takes place, led by John Knox: a religious reformer, who spent some time
imprisoned by the French, then travelled on the Continent, in Geneva was influenced by John Calvin; Knox established
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland
- Scottish reformation was bloodless;
- after the death of her husband, Francis II, Mary, 18, returned to Scotland (1561) and for six years struggled for power
against Knox
- the Protestants in Scotland had to ally with the Protestants in England; most of Catholic feudal influence came from
the North of England sparsely populated and of limited importance
- Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a descendant of King Henry VII of England and had by him a son, James
- Darnley demanded his rights as King, but he was murdered by Bothwell, whom Mary soon married
- the nobles gathered an army against Mary and Bothwell, they imprisoned her for some time, forcing her to abdicate
the throne for the sake of her son, but in 1568 she flied to England where she was imprisoned by Elizabeth

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- from the moment Mary was imprisoned, English Catholics, urged by the Pope, Spain and the Jesuits, started plotting
to put her on Elizabeths throne
- first crisis: the Northern rebellion (1569, 1570); the Catholics from the North of England rebelled, but with the help of
the South, the Queen was defended; Elizabeth took vengeance on the gentry, executing 800 of them
- the failure of the Northern rebellion showed the internal unity of new England
- in 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth and many French or Spanish people started plotting against her, her
possible assassination became a very popular topic
- the Commons demanded that Elizabeth executed Mary, but she did not: partly for pacifist reasons, but she also
believed that after Mary is killed, Philip, King of Spain would claim the throne of England
- in 1572, Elizabeth made an alliance with France; St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (thousands of French Protestants
killed), strained the alliance but did not break it; Elizabeth even began marriage negotiations with Henry, Duke of
Anjou and afterwards with his younger brother Franois, Duke of Anjou; the Spanish Ambassador reported that she
actually declared that the Duke of Anjou would be her husband; however, Anjou, who is in any case said to have
preferred men to women, returned to France and died in 1584 before he could be married
- later Elizabeth gave some secret help to Huguenots (French Protestants)
- together with new geographical discoveries, new routes of trade and colonisation, new possibilities opened for the
English islanders, no longer sentenced to their seclusion
- the contest for new commercial and naval leadership was between Spain, France and England;
- Spain and Portugal were the first countries to exploit the new situation on a large scale (1494 Popes division of the
world); they led to many discoveries along African and American coasts; in 1580 Spain annexed Portugal
- France was preoccupied with war campaign towards the Rhine and with internal religious wars
- Spain was the strongest sea-power, but relying on slave-rowed galleys and close-to-coast Mediterranean traditions;
- Spain had some ocean-going vessels, galleons, journeying to America, but they were not battleships; actually they
started building their warlike fleet soon before the outbreak of the war
- England, with its long, irregular coastline, most of land being not far from the coast, was a perfect country for
producing seafaring men;
- even though the population of England was smaller than Spanish or French, they had a large sea-going community
- since the times of Henry VIII they possessed a royal fighting navy built and armed in a modern way;
- the Spanish way of sea-fighting was to bring it as close to land war as possible crowding ships with land soldiers
who despised mariners
- the English led the world to evolution in sea warfare, the essence of which were cannons firing through portholes in
the side of the ship (besides, English ships were longer comparing to rounded Spanish ones)
- the English worked out a proper relationship between the military and maritime elements and people on ships: balance
between mariners and gentlemen; new naval officers combined qualities of both
- the leader of the English fleet was Admiral Francis Drake, an engineer and naval pioneer; he was the first Englishman
(and the first of any nationality not on a Spanish ship) to circumnavigate the globe, from 1577 to 1580
- apart from technical differences, the social character of Spain and new England was largely different: the defeudalised England of the Renaissance and Reformation had more energetic spirits of the gentry, middle and lower
classes ready to fight together for purposes of war and commerce; Spain still remained a feudal country, though with an
absolute King
- class pride was something not needed on a battleship
- Spain was also involved in conflict in the Netherlands and Flanders;
- commerce connected with new cloth manufacture: English merchants trying to find new markets in Africa, Asia and
America
- numerous conflicts with the Spanish and the Portugal in different seas and lands
- 1553, Richard Chancellor was seeking the North-East passage to India by the Arctic seas; instead he found Czar
Russia, soon the English started trade with Russia
- 1576-8, 1585-7, the attempts by Frobisher and Davis to reach India by North-West Passage led to the Hudsons bay
fur trade with the territories of later Canada
- 1600 Queen Elizabeth gave the East India Company her Royal Charter giving it monopoly of trade with India; it led
to the development of trade; the trade proceeded by ship rounding the Cape of Good Hope;
- however, the finances of the Queen were very bad: partly because of the fall in the value of money (it started in Henry
VIIIs times, and even though Elizabeth introduced new currency, the flow of gold and silver from America aggravated
it);
- much of Queens revenue was in fixed amounts, in inflation, the real value of it fell

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- many historians accused Elizabeth of being passive in the wars in Ireland, France, the Netherlands, of not taking full
advantage of the victory over the Spanish it was in fact all connected with her very scarce income;
- despite the tension between Spain and England, the war was deferred because of cautious and pacific temperament of
both Philip and Elizabeth;
- but long-term Philips policy was definitely leading to a war:
- he would exclude all foreigners (English) from approaching the shores of Asia, Africa or America assigned by the
Pope to Spain or Portugal - he would hand over the English merchants and sailors to the Inquisition;
- he would not tolerate England severed from Rome;
- Queen Elizabeth saw the delay as advantageous because every passing year made England stronger;
- Elizabeth supported the pirate-like attacks of Hawkins and Drake (called privateers pirates given for it license by the
state authorities); they attacked Spanish ships and colonies; it was accepted before the rise of international law
- in supporting Drake, Elizabeth opposed the advice of Cecil and followed that of Sir Francis Walsingham
- the peak of this procedure was Drakes voyage round the world (1577-80); the Spanish Pacific ships were practically
unarmed and unprepared for fights;
- on Drakes return to England, 1580, he was granted knighthood by Elizabeth, which was a challenge to Spain
- 1587 after the discovery of the plot by Walsingham and Babington to murder Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots was
linked to it, and by the will of the people and Parliament, rather than the Queen, she was executed;
- the execution was badly carried out some accounts say the executioner was drunk and it is said to have taken three
blows to hack off her head; after the first axe blow, she is supposed to have said, her throat slashed, "Executioner,
achieve your work!"
- according to another story, when the executioner picked up the severed head to show it to those present, it was
discovered that Mary had (as she always did) worn a wig; the headsman was left holding a bloody mop of hair, while
the late queen's head - the lips still moving in prayer - rolled on the floor
- yet another incident was the discovery of Mary's little Skye Terrier, which had been concealed in her skirts and ran out
in panic after she was beheaded, it took several washings to get his mistress' blood out of the dog's fur
- Mary was initially buried at Peterborough Cathedral, but her body was exhumed when her son, King James I of
England, ordered she be buried in Westminster Abbey, it remains there, only thirty feet from the grave of her cousin
Elizabeth
- Mary Stuart was canonised, and placed among the martyrs by the Jesuits
- Marys execution made it certain that Spain would at once attack England;
- in face of war it was Elizabeth moderate treatment of Catholics that prevented the civil war in England; even English
Catholics fought for her against Philip of Spain;
- In April 1587, Sir Francis Drake burnt the Spanish fleet at Cdiz, delaying Philip's plans
- In July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a grand fleet of 130 ships bearing over 30,000 men, set sail in the hopes of helping
the Spanish army under the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands cross the English Channel and invade England;
- the crews of the Armada ships were not so skilful as the English mariners, especially in the art of gunnery;
- the Spanish wanted to draw near the English according to the ancient rules of sea warfare, but the English preferred to
stay at distance and keep an artillery duel;
- July 1588, the English fleet led by Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Drake defeats the Spanish Armada in the
English Channel; also with the help of fire-ships (crewless ships with explosives)
- after the defeat, the Spanish ships that evaded the destruction had to escape north with the winds and, without stores,
water or repairs landed often in coasts of Scotland and Ireland where they were attacked by the Celtic people;
- out of 130 ships about the half reached home
- the colossal financial effort of building and equipping the Armada could not be repeated;
- the defeat of the Armada was an event that was a turning point in history: the superpower on the eve of universal
lordship failed
- it also ensured the survival of the Dutch Republic and the emancipation of France from Spanish influence;
- the regular war between England and Spain continued till the death of Elizabeth, 1603, mostly in the Netherlands
- unfortunately, due to limited budget of the Queen, England made no permanent conquests;
- besides, with 5 million inhabitants, England was not ready to colonise other continents;
- from the Elizabethan times onwards, up till WW1, England was not the scene of any foreign invasion, any warfare
involved English forces safely far from home
- it enabled the country to develop the Parliamentary government and freedom of people before any other great country
- the importance of secure position on the island the protective barrier of the sea combined with strong navy
The question of Wales
- the Tudors solved the problem of Wales

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- Henry VII was a Welshman himself, loved Welsh poetry and tradition; he was one of the Marcher Lords;
- he was able to introduce some order to the bloody anarchy in Wales;
- Henry VIII continued prudent policy in Wales: combining repression of disorder with justice to the Celtic population
- Henry VIII incorporated Wales in England on equal terms; he abolished the Principality of Wales and Marcher
Lordships and through the Act of Union joined the two countries, 1535;
- the Welsh shires and boroughs were represented in the English House of Commons;
- the Justices of the Peace who ruled the country locally were not English but Welsh, natural leaders for the people
- Wales was not very eager to accept Protestantism: Prayer Book and English Bible were in a tongue which was as
foreign as Latin,
- the result was that the landlords were becoming more and more English, and the Celtic language and customs
remained in the population;
The question of Ireland
- largely different from Welsh
- in the 15th cent. Ireland was governed on the principle of aristocratic Home Rule, by Anglo-Irish families;
- Henry VIII hanged the Earl of Kildare and his five uncles of the Fitzgerald family: a tragedy for the Irish, 1537
- he also subjected traditionally Catholic Ireland to his religious revolution; the breach with Rome was not so painful
(Ireland was always far from its influence) as the dissolution of the monasteries which were the source of culture more
valuable than the English ones;
- the English Bible and Prayer Book were in an alien tongue;
- the old religion was cherished by wandering friars who were later reinforced by the activity of the Jesuits who came
from abroad to guard the Catholic faith;
- the Pope sent armed invaders to Ireland and Elizabeth had to attack them there, 1580; because of lack of financial
resources, English army used great cruelty in destroying people by sword and famine
- what followed was a very strict policy of English colonisation of Ireland, gentlemen-adventurers and younger
sons (the Elizabethan eagles flew to the Spanish Main while the vultures swooped down on Ireland)
- the English were blind to racial and religious problem
- the native population conceived enthusiasm for Roman Catholic religion associated with the hatred for the English;
- in such circumstances Irish tribes finally united in a nation by the hatred for the English;
- the English, from the Tudors to Cromwell, abolished Irish upper-class to make room for their landlords;
- the Elizabethan times are also times of Counter-Reformation
- the Jesuits mission: from abroad in disguise, coming from place to place;
- in their mission, religion was connected with politics;
- the powerful force in the church in England were the Puritans, the most radical Protestants, who wanted he Church of
England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially Calvinist Geneva
- but the Queen preserved the Anglican character of the Church
- some Jesuits or Puritans were persecuted for treason
- economic and intellectual freedom was not followed by religious freedom, Catholics and Puritans were banned
- Elizabethan times were the era of Renaissance intellectual and poetic freedom
- poetry and drama flourished: Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson;
- by the end of Elizabeths reign, the English Bible was prepared, although the Authorised Version was completed in the
times of James I;
- it was also the time of the development of economic system; a growing number of country people were craftsmen;
- technical education and training of apprentices;
- the general quality of life improved; glass windows and chimneys introduced;
- improvement of Grammar Schools, good days for the Universities;
- the leading class was the landed gentry called squires;
- they were no longer feudal or military class;
- yeomen and merchants were constantly entering this class by marriage;
- the importance of the House of Lords diminished
- the growing strength of the House of Commons
- House of Commons was very loyal to the Queen, not really critical about her activities, recognising her devotion to the
well-being of England;
- as long as the Queen was alive, there was no opposition between her and the Parliament;

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- Elizabeth I fell ill in February 1603 and she died on 24 March 1603, at the age of sixty-nine, she was the oldest
English Sovereign ever to reign;
- she was buried in Westminster Abbey, immediately next to her sister Mary I, the Latin inscription on their tomb
translates to "Partners both in Throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one
resurrection"
- having no heir, she was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, the descendant of Margaret,
the sister of Henry VIII, who became King James I of England (1603) and begins the Stuart dynasty;
19. THE BEGINNING OF THE STUARTS JAMES I,
- the Tudor government relied on King-worship rather than despotism, the power was not material but metaphysical
- without an army or a paid bureaucracy it would not be possible for a monarch to control the state in a despotic way
- this system owed much to the political talents of the two Henries and Elizabeth;
- this situation was to change with the accession of James I; a popular and successful monarch in Scotland, but not in
Spain;
- the Stuarts claimed greater divine powers as kings, it was against the wishes of the strongest elements in English
society
- such stance of the monarch led to strong opposition in the Parliament
- James VI of Scotland was a good-natured, conceited, garrulous king; wise, but ignorant of England and her laws
- what worsened his image in England were allegations that James was homosexual; after his accession it was openly
joked in London that Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen
- those who support it: the King often lavished favours on male courtiers, there were numerous young boys around
- some historians against: these were rumours spread by Englishmen
- James came to England on the implied condition that he should continue the Elizabethan line of policy, and he tried to
do it as far as he was able; he retained Elizabeths advisors, most importantly Robert Cecil
- a good thing that followed his accession: union with Scotland
- but there was no union of the Parliaments, Churches and laws; general mutual dislike of the two nations
- Jamess ignorance of English ways: the Scottish Parliament did not have real powers, the King expected a similar
body in England; but the English MPs did not support his calls for taxation
- James (himself a Calvinist) refused to grant religious tolerance to the Puritan movement at the Hampton Court
Conference, 1604, as a result 300 Puritan clergy were ejected from their livings;
- he authorised an official translation of the Bible, which came to be known as the King James Version
- in 1604 he broadened Elizabeth's Witchcraft Act to bring the penalty of death without benefit of clergy to any one who
invoked evil spirits
- he started conflict with Catholics, whom he promised rights, but imposed fines of them;
- as a result, in 1605, a group of Catholic extremists led by Guy Fawkes developed a plan, known as the Gunpowder
Plot, to cause an explosion in the chamber of the House of Lords, where the King and members of both Houses of
Parliament would be gathered for the State Opening; one of the conspirators, however, leaked the information regarding
the plot, which was consequently foiled; Guy Fawkes was put to death, and there is now an annual "Guy Fawkes day"
(Nov. 5) in the United Kingdom to remember the failed Plot
- as the plot was supported by the Jesuits, it resulted in long lasting hatred towards Roman Catholics
- James was a pacifist, disliking men of war, he also disregarded the power of the navy (being a Scot);
- his neglect of the Navy deprived England of some possible advantages of the peace treaty with Spain; it opened trade
for the English merchants with Spain and its possessions in Europe but said nothing of Spanish America
- therefore, private war against Spanish and Portuguese was continued; the trade with South America was only for
Spain, but, as a result of Drakes victories, North America was open for English, French and Dutch trade and
settlement;
- the Portuguese tried to hinder the English from trade with the natives of Africa and East Indies, but East India
Company armed their ships and had a number of decisive victories, 1614-15;
- subsequently, East India Company, expelled from the Spice Islands (Molucca Sea), developed trade with inland India,
founding trading stations in Madras, Bengal;
- the result of Jamess neglect of the Royal Navy was that England ceased to be a naval power for 30 years;
- another result was the resentment of mariners and merchants against the Stuarts;
- to make matters worse, James beheaded Sir Walter Raleigh (a famous poet and explorer) to please the Spanish
ambassador, accusing him of plotting;
- the peaceful policy of James was put to test by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648);
- the war was another manifestation of Catholic Counter-Protestant reaction against England and Holland;

23

- the war was fought in Central Europe and involved Austria, Spain, but also many other European countries;
- towards the end of his life, James was under the influence of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; so was Jamess
son, Charles I at the beginning of his reign;
20. CHARLES I
- James I died in 1625; his son succeeded as Charles I, and the influence of Buckingham continued;
- The most interesting thing about king Charles I is that he was 56" tall at the start of his reign, but only 48" tall at the
end of it
- following Buckinghams advice, Charles was to be married with a Spanish Infanta, but he was finally married to
Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France: she brought many troubles to England and Stuarts; the Parliament was
against this marriage, as she was a Catholic;
- Buckingham ordered some overseas expeditions against Spain little result;
- the wars led to unparliamentary taxation, martial law over civilians and some arbitrary imprisonment
- it led to the Petition of Right, 1628: a document produced by the Parliament, addressed to King Charles I, asking him
to change in a number of issues: forced loans, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment against Magna Carta, forced billeting
of troops, imposition of martial law and exemption of officials from due process;
- the king was under strong financial pressure and had to sign the Petition; but that was only a beginning of a struggle
for principles;
- soon the Parliament became an opposition to the King;
- Charles was summoning and dissolving Parliament quickly and often; he also tried to get rid of his opponents by
disqualifying them from the Parliament by appointing to some minor functions in administration;
- even the death of Buckingham, murdered by a Puritan fanatic, (1628), did not stimulate the Parliament to cooperate
with the king
- an opposition to the despotic monarch was also English Common Law, the judges were often the great ally of
Parliament;
- two names associated with this opposition against the king: Sir John Eliot (imprisoned, died in Tower) and Sir Edward
Coke (pron. like Cook);
- after Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629, he ruled without it for 11 years this period is called Personal Rule or
Eleven Years Tyranny
- Charles made many unpopular decisions, like imposing the obsolete feudal tax known as Ship Money; the statutes of
earlier kings forbade to collect ship money in peace time;
- a very strong supporter of Charles was the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud;
- he conducted a religious reform, 1633, he attempted to ensure religious uniformity by dismissing non-conformist
clergymen and closing Puritan organisations;
- the persecution led to high scale emigration of Puritans to America, but also the furious reaction of Puritanism in
England was a reason for a civil war;
- while the Archbishop persecuted Puritans, the influence of Henrietta Maria stopped the persecution of Catholics, this
faith became fashionable at Court;
- Charles also used the Star Chamber for religious persecution (the court body which was so popular in Tudor times
now lost its popularity)
- the second name associated with this period is Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Strafford;
- he was an active member of Commons, in opposition to Buckingham, involved in Petition of Right;
- but he did not believe that a country could be successfully ruled by such a large body as Parliament, he envisaged a
royal administration similar to Richelieus in France;
- he became Privy Councillor in 1629, but then spent a few years in Ireland, as Lord Deputy; he showed a ruthless
contempt for opinion of others and intolerance of opposition; he planted English and Scottish colonies in Ireland;
- fortunately for the liberties in Britain, Wentworth became Charles right-hand man when it was too late, 1639
- the divergent courses of the Reformation in England and Scotland complicated the politics when a single King ruled
over both countries, as ecclesiastical union was not possible
- the English (Anglicans or Puritans) wished the State to control the Church, the Scottish Presbyterian party wished the
Church to control the State;
- Charles, brought up in England, believed that he could act as absolute monarch in Scotland even in matters of religion;
- 1637 he attempted to impose Lauds English Prayer Book on the Scottish Church, as the first step of introducing
Anglicanism to Scotland;

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- the revolt against Charles and Laud in Scotland took the form of action organised by the Church (anyway, organs of
political life were lacking in Scotland);
- the Scottish revolt of 1638-40 began the British Revolution; before that, there was no resistance in England, just
discontent; the habit of obedience to the Crown was the inheritance of the Tudor age;
- Scotland had what the English lacked: a rough and brave population accustomed to take arms in their own defence; the
English had so long enjoyed peace under Parliament and the Common Law that they were not eager to defend their
privileges with the sword
- in 1638 the Church Assembly at Glasgow defied the King; Charles replaced the church government with another one
- In 1639, the First Bishops' War broke out; it soon ended in an humiliating truce
- Wentworth advised Charles to summon Parliament, in hope it would provide the money to subdue Scotland; but the
Commons proved unmoveable, it demanded the discussion of various abuses of power during the Personal Rule; as
Parliament failed to proceed, it was dissolved in May 1640, less than a month after it assembled; it became known as
the "Short Parliament"
- subsequently, the Scots occupied Northumberland and Durham, demanding money for withdrawal;
- Charles still attempted to defeat the Scots, but failed; the humiliating Treaty of Ripon, signed after the end of the
Second Bishops' War in October 1640, required the King to pay the expenses of the Scottish army;
- Charles had no choice but to summon Parliament again, it was summoned in November 1640 and was called Long
Parliament, under the leadership of John Pym
- it proved just as difficult to negotiate with as the Short Parliament; it took measures which both threatened Charles's
political position and caused him deep personal grief;
- all actions of Long Parliament were led by Commons, Lords only followed (often reluctantly);
- the members of the House of Commons thought of themselves as conservatives defending the King, the Church and
parliamentary government against innovations in religion and the tyranny of Charles's evil advisers; preventing English
monarchy from European-type absolutism;
- the Parliament soon turned against Charles advisors: Laud was committed to the Tower after impeachment, accused
of treason (executed 1645); Wentworth was arrested and also accused of treason, Charles could not resist, risking his
kings powers, he had to sign the death warrant (Act of Attainder) and the man was executed in May 1641;
- the Parliament abolished the Star Chamber and some other institutions, invalidated Ship Money and some other forms
of taxation;
- to prevent the King from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act, which required that Parliament was
to be summoned at least once every three years, and that when the King failed to issue proper summons, the members
could assemble on their own
- the tension was heightened when the Irish rebelled against Protestant English rule (partly as a result of the execution
of Wentworth); there were rumours of Charles involvement; an army was required to put down the rebellion but many
members of the House of Commons feared that Charles might later use it against Parliament itself;
- The House of Commons next threatened to impeach Charles's Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, finally leading the
King to take desperate action;
- Charles wife persuaded him to arrest the five members of the House of Commons who led the anti-royal faction on
charges of high treason
- Charles entered the House of Commons with an armed force on 4 January 1642, but found that his opponents had
already escaped;
- it was no longer safe for Charles to be in London, and he went to the North to raise an army against Parliament; the
Queen, at the same time, went abroad to raise money to pay for it;
- at this point the civil war was certain, and people began to choose their side;
- after the fiasco of Five Members, Charles used the help of lawyer Hyde to prepare manifestos that won him many
friends: advocates of despotic powers, Romanist devotees;
- the sources of the Civil War included the question who should control: A) the Church B) the executive powers C) the
armed forces D) the militia of the towns and shires;
21. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR; THE COMMONWEALTH
- 1642 1651
- the two sides of the war:
- the Cavaliers (long hair in ringlets), the Royalists, the supporters of the King: mostly from the north and west of
England, usually old aristocracy and landowners; cathedral towns and market towns; the Roman Catholics
- the Roundheads (short hair and plain clothes), the supporters of the Parliament: mostly from London and the south, the
towns associated with cloth trade or close to the sea; classes associated with business and trade; the Navy; the Puritans

25

- tenant farmers and yeomen followed their landlords;

- Charles established a court in Oxford, from where he controlled the north and west of the country; the Parliament
controlled the south and east;
- the main problem the King faced during the war was the lack of money; the Roundheads had their own financial
resources, and they could additionally put taxes on the trade and take loans from cities; the Long Parliament imposed
new taxes and excise duties on goods to pay for the Civil War;
- but the Roundheads could not so easily and fast translate their financial advantages into military terms that
accounted for such a long time that the war lasted;
- The Civil War started on 25 October 1642 with the inconclusive Battle of Edgehill: both sides claimed victory in it;
- the battle produced two outstanding leaders, on either side: Kings nephew, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, a cavalry
commander and Oliver Cromwell, a country gentleman, evangelical Puritan, and former Member of Parliament;
- the fighting forces included infantry, pikes, musketeers, cannons, and the decisive cavalry, which won the most
important battles;
- in 1643 the Royalists had the best cavalry and infantry, so they won some decisive battles, took the port of Bristol,
gained control of most of Yorkshire, and planned to advance on London; however, they depended on irregular and local
army, which was not well-paid and unwilling to fight for a very long time;
- in 1643 Oliver Cromwell formed his troop called "Ironsides", a disciplined unit which demonstrated his military
ability; Ironsides were created from among the yeomen and small freeholders from East Anglia; Cromwell taught them
to combine strict military discipline and obedience to commanders with religious Puritan zeal together with social and
political questions;
- soon Ironsides stopped the Cavalier advance on London;
- after an inconclusive battle at Newbury, on October 11, 1643, the Parliamentarian army won the Battle of Winceby
- in a difficult situation John Pym, the leader of Parliament, negotiated an alliance with the Scots in August 1643
- the Scots agreed to send their army as the ally of the Parliament, but demanded the Reformation of the English Church
in Scottish fashion;
- obviously, the Parliament could not agree to lose supremacy of the State over Church, but some of its members
supported the idea; in the autumn Pym promised the Scots a thorough reformation of the English church and they
finally agreed to help him; in December 1643 Pym died;
- the help of Scots was essential to the important victory in the battle at Marston Moor (2 July 1644); Cromwell's
conduct in this battle (together with Ironsides) was decisive, and marked him out as a potential political as well as a
military leader; 27,000 Roundheads against 18,000 of Cavaliers: it was the largest battle in the war;
- as the result of this battle, the whole northern England was subjected to the Roundhead power;
- however, soon the Roundheads lost in the Battle of Lostwithiel in Cornwall,
- early in 1645 the House of Commons decided to reorganise the army of the Parliament and established the New Model
Army: commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, and Olivier Cromwell; it comprised professional soldiers led by trained
generals, unlike other military forces of the era, which tended to have aristocratic leaders with no guarantee of military
training; the Army was regularly fed and paid, therefore a strict discipline was enforced (Puritan religious zeal helped);
- the elite troops of the Army were its cavalry, which fought with sabres, and two pistols; attacking at the sides
- the centre of the battlefield was the infantry; with pikes and muskets interspersed;
- artillery was used at the sieges;
- the Royalists lost the trust of the society for their plundering habits worsening in 1645 as the King was bankrupt;
- the old spirit of chivalry was lost, the Cavaliers were brave in battle, but were drinking and gambling besides;
- the most decisive victory of the Roundheads came at Naseby, 14 June 1645; mostly thanks to Cromwells cavalry;
15,000 Roundheads under Thomas Fairfax against 12,000 Cavaliers against Prince Rupert;
- there followed a great number of defeats for the Royalists, and then the Siege of Oxford, from which Charles escaped
in April 1646, he put himself into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark, expecting to be well-treated,
in May 1646: this marked the end of the First Civil War;
- the Presbyterians, however, arrived at an agreement with English Parliament and delivered Charles to them in 1647;
- Charles was imprisoned by the Parliament forces;
- although the war ended with the victory of the Parliament, it was not able to make peace after the war
- one mistake was the inability of religious tolerance; Presbyterians attempted the persecution of Anglicans; the Prayer
Book was forbidden;
- besides, the Long Parliament, in financial difficulties, attacked the property of its opponents, Cavaliers, estranging
them; fines imposed on them made them sell some of their estates;

26

- then Parliament began to demobilize and disband the army, without paying the money that was owed to the soldiers;
the Army which made the Parliament the main political force, now stood in conflict with it;
- when the attention of the Parliament was diverted from Charles, he negotiated a new agreement with the Scots, again
promising church reform (establishing Presbyterianism in England and Scotland) in December 1647; although Charles
was still a prisoner, this agreement led to the "Second Civil War";
- a series of Royalist rebellions and a Scottish invasion took place in July 1648; beginning the so-called "Second Civil
War";
- the Scottish and Royalist armies were defeated within months, their final loss coming in August 1648 at the Battle of
Preston;
- this betrayal by Charles caused Parliament to debate whether Charles should be returned to power at all;
- furious that the Parliament was still treating Charles as a ruler, the Army marched on parliament and conducted
"Pride's Purge" (named after the commanding officer of the operation, Thomas Pride): 45 MPs were arrested; 146 were
kept out of parliament, only 75 were allowed in, it was called the Rump Parliament
- the Rump Parliament was ordered to set up a high court of justice in order to try Charles I for treason
- The High Court of Justice established by the Act consisted of 135 Commissioners
- judges found Charles I guilty of high treason, being a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy"; Fifty-nine
Commissioners signed Charles's death warrant, others were forced to;
- Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold in front of the Banqueting House of the Palace of Whitehall on January 30,
1649; the act of killing the King was called Regicide;
- the execution did not meet with any enthusiasm; some people dipped their handkerchiefs in monarchs blood, starting
the cult of the Martyr King;
- many claimed that Cromwell was responsible for Charles execution
- after the execution the country was reigned by Regicide government: army officers and members of the Rump,
- 19 May 1649 the Rump Parliament passed An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth"
- between 1649 and 1653 the country became the republic known as the Commonwealth of England;
- the Church of England changed into the Puritan church; Puritans closed all theatres;
- two main radical groups in the Parliament were Levellers (democratic) and Diggers (more extreme leftist)
- the state was in the state of complete chaos and anarchy; the Navy was paralysed by mutiny and the seas controlled by
Prince Rupert and his privateers; American colonies rebelled; other European states disregarded the regicides;
- Ireland and Scotland were fighting for Charles II (son of Charles I) to regain the throne (The Third Civil War)
- the reconstruction of the British Empire was done mainly by Cromwell
- the first step of it was taking control over Ireland;
- in 1648, in the wake of Charles I's arrest, and the growing threat to them from the armies of the English Parliament,
the Irish Confederates (controlling Ireland) signed a treaty of alliance with the English Royalists;
- Oliver Cromwell landed at Dublin on August 15, 1649 with the army to defeat Royalist alliance in Ireland;
- Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people;
especially the massacre of nearly 3,500 people in Drogheda after its capture comprising around 2,700 Royalist
soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests
- actually, more people died in the guerrilla war that followed until 1653 (estimated up to 30% of Ireland's population
either died or were exiled by the end of the wars)
- the English had destroyed the class of native gentry, so the only leaders of the people were persecuted Catholic priests
- Cromwells next task was to make Scotland obedient to the Commonwealth
- after Regicide, Charles II encouraged the Scots to form an alliance with the Cavalier forces and fight to restore him to
the throne
- Cromwell and his army landed in Scotland, defeated the Royalists at Dunbar 1650 and Worcester, then took
Edinburgh;
- in 1651 Charles II escaped to France which finally ended the Civil Wars;
- it is estimated that around 10 percent of the three kingdoms' population may have died during the civil wars: but more
deaths were caused by disease than by combat
- in 1653 Cromwell dismissed the ineffective Rump Parliament and instead took personal control, effectively, as
military dictator; taking the title of Lord Protector
- Cromwell as Protector realised his vision of the united British islands: Scotland and Ireland were joined to England in
legislative and economic union, their members sat in Parliament;
- Scotland and Ireland enjoyed the advantage of free trade with England and her overseas markets;
- the Scottish Presbyterian Church was preserved;
- the Protestant interest in Ireland was encouraged as a part of England;

27

- the Regicide government is also to be credited with the revival of English sea-power;
- Robert Blake was a great admiral of the Navy, victorious over Prince Rupert, he blockaded him in the Irish ports and
then chased into Mediterranean, where the Cavalier fleet was destroyed (first time English navy was there!)
- the revival of the Navy under Blake led to renewed rivalry with the Dutch; it finally led to the Dutch War of 1652-4;
the battles of two greatest fleets of the world;
- both countries suffered from the war and one of the first decisions of Cromwell as Protector was to make peace with
the Dutch on good terms for England;
- later Cromwell involved in the war with Spain, fought mainly at sea and in colonies; 1655-58;
- both wars were a heavy burden financially, Cromwell increased taxation, sold some Crown and Episcopal lands,
confiscated half the soil of Ireland;
- Cromwells militarism and imperialism became unpopular, for the costs they incurred;
- it was becoming necessary to change the system to enable the army to be disbanded;
- Cromwell tried to free himself from the dependence on the army by making terms with legalists and constitutionalists;
- they demanded that he should become the King himself: he was offered this by the revived Parliament; monarchy was
seen as essential to the restoration of the Parliament and the rule of law;
- but Cromwell declined the offer: it could have placed existing constitutional constraints on his rule; still, the written
constitution gave him many rights belonging to the King, e.g. to issue noble titles;
- however, in the early stage of this evolution of the Commonwealth, Cromwell died of malaria on September 3, 1658
- his son Richard Cromwell proved an unworthy successor
- in 1661 Oliver Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and was subjected to the ritual of a
posthumous execution; he was hanged, drawn and quartered; at the end his body was thrown into a pit; his severed head
was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Abbey until 168;
- Cromwell prepared the desired disbandment of the army and the Restoration of Monarchy, but it took place after his
death;
- the mistake of Puritans was that they excluded all non-Puritans from power and influence in the State; therefore, after
the Restoration, the Puritans were generally hated; it was also the cause of later anti-Puritan legislation;
- at the end of the 17th cent. London was extraordinary in size and importance; half a million inhabitants; due to being
the greatest port in the world, the centre of trade; also manufactures of cloth and other products;
- manufacturing was also developed in villages; life in villagers in England was easier than in Europe; yeomen were a
class unknown elsewhere, they were quite well-off and important;
- it was also the age of establishing English colonies in America which later became the basis for the USA
22. RESTORATION; CHARLES II
- in the last years of Cromwells leadership, the rule of the sword became unpopular in the country; Cromwell himself
tried to restore the old constitutional rule by reviving monarchy, but did not manage before death, and his son failed to
do so;
- after the death of Cromwell, as the country was descending to chaos, the Roundhead decided that it was inevitable to
restore monarchy, and the sooner they do it, the more freedom they will get from the King
- in 1660 the Convention Parliament was elected; it consisted of moderate Roundheads and a strong representation of
the Cavaliers; the Parliament called back Charles II from his exile in Holland;
- both the idea of Republicanism and Absolutism were dead neither was to be continued;
- Charles II and his monarchy did not recover full rights of the King; many limits, imposed in the times of the Long
Parliament, were still kept: the court system was based only on Common Law and Kings influence on it diminished
(Star Chamber did not exist); no taxation could be imposed without the vote of the Parliament;
- an important political figure, the Kings advisor, was Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; partly due to his wisdom and
moderation, combined with Kings shrewdness, the country was given peace after the war, not revenge;
- Clarendon was never forgiven by the Royalists for his acceptance for the Kings policy forbidding revenge; Cavaliers
were ready to seek revenge, but the king issued The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, amnesty for Roundheads
- still, the Regicides, judges involved in Charles Is execution were killed;
- Church and Crown lands, and the lands of Cavaliers that were confiscated before, now were taken back without any
compensation to the ones who bought them;
- but the lands that Cavaliers had to sell to pay for the fines imposed on them were not restored; their reaction was
hatred and they dictated the policy of the Cavalier Parliament, elected 1661; the angry Cavaliers formed a party in it,
that was later called Tory

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- the instrument of Cavaliers revenge was the Clarendon Code, a code of laws against Dissenters prepared by the
Parliament rather than by Clarendon or Charles II;
- Clarendon Code was a measure against the revival of the Roundhead party;
- it was also important for discouraging non-conformity to the Church of England; it prevented religious assemblies and
by the Act of Uniformity restored the Prayer Book;
- the Protestant Dissenters (mostly Puritans) were also a strong political force, even though in minority in the Cavalier
Parliament; their party in Parliament came to be called Whig;
- this opposition gave the basis for English two party system: Tories vs. Whigs;
- the consequence of the fall of the Cromwellian system was also reduction in public expenditure: the King was given
very short allowance by the Parliament; the Parliament was not eager to spend money on any matter;
- at the Restoration, the New Model Army was paid off and disbanded;
- the Cavalier Parliament feared the idea of a standing army, thinking that the King could use it against the
Parliament, so they put a limit on it; no strong limits were put on the Navy and the fleet flourished;
- the Navy came in useful soon, in the next war against Holland, 1665-7;
- this conflict began well for the English, with the capture of New Amsterdam (later renamed New York in honour of
Charles' brother James, Duke of York, the future James II)
- but in 1667 the Dutch launched a surprise attack upon the English when they sailed up the River Thames to where the
better part of the British Fleet was docked; almost all of the ships were sunk
- the Second Dutch War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda in 1667;
- Charles dismissed his advisor Clarendon, whom he utilised as a scapegoat for the war; Clarendon fled to France when
impeached by the House of Commons for high treason
- power passed to a group of five politicians known as the Cabal; they were neither true Anglicans nor true patriots;
quite infamous
- the calamity that touched England very deeply was the Great Plague; 1665-66; it was bubonic plague again, like Black
Death; it killed 75,000 to 100,000 people, up to a fifth of London's population
- the next one was the Great Fire of London; from September 2nd to September 5th, 1666;
- it resulted more or less in the destruction of the city: it destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 44
Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, some City prisons, four bridges across the
rivers Thames and Fleet, and three city gates, and made homeless 100,000 people, one sixth of the city's inhabitants at
that time; fortunately a very small number of people (max. 15) died in it;
- the fire seems to have effectively stopped the plague outbreak, probably due to the destruction of London rats and their
plague carrying fleas;
- after the fire, London was rebuilt on an urban plan originally drafted by architect Christopher Wren which included
widened streets, reduced congestion and basic sewage drainage systems; thatched roofs were also forbidden within the
city;
- in 1668 England united with Sweden and the Netherlands, forming the Triple Alliance against Louis XIV of France; a
fast result was the peace by which Louis stopped his hopes of conquest;
- in 1670 Charles signed the Treaty of Dover with Louis, and later he offered him help in a war against the Dutch, 1672,
which was the Third Anglo-Dutch war;
- but the Parliament forced Charles to make peace in 1674 by stopping the finance to the war;
- the Parliament understood that this war was not over sea power, but it was supposed to help the French and Jesuit
conquest of Europe; actually the secret clause of the Treaty of Dover was that Charles will himself convert into
Catholicism;
- in 1674 Charles disbanded the discredited Cabal Ministers and followed the advice of the leader of the Cavalier
Parliament, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby;
- Danby might be called the founder of the Tory Party; he arranged a marriage of William of Orange, a Dutch prince, to
the daughter of Charles II, Mary (as Charles did not have a son);
- in 1678, Titus Oates, a former Anglican cleric, falsely warned of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate the king
- Charles did not believe allegations, but Danby, who was anti-Catholic, supported them and it resulted in anti-Catholic
hysteria in the country;
- later Danby was involved in the scandal, being accused of helping the king to collaborate with the French; he was
impeached by the Parliament and Charles decide to dissolve the Cavalier Parliament after 17 years;
- a new Parliament, Whig Parliament, was quite hostile to the King and Danby was finally imprisoned in the Tower
- the last years of Charles IIs reign were marked by the violent conflicts between Whigs and Tories;

29

- one of them was based on the Exclusion Bill, which sought to exclude the Duke of York, James, Charles brother from
the line of succession, because he was openly a Roman Catholic; the Tories opposed the Exclusion, the Whigs
supported it;
- these conflicts reinforced the two-party system in England;
- Charles II died suddenly in February 1685, converting to Catholicism on his deathbed; he was succeeded by the Duke
of York, who became James II in England and Ireland, and James VII in Scotland;

23. JAMES II AND THE ENGLISH (GLORIOUS) REVOLUTION; WILLIAM OF ORANGE, ANNE
- James II was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1685; there was little overt opposition to the new Catholic
Sovereign; the new Parliament, strongly royalist, seemed favourable to James, agreeing to grant him a large income;
- soon James faced the Monmouth Rebellion (led by Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth); Monmouth
was defeated and executed at the Tower of London; the rebellion was actually supported by the Whig party (old
Roundhead traditions);
- the effect of the uprising was that it led James to tyranny: under French and Jesuit advice he wanted to convert the
country to Roman Catholicism; he had an excuse for keeping an army of 30,000; Catholics were appointed his officers;
- the fall of Monmouth made the Whigs concentrate their hopes on William III, Prince of Orange, and Mary (Charles Is
sister);
- English people dreaded French influence (Louis XIV still had high hopes) associated with James II, so they supported
the cause of Protestant William;
- after the birth of a Catholic son and heir, James Francis Edward, in 1687, threatened by a Catholic dynasty, several
influential Protestants entered into negotiations with William of Orange who was James's son-in-law;
- religious tension intensified after James allowed Roman Catholics to occupy the highest offices of the Kingdom;
- in the Declaration of Indulgence (1687), he suspended laws punishing Roman Catholics and other religious dissenters
and also granting them access to civil and military posts;
- James also dissolved Parliament in 1687, afterwards reforming the government to reduce the power of the nobility;
- he also offended Anglicans by letting Catholics hold important posts at the University of Oxford;
- then in April 1688 all the clergy were ordered to read from their parish pulpits the Kings Declaration of Indulgence;
- as reading it would have been a humiliation, seven Bishops petitioned the King against it, they were arrested and put
to trial, but acquitted;
- on the day of their acquittal, 30 June 1688, seven Whig and Tory chiefs (the Immortal Seven) sent an invitation to
William of Orange, to come to England with his army
- James refused the assistance of Louis XIV, fearing that the English would oppose French intervention, he believed
that his own army would be adequate;
- 5 November 1688 William brought to England an army drawn from Protestants from all Europe; anyway, James was
deserted by part of his army, which split between Protestants and Catholics;
- James dared not risk the battle and tried to escape to France in December, but was captured; but later released and fled
to France
- William convened a Convention Parliament, which decided that James escape is to be treated as abdication and gave
the throne to the daughter of Charles II, Mary and her husband, William of Orange; February 1689;
- the Scottish Parliament followed that soon;
- in March 1689 James landed with his army in Ireland; Irish Parliament did not follow the example of the English one,
after a few months he was defeated in the Battle of the Boyne (1690) and fled to France - this victory in Ireland is
commemorated annually by the Orange March in Belfast;
- the invasion and subsequent overthrow of James II is commonly known as the "Glorious Revolution," it was in reality
a coup d'tat; it was glorious perhaps only in the sense that it was bloodless
- the Parliament (Tories mainly) produced the Bill of Rights in which it repeated that William and Mary are monarchs;
- the Bill also charged James with abusing his power: the prosecution of the Seven Bishops, the establishment of a
standing army and the imposition of cruel punishments;
- furthermore, the MPs were so eager to prevent any Catholic succession to the throne that they secured the succession
for the children of William and Mary, then Marys sister Anne, and finally to the Protestant House of Hanover (distant
cousins of Anne); later it was replaced by the Act of Settlement 1701 which also excluded all Catholics;
- the Church of England was the main power, the Toleration Act gave the right of religious worship to Protestant nonconformists; Catholics were not strongly persecuted, but excluded from influential elites;
- the Revolution changed the attitude of English monarchs: no later King tried to rule against or without the Parliament;

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- no later King defied the liberties of the people;

- the Censorship of the Press was abandoned
- the balance between the Whig and Tory parties secured the stable government;
- Mary II died of smallpox in 1694, leaving William III to rule alone
- Williams reign was especially difficult in Scotland, which was largely Jacobite;
- 1692 the massacre of Glencoe about 70 Scottish men killed by the followers of William; it discredited the
government and fostered Jacobean feelings in the Scottish nation
- William survived in Scotland due to his tolerance mainly;
- Scotland was a poor and primitive country, especially compared with England;
- this gave the economic basis for the need to associate more closely with England; obviously the Scots had to sacrifice
some of their independence;
- the Act of Union from 1707 joined Scotland with England; it involved the absorption of Scotlands Parliament and
Privy Council in those in England; it created the Kingdom of Great Britain;
- the English invited Scotland to this union for political reasons: they wanted to secure against bringing the exiled
Stuarts to the Scottish throne; it gave England political security;
- in 1689 William of Orange involved England in the War of the Spanish Succession: because the King of Spain,
Charles II, did not have children, and his relatives were Louis XIV of France and Leopold, Holy Roman Emperor,
William did not want either of them to succeed but to split the Spanish territories (in Italy, Europe, America) between
them;
- this started the long period of wars: 1689-1713; they involved all Western and Central Europe; England allied with
Holland, Portugal, Catalonia;
- the wars were led by William and Lord Marlborough, a good military strategist and tactician; both on European
mainland and at sea;
- in 1702 William died and was succeeded by Anne, his sister-in-law;
- after the Act of Union Anne was the first Queen of Great Britain;
- Britain's involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession was brought to an end in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht;
- the treaty divided the Spanish European Empire
- it also ceded Gibraltar to Britain (taken by the British in 1704); and Minorca (it remained British to 1782)
- furthermore, the British were given the Asiento: it permitted England the annual privilege of sending a ship to trade
with Spanish America and of taking there negro slaves; very valuable economically;
- the English state was getting financially more and more stable; many loans were given to the monarch
- the principal lenders to the government were organised in the Bank of England, 1694; Ministers gave the support of
public credit to it;
- the trade flourished; the East India Company made fortunes; British colonies in America flourished; (part of the war
was fought by the British against the French in America)
- Anne died in 1714, and George I of the Hanoverian House, inherited the British Crown, pursuant to the Act of
Settlement 1701; about fifty Roman Catholics with genealogically senior claims were disregarded; amongst them were
the son of James II (James Francis Edward Stuart), the King of France (Louis XV), etc.
24. EARLY HANOVERIANS: GEORGE I, GEORGE II;
- the times of Restoration are the times of Tory domination in the Parliament
- the reign of William of Orange confirmed the doctrine of the Whigs and confused the Tories;
- but throughout the reigns of William and Anne the two parties continued to share the power evenly;
- in the times of kings George I and II the balance shifts in the direction of the Whigs, times of Whig oligarchy
- In England, the Tories generally opposed allowing a foreigner to succeed to the Throne, whilst the Whigs supported
the idea;
- Act of Settlement 1701: George's mother, the Electress Sophia, was designated heir to the British Throne if the thenreigning monarch (William III) and his sister-in-law (the Princess Anne of Denmark) both died without issue
- in the war of Spanish succession, George, who was a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, supported the English
against Louis XIV;
- George became King of Great Britain when Anne died on 1 August 1714; he was German, but Protestant;
- due to the growing influence of the Whigs, and also because George I was ignorant of English language and customs,
the first two Hanoverians gave certain privileges of the Crowns to the Whigs: the formation of Ministries, the
dissolution of the Parliament, the rule over Church and State

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- later George III recovered some powers of the Crown; then he used it to corrupt the House of Commons in a similar
manner as the Whig oligarchs did;
- the 18th century is the time in which the expression rotten boroughs became popular it was the source of lack of
democracy and corruption in the State;
- in some constituencies and boroughs, due to the small number of electors, the post of Member of Parliament could
effectively be bought; because the constituencies were not realigned as population shifts occurred, MPs from one
borough might represent only a few people (giving those people a relatively large degree of political representation
e.g. 11 voters 2 MPs!), whereas entire cities (such as Manchester) might have no representation at all; At one point,
out of 405 elected MPs, 293 were chosen by less than 500 voters;
- in addition, there were boroughs where parliamentary representation was in the control of one or more 'patrons' by
their power to either nominate or bribery these were so-called pocket boroughs;
- the aristocracy devised in the 18th century the machinery to control the executive without losing its efficiency: it was
the Cabinet and the Prime Minister
- the Cabinet was a group of Ministers dependent on the House of Commons; all of them had to be MPs, and they had to
agree as to the common policy of the country;
- the first many who evolved the common responsibility of the Cabinet and the leading role of the Prime Minister was
Sir Robert Walpole;
- he position of Prime Minister had no official recognition in law, but Walpole is nevertheless acknowledged as having
held the de facto office in 1721-1742;
- Walpole acted by driving out from his Cabinet all colleagues who did not agree with his policy or did not submit to his
leadership;
- the Cabinet system was the key to obtaining efficient government in Britain;
- it is a link between the executive and legislative powers;
- nevertheless, the English countryside was governed by the Justices of the Peace (since Tudor times), unpaid; and these
were mostly Tory landlords;
- thus the power in England was aristocratic and it was to remain so until the Industrial Revolution;
- the 18th century is the age of decay for the English universities; still only two of them and in an awful state; few
examination held;
- schools inefficient and corrupt;
- the 18th century was the last era when the village flourished; small yeomen freeholders often sold their farms and
moved to the towns with their families;
- the conditions of life under first two Georges (1714-1727-1760), freedom of individuals, mechanical inventions, the
beginning of the use of coal due to using up of timber, etc. prepared the way for the Industrial Revolution;
- the industrial and agricultural changes of George IIIs reign were necessary for Britains raise of population;
- whereas in England the old Cavaliers became law-abiding Tories, even though dissatisfied with the rule of the King
over the water, they were unwilling to restore Roman Catholic Stuarts to the throne;
- in Scotland the situation was largely different: Scottish Cavaliers became Jacobites and were prepared to fight at a
good opportunity
- the Act of Union from 1707 was quite unpopular and the famine and hardship fed the discontentment of the Scots;
- it was hoped that Jacobite restoration would mean a revival of Scottish independence;
- besides, some chiefs of the Highland clans wanted to oppose the leading clan of Campbell;
- this all resulted in two rebellions coming from Scotland: in 1715 and 1745 called the fifteen and the forty-five
- James Francis Edward Stuart (the son of James II, the old Pretender) corresponded with John Erskine, the Earl of
Mar, a leading Scottish politician, from France, as part of widespread Jacobite plotting, and in the summer of 1715 he
called on him to raise the Clans
- the English rising in 1715 concentrated mainly in Roman Catholic section of Northumberland, it was soon defeated by
the royal troops;
- it was more serious in Scotland, where many clans rose; the royal forces were led by John Campbell, the Duke of
Argyle, the rebels by Mar,
- in the main battle of Sheriffmuir in November 1715, 3500 men of Argyle defeated 8000 men of Mar; soon the
rebellion was over;
- George I was faced with a second rebellion in 1719;
- The Old Pretender sought to fight in "the Nineteen" with Spanish aid, he set up his government near Eilean Donan
Castle on the west Scottish coast, only for it to be destroyed by British ships a month later
- The Jacobites were poorly equipped, and were easily defeated by British artillery, the invasion never posed any
serious threat to the Government

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- George I was the least popular king among Hanoverians; he could not speak English and introduced many German
elements to the court
- he insisted that all his Ministers be Whigs;
- that he was not overthrown by the Jacobites is due to the fact that the exiled Stuarts so strongly persisted in their
Catholicism; being Protestant would have easily put them on the English throne;
- the peace in England was largely due to the policy of Robert Walpole; he adopted a moderate policy at home and
peace policy abroad
- in 1727 George I died and was succeeded by his son, George II
- George the second was more successful and more popular; he could speak English and knew England better;
- not much changed in the country which was still controlled by Walpole
- in 1739 George II involved England in the war against Spain, mainly at sea; against Walpoles will; it was part of the
War of Austrian succession
- the war, however, was popular with the British public opinion, since the English were eager to develop slave trade
beyond the limits established by the Asiento Treaty;
- the consequence of the maritime war with Spain was the continental war with France; partly fought in America as well
- the French partly encouraged the rising of 1745; after this rebellion the succession war continued, finishing with a
peace treaty in 1748;
- the second Jacobite rebellion took place in 1745, the forty-five
- the rebellion started from the French invasion; it was led by Charles Edward Stuart (later known as Bonnie Prince
Charlie or the Young Pretender)
- later, again, the Scottish clans joined the Pretender in the rebellion against the English forces;
- England was not prepared for the rebellion as many of its troops were abroad;
- the Scottish and Pretenders army took Edinburgh unopposed and they easily got as far as Derby in England (only 120
miles from London);
- after the surprise benefit was lost, Edward did not have much advantage: his army was defeated in January 1745 in the
Battle of Culloden, the last battle ever fought on British soil; they fled to France in womans clothing;
- the result of the forty-five in England was just the further decline of Jacobitism
- in Scotland, it was deeper, it affected the institutions of the country, leading to the abolishment of the feudal system;
- the Lowland Scotland had deeper influence over the Highlands; it also united Scotland more strongly with England;
giving basis for modern Scottish society;
- later, England took part in the Seven Years War, a continuation of the War of Austrian succession, 1756-63;
- Great Britain, Hanover and Prussia fought against many major European powers, including Austria, Russia, France,
Sweden and Saxony
- the war was also fought in North America (esp. Canada) and India;
- the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, 1763, France gave up Canada and Mississippi territories;
- a highly influential politician was William Pitt, the Elder; the Parliamentary leader and Prime Minister;
- called the Great Commoner he displayed contempt for the ruling Whig aristocracy;
- he was a great military leader in the Seven Years War;
- in 1760 George II died and was succeeded by his grandson, George III;
- England was a powerful country then, with free institutions envied by other states;
25. GEORGE III
- before George III became King in 1760, the conflict between the executive and legislative was solved by the new
invention of the Cabinet, whose ministers seated in the Parliament
- this system functioned very well in peace time under Walpole and during the war under the elder Pitt;
- but George III was able to break this balance for 40 years (1760-1782); he tried to recover the executive powers of the
Crown
- it was only possible because the Parliament did not have democratic basis and full social support, being mainly
aristocratic
- besides the lack of balance was caused by the weak Tory party in opposition which could not check the Whigs this
enabled the King to corrupt the Parliament
- thus George III ruled himself, making the Cabinet and the Parliament mere instruments of the royal will;

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- in his early reign, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years War; despite territorial gains, Britain ended the war with
a huge debt, resolving the matter of the debt was one of the reasons of American Revolution, as the British wanted to
put heavy taxes on American colonists; (e.g. Stamp Act 1763 introducing stamp duty on legal documents in America)
- the government was led again by William Pitt, now given the title of Earl of Chatham; but after his illness it changed;
- George III deemed that the chief duty of the colonists in North America was to submit to him and to Great Britain
- The Americans grew increasingly hostile to British attempts to levy taxes in the colonies
- in the Boston Tea Party in 1773, a Boston mob threw over 340 crates of tea into Boston Harbour as a political protest
- In response, Lord North, a British PM, introduced the Punitive Acts (Intolerable Acts, Penal Acts), controlling and
limiting the independence of colonies: closing the port of Boston and ordering political trials
- the Americans admitted the supremacy of the Crown, but rather not of the Parliament, in which they were not
represented;
- free from French influence after the Treaty of Paris, they did not make any attempt to tax themselves;
- the Empire was associated in their minds with restrictions on their commerce and industry;
- the English, on the other hand, treated colonies merely as markets for their goods; denying them rights
- the American colonies were not yet united, divided by vast distances and mutually jealous;
- the English society was aristocratic, old and elaborate and the American democratic, new and simple it was
difficult to understand one another;
- introducing the Penal Acts was a bad decision politically: it raised the hostility and practically meant the war with the
colonies;
- still, Britain did not prepare for the war, it even limited the number of seamen in the navy;
- the military conflict started in 1775;
- the sides of the conflict were the Radicals (led by George Washington) and the Loyalists;
- the civil war was so unpopular that the King had problems with finding support for it, he had to employ German
mercenaries
- On July 4, 1776 the colonies declared their independence from the Crown; The Declaration of Independence made
several political charges against the British king, legislature, and populace
- although Britain was initially successful, it changed after the surrender of British troops at Saratoga (October 1777)
- the French intervention in the war followed; the war ended as a war of Britain against half the world: France, Spain
fought at sea; the coalition of Russia, Prussia, Holland and Scandinavian countries united to defend their rights;
- George III obstinately tried to keep Great Britain at war with the rebels in America, despite the opinions of his own
ministers
- In 1781, the news of Charles Cornwallis capitulation reached London; the Tory Lord North subsequently resigned in
1782
- George III accepted the defeat in North America, and authorised the negotiation of a peace.
- The Treaty of Paris and the associated Treaty of Versailles were ratified in 1783; The former treaty provided for the
recognition of the new United States by Great Britain; the latter required Great Britain to give up Florida to Spain and to
grant access to the waters of Newfoundland to France
- as people were disappointed with the rule of the Whig oligarchy and PM North, in December 1783, George III
appointed a new PM: William Pitt the Younger, the head of the revived Tory party;
- the first decade of Pitts Ministry was a ministry of peace and reconstruction, compared to the times of Walpole; it
also finished the period of Kings domination as the executive power
- actually, appointing Pitt was a success for George III: he supported Pitts policy and he was popular again
- Pitt repaired the finances of the country, began rebuilding a new British Empire, modernising and securing the
governments in Canada and India;
- the reforms initiated by Pitt prepared England very well for the wars that followed the French Revolution;
- the times of Pitt mark the return of the aristocratic, Parliament-based government, independent from the King;
- it is also the era of the domination of a Tory oligarchy; the power still relied on the system of rotten boroughs;
- the Tory oligarchy was very much like Whig oligarchy before;
- the end of the 18th century was also the times of the early democratic movements (Tom Paine as one of the leaders),
but they were subdued and repressed by the Tory government, especially after the news of the French Revolution;
- an example of this is Combination Acts, 1799-1800, by which Pitt made Trade Unions illegal and forbade all
combinations of working class people;
- the milder opposition than Paines Radicals were the Whigs with Charles Fox as their leader
- George III's health was in a poor condition, he suffered from a mental illness, now strongly believed to be a symptom
of a blood disease porphyria; he was generally said to be mad;
- The King suffered a brief episode of the disease in 1765, but the first longer episode began in 1788; George became
seriously deranged and posed a threat to his own life

34

- after a final relapse of the disease in 1811 George III became permanently insane and locked away at Windsor Castle
until his death; sometimes speaking many hours without pause, he claimed to talk to angels and once greeted an oak tree
as King of Prussia;
- during this time George's eldest son governed as Prince Regent; until George III's death when he succeeded his father
to become George IV
- Over the Christmas of 1819, George III suffered a further bout of madness and spoke nonsense for fifty-eight hours,
then sank into a coma; On 29 January 1820, George died blind, deaf, and insane at Windsor Castle;
- the French Revolution of 1792 worried British landowners; as a result of it, France declared war at Britain in 1793,
beginning a long period of military conflict: the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars lasting until 1815;
- in the times of war, George III temporarily recovered from his illness, he became the symbol of British resistance, and
was very popular due to his decisions of increasing taxes and raising a powerful army;
- the war began with the defeat in British forces in the Netherlands in 1793-4, after which British troops were forced out
of the Continent;
- then Britain stayed in the state of war, but kept its armies out of Europe, safe behind the shield of the Navy;
- Britain only gave some naval and financial support to the campaigns of the war until 1808;
- those early years of the wars were successful for France, the most powerful European country then, with a strong
national feeling and good organisation
- England, which was the second power, did not actually treat the war seriously at the beginning: Pitt was a good leader
for peace, but not so good for war as his father;
- Pitt believed that the war could be fought in the colonial areas just as the Seven Years War, and did not involve
British troops so strongly in Europe;
- thus England fought a war in West Indies, where it suffered severe losses (40,000 men in 3 years), also as a result of
tropical diseases and slave rebellions;
- while European powers were defeated by the French Revolutionaries and then by Napoleon, England initially met her
crisis in the naval war
- it was excluded from the Mediterranean waters and faced some mutinies;
- then, a strong personality of admiral Horatio Nelson helped the English regain advantage;
- a cardinal event was a victorious battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798; restoring the British sea-power and disabling
Napoleons plan to move his army to English India; his army had to return from Egypt to France;
- in 1802 Britain signed a peace Treaty of Amiens with France, but it did not last longer than until the following year;
- an invasion of Napoleon forces seemed imminent, but it was thwarted by the English navy, again
- the decisive victory came in the Battle of Trafalgar, a cape off the southern coast of Spain, 21 October 1805, where the
English fleet defeated the French and the Spaniards; Nelson was hit by a bullet and died soon after the victorious end of
the battle;
- the battle confirmed the English supremacy on sea and gave England safety in its insular position;
- but Napoleon soon recovered his army defeated the Austrian and Russian troops at Austerlitz (Dec. 1805)
- in January 1806 Pitt died; his and Nelsons deaths mark the end of the first phase of the war;
- after the death of Pitt, there was no strong personality to lead the government, so England was ruled by the groups of
Tory politicians, the main political figure was Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Secretary of State for War and the
Colonies, and then Foreign Secretary;
- the war continued in the phase of a general blockade, with France invincible on land and England invincible on sea;
Germany, Russian and the US suffered from this blockade;
- this resulted in Russian rebelling against Napoleon and the US rebelling against England; a short war of England
against the US followed, 1812-14;
- the English higher classes suffered very little from the war; the burden was more on middle classes, but mainly on the
working classes;
- the balance of powers changed after two wrong decisions of Napoleon: to try to conquer Russia and to annex Spain
- it gave England (whose trade with Europe was blocked) the opportunity to commence the Peninsular War in 1808;
- the war started from the English support to Portugal fighting for its independence;
- the Portuguese were commanded by the British officers; then the army of 30,000 men from Britain joined them; they
were attacking Spanish and French troops in Spain; gradually gaining territory: 1809-13;
- British army fought under Sir John Moore and Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington;
- the Peninsular War was finally won, because the French suffered losses against Russia and Germany, with a decisive
battle of Leipzig, 1813;
- early in 1814 France was entered by Wellington from the South, by the Austrians, Prussians and Russians from the
North;
- the wisdom of Castlereagh helped form a successful coalition that subdued Napoleon and exiled him to Elba;

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- the defeat of France was followed by the Congress of Vienna (October 1814 June 1815) which redrew the map of
Europe; the treaty secured 40 years of peace for Europe, not giving much vengeance to the victors;
- however, Napoleon returned from Elba and gathered the army of veterans;
- the French army was soon defeated in the battle of Waterloo (the Netherlands) 18 June 1815;
- England did not gain any territories in Europe by the Treaty of Vienna, but it gave her an important advantage in
colonies, enabling the country to engage in the process of colonisation;
- the total English death toll in the Wars was about 100,000, half of it died in West Indies in Pitts times, about 40,000
in the Peninsula war;
.
- in the early and middle 18th century, when Jacobite Scotland rebelled, the Irish did little to oppose the English
- they started acts of rebellion towards the end of the century, especially during the War of American Independence;
- it was also a religious clash between Catholic and Protestant fanaticism
- there was a powerful rebellion in 1798, but it was subdued by the British
- Pitt, PM, decided that the only method of permanently restoring justice and order was united the two islands in one
Parliament at Westminster
- 1 January, 1801, Act of Union passed, merging the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- the Irish were given a large representation in the Parliament, but for 28 years Roman Catholics were prohibited from it
- the days of King George III are also important in the development of the British Empire throughout the world
- even in the times of George II, the British conquered French Canada, later on the country was under British
domination
- a significant part of the Empire became also Australia, since the times of Captain James Cook and his exploratory
journey with the Royal Navy;
- furthermore, after the destruction of French power in India, the British domination became undisputed; the Indians
themselves used the British support to solve their internal conflicts: the prise was the colonisation process, the
establishment of popular Anglo-Indian families;
- furthermore, domination in some parts, especially southern, of Africa;
- during the Napoleonic wars Britains lead over the rest of Europe in colonisation and trade was increased: it led to the
rapid expansion of the Second British Empire;
26. TOWARDS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TIMES OF GEORGE III
- the so-called Industrial Revolution was preceded by an Agricultural one: immense changes in farming, innovation in
methods of land cultivation, replacing people by machines, use of fertilisers;
- the growth of the British population: 1721: 6-7 million, the number doubles to 14 million during the times of George
III, until 1821, then in 1921 it is 42 million;
- the growth of population is due to: high birth rate; saving of life by improvements of medical science, improved
standard of living, disappearance of the Plague, better hygiene, habits of cleanliness, improvement of sanitation in
London and cities; better hospitals, care of infants;
- the additional millions could not have been maintained by the island: a need for agricultural and industrial changes;
- depletion of British timber; fuel famine need to excavate coal;
- due to growth of population, there was a need to enlarge the corn supply a national necessity
- it resulted in necessity for enclosures on the land, to improve farming; North English and Scottish landscape changed
as a result; many fields were enclosed by hedges or stone walls;
- enclosures meant better farming, and were necessary to feed the population, but they also meant that many people
were deprived of land; the Enclosure Acts of the Parliament and the Parliament was closed for anybody who did not
have a considerable areas of land;
- inadequate distribution of power;
- the Industrial Revolution was also prepared by rapid improvement of methods of transport (first since Roman times)
- a system of canals built in the country; fast and cheap transport
- then, in the 19th century it was followed by the development of railroads;
- development of many important new cities: Liverpool as a port for new cotton industry from Lancashire; the use of
coal to produce iron creation of the Black Country in the West Midland area;
- James Watt and steam engine; 1769, engines used for pumps in coal-mines, for factories, later train and steam ships
- a weaving machine invented 1786, faster production of cloths;
- coal mines, new generations of well-educated engineers;

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- what naturally followed was the development of the northern parts of England;
- the shift in the geographic balance of power was responsible for the demand for political change, new cities needed
Parliamentary representation;
- no legal Trade Unions could function, the labourers were often abused by factory owners, especially women and
children were exploited, bad conditions of work, overworked; low wages;
- unfortunately, people often had to escape from rural areas to industrial ones due to starvation; village industries started
to disappear;
- most of employment concentrated in industrial centres, life concentrated in urban districts;
- new industrial cities offered grave conditions of living, overcrowded and unhealthy houses; bad water supply and
sanitation; no education or social services;
27. 19TH CENTURY POLITICAL REFORMS
- the monarchs that ruled GB after George III were: his son, George IV, 1820-1830, and his other son, William IV,
1830-1837; followed by Queen Victoria 1837-1901, granddaughter of George III;
- Victoria was the longest ruling English monarch, the times of her reign, Victorian era, are usually associated with at
the height of the Industrial Revolution, a period of great social, economic, and technological change; and also with a
great expansion of the British Empire
- Victoria was the last monarch of the House of Hanover; her successors belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha:
her son, Edward VII, 1901-1910, his son George V, 1910-1936, his son Edward VIII, 1936 (abdicated due to love affair
to a married woman), other son George VI, 1936-1952, his daughter Elizabeth II, since 1952;
- after Napoleonic wars the prices of food ruined many farmers, the Parliament passed the Corn Law, 1815, to prevent
entry of this cheap grain; it was supposed to protect the monopoly of landlords, and the decision was criticised by
middle, industrial classes
- subsequently, the opposition, the Whigs, suggested the abolition of Income Tax;
- these, and any other democratic movements met with strong resistance and repression of the Tory governments;
- public meetings were prohibited, an important event is Peterloo Massacre, in Manchester, 1819, 11 people were killed
and over 400, including many women and children, were injured as a result of a cavalry charge into the crowd at a
public meeting
- in 1824 the Combination Acts making Trade Unions illegal were repealed, Robert Peel was a politician responsible for
that;
- strong opposition of the Whig party demanded Parliamentary Reform; the aristocratic Whig leaders combined with the
middle class, an important group in the times of Industrial Revolution;
- in 1830, the Whigs form a government with Lord Grey as PM; soon they start reforms which culminate in The Great
Reform Act (Bill), 1832; called a modern Magna Carta from the governing class;
- the Act introduced changes in franchise legislation: it extended the right to vote to middle classes; on the basis of
income; it also abolished 56 rotten boroughs and moved some MPs from small boroughs, giving larger representation to
industrial cities;
- in 1833 the first Factory Act was passed: fixing legal limits for the working hours of children
- 1847 the second Factory Act limited working hours to 10;
- in 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act freed the slaves and gave slave-owners large compensation for them, paid by the
country;
- 1837, the Municipal Corporations Act helped to organise the local government in new big cities;
- the new police organised by Robert Peel in London in 1829, spread over the country;
- Public Health Acts of 1848, 1872 and 1875 improved the towns, water supply, sanitation and hygiene;
- the Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1849, made bread cheaper, it was a reaction to hungry 40s;
- after the Great Reform Act, the disappointed Tory party under Peel reconstituted and changed into a Conservative
Party;
- later the Whig party, joined by some left-wing radicals, came to be called Liberal Party; the two-party system
continued;
- the Second Reform Act was passed in 1867, it further extended the right to vote, given an even larger representation in
the Parliament;
- 1872 the Ballot Act made the voting secret;
- 1854-56 are the years of the Crimean War against Russia; the result of the war was the loss of 25,000 lives;
- the real hero of the war was Florence Nightingale, for her contribution to nursing; a pioneer in this field;

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- two main leaders of the country in the late 19th century were: William Gladstone, Liberal, and Benjamin Disraeli,
Conservative, preferred by Queen Victoria; the rivalry between both politicians gave the country a number of reforms;
- the middle of Victorian age is the time of prosperity: The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London symbolized Britain's
industrial supremacy;
- the 10,600-km (6600-mi) railroad network of 1850 more than doubled during the mid-Victorian years, and the number
of passengers carried annually went up by seven times; the telegraph provided instant communication; inexpensive steel
was made possible, and a boom in steamship building began, the value of British exports tripled, and overseas capital
investments quadrupled, working-class living standards improved, and there came growth of trade unionism
- the Victorian Age is the age of the growth and domination of the Second British Empire: Canada, Australia, South
Africa, India;
28. 20TH CENTURY KEY ISSUES
- 1900 new Labour Party established based on trade unions and left-wing politicians;
- after the fall of popularity of Liberal Party, last government 1905-1915, Labour Party became the balance for the
Conservative party in British two party system;
- the first Labour government was formed in 1924, but the first really strong one, in 1945, soon after WW2, with
Clement Atlee as PM
- this government initiated a number of important reforms: selective nationalisation (the Bank of England, coal,
electricity, gas, the railways and iron & steel); it also developed a welfare state and funded National Health Service in
1948; which remains Labour's proudest achievement;
- the age of wars: WW1 with David Lloyd George as PM and WW2 with Winston Churchill as PM
- decolonisation: the fall of the British Empire:
- 1931, The Statute of Westminster grants virtually full independence to Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, the Irish
Free State, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Union of South Africa, when it declares the British parliament
incapable of passing law over these former colonies without their own consent.
- 1947, India and Pakistan (including present-day Bangladesh) achieve independence in an attempt to separate the
predominantly Hindu and Muslim parts of former British India
- 1948, Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) become independent
- 1954; The United Kingdom withdraws from the last part of Egypt it controls: the Suez Canal zone.
- 1956, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan becomes independent.
- 1957, Ghana
- 1960, Nigeria, Somalia, Cyprus
- 1960s, further African countries
- the Thatcher decade: in office 1979-1990; Conservative; stopping the inflation by high interest rates and spending
cuts; the years between 1982 and 1988 were economic boom years in Britain, the living standards rose and the rate of
unemployment gradually ebbed, British industries became more efficient, and London maintained its role as one of the
world's top three centres of finance, t
- the economic role of government declined as Thatcher promoted privatization-the turning over to private investors of
government monopolies such as British Airways, the telephone service, and the distribution of gas and water, public
housing tenants were strongly encouraged to buy the houses they rented
- although Thatcher had not abolished the welfare state, in the eyes of her critics "the Iron Lady" had limited social
services such as education and the National Health Service
- since 1997 the Labour Government under Tony Blair;

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