BRITISH HISTORY NOTES

What is Anglicanism ?.

Anglicanism,  one of the major branches of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and a form of Christianity that includes features of both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Anglicanism is loosely organized in the Anglican Communion, a worldwide family of religious bodies that represents the offspring of the Church of England and recognizes the archbishop of Canterbury as its nominal head

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It prizes traditional worship and structure but operates autonomously and flexibly in different locales. Although the Anglican Communion has a creed—the Thirty-nine Articles—it has been disposed to allow widely divergent interpretations.

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Thus, Anglicans see themselves as possessing a cluster of historic pieties and procedural loyalties but few firm rules. The Book of Common Prayer, a compilation of the church’s liturgical forms originally issued in 1549, represents the faith’s independence from Rome and remains the hallmark of Anglican identity. The prayer book derives from ancient English spirituality and embodies the uniqueness of Anglican Christianity.

What is Puritanism ?

Puritanism,  a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that sought to “purify” the Church of England of remnants of the Roman Catholic “popery” that the Puritans claimed had been retained after the religious settlement reached early in the reign of QueenElizabeth I.

Puritans became noted in the 17th century for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that informed their whole way of life, and they sought through church reform to make their lifestyle the pattern for the whole nation. Their efforts to transform the nation contributed both to civil war in England and to the founding of colonies in America as working models of the Puritan way of life.

Puritanism may be defined primarily by the intensity of the religious experience that it fostered. Puritans believed that it was necessary to be in a covenant relationship with God in order to redeem one from one’s sinful condition, that God had chosen to reveal salvation through preaching, and that the Holy Spirit was the energizing instrument of salvation.

King Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, and the cause of Protestantism advanced rapidly under Edward VI (reigned 1547–53). During the reign of Queen Mary (1553–58), however, England returned to Roman Catholicism, and many Protestants were forced into exile.

Many of the exiles found their way to Geneva, where John Calvin’s church provided a working model of a disciplined church. Out of this experience also came the two most popular books of Elizabethan England—the Geneva Bible and John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs—which provided justification to English Protestants to view England as an elect nation chosen by God to complete the work of the Reformation.

Thus, Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 was enthusiastically welcomed by these Protestants; but her early actions while reestablishing Protestantism disappointed those who sought extensive reform, and this faction was unable to achieve its objectives in the Convocation, the primary governing body of the church.

Many of these Puritans—as they came to be known during a controversy over vestments in the 1560s—sought parliamentary support for an effort to institute a presbyterian form of polity for the Church of England. Other Puritans, concerned with the long delay in reform, decided upon a “reformation without tarrying for any.”

These “Separatists” repudiated the state church and formed voluntary congregations based on a covenant with God and among themselves. Both groups, but especially the Separatists, were repressed by the establishment. Denied the opportunity to reform the established church, English Puritanism turned to preaching, pamphlets, and a variety of experiments in religious expression and in social behaviour and organization. Its successful growth also owed much to patrons among the nobility and in Parliament and its control of colleges and professorships at Oxford and Cambridge.

Puritan hopes were again raised when the Calvinist James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth as James I of England in 1603. But at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 he dismissed the Puritans’ grievances with the phrase “no bishop, no king.” Puritans remained under pressure. Some were deprived of their positions; others got by with minimal conformity; and still others, who could not accept compromise, fled England. The pressure for conformity increased under Charles I (1625–49) and his archbishop, William Laud. Nevertheless, the Puritan spirit continued to spread, and when civil war broke out between Parliament and Charles in the 1640s, Puritans seized the opportunity to urge Parliament and the nation to renew its covenant with God. Parliament called together a body of clergy to advise it on the government of the church, but this body—the Westminster Assembly—was so badly divided that it failed to achieve reform of church government and discipline.

Meanwhile, the New Model Army, which had defeated the royalist forces, feared that the Assembly and Parliament would reach a compromise with King Charles that would destroy their gains for Puritanism, so it seized power and turned it over to its hero, Oliver Cromwell. The religious settlement under Cromwell’s Commonwealth allowed for a limited pluralism that favoured the Puritans. A number of radical Puritan groups appeared, including the Levelers, the Diggers, the Fifth Monarchy Men, and the Quakers (the only one of lasting significance).

After Cromwell’s death in 1658, conservative Puritans supported the restoration of King Charles II and a modified episcopal polity. However, they were outmaneuvered by those who reinstituted Laud’s strict episcopal pattern. Thus, English Puritanism entered a period known as the Great Persecution. English Puritans made a final unsuccessful attempt to secure their ideal of a comprehensive church during the Glorious Revolution, but England’s religious solution was defined in 1689 by the Toleration Act, which continued the established church as episcopal but also tolerated dissenting groups.

The Puritan ideal of realizing the Holy Commonwealth by the establishment of a covenanted community was carried to the American colony of Virginia by Thomas Dale, but the greatest opportunity came in New England. The original pattern of church organization in the Massachusetts Bay colony was a “middle way” between presbyterianism and Separatism, yet in 1648 four New England Puritan colonies jointly adopted the Cambridge Platform, establishing a congregational form of church government.

The New England Puritans fashioned the civil commonwealth according to the framework of the church. Only the elect could vote and rule. When this raised problems for second-generation residents, they adopted the Half-Way Covenant, which permitted baptized, moral, and orthodox persons to share the privileges of church membership. Other variations of the Puritan experiment were established in Rhode Island by Roger Williams, who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay colony, and in Pennsylvania by the Quaker William Penn.

Who is John Knox ?

John Knox,  (born c. 1514, near Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland—died November 24, 1572, Edinburgh), foremost leader of the Scottish Reformation, who set the austere moral tone of the Church of Scotland and shaped the democratic form of government it adopted. He was influenced by George Wishart, who was burned for heresy in 1546, and the following year Knox became the spokesman for theReformation in Scotland. After a period of intermittent imprisonment and exile in England and on the European continent, in 1559 he returned to Scotland, where he supervised the preparation of the constitution and liturgy of the Reformed Church. His most important literary work was his History of the Reformation in Scotland.

What is Mercantalism ?

Mercantilism,  economic theory and practice common in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century that promoted governmental regulation of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. It was the economic counterpart of political absolutism. Its 17th-century publicists—most notably Thomas Mun in England, Jean-Baptiste Colbert in France, and Antonio Serra in Italy—never, however, used the term themselves; it was given currency by the Scottish economist Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations (1776).

Mercantilism contained many interlocking principles. Precious metals, such as gold and silver, were deemed indispensable to a nation’s wealth. If a nation did not possess mines or have access to them, precious metals should be obtained by trade. It was believed that trade balances must be “favourable,” meaning an excess of exports over imports. Colonial possessions should serve as markets for exports and as suppliers of raw materials to the mother country. Manufacturing was forbidden in colonies, and all commerce between colony and mother country was held to be a monopoly of the mother country.

A strong nation, according to the theory, was to have a large population, for a large population would provide a supply of labour, a market, and soldiers. Human wants were to be minimized, especially for imported luxury goods, for they drained off precious foreign exchange. Sumptuary laws (affecting food and drugs) were to be passed to make sure that wants were held low. Thrift, saving, and even parsimony were regarded as virtues, for only by these means could capital be created. In effect, mercantilism provided the favourable climate for the early development of capitalism, with its promises of profit.

Later, mercantilism was severely criticized. Advocates of laissez-faire argued that there was really no difference between domestic and foreign trade and that all trade was beneficial both to the trader and to the public. They also maintained that the amount of money or treasure that a state needed would be automatically adjusted and that money, like any other commodity, could exist in excess. They denied the idea that a nation could grow rich only at the expense of another and argued that trade was in reality a two-way street. Laissez-faire, like mercantilism, was challenged by other economic ideas. Compare laissez-faire.

What is Spanish Armada ?

Armada, also called Spanish Armada or Invincible Armada, Spanish Armada Española or Armada Invencible,   the great fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain in 1588 to invade England in conjunction with a Spanish army from Flanders. England’s attempts to repel this fleet involved the first naval battles to be fought entirely with heavy guns, and the failure of Spain’s enterprise saved England and the Netherlands from possible absorption into the Spanish empire.

Philip had long been contemplating an attempt to restore the Roman Catholic faith in England, and English piracies against Spanish trade and possessions offered him further provocation. The Treaty of Nonsuch (1585) by which England undertook to support the Dutch rebels against Spanish rule, along with damaging raids by Sir Francis Drake against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean in 1585–86, finally convinced Philip that a direct invasion of England was necessary. He decided to use 30,000 troops belonging to the veteran army of the Spanish regent of the Netherlands, the duke of Parma, as the main invasion force and to send from Spain sufficient naval strength to defeat or deter the Englishfleet and clear the Strait of Dover for Parma’s army to cross from Flanders over to southeastern England.

At midnight on August 7–8 (July 28–29), the English launched eight fire ships before the wind and tide into the Spanish fleet, forcing the Spanish ships to cut or slip their cables (thus losing their anchors) and stand out to sea to avoid catching fire. The Spanish ships’ formation was thus completely broken. At dawn on the 8th the Englishattacked the disorganized Spanish ships off Gravelines, and a decisive battle ensued. The English ships now closed to effective range and were answered largely with small arms.

The Spanish ships’ heavy guns were not mounted, nor were Spanish gunners trained to reload in action. They sustained serious damage and casualties without being able to reply effectively. Three Spanish ships were sunk or driven ashore, and others were badly battered. At the same time, the English were obliged by shortage of ammunition to break off the action and follow at a distance.

By the morning of August 9 (July 30), the prevailing westerly winds were driving the Spaniards toward the shoals of the Zeeland banks. At the last minute, however, the wind shifted and allowed them to shape a safe course to the northward. Both the west wind and the English fleet now prevented the Armada from rejoining Parma, and it was forced to make the passage back to Spain around the northern tip ofScotland. 

The English fleet turned back in search of supplies when the Armada passed the Firth of Forth and there was no further fighting, but the long voyage home through the autumn gales of the North Atlantic proved fatal to many of the Spanish ships. Whether through battle damage, bad weather, shortage of food and water, or navigational error, some ships foundered in the open sea while others were driven onto the west coast of Ireland and wrecked. Only 60 ships are known to have reached Spain, many of them too badly damaged to be repaired, and perhaps 15,000 men perished. The English lost several hundred, perhaps several thousand, men to disease but sustained negligible damage and casualties in action.

Significance

The defeat of the Armada saved England from invasion and the Dutch Republic from extinction, while dealing a heavy blow to the prestige of the greatest European power of the age. Tactically, the Armada action has enduring historical significance as the first major naval gun battle under sail and as the moment from which, for over two and a half centuries, the gun-armed sailing warship dominated the seas.

English East India Company

East India Company, also called English East India Company, formally (1600–1708) Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, or (1708–1873) United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies,   English company formed for the exploitation of trade with East and Southeast Asia and India, incorporated by royal charter on December 31, 1600.

Starting as a monopolistic trading body, the company became involved in politics and acted as an agent of British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century. In addition, the activities of the company in China in the 19th century served as a catalyst for the expansion of British influence there.

The company was formed to share in the East Indian spice trade. This trade had been a monopoly of Spain and Portugal until the defeat of the Spanish Armada(1588) by England gave the English the chance to break the monopoly. Until 1612 the company conducted separate voyages, separately subscribed. There were temporary joint stocks until 1657, when a permanent joint stock was raised.

The company met with opposition from the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the Portuguese. The Dutch virtually excluded company members from the East Indies after the Amboina Massacre in 1623 (an incident in which English, Japanese, and Portuguese traders were executed by Dutch authorities), but the company’s defeat of the Portuguese in India (1612) won them trading concessions from the Mughal Empire.

The company settled down to a trade in cotton and silk piece goods, indigo, and saltpetre, with spices from South India. It extended its activities to the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. After the mid-18th century the cotton-goods trade declined, while tea became an important import from China. Beginning in the early 19th century, the company financed the tea trade with illegal opium exports to China. Chinese opposition to this trade precipitated the first Opium War (1839–42), which resulted in a Chinese defeat and the expansion of British trading privileges; a second conflict, often called the Arrow War (1856–60), brought increased trading rights for Europeans.

The original company faced opposition to its monopoly, which led to the establishment of a rival company and the fusion (1708) of the two as the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. The united company was organised into a court of 24 directores who worked through committees.they were elected annually by the chief  shareholders.

When the company acquired control of Bengal in 1757, Indian policy was until 1773 influenced by shareholders’ meetings, where votes could be bought by the purchase of shares. This led to government intervention. The Regulating Act (1773) and Pitt’s India Act (1784) established government control of political policy through a regulatory board responsible to Parliament. Thereafter, the company gradually lost both commercial and political control. Its commercial monopoly was broken in 1813, and from 1834 it was merely a managing agency for the British government of India. It was deprived of this after the Indian Mutiny(1857), and it ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1873.

What is Poor Laws ?.

Poor Law,  in British history, body of laws undertaking to provide relief for the poor, developed in 16th-century England and maintained, with various changes, until after World War II. The Elizabethan Poor Laws, as codified in 1597–98, were administered through parish overseers, who provided relief for the aged, sick, and infant poor, as well as work for the able-bodied in workhouses. Late in the 18th century, this was supplemented by the so-called Speenhamland system of providing allowances to workers who received wages below what was considered a subsistence level. The resulting increase in expenditures on public relief was so great that a new Poor Law was enacted in 1834, based on a harsher philosophy that regarded pauperism among able-bodied workers as a moral failing.

The new law provided no relief for the able-bodied poor except employment in the workhouse, with the object of stimulating workers to seek regular employment rather than charity. The growth of humanitarian feeling in the 19th century helped to mitigate the harshness of the law in practice, and the phenomenon of industrial unemployment in the 20th century showed that poverty was more than a moral problem. The social legislation of the 1930s and ’40s replaced the Poor Laws with a comprehensive system of public welfare services. See also workhouse.

Who is Roger Ascham  ?

Roger Ascham, British humanist, scholar, and writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education.As a boy of 14, Ascham entered the University of Cambridge, where he earned his M.A. (1537) and one year later was elected a fellow of St. John’s and appointed reader in Greek. The new Renaissance enthusiasm for the classics, especially Greek, was at its height.

Ascham’s Toxophilus (“Lover of the Bow”), written in the form of a dialogue, was published in 1545 and was the first book on archery in English. In the preface Ascham showed the growing patriotic zeal of the humanists by stating that he was writing “Englishe matter in the Englishe tongue for Englishe men.” He became Princess Elizabeth’s tutor in Greek and Latin (1548–50), then served as secretary to Sir Richard Morison (1550–52), English ambassador to the Habsburg emperor Charles V, traveling widely on the European continent. Thereafter, he was appointed Latin secretary to Queen Mary, a post he held until her death in 1558. He continued in this position for Queen Elizabeth I until his death. He served her by composing her official letters to foreign rulers and by helping her pursue the study of Greek.

The Scholemaster, written in simple, lucid English prose and published posthumously in 1570, is Ascham’s best-known book. It presents an effective method of teaching Latin prose composition, but its larger concerns are with the psychology of learning, the education of the whole person, and the ideal moral and intellectual personality that education should mold. His success in tutoring three females—Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth—has led some to consider Ascham an early proponent of education for girls.

What is Humanism ?

humanism, term freely applied to a variety of beliefs, methods, and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm. Most frequently, however, the term is used with reference to a system of education and mode of inquiry that developed in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries and later spread through continental Europe and England.

 Alternately known as “Renaissance humanism,” this program was so broadly and profoundly influential that it is one of the chief reasons why the Renaissance is viewed as a distinct historical period. Indeed, though the word Renaissance is of more recent coinage, the fundamental idea of that period as one of renewal and reawakening is humanistic in origin. But humanism sought its own philosophical bases in far earlier times and, moreover, continued to exert some of its power long after the end of the Renaissance.Petrarch is Known as the father Humanism.

Stuart Monarchy

House of Stuart, royal house of Scotland from 1371 and of England from 1603. It was interrupted in 1649 by the establishment of the Commonwealth but was restored in 1660. It ended in 1714, when the British crown passed to the house of Hanover.

In 1603 James VI, through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England, inherited the English throne as King James I. After the execution (1649) of James’s son Charles I, the Stuarts were excluded from the throne until the restoration of Charles II in 1660.

Charles II was succeeded in 1685 by his Roman Catholic brother James II (d. 1701), who so alienated the sympathies of his subjects that in 1688 William, prince of Orange, was invited to come “to the rescue of the laws and religion of England.” James fled, and by the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701), which denied the crown to any Roman Catholic, he and his descendants were excluded from the throne.

But Stuarts still ruled in England and Scotland, for William was the son of Charles II’s sister mary,and his wife mary was James II daughter.They became joint  sovereigns as William III and Mary II. They left no issue, and the Act of Settlement secured the succession to Mary’s sister Anne (d. 1714) and on her death without issue to Sophia, electress of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I; Sophia’s son and heir became George I, first of the British House of Hanover.

The last male Stuarts of the British royal line were James II’s son James Edward (d. 1766), the Old Pretender, and his sons Charles Edward (d. 1788), the Young Pretender (known as Bonnie Prince Charlie), who died without legitimate issue, and Henry (d. 1807), Cardinal Duke of York.

Petition of Right

Petition of Right, (1628) petition sent by the English Parliament to King Charles I complaining of a series of breaches of law. The petition sought recognition of four principles: no taxation without the consent of Parliament, no imprisonment without cause, no quartering of soldiers on subjects, and no martial law in peacetime. To continue receiving subsidies for his policies, Charles was compelled to accept the petition, but he later ignored its principles. 

English Civil Wars

English Civil Wars, also called  Great Rebellion,   (1642–51), fighting that took place in the British Isles between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I (and his son and successor, Charles II) and opposing groups in each of Charles’s kingdoms, including Parliamentarians in England, Covenanters in Scotland, and Confederates in Ireland.

The civil wars are traditionally considered to have begun in England in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against the wishes of Parliament, ostensibly to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. But the period of conflict actually began earlier in Scotland, with the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–40, and in Ireland, with the Ulster rebellion of 1641. Throughout the 1640s, war between king and Parliament ravaged England, but it also struck all of the kingdoms held by the House of Stuart—and, in addition to war between the various British and Irish dominions, there was civil war within each of the Stuart states. For this reason the English Civil Wars might more properly be called the British Civil Wars or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The wars finally ended in 1651 with the flight of Charles II to France and, with him, the hopes of the British monarchy.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell,English soldier and statesman who led parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars; he was lord protector of England,Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to 1658 during the republican Commonwealth.

As one of the generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I, Cromwell helped to bring about the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, and, as lord protector, he raised his country’s status once more to that of a leading European power from the decline it had gone through since the death of Queen Elizabeth I.

A man of outstanding gifts and a forceful character, he was one of the most remarkable rulers in modern European history, for although a convinced Calvinist, he believed deeply in the value of religious toleration. At the same time Cromwell’s victories at home and abroad helped to enlarge and sustain a Puritan attitude of mind, both in Great Britain and in North America, that continued to influence political and social life until recent times.

Restoration

Restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660. It marked the return of Charles II as king (1660–85) following the period of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. The bishops were restored to Parliament, which established a strict Anglican orthodoxy. The period, which also included the reign of James II(1685–88), was marked by an expansion in colonial trade, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, and a revival of drama and literature (see Restoration literature).

Restoration literature

English literature written after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following the period of the Commonwealth. Some literary historians speak of the period as bounded by the reign of Charles II (1660–85), while others prefer to include within its scope the writings produced during the reign of James II (1685–88), and even literature of the 1690s is often spoken of as “Restoration.”

By that time, however, the reign of William III and Mary II (1689–1702) had begun, and the ethos of courtly and urban fashion was as a result sober, Protestant, and even pious, in contrast to the sexually and intellectually libertine spirit of court life under Charles II. Many typical literary forms of the modern world—including the novel, biography, history, travel writing, and journalism—gained confidence during the Restoration period, when new scientific discoveries and philosophical concepts as well as new social and economic conditions came into play.

There was a great outpouring of pamphlet literature, too, much of it politico-religious, while John Bunyan’s great allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, also belongs to this period. Much of the best poetry, notably that of John Dryden (the great literary figure of his time, in both poetry and prose), the earl of Rochester, Samuel Butler, and John Oldham, was satirical and led directly to the later achievements of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Gay in the Augustan Age.

The Restoration period was, above all, a great age of drama. Heroic plays, influenced by principles of French Neoclassicism, enjoyed a vogue, but the age is chiefly remembered for its glittering, critical comedies of manners by such playwrights as George Etherege, William Wycherley, Sir John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve.

Long Parliament

Long Parliament, the English Parliament summoned in November 1640 by King Charles I; it has been so named to distinguish it from the Short Parliament of April–May 1640. The duration of the Long Parliament has been held to have extended either until April 1653, when its remaining members were forcibly ejected by the Cromwellian army, or until March 1660, when its members, finally restored, passed an act for its dissolution.

 Legally the act of 1660 was as invalid as the ejection of 1653, because it lacked royal assent. An act of the Convention Parliament of April–December 1660 can be said to have finally dissolved the Long Parliament, though the Convention was itself not a lawful parliament because it had not been summoned by the king; its acts were reinforced by later legislation.

Charles I summoned both the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640 because only the Parliament could raise the money he needed to wage the second Bishops’ War against the Scots, who were resisting his attempts to impose episcopacy on them. Because of disputes he dismissed the Short Parliament hastily; the Scots then invaded northern England, and, in order to buy them off, a fresh recourse to Parliament was unavoidable. The Long Parliament proved much more intransigent than the Short, however.

During its first nine months it brought down the king’s advisers, swept away the machinery of conciliar government developed by the Tudors and early Stuarts, made frequent sessions of Parliament a statutory necessity, and passed an act forbidding its own dissolution without its members’ consent. Tension between the king and Parliament steadily increased, notably upon Charles’ abortive attempt to arrest five of its members in January 1642, and the Civil Wars broke out later that year.

After the king was finally defeated in the field (1646), new members were elected to replace those who had joined the king (the “recruiters”), but real power passed to the army. In December 1648 Col. Thomas Pride carried out what came to be known as “Pride’s  Purge.” Acting on behalf of the generals, he secluded more than half of the 460 members of the Commons and several of the handful of peers still in attendance. Most of the remainder refused to take their seats (at least until long after the regicide) or to recognize the legitimacy of what the army had done at Pride’s Purge.

The surviving group known to historian as Rump brought Charles I to trial and execution in January 1649; it was forcibly ejected in 1653. After the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the Rump was restored in May 1659 and expelled in October. It was reestablished in December 1659, and, after those excluded in 1648 had joined it, it dissolved itself; the newly elected Convention Parliament then opened negotiations for the restoration of Charles II.

Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution, also called Revolution of 1688, or Bloodless Revolution ,   in English history, the events of 1688–89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of his daughter Mary II and her husband, William III, prince of Orange and stadholder of the Netherlands.

After the accession of James II in 1685, his overt Roman Catholicism alienated the majority of the population. In 1687 he issued a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the penal laws against dissenters and recusants, and in April 1688 ordered that a second Declaration of Indulgence be read from every pulpit on two successive Sundays.

 William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, and six other bishops petitioned him against this and were prosecuted for seditious libel. Their acquittal almost coincided with the birth of a son to James’s Roman Catholic queen, Mary of Modena (June). This event promised an indefinite continuance of his policy and brought discontent to a head. Seven eminent Englishmen, including one bishop and six prominent politicians of both Whig and Tory persuasions, wrote inviting William of Orange to come over with an army to redress the nation’s grievances.

William was both James’s nephew and his son-in-law, and, until the birth of James’s son, his wife, Mary, was heir apparent. William’s chief concern was to check the overgrowth of French power in Europe, and he welcomed England’s aid. Thus, having been in close touch with the leading English malcontents for more than a year, he accepted their invitation. Landing at Brixham on Tor Bay (November 5), he advanced slowly on London, as support fell away from James II. James’s daughter Anne and his best general, John Churchill, were among the deserters to William’s camp; thereupon James fled to France.

William was now asked to carry on the government and summon a Parliament. When this Convention Parliament met (January 22, 1689), it agreed, after some debate, to treat James’s flight as an abdication and to offer the Crown, with an accompanying Declaration of Right, to William and Mary jointly. Both gift and conditions were accepted. Thereupon the convention turned itself into a proper Parliament and large parts of the Declaration into a Bill of Rights. This bill gave the succession to Mary’s sister, Anne, in default of issue to Mary; barred Roman Catholics from the throne; abolished the Crown’s power to suspend laws; condemned the power of dispencing with laws as it has been exercised and used of late  and declared a standing army illegal in time of peace.

The settlement marked a considerable triumph for Whig views. If no Roman Catholic could be king, then no kingship could be unconditional. The adoption of the exclusionist solution lent support to John Locke’s contention that government was in the nature of a social contract between the king and his people represented in parliament. The revolution permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England.

Bill of Rights

Bill of Rights, formally An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown (1689),  one of the basic instruments of the British constitution, the result of the long 17th-century struggle between the Stuart kings and the English people and Parliament.

It incorporated the provisions of the Declaration of Rights, acceptance of which had been the condition upon which the throne, held to have been vacated by James II, was offered to the prince and princess of Orange, afterward William III and Mary II. With the Toleration Act (1689), granting religious toleration to all Protestants, the Triennial Act (1694), ordering general elections to be held every three years, and the Act of Settlement (1701), providing for the Hanoverian succession, the Bill of Rights provided the foundation on which the government rested after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89).

 It purported to introduce no new principles but merely to declare explicitly the existing law. The revolution settlement, however, made monarchy clearly conditional on the will of Parliament and provided a freedom from arbitrary government of which most Englishmen were notably proud during the 18th century.

The main purpose of the act was unequivocally to declare illegal various practices of James II. Among such practices proscribed were the royal prerogative of dispensing with the law in certain cases, the complete suspension of laws without the consent of Parliament, and the levying of taxes and the maintenance of astanding army in peacetime without specific parliamentary authorization.

A number of clauses sought to eliminate royal interference in parliamentary matters, stressing that elections must be free and that members must have complete freedom of speech. Certain forms of interference in the course of justice were also proscribed. The act also dealt with the proximate succession to the throne, settling it on Mary’s heirs, then on those of her sister, afterward Queen Anne, and then on those of William, provided they were Protestants

Bank of England

Bank of England,  the central bank of the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are in the central financial district of the City of London.The Bank of England was incorporated by act of Parliament in 1694 with the immediate purpose of raising funds to allow the Englishgovernment to wage war against France in the Low Countries .

 A royal charter allowed the bank to operate as a joint-stock bank with limited liability. No other joint-stock banks were permitted in England and Wales until 1826. This special status and its position as the government’s banker gave the bank considerable competitive advantages.

The bank was located first in Mercers’ Hall and then in Grocers’ Hall, but it was moved to its permanent location on Threadneedle Street in the 1730s. By that time it had become the largest and most prestigious financial institution in England, and its banknotes were widely circulated. As a result, it became banker to other banks, which, by maintaining balances with the Bank of England, could settle debts among themselves. The bank was threatened by the economic instability that accompanied the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but its standing was also considerably enhanced by its actions in raising funds for Britain’s involvement in those conflicts.

During the 19th century the bank gradually assumed the responsibilities of a central bank. In 1833 it began to print legal tender, and it undertook the roles of lender of last resort and guardian of the nation’s gold reserves in the following few decades.

The bank was privately owned until 1946, when it was nationalized. It funds public borrowing, issues bank notes, and manages the country’s gold and foreign-exchange reserves. It is an important adviser to the government on monetary policy and is largely responsible for implementing the chosen policy by its dealings in the money, bond, and foreign-exchange markets. The bank’s freedom of action in this regard was considerably enhanced when it was given the power to determine short-term interest rates in 1997. The Bank of England is a member of the European Central Bank and part of its General Council.

Development of British Party system

British politics has traditionally been characterized by its two-party system of government, despite the fact that reasonably well-functioning coalition governments did exist between 1915 and 1922 and 1931 and 1945. Indeed, the possibility of coalition government still exists today, should the successes of the newly formed alliance continue. The first signs of a emerging political parties were apparent shortly before and after the English Civil War during the 17th century. During this period parliament split into two made up of those loyal to the king "Cavaliers" and the republicans "Roundheads". The development of a party system, however, did not come about until the king had been reinstated as head of state and loose groupings going under the name of "Tories" and "Whigs" - originally intended as insults - began to develop. The Tories found their support among the landed gentry and identified themselves strongly with the Anglican Church and the Crown. In contrast, the Whigs represented the interests of large landowners and rich merchants, championed religious and political tolerance and stuck to the basic principle that the king's ministers must have the trust of parliament. A strict dividing line between party and interests were present until well into the 19th century. The first cabinet to be formed out of a parliamentary majority was called into being by William III as early as 1693. The first prime minister was named in 1721 and acted as the head of the cabinet in the absence of the monarch. This development led to a situation in which the parties and their leaders gained great significance in the British constitutional system. Two of today's political parties developed out of these groupings during the 19th century. In broad terms, the reforming Liberal Party developed from the Whigs and the Conservative Party from the Tories. Indeed, the Conservative Party is still referred to as the Tories today. It was not until the end of the 19th century that the first elements of a third party began to emerge in the form of the Labour Party, which began to displace the Liberal Party step-by-step as the main opposition party. This breakthrough was achieved by addressing directly the problems faced by the nation's working class, who until the emergence of the Labour Party had voted mainly for the Liberals. The Liberal Party was regarded as the party of political and social reform, even if this eagerness was often economically motivated. The working class was able to identify more easily with Labour Party candidates than members of the upper class and representatives of business, who mainly elected Liberal members to parliament. (...) Ever since the end of the Second World War, Britain's political landscape has been dominated by the Conservative and Labour Parties.

                                                                                                          

Coffee house

A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks.

The first coffeehouse inEngland was set up in Oxford in 1652 by a Jewish man named Jacob at the Angel in the parish of St Peter in the East in a building now known as "The Grand Cafe". A plaque on the wall still commemorates this and the cafe is now a trendy cocktail bar.

 Oxford's Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is also still in existence today. The first coffeehouse inLondon was opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the servant of a trader in Turkishgoods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill.

 By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.^[10] Pasqua Rosée also established Paris'first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope in 1686.

 From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups of 2 or 3.