Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 19 - The nineteenth century

The years of power and danger

By the end of the century, Britain's empire was political rather than commercial. Britain used this empire to control large areas of the world. The empire gave the British a feeling of their own importance which was difficult to forget when Britain lost its power in the twentieth century. This belief of the British in their own importance was at its height in the middle of the nineteenth century, among the new middle class, which had grown with industrialisation. The novelist Charles Dickens nicely described this national pride. One of his characters, Mr Podsnap, believed that Britain had been specially chosen by God and "considered other countries a mistake".
The rapid growth of the middle class was part of the enormous rise in the population. This growth and the movement of people to towns from the countryside forced a change in the political balance, and by the end of the century most men had the right to vote.
The aristocracy and the Crown had little power left by 1914.
However, the working class, the large number of people who had left their villages to become factory workers, had not yet found a proper voice.
Britain wanted two main things in Europe: a "balance of power" which would prevent any single nation from becoming too strong, and a free market in which its own industrial and trade superiority would give Britain a clear advantage. It succeeded in the first aim by encouraging the recovery of France, to balance the power of Austria. Further east, it was glad that Russia's influence in Europe was limited by Prussia and the empires of Austria and Turkey. These all shared a border with Russia.
Outside Europe, Britain wished its trading position to be stronger than anyone else's. It defended its interests by keeping ships of its navy in almost every ocean of the world. This was possible because it had taken over and occupied a number of places during the war against Napoleon.
After 1815 the British government did not only try to develop its trading stations. Its policy now was to control world traffic and world markets to Britain's advantage. In spite of its power, Britain also felt increasingly anxious about growing competition from France and Germany in the last part of the century. Most of the colonies established in the nineteenth century were more to do with political control than with trading for profit.
The concerns in Europe and the protection of trade routes in the rest of the world guided Britain's foreign policy for a hundred years. It was to keep the balance in Europe in 1838 that Britain promised to protect Belgium against stronger neighbours. In spite of political and economic troubles in Europe, this policy kept Britain from war in Europe for a century from 1815. In fact it was in defence of Belgium in 1914 that Britain finally went to war against Germany.
Until about 1850, Britain was in greater danger at home than abroad. The Napoleonic Wars had turned the nation from thoughts of revolution to the need to defeat the French. They had also hidden the social effects of the industrial revolution. Britain had sold clothes, guns, and other necessary war supplies to its allies' armies as well as its own. At the same time, corn had been imported to keep the nation and its army fed.
All this changed when peace came in 1815. Suddenly there was no longer such a need for factory-made goods, and many lost their jobs. Unemployment was made worse by 300,000 men from Britain's army and navy who were now looking for work. At the same time, the landowning farmers' own income had suffered because of cheaper imported corn. These farmers persuaded the government to introduce laws to protect locally grown corn and the price at which it was sold. The cost of bread rose quickly, and this led to increases in the price of almost everything.
The general misery began to cause trouble. People tried to add to their food supply by catching wild birds and animals. But almost all the woods had been enclosed by the local landlord and new laws were made to stop people hunting animals for food. A man found with nets in his home could be transported to the new "penal" colony in Australia for seven years. A man caught hunting with a gun or a knife might be hanged, and until 1823 thieves caught entering houses and stealing were also hanged.
In order to avoid the workhouse, many looked for a better life in the towns. Between 1815 and 1835 Britain changed from being a nation of country people to a nation mainly of townspeople.
If the rich feared the poor in the countryside, they feared even more those in the fast-growing towns. These were harder to control. If they had been organised, a revolution like that in France might have happened. But they were not organised, and had no leaders.

Reform
The Whigs understood better than the Tories the need to reform the law in order to improve social conditions. Like the Tories they feared revolution, but unlike the Tories they believed it could only be avoided by reform. Indeed, the idea of reform to make the parliamentary system fairer had begun in the eighteenth century. It had been started by early radicals, and encouraged by the American War of Independence, and by the French Revolution.

Workers revolt
Since 1824 workers had been allowed to join together in unions. Most of
these unions were small and weak. Although one of their aims was to make sure employers paid reasonable wages, they also tried to prevent other people from working in their particular trade. As a result the working classes still found it difficult to act together.
In 1834, there was an event of great importance in trade union history. Six farmworkers in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle joined together, promising to be loyal to their "union". Their employer managed to find a law by which they could be punished. A judge had been specially appointed by the government to find the six men guilty, and this he did. In London 30,000 workers and radicals gathered to ask the government to pardon the "Tolpuddle Martyrs". The government, afraid of seeming weak, did not do so until the "martyrs" had completed part of their punishment. It was a bad mistake. Tolpuddle became a symbol of employers' cruelty, and of the working classes' need to defend themselves through trade union strength.
The radicals and workers were greatly helped in their efforts by the introduction of a cheap postage system in 1840. This enabled them to organise themselves across the country far better than before.
Britain's success in avoiding the storm of revolution in Europe in 1848 was admired almost everywhere. European monarchs wished they were as safe on their thrones as the British queen seemed to be. For much of the nineteenth century Britain was the envy of the world.

Family life
In spite of the greater emphasis on the individual and the growth of openly shown affection, the end of the eighteenth century also saw a swing back to stricter ideas of family life. In part, the close family resulted from the growth of new attitudes to privacy, perhaps a necessary part of individualism.
Except for the very rich, people no longer married for economic reasons, but did so for personal happiness. However, while wives might be companions, they were certainly not equals. As someone wrote in 1800, "the husband and wife are one, and the husband is that one". As the idea of the close family under the "master" of the household became stronger, so the possibility for a wife to find emotional support or practical advice outside the immediate family became more limited.
One must wonder how much things reduced the chance of happy family life. Individualism, strict parental behaviour, the regular beating of children (which was still widespread), and the cruel conditions for those boys at boarding school, all worked against it. One should not be surprised that family life often ended when children grew up. As one foreigner noted in 1828, "grown up children and their parents soon become almost strangers". It is impossible to be sure what effect this kind of family life had on children. But no doubt it made young men unfeeling towards their own wives who, with unmarried sisters, were the responsibility of the man of the house. A wife was legally a man's property, until nearly the end of the century.

In spite of a stricter moral atmosphere in Scotland which resulted from the strong influence of the Kirk, Scottish women seem to have continued a stronger tradition of independent attitudes and plain speaking.

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Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 18: The years of revolution

Industrial revolution
Several influences came together at the same time to revolutionise Britain's industry: money, labour, a greater demand for goods, new power, and better transport. By the end of the eighteenth century, some families had made huge private fortunes. Growing merchant banks helped put this money to use.
By the early eighteenth century simple machines had already been invented for basic jobs. They could make large quantities of simple goods quickly and cheaply so that "mass production" became possible for the first time. Each machine carried out one simple process, which introduced the idea of "division of labour" among workers. This was to become an important part of the industrial revolution.
Increased iron production made it possible to manufacture new machinery for other industries. No one saw this more clearly than John Wilkinson, a man with a total belief in iron. He built the largest ironworks in the country. He built the world's first iron bridge, over the River Severn, in 1779. He saw the first iron boats made. He built an iron chapel for the new Methodist religious sect, and was himself buried in an iron
coffin. Wilkinson was also quick to see the value of new inventions. When James Watt made a greatly improved steam engine in 1769, Wilkinson improved it further by making parts of the engine more accurately with his special skills in ironworking. But in 1781 Watt produced an engine with a turning motion, made of iron and steel. It was a vital development because people were now no longer dependent on natural power. One invention led to another, and increased production in one area led to increased production in others. Other basic materials of the industrial revolution were cotton and woollen cloth, which were popular abroad. In the middle of the century other countries were buying British uniforms, equipment and weapons for their armies. To meet this increased demand, better methods of production had to be found, and new machinery
was invented which replaced handwork.
Soon Britain was not only exporting cloth to Europe. It was also importing raw cotton from its colonies and exporting finished cotton cloth to sell to those same colonies, The social effects of the industrial revolution were enormous. Workers tried to join together to protect themselves against powerful employers. They wanted fair wages and reasonable conditions in which to work. But the government quickly banned these "combinations", as the workers' societies were known. Riots occurred, led by the unemployed who had been replaced in factories by machines. In 1799 some of these rioters, known as Luddites, started to break up the machinery which had put them out of work. The government supported the factory owners, and made the breaking of machinery punishable by death. The government was afraid of a revolution like the one in France.

Society and religion
Britain avoided revolution partly because of a new religious movement. The new movement which met the needs of the growing industrial working class was led by a remarkable man called John Wesley. He was an Anglican priest who travelled around the country preaching and teaching.
For fifty-three years John Wesley travelled 224,000 miles on horseback, preaching at every village he came to. Sometimes he preached in three different villages in one day. Very soon others joined in his work. John Wesley visited the new villages and industrial towns which had no parish church.
John Wesley's "Methodism" was above all a personal and emotional form of religion. It was organised in small groups, or "chapels", all over the country. At a time when the Church of England itself showed little interest in the social and spiritual needs of the growing population, Methodism was able to give ordinary people a sense of purpose and dignity. The Church was nervous of this powerful new movement which it could not control, and in the end Wesley was forced to leave the Church of England and start a new Methodist Church.
He carefully avoided politics, and taught people to be hardworking and honest. As a result of his teaching, people accepted many of the injustices of the times without complaint. Some became wealthy through working hard and saving their money. As an old man, Wesley sadly noted how hard work led to wealth, and wealth to pride and that this threatened to destroy his work. "Although the form of religion remains," he
wrote, "the spirit is swiftly vanishing away." However, Wesley probably saved Britain from revolution. He certainly brought many people back to Christianity.
The Methodists were not alone. Other Christians also joined what became known as "the evangelical revival", which was a return to a simple faith based on the Bible. Some, especially the Quakers, became well known for social concern. One of the best known was Elizabeth Fry, who made public the terrible conditions in the prisons, and starred to work for reform.
It was also a small group of Christians who were the first to act against the evils of the slave trade, from which Britain was making huge sums of money. Slaves did not expect to live long. Almost 20 per cent died on the voyage. Most of the others died young from cruel treatment in the West Indies.
The first success against slavery came when a judge ruled that "no man could be a slave in Britain", and freed a slave who had landed in Bristol. This victory gave a new and unexpected meaning to the words of the national song, "Britons never shall be slaves." In fact, just as Britain had taken a lead in slavery and the slave trade, it also took the lead internationally in ending them. The slave trade was abolished by law in 1807. But it took until 1833 for slavery itself to be abolished in all British colonies.
Others, also mainly Christians, tried to limit the cruelty of employers who forced children to work long hours. In 1802, as a result of their efforts, Parliament passed the first Factory Act, limiting child labour to twelve hours each day. In 1819 a new law forbade the employment of children under the age of nine. Neither of these two Acts were obeyed everywhere, but they were the early examples of government action to protect the weak against the powerful.

Revolution in France and the Napoleonic Wars
France's neighbours only slowly realised that its revolution in 1789 could be dangerous for them. Military power and the authority of kingship were almost useless against revolutionary ideas.
In France the revolution had been made by the "bourgeoisie", or middle class, leading the peasants and urban working classes.
Several radicals sympathised with the cause of the French revolutionaries, and called for reforms in Britain.
The French Revolution had created fear all over Europe. The British government was so afraid that revolution would spread to Britain that it imprisoned radical leaders. As an island, Britain was in less danger, and as a result was slower than other European states to make war on the French Republic. But in 1793 Britain went to war after France had invaded the Low Countries (today, Belgium and Holland). One by one the European countries were defeated by Napoleon, and forced to ally themselves with him. Most of Europe fell under Napoleon's control.
Britain decided to fight France at sea because it had a stronger navy, and because its own survival depended on control of its trade routes. British policy was to damage French trade by preventing French ships, including their navy, from moving freely in and out of French seaports. The commander of the British fleet, Admiral Horatio Nelson, won brilliant victories over the French navy, near the coast of Egypt, at Copenhagen, and finally near Spain, at Trafalgar in 1805, where he destroyed the French—Spanish fleet. Nelson was himself killed at Trafalgar, but became one of Britain's greatest national heroes. His words to the fleet before the battle of Trafalgar, "England expects that every man will do his duty," have remained a reminder of patriotic duty in time of national danger.
In the same year as Trafalgar, in 1805, a British army landed in Portugal to fight the French. This army, with its Portuguese and Spanish allies, was eventually commanded by Wellington, a man who had fought in India. Like Nelson he quickly proved to be a great commander. After several victories against the French in Spain he invaded France. Napoleon, weakened by his disastrous invasion of Russia, surrendered in 1814. But the following year he escaped and quickly assembled an army in France. Wellington, with the timely help of the Prussian army, finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in June 1815.

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Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 17 - Life in town and country

Town life
In 1700 England and Wales had a population of about 5.5 million. This had increased very little by 1750, but then grew quickly to about 8.8 million by the end of the century. Including Ireland and Scotland, the total population was about 13 million.
By the middle of the century Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds were already large. But such new towns were still treated as villages and so had no representation in Parliament.
All the towns smelled bad. There were no drains. In fact people added to it, leaving in the streets the rubbish from the marketplace and from houses. The streets were muddy and narrow, some only two metres wide.
The towns were centres of disease. As a result only one child in four in London lived to become an adult. It was the poor who died youngest. They were buried together in large holes dug in the ground. These were not covered with earth until they were full. It was hardly surprising that poor people found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Poor people found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Quakers, shocked by the terrible effects of gin drinking, developed the beer industry in order to replace gin with a less damaging drink.
During the eighteenth century, efforts were made to make towns healthier. Streets were built wider, so that carriages drawn by horses could pass each other. From 1734, London had a street lighting system. After 1760 many towns asked Parliament to allow them to tax their citizens in order to provide social services, such as street cleaning and lighting. Each house owner had to pay a local tax, the amount or "rate" of which was decided by the local council or corporation.
Soon London and the other towns were so clean and tidy that they became the wonder of Europe. Indeed London had so much to offer that the great literary figure of the day, Samuel Johnson, made the now famous remark, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. For there is in London all that life can afford."
There were four main classes of people in eighteenth-century towns: the wealthy merchants; the ordinary merchants and traders; the skilled craftsmen; and the large number of workers who had no skill and who could not be sure of finding work from one day to another.

The rich
Social conditions were probably better than in any other country in Europe. British aristocrats had less power over the poor than European aristocrats had. It was difficult to see a clear difference between the aristocracy, the gentry and the middle class of merchants. Most classes mixed freely together.

Thomas Gainsborough, perhaps England's finest portrait painter, painted for the rich and famous. "The Morning Walk" has a clam domesticity about it. At the other end of the social scale, Thomas Gainsborough, perhaps England's finest portrait painter, painted for the rich and famous. "The Morning Walk" .

Foreigners noticed how easy it was for the British to move up and down the social "ladder". In London a man who dressed as a gentleman would be treated as one. The comfortable life of the gentry must have been dull most of the time. The men went hunting and riding, and carried out "improvements" to their estates. During the eighteenth century these improvements included rebuilding many great houses in the classical style. It was also fashionable to arrange natural-looking gardens and parks to create a carefully made "view of nature" from the windows of the house. Some of the gentry became interested in collecting trees or plants from abroad.

Women's lives were more boring. But even the richest women's lives were limited by the idea that they could not take a share in more serious matters.
During the eighteenth century, people believed that the natural spring waters in "spa" towns such as Bath were good for their health. These towns became fashionable places where most people went to meet other members of high society.

Somersetshire Buildings in Mlson Street, Bath, 1788, were among the finest town houses built ii "Georgian" period. Both has survived as England's best preserved Georgian city because was very fashionable during the eighteenth century, but suddenly ceased to be so at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As a result the economy of Bath, based upon tourism, collapsed and the splendid Georgian buildings were replaced during the nineteenth, or twentieth centuries.

The countryside
The cultural life of Edinburgh was in total contrast with life in the Scottish Highlands. Because the kilt and tartan were forbidden, everyone born since 1746 had grown up wearing Lowland (English) clothes. The old way of colouring and making tartan patterns from local plants had long been forgotten. By the time the law forbidding the kilt and tartan was abolished in 1782, it was too late.
Highland dress and tartans became fancy dress, to be worn by Scottish soldiers and by lovers of the past, but not by the real Highlanders.
The real disaster in the Highlands, however, was economic. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the clan chiefs began to realise that money could be made from sheep for the wool trade. They began to push the people off the clan lands, and replace them with sheep, a process known as the clearances. Many Highlanders, men, women and children, lived poor on the streets of Glasgow. Others went to begin a new life, mainly in Canada where many settled with other members of their clan. A smaller number went to Australia in the nineteenth century. Clan society in the Highlands had gone forever.
In England the countryside changed even more than the towns in the eighteenth century. Most farming at the beginning of the century was still done as it
had been for centuries. Each village stood in the middle of three or four large fields, and the villagers together decided what to grow, although individuals continued to work on their own small strips of land.
During the eighteenth century most of this land was enclosed. The enclosed land was not used for sheep farming, as it had been in Tudor times, but for mixed animal and cereal farms. People with money and influence, such as the village squire, persuaded their MP to pass a law through Parliament allowing them to take over common land and to enclose it. The MP was willing to do this because the landowner was often able to help him at the next election with the votes of those who worked for him.
One main cause of these enclosures was that a number of the greater landlords, including the aristocracy, had a great deal of money to invest.
Most of them wanted to invest their money on the land, and having improved
their own land, and built fine country houses, they looked to other land. Their reason was that farming had become much more profitable.
Traditionally the land had been allowed to rest every three years. But by growing root crops one year, animal food the next, and wheat the third, farmers could now produce more. Growing animal food also made it possible to keep animals through the winter. This was an important new development. Before the mid- eighteenth century most animals were killed before winter because there was never enough food to keep them until the following spring. For the first time people could now eat fresh meat all the year round.
Richer farmers wanted to change the system of farming, including the system of landholding. With one large area for each farm the new machinery and methods would work very well. They had the money to do this, and could expect the help of the village squire and their MP, who were also rich farmers with the same interests. They had a strong economic argument for introducing change because it was clear that the new methods would produce more food for each acre of land than the traditional methods. There was also another strong reason, though at the time people may not have realised it. The population had started to grow at a greatly increased rate.
Improved use of land made it possible to grow wheat almost everywhere. For the first time everyone, including the poor, could eat white wheat bread. White bread was less healthy than brown, but the poor enjoyed the idea that they could afford the same bread as the rich. In spite of the greatly increased production of food, however, Britain could no longer feed itself by the end of the century. Imported food from
abroad became necessary to feed the rapidly growing population.
But in social terms the enclosures were damaging. Villagers sometimes knew nothing about an enclosure until they were sent off the land. Some had built their homes on common land and these were destroyed.
The enclosures changed the look of much of the countryside. Instead of a few large fields there were now many smaller fields, each encircled with a hedge, many with trees growing in them.
The problem of the growing landless class was made very much worse by the rapid increase in population in the second half of the century.
Help was given to a family according to the number of children. Before the enclosures farmers had smaller families because the land had to be divided among the children, and because young men would not marry until they had a farm of their own.
The enclosures removed the need for these limits, and the encouraged larger families since this meant an increase in financial help.

Family life
In the eighteenth century families began to express affection more openly than before. One popular eighteenth-century handbook on the upbringing of children, itself a significant development, warned: "Severe and frequent whipping is, I think, a very
bad practice. The most likely thing to expand a youthful mind is …praise”.
Girls, however, continued to be victims of the parents' desire to make them match the popular idea of feminine beauty of slim bodies, tight waists and a pale
appearance. To achieve this aim, and so improve the chances of a good marriage, parents forced their daughters into tightly waisted clothes, and gave them only little food to avoid an unfashionably healthy appearance.
Parents still often decided on a suitable marriage for their children. However, sons and daughters often had to marry against their wishes.
The increase in affection was partly because people could now expect a reasonably long life. This resulted mainly from improved diet and the greater cleanliness of cotton rather than woollen underclothing. However, it was also the result of a growing idea of kindness. Perhaps the first time people started to believe that cruelty either to humans or animals was wrong. It did not prevent bad factory conditions, but it did help those trying to end slavery. At the root of this dislike of cruelty was the idea that every human was an individual.

Hogarth is best known for his realistic pictures of society's its, but to make money he also painted wealthy people. "The Graham Children' ' gives a delightful view of a warm relaxed and jolly atmosphere. Play began to be recognised as good for children, but only for young one it was feared that if older children played they would become lay adults. One lord wrote to his son on his ninth birthday, "Childish toys and playthings must be thrown aside, and your mind directed to serious objects."

This growing individualism showed itself in a desire for privacy. In the seventeenth century middle-class and wealthier families were served by servants, who listened to their conversation as they ate. They lived in rooms that led one to another, usually through wide double doors. Not even the bedrooms were private. But in the eighteenth century families began to eat alone, preferring to serve themselves than to have servants listening to everything they had to say. They also rebuilt the insides of their homes, putting in corridors, so that every person in the family had their own private bedroom.
Individualism was important to trade and industrial success. Such individualism could not exist for the poorer classes.
The use of child labour in the workhouse and in the new factories increased towards the end of the century. This was hardly surprising. A rapidly growing population made a world of children. Children of the poor had always worked as soon as they could walk. Workhouse children were expected to learn a simple task from the age of three, and almost all would be working by the age of six or seven. They were particularly useful to factory owners because they were easy to discipline, unlike adults, and they were cheap.
Then, quite suddenly at the end of the century, child labour began to be seen as shameful. Horrified by the suffering of children forced to sweep chimneys, two men campaigned for almost thirty years to persuade Parliament to pass a Regulating Act in 1788 to reduce the cruelty involved. In the nineteenth century the condition of poor children was to become a main area of social reform. This was a response not only to the fact that children were suffering more, but also that their sufferings were more public.

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Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 16 - The eighteenth century

The political world
Well before the end of the eighteenth century Britain was as powerful as France. This resulted from the growth of its industries and from the wealth of its large new trading empire, part of which had been captured from the French. Britain now had the strongest navy in the world; the navy controlled Britain's own trade routes and endangered those of its enemies. It was the deliberate policy of the government to create this trading empire, and to protect it with a strong navy. This was made possible by the way in which government had developed during the eighteenth century.
For the first time, it was the king's ministers who were the real policy and decision-makers. Power now belonged to the groups from which the ministers came, and their supporters in Parliament. These ministers ruled over a country which had become wealthy through trade. This wealth, or "capital", made possible both an agricultural and an industrial revolution which made Britain the most advanced economy in the world.
However, there was an enormous price to pay, because while a few people became richer, many others lost their land, their homes and their way of life. Families were driven off the land in another period of enclosures. They became the working "proletariat" of the cities that made Britain's trade and industrial empire of the nineteenth century possible. The invention of machinery destroyed the old "cottage industries" and created factories. The development of industry led to the sudden growth of cities like Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool and other centres in the north Midlands.

The British government was afraid of dangerous revolutionary ideas spreading from France to the discontented in Britain. Revolution was still a possibility, but Britain was saved partly by the high level of local control of the ruling class in the countryside and partly by Methodism, a new religious movement which offered hope and self-respect to the new proletariat.

Politics and finance
When Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, died in 1714, it was not entirely certain that the Protestant ruler of Hanover, George, would become king. There were some Tories who wanted the deposed James II's son to return to Britain as James III. If he had given up Catholicism and accepted the Anglican religion he probably would have been crowned James III. But like other members of his family, James was unwilling to change his mind, and he would not give up his religion. Nor would he give up his claim to the throne, so he tried to win it by force.

In 1715 he started a rebellion against George I, who had by this time arrived from Hanover. But the rebellion was a disaster, and George's army had little difficulty in defeating the English and Scottish "Jacobites", as Stuart supporters were known. Because of the Tory connection with the Jacobites, King George allowed the Whigs to form his government.

Government power was increased because the new king spoke only German, and did not seem very interested in his new kingdom. Among the king's ministers was Robert Walpole, who remained the greatest political leader for over twenty years. He is considered Britain's first Prime Minister.
Walpole came to power as a result of his financial ability. At the end of the seventeenth century the government had been forced to borrow money in order to pay for the war with France. In 1694, a group of financiers who lent to the government decided to establish a bank, and the government agreed to borrow from it alone. The new bank, called the Bank of England, had authority to raise money by printing "bank notes". This was not an entirely new idea. For hundreds of years bankers and money dealers had been able to give people "promisory notes" signed by themselves. These could be handed on as payment to a third or fourth person. This way of making trade easier had been made lawful during the reign of Henry I, six hundred years earlier. The cheques we use today developed from these promisory notes.
At a time when many people had money to invest. there was popular interest in financial matters. People wanted to invest money in some of the trading companies doing business in the West Indies, the East Indies or in other newly developing areas.
In the other countries of Europe kings and queens had absolute power. Britain was unusual, and Walpole was determined to keep the Crown under the firm control of Parliament. He knew that with the new German monarchy this was more possible than it had been before.
Walpole skilfully developed the idea that government ministers should work together in a small group, which was called the "Cabinet". He introduced the idea that any minister who disagreed deeply with other Cabinet ministers was expected to resign.

The limits to monarchy were these: the king could not be a Catholic; the king could not remove or change laws; the king was dependent on Parliament for his financial income and for his army. The king was supposed to "choose" his ministers. Even today the government of Britain is "Her Majesty's Government". But in fact the ministers belonged as much to Parliament as they did to the king.
Walpole wanted to avoid war and to increase taxes so that the government could pay back everything it had borrowed, and get rid of the national debt. He put taxes on luxury goods, such as tea, coffee and chocolate, all of which were drunk by the rich, and were brought to Britain from its new colonies by wealthy traders. Tea had become a national drink by 1700, when 50,000 kg were already being imported each year.
War with France broke out in 1756. Britain had already been involved in a war against
France, from 1743 to 1748, concerning control of the Austrian Empire.

The war against France's trade went on all over the world. In Canada, the British took Quebec in 1759 and Montreal the following year. This gave the British control of the important fish, fur and wood trades. Many Britons started to go to India to make their fortune. Unlike previous British traders, they had little respect for Indian people or for their culture. So, while India became the "jewel in the Crown" of Britain's foreign possessions, British-Indian relations slowly went sour.
The British have a very high opinion of themselves, he wrote, and they "think nothing is as well done elsewhere as in their own country". British pride was expressed in a national song written in 1742: "Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves, Britons never never never shall be slaves."
Britain's international trade increased rapidly. By the end of the century the West Indies were the most profitable part of Britain's new empire. They formed one corner of a profitable trade triangle. British-made knives, swords and cloth were taken to West Africa and exchanged for slaves. These ware taken to the west Indies and the ships returned to Britain carrying sugar which had been grown by slaves.

An East India Company official with his escort of locally recruited soldiers. In India the officials of the East India Company made public fortunes for Britain, and private fortunes for themselves. Many, however, did not survive the effects of heat and disease. On the whole Indian society accepted "John Company", as the East India Company was locally known, in both trade and warfare as just another element in a complicated cultural scene. India was used to invaders. It was only in the nineteenth century that Indians began to hate the way the British extended their control over all India and the way that the British treated them.

Wilkes and liberty
George III was the first Hanoverian to be born in Britain. Unlike his father and grandfather he had no interest in Hanover. He wanted to take a more active part in governing Britain, and in particular he wished to be free to choose his own ministers. As long as he worked with the small number of aristocrats from which the king's ministers were chosen, and who controlled Parliament, it did not seem as if he would have much difficulty.
Parliament still represented only a very small number of people. In the eighteenth century only house owners with a certain income had the right to vote. This was based on ownership of land worth forty shillings a year in the counties, but the amount varied from town to town. As a result, while the mid-century population of Britain was almost eight million, there were fewer than 250,000 voters, 160,000 of them in the counties and 85,000 in the towns or "boroughs". Each county and each borough sent two representatives to Parliament.
It was not difficult for rich and powerful people either in the boroughs or in the counties to make sure that the man they wanted was elected to Parliament. No one could describe Parliament in those days as democratic.

However, there was one MP, John Wilkes, who saw things differently. Wilkes was a Whig, and did not like the new government of George III. Unlike almost every other MP, Wilkes also believed that politics should be open to free discussion by everyone. Free speech, he believed, was the basic right of every individual. When Leorge III made peace with France in 1763 without telling his ally Fredericle of Prussia Wilkes printed a strong attack on the government in his newspaper. Wilkes was arrested but he won his case in the court and was released. His victory established principles of the greatest importance: that the freedom of the individual is more important than the interests of the state, and that no one could be arrested without a proper reason. Government was not free to arrest whom it chose. Government, too, was under the law. Wilkes's victory angered the king, but made Wilkes the most popular man in London.
Newspapers were allowed to send their own reporters to listen to Parliament and write about its discussions in the newspapers. The age of public opinion had arrived.

Radicalism and the loss of the American colonies
In 1764 there was a serious quarrel over taxation between the British government and its colonies in America. In 1700 there had been only 200,000 colonists, but by 1770 there were 2.5 million. Such large numbers needed to be dealt with carefully.
Some American colonists decided that it was not lawful for the British to tax them without their agreement. Political opinion in Britain was divided. Some felt that the tax was fair because the money would be used to pay for the defence of the American colonies against French attack.
In 1773 a group of colonists at the port of Boston threw a shipload of tea into the sea rather than pay tax on it. The event became known as "the Boston Teaparty". The British government answered by closing the port. But the colonists then decided to prevent British goods from entering America until the port was opened again. This was rebellion, and the government decided to defeat it by force. The American War of Independence had begun.
The war in America lasted from 1775 until 1783. The government had no respect for the politics of the colonists, and the British army had no respect for their fighting ability. The result was a disastrous defeat for the British government. It lost everything except for Canada. Many British politicians openly supported the colonists. They were called "radicals". For the first time British politicians supported the rights of the king's subjects abroad to govern themselves and to fight for their rights against the king. The war in America gave strength to the new ideas of democracy and of independence.

Ireland
James II's defeat by William of Orange in 1690 had severe and long-term effects on the Irish people. Over the next half century the Protestant parliament in Dublin passed laws to prevent the Catholics from taking any part in national life. Catholics could not become members of the Dublin parliament, and could not vote in parliamentary elections. No Catholic could become a lawyer, go to university, join the navy or accept any public post. Catholics were not even allowed to own a horse worth more than £5. It was impossible for Catholics to have their children educated according to their religion, because Catholic schools were forbidden. Although there were still far more Catholics than Protestants, they had now become second-class citizens in their own land.
By the 1770s, however, life had become easier and some of the worst laws against Catholics were removed. But not everyone wanted to give the Catholics more freedom. In Ulster, the northern part of Ireland, Protestants formed the first "Orange Lodges", societies which were against any freedom for the Catholics.
In order to increase British control Ireland was united with Britain in 1801, and the Dublin parliament closed. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland lasted for 120 years. Politicians had promised Irish leaders that when Ireland became part of Britain the Catholics would get equal voting opportunities. But George III, supported by most Tories and by many Protestant Irish landlords, refused to let this happen.

Scotland
Scotland also suffered from the efforts of the Stuarts to win back the throne. The first "Jacobite" revolt to win the crown for James II's son, in 1715, had been unsuccessful. The Stuarts tried again in 1745, when James II’s grandson Prime Charles Edward Stuart better known as “Bonny Prince Charlie” landed on the west coast of Scotland.

Bonny Prince Charlie was more successful at first than anyone could have imagined. His army of Highlanders entered Edinburgh and defeated an English army in a surprise attack. Then he marched south. Panic spread through England, because much of the British army was in Europe fighting the French. But success for Bonny Prince Charlie depended on Englishmen also joining his army. When the Highland army was over halfway to London, however, it was clear that few of the English would join him, and the Highlanders themselves were unhappy at being so far from home. The rebels moved back to Scotland. Early in 1746 they were defeated by the British army.
The English army behaved with cruelty. Many Highlanders were killed, even those who had not joined the rebellion. Others were sent to work in America. Their homes were destroyed, and their farm animals killed. The fear of the Highland danger was so great that a law was passed forbidding Highlanders to wear their traditional skirt, the kilt. The old patterns of the kilt, called tartans, and the Scottish musical instrument, the bagpipe, were also forbidden. Some did not obey this law, and were shot.

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Historia Inglaterra: Chapter 15 - Life and thought

The political revolution during the Stuart age could not have happened if there had not been a revolution in thought. This influenced not only politics, but also religion and science. By 1714 people's ideas and beliefs had changed enormously. The real Protestant revolution did not, in fact, happen until the seventeenth century, when several new religious groups appeared. But there were also exciting new scientific ideas, quite separate from these new beliefs. For the first time it was reasonable to argue that everything in the universe had a natural explanation, and this led to a new self-confidence.

The revolution in thought
The influence of Puritanism increased greatly during the seventeenth century, particularly among the merchant class and lesser gentry. It was the Puritans who
persuaded James I to permit a new official ("authorised") translation of the Bible. It was published in 1611. This beautiful translation was a great work of English literature, and it encouraged Bible reading among all those who could read.
Some of them understood the Bible in a new and revolutionary way. As a result,
by the middle years of the seventeenth century Puritanism had led to the formation of a large number of small new religious groups, or “sects”.
Most of these Nonconformist sects lasted only a few years, but two are
important, the Baptists and the Quakers. In spite of opposition in the seventeenth century, both sects have survived and have had an important effect on the life of the nation. The Quakers became particularly famous for their reforming social work in the eighteenth century. These sects brought hope to many of the poor and the powerless. Social reform and the later growth of trade unionism both owed much to Nonconformism. In spite of their good work, however, the Nonconformists continued to be disliked by the ruling class until the end of the nineteenth century.
The Anglican Church, unlike the Nonconformist churches, was strong politically, but it became weaker intellectually. The great religious writers of the period, John Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, and John Milton, who wrote
Paradise Lost, were both Puritan.
For some Nonconformists, the opposition to their beliefs was too great to bear. They left Britain to live a free life in the new found land of America. In 1620, the
"Pilgrim Fathers" sailed in a ship called the Mayflower to Massachusetts. Catholic families settled in Maryland for the same reasons. But most of the 400,000 or so who left England were young men without families, who did so for economic and not
religious reasons. They wanted the chance to start a new life. At the same time there were other people coming in from abroad to live in Britain. Cromwell allowed Jews to settle again, the first Jews since the earlier community had been expelled 350 years
earlier. And after 1685 many French Protestants, known as Huguenots, escaped from Louis XIV's persecution and settled in Britain.
The revolution in religious thinking was happening at the same time as a revolution in scientific thinking. Careful study of the natural world led to important
new discoveries.

It was not the first time that the people of Britain had taken a lead in scientific matters. Almost a thousand years earlier, the English monk and historian, Bede, had argued that the earth stood still, fixed in space, and was surrounded by seven heavens. This, of course, was not correct, but no one doubted him for centuries.
In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries English scientists, most of them at the University of Oxford, had led Europe. Friar Roger Bacon, one of the more
famous of them, had experimented with light, heat and magnetism. Another, William of Ockham, had studied falling objects. Another, William Marlee, had been one of the
first to keep a careful record of the weather. Chaucer himself wrote a book to teach his son how to use an astrolabe.
Every scientific idea, must be tested by experiment. With idea and experiment
following one after the other, eventually the whole natural world would be understood. In the rest of the century British scientists put these ideas into practice.
In 1628 William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood and this led to great
advances in medicine and in the study of the human body. The scientists Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke used Harvey's methods when they made discoveries in the chemistry and mechanics of breathing.
In 1666 the Cambridge Professor of Mathematics, Sir Isaac Newton, began to
study gravity, publishing his important discovery in 1684. In 1687 he published Principia, on "the mathematical principles of natural philosophy", perhaps the greatest book in the history of science. Newton's work remained the basis of physics until Einstein's discoveries in the twentieth century. Newton's importance as a "founding father" of modern science was recognised in his own time.
Newton had been encouraged and financed by his friend, Edmund Halley, who is mostly remembered for tracking a comet (Halley's Comet) in 1682. There was at that
time a great deal of interest in astronomy. The discovery of the geometric movement of stars and planets destroyed old beliefs in astrology and magic. Everything, it seemed,
had a natural explanation.
It was no accident that the greatest British architect of the time, Christopher Wren, was also Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. In 1666, following a year of terrible plague, a fire destroyed most of the city of London. Eighty-seven churches,
including the great medieval cathedral of St Paul, were destroyed. Wren was ordered to rebuild them in the modern style, which he did with skill.
As a result of the rapid spread of literacy and the improvement in printing techniques, the first newspapers appeared in the seventeenth century. They were a new way of spreading all kinds of ideas, scientific, religious and literary. Many of them included advertisements. In 1660 Charles II advertised for his lost dog.

Life and work in the Stuart age
The situation for the poor improved in the second half of the seventeenth
century. Prices fell compared with wages, and fewer people asked for help from the parish. But it was the middle groups who continued to do well. Many who started life as yeoman farmers or traders became minor gentry or merchants. Part of their success resulted from a strong interest in farming improvements, which could now be studied in the many new books on the subject.

By the middle of the century the government had already begun to control the trade in cereals to make sure that merchants did not export these while Britain still needed them. However, by 1670 Britain was able to export cereals to Europe, where living conditions, particularly for the poor, were much worse than in Britain. This was partly the result of the Thirty Years War, 1618-48, which had badly damaged European agriculture.
Trade within Britain itself changed enormously in the seventeenth century. The different regions became less economically separate from each other. No place in
Britain was more than seventy-five miles from the sea, and by 1690 few places were more than twenty miles from a river or canal. These waterways became important means of transport, allowing each region to develop its own special produce. Kent, for
example, grew more fruit and vegetables to export to other regions, and became known as "the garden of England".
Improved transport resulted in a change in buying and selling. Most towns did
not have shops before the seventeenth century. They had market days when farmers and manufacturers sold their produce in the town square or marketplace. By 1690, however, most towns also had proper shops. Shopkeepers travelled around the country to buy goods for their shops, which were new and exciting and drew people from the country to see them. Towns which had shops grew larger, while smaller towns without shops remained no more than villages.
London remained far larger than any other town, with more than 500,000 people by 1650. It controlled almost all the sea trade with other countries. After the fire of 1666, the richer citizens for the first time had water supplied to their houses, through specially made wooden pipes. The city streets had traffic jams just as bad as today's,
and the noise was probably far worse, with the sound of iron-tyred wheels and the hammering of craftsmen.
In London there was a new class of rich "aristocrats", most of whom belonged to the nobility, but not all. Money could buy a high position in British society more easily than in Europe. After 1650 the rich began to meet in the new coffeehouses, which quickly became the meeting places for conversation and politics.
Some of the old nobility, however, did not accept the new rich as equals. While new Stuart yeomen wanted to be gentry, descendants of the older Tudor gentry started to call themselves "squires", the ruling class of the countryside. They did not wish to be confused with the new gentry.
While the rich of London visited the coffeehouses, the ordinary people went to the drinking houses, called "alehouses", in town and country. These soon became the centre of popular culture, where news and ideas could be passed on. By the end of the century the government had secret informers watching the alehouses and listening for rebellious talk.

Family life
After the rapid increase in population in the Tudor century, the number of births began to fall in the Stuart age.
One reason for the smaller number of births was that people married later than
anywhere else in Europe. Most people married in their mid twenties, and by the end of the century the average age of first marriages was even older, at twenty-seven. It also seems that more men remained unmarried than before. But the pattern of population growth and human behaviour remains puzzling.
By the end of the sixteenth century there were already signs that the authority of the husband was increasing. This resulted from the weakening of wider family ties. Furthermore, just as the power of the monarch became more absolute during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so also did that of the husband and father. But while the power of the monarchy was brought under control, the authority of the head of the family continued to grow.
The father always led daily family prayers and Bible reading. In some ways he had taken the place of the priest. As a result, his wife and children belonged to him, mind, body and soul. Absolute obedience was expected. Disobedience was considered an act against God as well as the head of the house.
One result of this increase in the father's authority was that from the early seventeenth century children were frequently beaten to break their "sinful" will. The child who was not beaten was unusual.
Only Quaker sect, which rejected all violence was against corporal punishment. Another result was the loss of legal rights by women over whatever property they had brought into a marriage.

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