The Restoration and Eighteenth Century
England, 1660-1785
When Charles II learned of his father's execution in 1649, he
immediately began trying to regain the throne. He was finally
successful
in 1660, when Parliament welcomed him back and the monarchy was
restored. Charles II encouraged the arts and reestablished the theatre
in England, with women appearing on stage for the first time (one of
his claims to fame was his much-publicized affair with actress Nell
Gwynne) and a new genre of plays, called Restoration
Drama, coming into vogue. Charles promoted science and inaugurated
the Royal Society.
Religious unrest continued, with the 1662 Act of Uniformity intended to
force Puritans to accept the doctrines of the Church of England and the
1670 Secret Treaty of Dover intended to restore Catholicism; the Test
Act of 1673 prohibited Catholics from holding political office, and the
Popish Plot of 1678 resulted in persecution of Catholics. Political
conflicts in 1679 resulted in the dismissal of Parliament, which
instigated the formation of two political parties, the Whigs, who
petitioned (unsuccessfully) for a new Parliament, and the Tories
(royalists), who opposed them. Charles's reign was also marked by two
major tragedies in London: the Great Plague of 1665, which killed more
than 100,000 people, and the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed 440
acres and more than 13,000 buildings. On his deathbed in 1685, he
formally converted to Roman Catholicism.
Charles was succeeded by his brother, James II, whose three-year reign
was
filled with conflict. Two separate attempts in 1685 to put the Duke of
Monmouth (Charles II's illegitimate son) on the throne were crushed;
Monmouth was executed and to discourage any further rebellion, James
passed the Bloody Assizes, which resulted in 331 of Monmouth's
followers being hanged, 849 being sent to the American colonies, and 33
being fined or whipped. James attempted to restore Catholicism in
England, which led to conflicts with both the Church of England and
Parliament. In 1688, when James's wife gave birth to a son (and heir),
seven leading statesmen invited the Protestant William of Orange to
take the throne in what is known as the Glorious Revolution. William
was the son of Charles II's eldest daughter Mary and William II of
Holland, and thus James's nephew; he was also James's own son-in-law,
having married James's eldest daughter Mary. William's advance on
London forced James to abdicate and flee to France.
William ruled jointly with his wife, Mary, from 1689 until her death in
1694, after which he ruled singularly until his death in 1702. William
and Mary accepted a Bill of Rights in 1689 which limited monarchical
powers by assuring the superiority of parliamentary rule and
establishing an efficient cabinet government, and a Triennial Act
required a new Parliament to be summoned every three years. William's
defeat of James' supporters in 1690 at the Battle of Boyne in Ireland
exacerbated conflicts between Irish Catholics and Protestants. By 1694,
both the Bank
of England and Lloyds of London were established, and in 1695 press
censorship was abolished. An Act of Settlement was passed in 1701 which
provided for the Protestant succession and required that future
monarchs be members of the Church of England. William formed a grand
alliance between England, Holland, and Austria in 1701 to prevent a
union between France and Spain, thus leading to the War of the Spanish
Succession.
In 1702, William died after a riding accident, and his sister-in-law
Anne succeeded him. Married to George, Prince of Denmark, she gave
birth to seventeen children, but only one, William, survived infancy,
and he died hydrocephalic at the age of eleven. During Anne's reign,
English victories in the War of the Spanish Succession distinguished
Britain as a major European power with the establishment of the first
British Empire. In 1707, the Act of Union united the kingdoms of
England and Scotland, and the Union Jack was adopted as the new
national flag. The first daily newspaper (The Daily Courant) appeared in
London, horse racing was established at Ascot, scientific advances were
made, and fine furniture was produced. The last execution for
witchcraft in England took place in 1712. Several shifts of power
between the Whigs and Tories occurred, illustrating the significance
Parliamentary elections had achieved. Anne died in 1714, the last
monarch of the House of Stuart.
George I was Anne's successor and was the great-grandson of James I,
and he was the first English king of the House of Hanover. George spoke
no English, and prior to his assuming the English throne, his wife,
Sophia Dorothea, had been indiscreet in an affair with a Swedish count,
which resulted in the count's disappearance (some believed George had
ordered him killed) and George's divorcing his wife, then imprisoning
her in a German castle for the rest of her life (from 1694 until 1726).
In 1715, James Edward Stuart (heir to James II), known as the Old
Pretender, landed in Scotland and
attempted to claim the throne, but he was easily defeated. George had
limited knowledge of Britain and was not particularly erudite, though
he did have a love of music and made it possible for George Frederick
Handel to make his mark on English music. In 1720, the South Sea
Company, which had contracted to manage £30 million of the
National Debt, failed in what is known as the "South Sea Bubble," after
which finances were put firmly in the hands of the Bank of England,
with the result that the English economy became the best managed in
Europe over the next several centuries. In
1726, the first circulating library in Britain opened in Edinburgh,
Scotland. During George's reign, England's prime minister, Robert
Walpole, exercised unprecedented power and became, in effect, Britain's
first Prime Minister.
George II succeeded his father in 1727 and in 1732 granted a royal
charter for the founding of Georgia in America. In 1738, John and
Charles Wesley started the Methodist movement in Britain. George
promoted the arts, with Handel's Messiah
premiering during his reign. His wife, Caroline of Anspach, established
her own cultural center at Leicester House. However, in 1737, the
Licensing Act was established, requiring the Stationer's Company
(office of Lord Chamberlain) to approve all plays, establishing
theatrical censorship. In 1743, George himself led troops into battle
at Dettingen in Bavaria; he would be the last British king to lead an
army in the field. In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender
(son of the Old Pretender and often referred to as Bonny Prince
Charlie), mounted a challenge for the throne with much more force than
his father had exhibited and won several victories in Scotland, but was
ultimately defeated by George's favorite son, the Duke of Cumberland.
Several wars were fought for new territory, most notably in India and
Canada and on the Gold Coast of Africa, and by the time George died in
1760, Britain was well on its way to becoming a world power.
In 1760, George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III, who was
the first of the Hanoverian kings to have been born in England and the
first English monarch since Queen Anne to speak the English language
without a foreign accent. George III was very religious and very
conscientious. He was expert in agricultural sciences (which led some
to refer to him as "Farmer George") and wrote pamphlets on agricultural
improvements under the pseudonym of Ralph Robinson. The early years of
his reign were marked by various difficulties, including a series of
ineffective prime ministers and dissension in and ultimate loss of the
American colonies. Vast strides were being made in exploration,
science, and industry -- Captain James Cook made his first voyage in
the Pacific in 1769; the Encyclopaedia
Britannica was first published in 1771; and the world's first
cast-iron bridge was constructed in 1773 over the River Severn --,
paving the way for the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution had a dramatic effect on life and literature
of the eighteenth century. Whereas the seventeenth century saw literary
works addressed to the aristocracy, the eighteenth century found the
men of the middle class taking a new interest in the arts. Coffeehouses
played an important role in disseminating literary tastes. The steady
growth of industry drew people into the cities, so that writers
considered it catastrophic to be forced to live away from the
intellectual excitement of the urban centers. Industrialization was
accelerated by important mechanical inventions (e.g., spinning jenny,
flying shuttle, water frame, steam engine) and scientific advances of
the late seventeenth century (e.g., development of the telescope,
thermometer, barometer, pendulum clock, Newton's law of gravitation,
development of analytical geometry and calculus, beginnings of
entomology), which also contributed to the intellectual atmosphere.
Several social developments influenced literature of the eighteenth
century, including a rise in middle class population, an increase in
literacy and education, the growth of cities, massive changes in sexual
morality, an enormous increase in premarital illegitimacy, increasing
protest of the young against inordinate parental authority, and an
increase in divorce actions.
Throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century,
the most influential philosopher in England was John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690) formed the basis of British empiricism--the view, in general,
that only particular, concrete things actually exist, with all other
ideas an abstraction from these primal realities. Locke rejected
the idea that human beings are born with innate ideas. The mind, in his
famous phrase, is a "tabula rasa"--a blank slate--ready to receive only
what sensory experiences write upon it. Thus, writers following
Locke's lead placed emphasis on what was
(empirically defined) rather
than what might be (via the
imagination or visionary), and on the central
importance of guiding principles, not innovative leaps.