Unit 5. The Stuarts

• 1. James I (1603-1625)

  • Clever and well educated. Believed in the divine right of kings.
  • Constant conflict with Parliament (raised money without agreement from Parliament).
  • Pleased with bishops of Anglican Church. Puritans ask to remove them, but he saw danger. 
  • Gunpowder Plot several attempts against his life in 1605. Catholics had been caught try to blow up the Houses of Parliament with King James inside. 
  • The Authorised King James Bible (Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England)
  • Expeditions to the New World.
• Charles I (1625-1649)

  • Parliamentary rights: raise money by Act of Parliament, not imprison anyone without lawful reason. Known as Petition of Right: Parliament controlled both money and law. 
  • Personal rule: Charles dissolve Parliament, 
  • Marry French Catholic and appoint Puritans’ enemy, William Laud, as Archbishop of Canterbury. Result in national resistance: Charles agree to respect Scottish political religious freedoms and pay to return home. 
• Puritans: strict Protestants who wanted to 'purify' the Church and get rid of all traces of the Catholic faith.

  Puritans’ objective: 

  • Puritans sought to eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible.
  • Puritans felt that they had a direct covenant with God to enact these reforms.
  • They sought a complete reformation both of religious and of secular life.
  • They wanted a disciplined, godly life and promoted self-discipline, individualism, responsibility and work
• Civil War: 

  • Royalist (“Cavaliers”): controlled north and west. Wore fashionable long ringlets. 
  • Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”): east and south. Short hair.
• Why did Roundheads win?

  • The Royalists' lack of finance: Royalist forces from the English aristocracy. Royalists controlled rural areas.Parliament control over wealthy populated areas (Find needed funds more quickly)
  • New Model Army: Created by Oliver Cromwell. Based on merit rather than social standing. The New Model Army was highly disciplined and posed a brutal opposition to the Royalist side.
  • Allies in the North: Parliament signed the Solemn League and Covenant with Scotland. Charles surrendered to the Scottish force; they swiftly handed him over to Parliament.
• Outcome of the civil war: Cromwell and his advisers had captured the king in 1645. King Charles was executed in 1649.
• Commonwealth (1649-1660) as a form of government, closer to a Republic. Far more severe than Charles's had been. They had got rid of the monarchy, and they got rid of the House of Lords and the Anglican Church.
• Oliver Cromwell’s rule:

  • Lord Protector. 
  • Disagreements between the army and Parliament resulted in Parliament's dissolution in 1653.
  • Unpopular for governing through the army, forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter or play games on Sunday.
• Levellers: group that emerged during Cromwell’s. They wanted new equality among all men. Parliament to meet every two years, men over the age of twenty-one to have the right to elect MPs to it and complete religious freedom. Little popular support. Levellers in the army rebelled, but their rebellion was defeated.
• Charles II: 

  • Laws and Acts of Cromwell's government were automatically cancelled.
  • Attracted to Catholic Church.
  • Test Act in 1673: no catholic in public office.
  • Catholic plot to murder Charles and put his brother James on the throne (trick). Parliament passed an Act forbidding any Catholic to be a member of either the Commons or the Lords
• First political parties in Britain (loosely formed) appeared during Charles II’s reign: 

  • Whighs: afraid of absolute monarchy and Catholic faith, crown depend on Parliament, tolerant with.
  • Tories: upheld authority of the crown and the Church, inheritors of Royalist position. 
• There were two terrible disasters in 1665 and 1666

  • Bubonic Plague: red blotches or “buboes”. It was transmitted by fleas or rats. Thousands of people die, houses sealed, London closes.
  • The fire helped kill the disease but destroyed a great part of the city.
• Samuel Pepys: It is the most famous diary in the English language, which contains a detailed account of a decade (1660-1669.) He was an extremely observant commentator and his diary is an important historical document. The manuscript is housed at Magdalene College, Cambridge
• Glorious Revolution (1688): James II lost his right to the crown. Logical conclusion of such ideas was that the "consent of the people" was represented by Parliament and it should be overall power. They offered William and Mary the Crown. 
• Bill of Rights (1689): put an end to the absolute power of the monarch. It is written after the Glorious Revolution. 
• William and Mary: 

  • Protestant. 
  • Accepted Declaration of Rights.
  • William, an unpopular king, focused on Netherlands.
  • Mary died in 1694 and William continued to rule alone as William III.
• In 1701 Parliament finally passed the Act of Settlement, to make sure only a Protestant could inherit the crown
• Royal Society (1660) founded to bring together reading scientific minds of the day. It is the World's oldest scientific academy. Scientific studies were encouraged by the stuarts: 

  • 1628: William Harvey, circulation of blood. 
  • 1684: Isaac Newton, gravity discovery.
  • 1682: Edmund Halley, Halley’s comet.