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UNIT 5:
THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES: FROM THE STUARTS TO THE HANOVERS WITH A REPUBLICAN
INTERLUDE

PART 1: THE STUARTS AND THE HANNOVERS FAMILY TREE

James I
(1603-1625)

Cromwells
Charles I Republic
(1625-1649) (1649-1660)

Charles II James II THE HOUSE OF

(1660-1685) (1685-1689) HANOVER

James Mary II & Anne I (1702- George I

William of 1714) (1714-1727)
Orange
(1689-1702)
Charles George II
Edward (1727-1760)

George III
(1760-1820)

George IV
(1820-1830)

William IV
(1830-1837)

QUEEN VICTORIA
(1837)
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PART 2: JAMES I & CHARLES I

JAMES I (PROTESTANT)
He didnt have advise from the house of commons. He was not interested in parlianment. He
was not clever to have advisers. He left the rule of England in the hands of a few: friends. He
was a protestant. There was a plot to kill him: Guy Fawlkes plot. James came from Scotland, they
didnt have a Parlianment there. The Parliament had to be called by the king. He didnt call the
parlianment for 11 years. There was a revolt in the north of Scotland and in Ireland. He needed
an army to put down the revolves. To pay the army he needed taxes, so he call the parliament.
He decided to reduce and take control of the Parliament by his own army. But the parliament
had been advised.
Cavaliers (the army of the king) vs roundheads (the ones of the parliament). Roundheads won
in the battle of Naseby. The king was captured and executed.

The leader of the parliament was Oliver Cromwell. He was a puritan. This was a republic: country
controlled by the parlianment. He closed the house of Lords, because represented the rich
people and took possessions of their goods. He closed all drinking houses, you couldnt swear
neither travel on Sunday. He divided the country into 11 districts and put a general in church of
each district. When he died, no body wanted to continue with his plan. When he died, they
decided to call back the dynasty. The family of the king was exhiled in France.

CHARLES I (MARRIED TO A CATHOLIC QUEEN HAD CATHOLIC SYMPATHIES)

1. An angry Parliament was determined that they were not going to grant
the King money without first ensuring he desist from imposing illegal
and invented taxes. Charles was forced to agree a bill that the
Parliament would be called regularly, neither could he dissolve
Parliament without its consent, and forced loans and ship money were
abolished, leaving Charles dependent on Parliament for income. (John
OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper
Class Idiots in Charge. 226)

PART 3: CIVIL WAR AND CROMWELLS REPUBLIC

2. Cromwells name is still uttered with contempt in Ireland and with good
reason. His conduct of the war there would embarrass a modern-day
Serbian warlord. At Drogheda he had thousands of civilians put to
death; women and children were taking refuge in the church were
burnt alive while the commander of the towns forces was beaten to
death with his own wooden leg. The handful of survivors were
deported to Barbados, which was not as nice as it sounds. Shortly
afterwards, at Wexford, a similar massacre took place, priests bearing
crucifixes before them were mown down by English soldiers. Even by
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the brutal rules of war of the time these were exceptionally barbaric
episodes. Anyone who imagines that some fundamental decency in the
English national character would somehow made it impossible for the
brutality of the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge to happen here should
remember that the English military have committed plenty of
horrendous war crimes of their own that somehow didnt make it to
Our Island Story. Any race or people are capable of obscenely inhumane
acts once they have been persuaded that their victims are subhuman
and such was the propaganda directed at Irish Catholics in the
seventeenth century. (John OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of
Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge. 237)

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: An interesting television mini-series that provides a fictional account of

Cromwells times: The Devils Whore (Peter Flannery and Martine Brant, 2008)

PART 4: MONARCHY REINSTATED

CHARLES II (PROTESTANT)
He was living in exile in France, when he came back the first put to death those in Parliament
that had signed the execution notive of his father. He reopened the House of Lords. The 2 groups
that had fought in the civil war were also 2 factions in Parliament, and eventualy grew into the
first political parties. First political parties in UK: the cavaliers became the Tories, and the
Roundheads the Whigs.

Charles died childless, the throne was inherited by his brother.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: An interesting fictional account of the restoration of the Stuart
monarchy in England can be found in the film Restoration (Michael Hoffman, 1995), based on a
novel by Rose Tremain. King Charles II also appears in an interesting portrayal of the world of
the theatre in England in the 1660s, the film: Stage Beauty (Richard Eyre, 2004). Another text
which provides useful information on the life during the Restoration is: Liza Picards Restoration
London (1997).

JAMES II (CATHOLIC): James was married to a catholic queen, he had been ehiled to France, a
catholic country. He put down the rebellion but was very severe. He had to face the protestant
rebellion. He killed 300 people and sent 1.000 to the collonies to work as slaves. The parliament
was not happy and they plotted against their king. He had a daughter, Mary, married to a Dutch.
They plot an invasion with an army financed by the husband of his daughter. When the king saw
the army arriving to the country, the king escaped back to France.

3. It is commonly believed that no foreign army has successfully invaded

Britain since 1066. However, this is not strictly true. Whatever we think
about James II, he was the rightful King of England and Scotland;
William of Orange himself had no legal claim to the Crown and his
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invading army consisted of his fellow countrymen from Holland, with

German, Danish and Huguenot reinforcements. There may have been
no battle, but James did not flee his realm because he thought William
might tease him about his nosebleeds. An invading foreign army was
the key factor in this illegal coup dtat. The last foreign power to
invade England was not the Normans but the Dutch in 1688. ... [I]t has
been spun as the Glorious Revolution, or the Bloodless Revolution in
order to accommodate the uncomfortable truth that a foreign Prince
took the British throne by turning up with a huge army. (John OFarrell.
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class
Idiots in Charge. 255-256)

MARY II AND WILLIAM III (OF ORANGE) (PROTESTANTS) They becie joint rulers. They passed a
law that onwards no king could be catholic. And, if they died without children, the throne would
go to the sister Anne, but tot again to James.

ANNE I: During her reign, the Act of Union was signed. Ireland was just a colony. Now it is no
longer England. There was no war in Scotland, it was part of England through the Act of Union.

4. Grumpy, boring and unintelligent, she lacked wit or charm and her
writings are riddled with basic grammatical errors and spelling
mistakes. She attempted to present herself as the new Queen
Elizabeth, but historical pedants spotted subtle differences between
the two queens namely that Elizabeth had been a striking redhead
with a fierce intelligence and ready wit, whereas Anne was a big fat
thicko who was as dull as ditchwater. ... The best that can be said of
Queen Anne ... was that she provided some sort of focus for national
unity during a war with France that lasted for nearly her entire reign.
(John OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of
Upper Class Idiots in Charge. 264-265)

5. [T]he Act of Union was passed in 1707, and under its terms forty-five
Scottish MPs came to Westminster and sixteen Scottish peers joined
the House of Lords. ... The Country had a new name and a new flag; a
common market and monetary union and somewhere in the small print
of the act it must have stipulated that if any Scottish sportsmen won
anything, the London media would always refer them as British just to
annoy the Scots. (John OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain
or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge. 268)

PART 5: THE HANOVERS

GEORGE I: was offered to be the king. It is the start of a new House. He was German, didnt
speak English, bust he was a Protestant and hated the French, it was enough. The King had to sit
all sessions fof Parliament and didntu nderstand a word. He needed a translator. Sisnce he
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didnt speak English, the Cabinet system was created. The leader of the cabinet was the prime
minister. Its easier to put things in a small group and then vote.

GEORGE II: He also was born in Germany.He passed the Stage Licensing Act forbidding any text
to criticise the King. Specialy stage texts. Jacobite Rebellion. They tried to re-establish the stuarts
(Charles Edward was the representant). They wanted to win the House of Hannover. The Stuarts
lose. People didnt like it, it was passed a law that prohibited to criticise the king in places such
as theatre. They wanted to stablish back the line of Stuarts with Charles Edward. He had to
scape dressed as a woman.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: An interesting contemporary account of the times of George II is the

novel Tom Jones, written by Henry Fielding in 1749. There is a film version: Tom Jones (Tony
Richardson, 1963), screenplay by John Osborne.

GEORGE III: had a blood desease that affected his mental abilities. Now we identify it as
porphyria. He was declared insane. Until his death, his son aced as regent.

George IV: was a womanizer, gambler he always had debts. The parliament could manipulate
him because he needed more money. In short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable,
honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal PRINCE, was a violator of his word, a libertine over
head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and
demireps, a man who just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his
country or the respect of posterity. (Leigh Hunt in an article in The Examiner, 22 March 1812.
Leigh was in prison for two years for advancing his opinions). Accounts of the Princes early life,
or the rakes progress, are in danger of making Hunts comments seem almost moderate and
understated. The Prince conducted a well-publicised affair with a married actress, Mary Perdita
Robinson, when he was seventeen. The affair did not last long ... but the Prince went on to have
more discreet affairs with other married actresses. The Princes name became synonymous with
scandal. He became a prominent patron of racing. ... It has been estimated that his racing
activities cost him at least thirty thousand pounds a year and thus contributed to his financial
problems. A much bigger and more long-lasting scandal was occasioned ... by the Princes
relationship with Maria Fitzherbert. The Royal Marriages Act of 1772 stated unequivocally that
there could be no possibility of marriage between them. Maria was a Roman Catholic who had
been widowed twice and the Prince was still under twenty-five. A secret wedding ceremony took
place in London on 15 December 1785. ... Although this relationship was to last much longer
than the one with Robinson, the Princes name also became associated with those of a number
of other married women .... He also attempted to start an affair in 1809 with Lady Bessborough,
although she was not at all impressed by the sight of that immense, grotesque figure flouncing
about half on the coach, half on the ground. The Prince although secretly married, decided to
undergo a more open and conventional ceremony with Caroline of Brunswick on 8 April 1795.
... Mercenary motives were uppermost in the Princes mind since he wanted members of
Parliament both to clear some of his debts and to provide him with a larger allowance in the
future. They in turn wanted him to provide an heir. Although this official marriage certainly
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helped to ease, if not to solve, some of his financial problems, it did nothing to put a stop to the
breath of scandal that seemed to accompany everything he did. The new couple were living
apart within a year, each of them embarking on a series of publicised relationships. (Roger Sales.
Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England. 65-67). He didnt have children, the crown
went to his brother, William IV.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: An interesting account of the times of George III and his son George IV
can be found in the film The Madness of King George (Nicholas Hytner, 1994), based on a play
by Alan Bennett.

WILLIAM IV: He didnt have any children. It went to a nice, Queen Victoria.

8. William IV (1930-1837) filled the gap between the Regency Period and
the Victorian Era. ... William, the younger brother of George IV, had ten
children by his mistress, but being illegitimate they were not eligible for
the throne. Had Williams marriage to his actress friend had been
permitted by his big brother, there would have been no Queen Victoria,
no Queen Elizabeth II and an entirely separate branch of the royal
family would have taken precedence, eventually including the couples
descendant: Conservative leader David Cameron. (John OFarrell. An
Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots
in Charge. 359)

PART 6: MAJOR HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL EVENTS DURING THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD
(FROM GEORGE III TO WILLIAM IV)

THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE (1775-1783)

9. The loss of the American colonies was a terrible blow to the British
government. They could have little idea that the United States of
America would one day became a key ally in two world wars and go on
to produce seven series of The West Wing and The Simpsons, making it
all worth it in the long run. Lord North lost a vote of no confidence in
the House of Commons, while George III drafted a letter of abdication,
though he never actually went through with it. (John OFarrell. An
Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots
in Charge. 309)

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS (1789-1815)

It started with a Republic and eneded with an emperor .There were philosophers who
supported revikutionary ideas, they were extremely influentiall in the development of what
happened in France and uthe US.
Thomas Pane The Rights of Men.
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They supported the creation of a Republic, what was happeing in France, had republican ideas.

It was the time of the IR, they were living in harsh living conditions, but the implication of
doing things like that, if you have social changes taking place and you cant change antthing,
social reorm is completely stalle. It was a time of changes, people with more power and money
than nobles but with no representation in parliament for not having lands. Government was
more interested in protecting itself than helping people.
William Godwin. Enquires Concerning Political Justice

The justice measures were drastic. Unfair things taking place.

1789 The storming of the Bastille.
1792 September Massacres. Imprisoned and helpless nobility executed.
1793 King Louis XVI was executed. Invasion by the French Republic of areas of the
Rhineland and the Netherlands. The French Republic offered support to anybody wanting to
overthrow its government.
1793-1794 The Reign of Terror under Robespierre.
1804 Napoleon was crowned Emperor.
1811-1815 Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.

THE START AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: the revolution started with
the steam engine. Constanty accelerating changes. Everything that had existd in the past was
transformed. Landscascape changed, full of chimmenies. There were possessionless
workers.The landscape of the city also changed with the creation og slum tenements: badly built
houses for working classes. They lived without sanitation. John Disnaeli started to talk of the 2
nations and a widening gap between the working classes and the rich society. The government
deided to keep a laissex faire attitude, they deided not to regulate to make things better for the
working classes: no regulation. For as long as they make money, who cares about the poor?

There were hunger riots, a little revolution. There was a protest in Manchester, Sant Peters
Square, and some people were killed. Peterloo Massacre. There were less jobs and people
couldnt find a job because machines were doing the job for them.

CREATION OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE (1829) They moved from wherever they stayed to
the Scotland Yard.

10. [Robert] Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police in 1829. Previously

this work had been done by local volunteers and dodgy law-and-order
enthusiasts, but that system only really worked in village communities
where everyone knew one another. One thousand constables were
introduced on to the London streets ... Crucially the police were not to
be armed, but were to have a whistle that they could blow in the foggy
London back streets as bloodhounds barked in the near distance. It is
of course from Robert Peel that we get the slang word Bobby for
policeman and well into the twentieth century the police were still
nicknamed Peelers. ... Although he is generally considered to be the
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father of modern policing, the city of Glasgow had had its own police
force since 1800, and there was also a London precedent with the Bow
Street Runners that had been set up in 1749 by the novelist and
magistrate Henry Fielding to arrest anyone trespassing on his genre.
But it was the advent of the Metropolitan Police that led to police
forces forming all across the country and established the structure, civic
code and bizarre headgear that were to be copied across the British
Empire. (John OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000
years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge. 356-357)

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY (1833). Triangular trade, they traded and catched black people to the
colonies of the U:S:A. The slaves worked on cotton and plantations of U.S.A. and Jamaica. The
products then, when back to England. England with products catch the slaves go to usa to
grow products: cotton, sugar, coffe Back to England. Middle passage is the trip from Africa
to U.S.A

11. Since the reign of Elizabeth but increasingly during the past 150 years,
British ships had set off from Bristol or Liverpool and sailed to West
Africa were the local residents had been helpfully rounded up by
African businessmen to be exchanged for much coveted British goods
such as guns, alcohol or Beatles memorabilia. ... It is estimated that
around twenty million Africans died before they even reached the slave
market. Those that survived might often have to endure the brutal
process of seasoning, whereby prisoners were tortured and deprived
of food and sleep to make them compliant. The ships would then return
to Britain loaded with the cheap produce of slave labour: sugar, coffee,
cotton and tobacco, and the lucrative cycle would begin all over again.
... A campaign began in the 1780s with the monumental ambition of
outlawing a trade that was completely accepted right across Europe
and lined the pockets of many of the businessmen who populated the
House of Commons. A group known as the Clapham sect, led in
Parliament by William Wilberforce, campaigned tirelessly with
pamphlets, endless lobbying and public meetings at which former
slaves would describe the conditions under which they had laboured.
... By 1807 they had succeeded in shifting public opinion sufficiently
that when the Tories were briefly out of power, they were able to get
a bill outlawing the slave trade through the House of Commons. The
trade continued illegally for a while; if slave ships saw a Royal Navy ship
approaching, they would simply throw all the slaves into the sea to
avoid being fined. But the worlds greatest slave-traders had set
themselves against the practice, and would force the rest of Europe to
abandon the trade ... The institution of slavery continued across the
British Empire, finally being abolished in 1833. (John OFarrell. An
Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots
in Charge. 335-337)
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FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO ROMANTICISM

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: Great scientific advance. Explain things by use of reason and no religion.

12. The Enlightenment was not an organised movement; people didnt turn
up at Benjamin Franklins house to say, Hello, Id like to join the
Enlightenment please. ... But it became the height of fashion to apply
the power of reason and logic to the laws of both nature and man and
to challenge everything that had previously been accepted because of
tradition or superstition. ... The seed of the Enlightenment had been
the huge advances made in physics and maths by Sir Isaac Newton ...
[He] explained the movement of the stars, formulated the laws of
motion, developed calculus and invented the refracting telescope. ...
Other major British influences came from philosopher John Locke, an
early champion of the social contract between government and the
governed, and later the political agitator and pamphleteer Thomas
Paine, whose writings greatly influenced the American and French
revolutions. Edinburgh-born David Hume was one of the major
advocates of naturalism (meaning that he argued against the belief in
the supernatural, not that he was a creepy fat nudist who played table
tennis in the buff). Another Scot, Adam Smith, turned economic theory
on its head with his seminal work The Wealth of the Nations, the proto-
capitalist manifesto in which he proposed that the greater good was
served by individuals pursuing self-interest. ... The great Mary
Wollstonecraft was a prolific philosopher, historian and author whose
work established her as the founder of modern feminism. (John
OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper
Class Idiots in Charge. 290-292)

Presumptuous man! The reason would thou find,

Why formed so weak, so little and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why formed no weaker, blinder and no less!
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Joves satellites are less than Jove?

Just as absurd for any part to claim

To be another, in this general frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks of pains,
The great directing MIND of ALL ordains.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
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(Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man)

Some major literary figures associated with the Enlightenment and the Regency period are the
poets Alexander Pope and William Blake and novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Henry
Fielding and Jane Austen.

ROMANTICISM

Some major literary figures associated with Romanticism are the poets Percy B. Shelley, Lord
Byron, William Wordsworth or Samuel Taylor Coleridge or the novelists Sir Walter Scott and
Mary Shelley. In fact, they became major celebrities and some of them became the equivalent
of contemporary rock or film stars.

13. Byron was a fantastically charismatic Regency idol, famously described

by his jilted lover Caroline Lamb as mad, bad and dangerous to know.
At Cambridge University he had responded to a regulation forbidding
dogs by keeping a pet bear. Emerging with a double first in Brooding
and Being Handsome, he took his seat in the House of Lords and
became one of the few Parliamentary defenders of Catholics and
Luddites, even writing poetry on their behalf. Other works attacked the
pompous establishment figures of the day like Wellington and
Castlereaagh, but it was Byrons sexual appetite that eventually made
him a social pariah. He openly slept with men and women of all ages,
falling in love with his half-sister and fathering a child by her. Visiting
him in Italy Shelley wrote that he indulged in sexual practices which are
not only not named, but I believe seldom ever conceived in England. To
which a swift reply came more details please. In Venice Byron claimed
to have bedded over 250 women in one year, in between swimming
the length of the Grand Canal and writing poems and plays that
developed his idea of the Byronic hero. ... Byron was the first modern
celebrity, his face adorned china tea sets and ladies lockets; had he
come along a bit later they could have downloaded his poems as
ringtones on their mobile phones. He was James Dean and Che Guevara
rolled into one, but, as for all great pin-ups, dying young was
unfortunately part of the deal. (John OFarrell. An Utterly Impartial
History of Britain or 2000 years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge. 354)