The Seventeenth Century in England

Historical Overview

James I (1566 – 1625)

• Ruler of England from 1603 up to his death.

• He was already the king of Scotland since he was thirteen months old.

• His major – and successful – ambition was to unite England and Scotland.

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

(November 5th, 1605)

• The Catholic English soldier Fawkes, arriving in England after returning from a war against reformers in Spain, joined Robert Catesby in a plot to kill the protestant king James I.

• The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives.

• Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.

Charles I (1600 – 1649)• Charles I (ruled from 1625 to 1649) was constantly

involved in expensive foreign wars and thought he had the right to spend as much as he wanted. He believed he was chosen by God to be king, and so everyone should do as he said.

• Parliament thought that Charles I was on the side of the Catholics, and did not want him to buy more weapons, in case he turned his guns on Parliament.

• Tension between the two sides increased, and when the king ordered his soldiers to arrest five members of the Parliament, a full-scale Civil War broke out (1642).

• Parliament’s general, Oliver Cromwell, created a New Model Army that was only loyal to him, and defeated the king’s men after some years of combat. Charles I fled to Scotland, but the Scots sold him back to Cromwell.

• Even in prison, Charles I plotted and schemed, and soon war broke out again. Cromwell won this time too, but the army decided that there would never be peace as long as the king was alive. King Charles I was sentenced to death, and his head was chopped off.

The Civil War• The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political

machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers). The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

• The English Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with, first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53), and then with a Protectorate (1653–59), under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.

• Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although this concept was legally established only with the Glorious Revolution later in the century.

Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658) &The Time of No King At All

• Victory went to Parliament in the end of Civil War because it discovered in Oliver Cromwell a military leader of genius.

• As soon as Charles I’s head was chopped off, his son Charles II was declared king by his father’s supporters. He joined forces with the Scots and marched on England, but Cromwell’s men thrashed them.

• Cromwell’s New Model Army (known as ‘Ironsides’) was probably the finest in Europe.

• Receiving the title of Lord Protector, Cromwell ruled England from 1653 to 1659 in a dictatorship that won several foreign wars, and he was feared by kings all over Europe.

• His Puritan Protectorate quickly became unpopular, and English people, fed up with amusements like psalm-singing and listening to very long sermons, were delighted when monarchy was restored in 1660.

Restoration • In 1660, in what is known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles II in France and arranged to restore him to power in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious toleration for his former enemies.

• On May 25, 1660, Charles II landed at Dover and four days later entered London in triumph. It was his 30th birthday, and London rejoiced at his arrival.

• In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn.

When Oliver Cromwell died, his son Richard did not receive the same support from the New Model Army, and there was a split in power.

Then, young Charles II, hidden in France, wrote a letter promising to let the Parliament to have power of decision if he would be accepted back to the throne. The Parliament welcomed him back, approving of the Restoration.

He started his rule (1660 – 1685) being very popular, and his mane of thick curly hair became a fashion among European men.

At the end of his life he was already hated by English people, but a heart attack relieved England from another civil war.

Charles II (1630 – 1685)

• The Great Plague (1665–1666) was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the United Kingdom. It happened within the centuries-long time period of the Second Pandemic, an extended period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which began in Europe in 1347, the first year of the “Black Death” and lasted until 1750.

• The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people, about 20% of London's population.

• By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself. King Charles II, his family and his court left the city for Oxfordshire. The aldermen and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts. The Lord Mayor of the City, Sir John Lawrence, also decided to stay in the city.

• Businesses were closed when most wealthy merchants and professionals fled. As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to remain.

The Plague of 1665-6

the Great Fire of London of 1666

• The Great Fire of London began on the night of September 2, 1666, as a small fire on Pudding Lane, in the bakeshop of Thomas Farynor, baker to King Charles II. At one o'clock in the morning, a servant woke to find the house aflame, and the baker and his family escaped, but a fear-struck maid perished in the blaze.

• Only five people were killed, but 13,000 houses, 89 churches and four stone bridges were destroyed. London was rebuilt in brick and stone, rather than wood.

• The streets were made wider and straighter, and straw was no longer used to cover floors. The result was that the city became much cleaner, and the plague never returned.

James II (1633 – 1701)

• Brother of Charles II, James II only ruled from 1685 to 1688.

• English Parliament detested James II, who was a militant Catholic in what was now a Protestant country.

• The Parliament got rid of him, and invited a Dutch prince, William of Orange, who had married James’ daughter Mary (both Protestants), to take the crown.

• Terrified of having his head chopped off, James II fled to France when William and his army landed in England.

William of Orange (1650 – 1702)

• The overthrow of James II by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Stadtholder William of Orange-Nassau was named “The Glorious Revolution”, or “The Revolution of 1688”.

• He ruled Britain from 1689 to 1702, together with his wife Mary II of England, being named William III of England.

• By that time onwards, the monarchy changed, being a constitutional one, as it has been ever since.