Unit 5 The Neoclassical Period

(1660—1798)

Henry VII possessed only his ability and the ancient name and audacity of his Welsh ancestors. His grandfather had married the widow of Henry V, and his father had married Margaret Beaufort, who was descended illegitimately from Edward III. Henry's only claim to the throne was his victory at Bosworth and his subsequent success. The pragmatic Tudors gave England the government it wanted; with the exception of Mary I, they seldom tried to lead where their subjects were not ready to follow.

Henry got rid of his Yorkist rivals, including some impostors. He married Elizabeth, Edward IV's daughter, and soon had a nursery full of babies, the only Tudor so blessed. He gained recognition abroad, from Spain in 1489 by the Treaty of Medina del Campo, and then from France, the Netherlands, and Scotland. He restored strong, efficient government, such as England had once enjoyed but lacked for many years. He promoted English trade, which he could tax, avoided foreign wars, and saved money. He became rich and powerful, commanding England's respect if not its love.

1 Henry VIII

Ambitious and bold, Henry VIII was a vivid contrast to his careful, workaday father. Humanist scholars praised him; one of them, Thomas More, served in his government. In 1513 Henry won the Battle of the Spurs in France and beat the Scots at Flodden. He exhausted his inherited wealth, but won fame and discovered the talents of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, who as chancellor and archbishop of York dominated the years 1514 to 1529. The blight on Henry's reign was his desire for a male heir. Although his wife, Catherine of Aragón, bore him six children, only one—later Mary I—survived infancy. Wanting a son, and smitten by Anne Boleyn, Henry appealed to the pope for a divorce. When the all-capable Wolsey could not obtain it, Henry dismissed him and summoned the Reformation Parliament. The result was the Church of England, with Henry as supreme head, separate from Rome but otherwise Catholic.

Anne Boleyn, whom Henry was now free to marry (1533), gave birth not to a son but to another daughter, Elizabeth. Anne soon lost the king's favor and was beheaded for alleged adultery. Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, died giving birth to Edward, his only surviving son. Three later wives, one of whom he divorced and another of whom was beheaded, had no children.

Thomas Cromwell, Henry's second administrative genius, oversaw the revolutionary changes of the 1530s. These included the break with Rome and dissolution of the monasteries, the new growth of Parliament, especially the House of Commons, and the creation out of the old King's Council of a new bureaucratic structure, including the Privy Council and the prerogative courts, which were controlled by the Crown.

2 Henry's Heirs

Under Edward VI, a minor dominated successively by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, the English church became Protestant. Parliament's Acts of Uniformity enforced the Book of Common Prayer. When Edward died at the age of 16, Northumberland tried but failed to save Protestantism and himself by preventing the succession of the king's half-sister, Mary.

Mary I, the daughter of Catherine of Aragón, restored the Roman Catholic church and married her cousin, Philip II of Spain. Her burning of almost 300 Protestants made the people hate her and Rome, however, and her marriage led to war with France and the loss of Calais. When Bloody Mary, as she was known, died in November 1558, England rejoiced in the accession of her half-sister, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth I, one of England's greatest sovereigns, had her grandfather's frugality and care and her father's imperious manner and his ability to charm and overwhelm. She had a sense of what people wanted and would allow, and she had the judgment to pick able and devoted ministers.

Cooperating with Parliament, she settled the church in 1559 on a moderate course. She neutralized the Scottish threat by helping the Protestant and pro-English faction to win dominance there. She assisted the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands and encouraged English sailors to raid Spanish ships on the high seas. Her navy defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 and prevented the invasion of England. Ireland, increasingly rebellious and vulnerable as a possible point of foreign attack, was finally completely conquered in 1603. Elizabeth presided over England's rise to glory abroad and to prosperity and literary achievement at home, justifiably giving her name to England's golden age.

3 The Early Stuarts

The accession of James I, the son of Elizabeth's cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, united the crowns of England and Scotland. It also began a century of domestic conflict, due in part to the personalities of the Stuart kings, but more to the problems inherited from the previous reign. The Puritans, or extreme Protestants, who had already been restive under Elizabeth, grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Church of England, which they felt was still too Catholic. Religious unrest reached its height when anti-Puritan William Laud became archbishop of Canterbury in the 1630s. The Gunpowder Plot, a Roman Catholic conspiracy to blow up Parliament in 1605, confirmed English fear of Rome.

The major conflict was between king and Parliament—that is, between James's idea, passed on to his son, Charles I, of monarchy by divine right, and Parliament's insistence on its own independent rights. Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, after being dismissed by James for advocating an independent judiciary, backed Parliament's assertion of its right to impeach the king's ministers (1621) and helped produce the Petition of Right in 1628. The petition, like the Magna Carta, forced Charles I to admit limitations on his authority.

Charles attempted to rule without Parliament from 1629 to 1640. His efforts to obtain money without the aid of Parliament by all kinds of extraordinary levies became notorious. The measures by Laud and the Court of Star Chamber to restrain the Puritan press and pulpit, and the prosecution of Puritan leaders in 1637, led to an outcry against prerogative courts. Charles's attempts in 1637 to impose English-style worship in Scotland led to a rebellion, which in turn forced Charles to summon Parliament in 1640.

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4 The English Revolution

This Parliament, known as the Long Parliament, used the crisis to get control of the government. It released political prisoners, and it arrested and executed Archbishop Laud and Sir Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who were blamed for the king's policies. It abolished the prerogative courts, limited the king's ability to tax, and established the rule that Parliament should meet every three years.

4a Civil War On other measures, however, such as the Root and Branch Bill, which proposed abolishing bishops in the church, Parliament was hopelessly split. The division was further exacerbated by Charles's attempt to arrest some members of Parliament whom he accused of conspiracy. Failing that, the king withdrew with his supporters, the Cavaliers. The Puritan remainder of Parliament, called Roundheads, then issued a call to arms, and Charles gathered his forces as well. Civil war was inevitable; its first battle was fought at Edgehill in October 1642.

The Roundheads eventually won the war, in part because the Solemn League and Covenant brought help from Scotland, but more because of the military leadership of Oliver Cromwell, who created the Ironsides cavalry regiment and then the New Model Army. The strife produced a wealth of political ideas, the most famous being those of the radical, democratic Levellers, but discussion brought no settlement. Charles, who had surrendered to the Scots in 1646 and been turned over to the Roundheads in 1647, escaped in the confusion, made a deal with the Scots, and began the second civil war in 1648. Cromwell and the New Model Army won again and then purged Parliament of all but a "Rump" of members conformable to army control. The Rump brought the king to trial and executed him on January 30, 1649. It abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and declared England a commonwealth. See also Covenanters; English Revolution; Rump Parliament.

4b The Cromwellian Regime The problem of settling the government on a permanent basis was never solved. The new Council of State had to depend on the force of the army and the scant legitimacy of the Rump Parliament. Cromwell was the dominant individual. From 1649 to 1651 he subdued Ireland and Scotland and brought them into the Commonwealth. In 1653 he dissolved the Rump, tired of its attempts to perpetuate itself. After the experiment of the nominated Barebone's Parliament failed, Cromwell in December 1653 accepted the Instrument of Government, England's only attempt at a written constitution. The protectorate, which it created, was governed by a House of Commons and Cromwell as Lord Protector. Parliament challenged the restrictions of the Instrument and then proposed the so-called Humble Petition and Advice to amend it. Cromwell accepted a second house of Parliament and the right to name his successor, but refused the title of king.

After a Royalist uprising in 1655, Cromwell divided England into 11 military districts commanded by major generals. This, more than anything except the killing of Charles, turned people against Cromwell and taught them to hate Puritans and standing armies.

Cromwell pursued an active foreign policy. The Navigation Act of 1651 provoked the Dutch War of 1652 to 1654, from which England gained some success. Jamaica was taken from Spain in 1655. Allied with France, England in 1658 won the Battle of the Dunes and took Dunkerque in France. Not since Elizabeth's reign had English ships and arms been so successful and so respected.

The protectorate collapsed after Cromwell died in September 1658, and his son, Richard, was unable to gain the respect of the army. In the ensuing confusion, General George Monck, the commander in Scotland, marched to London, recalled the Long Parliament, and set in motion the return of the dead king's eldest son from exile.

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5 The Restoration

England welcomed Charles II home in May 1660 and attempted to restore things to what they had been in 1642. Only a dozen men were executed for their role in the execution of Charles I. Both the people and Charles had learned the value of moderation, but the issue of sovereignty remained to be resolved.

Parliament restored bishops to the church and expelled Dissenters (Protestants who did not conform to the Church of England), restricting their worship and political activity. In 1673 the Test Act removed Roman Catholics from the royal government. The Popish Plot of 1678 and the move to exclude James, the king's Roman Catholic brother, from the succession revealed the political parties then forming. The Whigs, favoring Parliament and hating "popery," urged exclusion; the Tories, favoring the kings and the Anglican church, opposed it. When emotions cooled, Charles regained control and ruled without Parliament. He died in 1685, passing the throne to James.

The Restoration was a reaction against Puritanism—in behavior, literature, and drama—yet Paradise Lost, written by John Milton, was published in 1667 and Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, was published from 1678 to 1684. In 1662 Charles chartered the Royal Society, to promote the study of natural science. In 1665 the last outbreak of bubonic plague occurred. After London burned in 1666, Christopher Wren rebuilt it in beauty and grandeur.

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6 The Glorious Revolution

James II soon lost the goodwill he had inherited. He was too harsh in his suppression of a revolt by James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (an illegitimate son of Charles), in 1685; he created a standing army; and he put Roman Catholics in the government, army, and university. In 1688 his Declaration of Indulgence, allowing Dissenters and Catholics to worship freely, and the birth of a son, which set up a Roman Catholic succession, prompted James's opponents to invite William of Orange, a Protestant and stadtholder of the Netherlands and husband of the king's elder daughter, Mary, to come to safeguard Mary's inheritance. When William landed, James fled, his army having deserted to William.

William was given temporary control of the government. Parliament in 1689 gave him and Mary the crown jointly, provided that they affirm the Bill of Rights listing and condemning the abuses of James. A Toleration Act gave freedom of worship to Protestant dissenters. This revolution was called the Glorious Revolution because, unlike that of 1640 to 1660, it was bloodless and successful: Parliament was sovereign and England prosperous. It was a victory of Whig principles and Tory pragmatism. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) provided an attractive theoretical justification for it.

Those who would not swear allegiance to the new monarchs were called nonjurors or Jacobites—Jacobus being Latin for James. The Jacobites were most numerous among the Roman Catholics in the Scottish Highlands and in Ireland. Both areas were subdued, but at a cost of the Massacre of Glencoe in Scotland and the Battle of the Boyne and greater repression of Roman Catholics in Ireland.

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7 The Last of the Stuarts

With William, England also got William's war with France, the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713). William spent his entire life fighting the territorial ambitions of France's Louis XIV. The first war accomplished little save Louis's recognition of William as William III, King of England. In the second war, the victory of John Churchill (later Duke of Marlborough) at Blenheim in 1704 showed that England was once again a force to be reckoned with in European affairs.

The wars also demonstrated the wealth that England now had at its disposal and the willingness of the English to levy taxes on themselves in Parliament. In 1693 England created a permanent national debt and in 1694 chartered the Bank of England. These and the developing stock exchange were the basis of London's growing financial position in Britain and in the world.

The Two Treatises of John Locke and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), based on empiricism and common sense, and the Principia of Isaac Newton (1687), integrating the laws of motion with the idea of universal gravitation, gave England a commanding place in the world of thought. This, matched with its wealth and military success, showed that England had not destroyed itself in the internal quarrels of the previous century, but had in fact put its house in order and created the basis of ideas and power by which it would dominate the modern world.

8 Union with Scotland

Before James II's younger daughter, Anne, came to the throne in 1702, her many children had all died. To prevent a return of the Roman Catholic Stuarts, Parliament in 1701 passed the Act of Settlement, providing that the throne should go next to the Protestant Electress Sophia of Hannover, the granddaughter of James I, and to her descendants. Scotland, angry at its exclusion from trade with the English Empire, hesitated to duplicate the act, as it had the Bill of Rights in 1689. The only solution was to combine the two kingdoms, which was done by the Act of Union of 1707, creating the kingdom of Great Britain.

Contributed By:
Jacquelin Collins

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