an empire in chaos

8/12/2019 An Empire in Chaos

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An Empire

in Chaos England in the 17th and 18 th centuries

up to 1763


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Jamestown of Virginia and Plymouth of Massachusetts survived their rocky and violentbeginnings, but their survival throughout the intervening decades would come at a cost

that defies imagination. Historian John Murrin notes, [Losers] far outnumbered winners [in] a tragedy of such huge proportions that no ones imagination can easilyencompass it all. Interpretations of colonial history tend to be couched in terms of agrowing civilization ripe with the ideals of the enlightenment; such interpretations fail totake account of the fact that the success and growth of the American colonies soakedthe land in blood, and the colonies themselves were often at odds with one another.Perceiving the American colonies as united in thought and deed against oppressiveEngland stems from teleology; that is, reading American history through the lens of thefuture. Such a reading assumes that colonial independence from the overbearing mothercountry was a foregone conclusion; the truth is that such independence-orientedthinking was heretical up until 1775 (and the most shocking part is that independencecame only a year later ). The colonies, often at each others throats and stabbing oneanother in the back, fostered one united sentiment, and that was love for England and pridein being English . The American colonies cannot be understood apart from theirrelationship to England, and events in England directly affected colonial thought and

life.

THE ENGLISH CIVIL W AR England went through one of its most turbulent centuries during the 1600s: competingfactions tore at the fabric of society, and the resulting inner instability left Englishconcern for the colonies shelved and all but forgotten. On the other side of the vast

Atlantic, the English colonies were virtually left to fend for themselves, and theyprospered outside the rigid confines of royal rule. The colonies kept one eye on theirown affairs and one on the affairs of the mother country, news of Englands turmoilbrought by ship months after the events transpired. Most colonists saw the conflict inEngland as a struggle between the arbitrary power of the Stuart kings and constitutionalgovernment embodied in Parliament. The Stuart kings struggle against Parliamentthroughout the 17 th century only served to cement in the colonists minds their rightsas Englishmen, rights they would be willing, and even eager, to fight to protect.

English turmoil reached a head by 1642: tensions between Parliament and KingCharles had been escalating for some time, and Charles exercised royal authority byshutting down Parliament and thus eliminating the main check against the crown.


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Although the Star Chamber and High Commission still served as checks, they werebut smokescreens for Charles authority, since he elected all those in the Chamber and

on the Commission. The Scottish Revolt of 1638 put King Charles armies to shamebefore the Scots, and the king frantically reconvened Parliament to try and raise moneyto buy off the Scottish invaders. Parliament indeed went back into session, but theirconcern wasnt the Scots at their doors but Charles abuse of royal powers. King Charlesreacted not by shutting down Parliament once again, but by forcing Parliament todisband to reconvene at a later time. During the first two years of this new arrangement,tensions continued escalating until the Puritan factions rejected the Book of CommonPrayer and demanded that the Church of England be reconstituted around Presbyterianlines. At the dawn of 1642, Charles ordered the impeachment of the leaders in theHouse of Commons for treasonable correspondence with the Scots, an accusationabsent substance. The Commons refused, and King Charles responded with a party ofsoldiers, and he entered the House of Commons to make the arrests. The indicted,alerted to what was afoot, fled to the City of London, a hotbed of anti-monarchialsentiment. When Charles left for York following his just-too-late attempt to arrest theleaders of the House of Commons, the indicted returned and drafted nineteen

propositions to present to King Charles. These propositions, if accepted, would havestripped King Charles and the Church of England from most of their powers, so ofcourse Charles refused to sign. It was clear to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hearthat the Puritan radicals had wrested control in Parliament, and the nail-biting tensionsreached a head when Parliament drafted an army of 20,000 amateur soldiers and 4000regular soldiers to keep the peace. 65 of the conservative members of the Commonstook sides with King Charles, and they sought to build up their own counter-army atNottingham.

England found herself on the brink of civil war. The gentry, peasantry, the Anglican clergy, and those members of the working class unaffected by the Puritan faithsupported King Charles, and the merchants, aristocrats, and middle-class tended to side

with the Puritan radicals. The political war turned into one of spilled blood at the Battleat Edge Hill. The counter-army raised by the conservative members of the Commons(the Royalists) were favored at the onset of battle, but the rebel army was placed underOliver Cromwell, who turned out to be a military genius. In a short time, he turned his

citizen soldiers into a formidable body of men under strict discipline. They were knownas the Ironsides, and they decisively whipped the Royalists at the Battle of MarstonMoor on July 2, 1644. Another battle eleven years later saw the destruction of Charles


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Royalist armies, and Charles was forced to surrender to Presbyterian Scots who weresupposed to sell Charles to Parliament. Unbeknownst to the victorious Parliament,

Charles had already made a deal with the Scots, and the whole surrender was but aploy to draw Parliament away from its army. The English Civil War entered a secondphase as Charles and the Scotch Presbyterians warred against Cromwells Roundheadsand Independents. Charles escaped capture, and the war raged for several more years,culminating with the destruction of the Scots at the Battle of Preston in August 1648.Charles was captured, and this time he couldnt make good his escape: he was executed.

THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH The execution of King Charles and the victory of the Parliamentary armies in theEnglish Civil War gave birth to eleven years under the English Commonwealth. TheCommonwealth was marked by a supposedly republican form of government that was,in actuality, largely under the thumb of Cromwell, who in 1653 took the title LordProtector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The written code

was called the Instrument of Government, and it gave Cromwell dictatorial powers.

Unlike King Charles, however, Cromwell used his dictatorial powers with relativeconstraint during war with Spain and his death in 1658. Cromwells son R ichard, knownas Tumble -Down Duck, succeeded his father as Lord Protector. Parliament decidedthat it was tired of life under the Commonwealth, and it voted to restore the Stuartmonarchy by declaring Charles II the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The crowning of King Charles II in 1660, and the posthumous execution ofOliver Cromwell (his body was dug up, hanged in chains at the city of Tyburn, andthrown into a pit; his severed head was impaled on a pole and displayed outside

Westminster Hall for 24 years), marked the end of the Commonwealth. Charles IIenacted the Declaration of Breda, wisely and politically providing a general amnestytowards, and containing appropriate expressions of respect for, Parliament. TheDeclaration also promised religious toleration, since Charles II and his advisors were

well aware of how religious intolerance had torn England apart at the seams. TheDeclaration also reestablished the rights of Parliament to tax, and it abolished the StarChamber and the High Commiss ion. At the Restoration of 1660, the upper classes,

hoping to numb the recurring nightmares of the horrors of the Civil War, plunged intoan orgy of hedonistic pleasures. Anglicanism and aristocracy once more suppressedPuritanism. The New England colonies across the Atlantic, indebted with a Puritan


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slant, didnt forget the horrors through intoxication and licentiousness but sought tolearn from them. The radical ideas of the Diggers, Levelers, and John Milton may have

been forgotten in England, but they took root in the American colonies and continuedto grow.

The political groups known as the Diggers and Levelers emerged from theperiod of the Civil War. The Diggers challenged Parliamentary leaders, focusing on theunderprivileged in society: the poor, the fatherless, the widows, and the impoverished.

They advocated a form of communistic society absent tithes, hereditary titles, andinequality of income, and they advocated the election of leaders. The Diggers were soloathed by much of English society that one large demonstration turned out neighbors

who attacked and beat them, destroyed their tools and crops, and burned their homes. The Levelers hoped for a new constitution founded on popular consent. The politicalupheaval of the times, coupled with the constricted legalization from both the Crownand Parliament, led to the presses being far less censored, and the Levelers radicalpamphlets spread across the English countryside and into America. The English poet

John Milton championed for a free press, and his writings urged freedom in every areaof mans social and political life. His Areopagitica , published in 1644, became as common

in the American colonies as the Bible to those of Protestant persuasion.Congregationalists, Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians found their hearts beating inrhythm with Miltons radical ideas. Indeed, the English Civ il War taught the coloniststhat the rights and liberties of a free people had to be fought for , and that in the mothercountry such a struggle had been crowned with success with the Commonwealth ofEngland (though the Restoration of 1660 put an end to such a victory). The politicalinstability of England served as a powerful incentive for emigration in the days whenbeing out of power meant risking your life. By the mid-1600s, the colonies swelled withnumbers as political dissidents, ripe with ideologies against and resentment towardsmonarchy, fled England. Colonial sentiments were about to receive a boost as KingCharles II followed in the footsteps of his father in trying to outdo the swelling DutchEmpire.

THE R ISE OF THE DUTCH

During the early 1600s, the Netherlands emerged as an economic and military giant,totally out of proportion to its confined geography and miniscule population of 1.5million (the English population numbered around five million, and the French around


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twenty million). The Dutch exploited their prime commercial real estate at the mouth ofthe Rhine River, beside the North Sea, and near the entrance to the Baltic Sea; the

Netherlands thus became the nexus of northern European commerce between Franceand England to the west, the German cities and principalities to the east, and Russia andthe Scandinavian countries to the northeast. The Dutch developed the worlds mostefficient merchant marine and fishing fleet, dominating the carrying trade ofnorthwestern Europe, the fisheries of the North Sea, and arctic whaling. By 1670, theDutch employed 120,000 sailors on vessels totaling 568,000 tons, more than thecombined shipping of Spain, France, and England. The sweeping dominance of theNetherlands took the world by surprise; until the late 16 th century, the Netherlands hadbeen subordinated within the Spanish Empire. Protestant and Calvinist, the Dutchresented economic exploitation and religious persecution by Catholic Spain. During the1560s, the Dutch provinces decided theyd had enough and rebelled, gradually securingtheir independence after a long and brutal war.

The Eighty Years War launched in 1566 under the direction of William ofOrange, a staunch Calvinist, whose goal was to liberate the Dutch, regardless of religiousaffiliations, from the Catholic Spaniards. Although they didnt receive official

independence until 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, the Dutch in rebellion becameone of the greatest economic and mercantile powers of the world. To weaken theSpanish and line their own pockets, Dutch warships carried the Eighty Years Wararound the globe, preying on Spanish and Portuguese colonies and shipping, slowly butsurely building their own far-flung marine empire. The Dutch were able to supplant thePortuguese as leaders in the spice and silk trade from Asia to Europe, and to protecttheir trade routes, the Dutch established a small colony at the Cape of Good Hope atthe southern tip of Africa, the future Capetown, South Africa. As if winning the spiceand silk trade werent enough, during the early 17th century they wrested primacy fromthe Portuguese in the export of sugar from American plantations in the West Indies andthe transportation of slaves from West Africa to cultivate that trade. By 1650, the Dutch

were refining most of the sugar consumed in Europe, and they occupied several islandsin the West Indies including Curacao, St. Martin, and St. Eustatius. These bases servedto support their sugar plantations and to facilitate smuggling with and piracy upon Spanish ports and ships in the Caribbean. Dutch success in these matters was dependent

on a vast armada of ships, and they developed the most formidable fleet of warships inEurope. In 1628, a Dutch flotilla captured the entire Spanish treasure fleet homeward-bound from the Caribbean, virtually bankrupting the Spanish crown and bolstering


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Dutch wealth. The Portuguese, suffering under Dutch attacks and fed up with Spanishrule themselves, rebelled against Spain and asserted their own independence in 1640,

thus weakening even more the once-mighty Spanish empire. The Spanish knew they were on their last legs, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Eighty Years Warand made the Dutch Republic an official entity. The Dutch Republic continued to excelin trade with China, India, Africa, Brazil, and in the Caribbean. The French and theEnglish hadnt mis sed any of this, and by the mid-17 th century, they were eager to curbthe prominence of the Dutch Republic and reestablish themselves as the wo rlds leadingpowers.

King Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York, hoped to buildEnglish clout by expanding the English empire in North America. The Dutch all butpioneered commercial expansion based upon overseas colonies and its connection tonational power, and the Dutch Republics mercantilist policies werent lost on Charles IInor the Duke of York. By the mid-1600s, the English were settling the Chesapeake andNew England in mainland America, and the Dutch and Swedes had settlements in themid-Atlantic region. Charles II yearned for control over North America, but he knewEngland lacked the strength to oust the Dutch and Swedes; and since this period of

European history was marked by religious wars between Catholics and Protestants,England wasnt eager to lose their Protestant allies. Nevertheless, the rise of the DutchRepublic, slowly outdoing the English, French, and especially the Spanish, made CharlesII and the Duke of York feel a burning need to reestablish themselves.

To do this, Charles II focused on the American colonies. As a homegrowninitiative, Charles II sought to reorganize the colonies already in English possession. TheKing exercised little control over the colonists since most of the colonies wereproprietary colonies; as a general rule, the English had paid little attention to overseasexpansions, and the crown had entrusted early colonization to private interests licensedby royal charters awarding both title to land and the right to govern to colonists,subjected, of course, to royal oversight, which was meager in the best of times. By virtueof these proprietary charters, the New England colonies were all but independent ofcrown control. These proprietary colonies became a liability with the crowns thirst forimperial expansion, and imperial officials sought tighter control and more regulation andtaxation over colonial commerce. Imperial officials were insistent that proprietary

colonies should be converted into royal colonies and then consolidated into anoverarching government not unlike the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. Thus duringthe 1600s, crown officials slowly converted a few proprietary colonies into royal


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colonies, so that the king, rather than the proprietor, appointed the colonys governorand council. The first colonies to be converted were those which would reap the most

profit for the crown: tobacco-rich Virginia and the sugar colonies of Barbados, Jamaica,and the Leeward Islands. The crown didnt pay too much attention to the New Englandcolonies since they lacked a lucrative staple such as tobacco or sugar, and the Puritancolonists promised only to be a thorn in the crowns side if the crown became toooverbearing.

The second step was wresting New Netherland from the Dutch. By conqueringDutch-controlled New Netherland, Charles II and the Duke of York hoped tostrengthen Englands commerce by virtue of weakening the Dutch Empire. NewNetherland had, by this point, already swallowed up New Sweden, and by taking overNew Netherland, the gap between the Chesapeake colonies and those of New England

would be closed, promoting their mutual defense against other empires and the native Americans. Charles II also hoped that such a conquest would keep the Americancolonies on a tighter leash: by seeing what English soldiers could do, disgruntledcolonists would be less apt to disrespect royal authority. The operation was launched in1664; an English naval squadron laden with soldiers crossed the Atlantic bound for

North America. The colonists in New England feared that these soldiers were bound forBoston to subdue the Puritans in the crowns gambit to turn Massachusetts Bay into aroyal colony. The warships instead showed up on the Hudson River to conquer NewNetherland. The English soldiers were victorious, and the conquest of New Netherlandsolidified Englands hold along the eastern shore of North America (though NewFrance was still a contender far to the north). The English victory opened the windowfor the development of a new cluster of English colonies , known as the MiddleColonies because they were sandwiched between the Chesapeake to the south and NewEngland to the north.

Charles II thus initiated war with the Dutch Republic, but it was in thefootsteps of Oliver Cromwell, who during the Commonwealth Era sought to curbDutch dominance by focusing on the English navy, building new ships and refittingothers, and instituting new naval disciplines so that England would stand ready to go to

war against the Dutch. War against the Dutch under Cromwells rule was preceded bythe Navigation Acts in 1651, which declared that all importation into English ports must

be done by British and only British ships (a mercantilist attempt at stifling Dutch trade).England demanded that all other ships, even those at foreign ports in the North Sea orthe Channel, had to strike their flags, i.e. lower their colors in surrender to all English


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ships. This was a ridiculous notion, an attempt by England to reestablish themselves asthe lords of the seas, and the Dutch kn ew it. On 29 May 1652, a Dutch fleet refused

to strike their flags, and Admiral Blake of the countering English fleet fired three warning shots at the Dutch flagship. The third shot struck the ship, wounding severalsoldiers, and the Dutch responded with a warning broadside. Admiral Blake answered

with a not-so-warning broadside that initiated a 5-hour battle resulting in two Dutchships captured and both fleets bloodied and bruised. This Battle of Goodwin Sands ledto the Commonwealth declaring war against the Dutch Republic on 10 July. By the endof the war, England hadnt succeeded in usurping Dutch trade, though itd won the war.

To English pride, Dutch ships were forced to salute English ships. Following theRestoration of 1660 and the crowning of Charles II, English relations with the Dutchonly deteriorated. In 1663, the Royal African Company serviced to capture Dutchtrading posts and colonies in West Africa; in June 1664, the English invaded NewNetherland and had it in her possession by October of that year. The Dutch responded

with a fleet sent to recapture their African trade posts. The Dutch were successful, andafter capturing most English trade stations, the Dutch fleet crossed the Atlantic for apunitive strike against the English colonies in America. Despite bloody battles on both

sides, the second English war with the Dutch ended in 1667 as a Dutch victory.It hadnt needed to be so: Charles II prematurely called it quits, fearing the

internal integrity of England. His fears were only bolstered by the rising debt of war, thebubonic plague of 1665-1667, and the crippling Great Fire of London. Charles IIdecided hed had enough following a Dutch raid on the Medway in June of 1667, when aflotilla of French ships broke through the defensive chains guarding the Medway,burned part of the English fleet anchored at Chatham, and towed away the Unity andthe Royal Charles, pride flagships of the English fleet. Charles II found himselfhumiliated, and he feared meeting the same fate as his father (execution), so hepractically begged for peace and got it. The Dutch navy was the worlds strongest, andthe Republic stood at its zenith of power. England was left smoldering and broken in its

wake. The peace was short-lived, for a fourth Anglo-Dutch War erupted five years

later. The English navy had been rebuilt, and though the English werent too keen onanother war with the Dutch (seeing as how the last one went), Charles II was bound by

the Treaty of Dover to assist Louis XIV in his attack against the Dutch Republic in theFranco-Dutch War. The Anglo-French fleet tried to invade the Republic by sea, but theDutch repulsed the invasion. Parliament forced Charles II to make peace in 1674,


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though the Republics contest with France would continue for another fo ur years. By theend of this Franco-Dutch War, France would emerge as a solidified world power, and

though weakened, the Dutch Republic remained a formidable foe. A period of awkwardpeace between the Republic and England would last for a little over a decade, when theGlorious Revolution of 1688 once again turned England on its head in the same manneras the English Civil War (though with a lot less spilling of blood).

THE DOMINION OF ENGLAND

Nearly four years before the Glorious Revolution, Charles II died without a legitimateson, leaving the English throne to his younger brother, the Duke of York, who reignedas James II. James II openly practiced Catholicism in a country ripe with anti-Catholicsentiment, and he ruled with an iron fist. Charles II had reworked the English colonies,and James II took this reorganization to the next level: he consolidated the eightnorthern colonies (all five in New England plus New York and West Jersey) into asuper-colony known as the Dominion of England. Modeled on the Spanish viceroyaltyof New Spain, the Dominion extended from the Delaware River to New France

(Canada). James II doubled the much-loathed Sugar Act, got rid of the pesky colonialassemblies that seemed only to spawn protests, and he placed Sir Edmund Andros overthe Dominion of England; Andros had been the tyrannical governor of New York up tothat point, and when he relocated to Boston to rule with an iron fist, his second-in-command and a crown-appointed council took his place in New York. James II chose

Andros because he knew the man to be a reliable bully, and Andros didnt let him down:he reorganized the colonial courts and militia, replaced Puritan judges and officers with

Anglicans more in tune with crown sentiments, and he appointed the sheriffs whonamed the jurors, which helped to sway trials in the crowns favor. He ruled that thesuperior court had to meet in the town of Boston, which meant that anyone involved inthe trials had to travel far from home to make an appearance.

Accompanying him in Boston were two companies of regular British soldiers;because these soldiers needed to be paid and supplied, Andros levied new taxes withoutan assembly and even against the majority of his own council, most of whom were

wealthy merchants who were directly affected by the new taxes. Although he made a

lavish salary of 1200 pounds, he sought to line his pockets even more by challenging theland titles issued under the old Puritan charter done away with in 1684 and bydemanding new land grants issued by the new government. This sleight of hand


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regarding land titles served as a direct affront to the colonists, who felt that their Englishrights to liberty, status, and prosperity were intimately connected to secure real estate. In

1687, a year before the Glorious Revolution swept through England, Reverend John Wise claimed that the colonists carried their Magna Carta rights across the Atlantic, andby virtue of that they still possessed the fundamental rights of Englishmen to pay no taxlevied absent their own representatives. Andros bitterly disagreed, denouncing thecolonists as second-hand citizens, and claiming that when they left England behind, theyhad left their English rights behind as well. Not content simply to disagree with Wise,

Andros had him arrested, convicted, and fined along with other protesters. Androssought to enforce the Navigation Acts, and in so doing established in Boston a new

vice-admiralty court that operated without juries, which again cut against the fabric ofcolonial sensibilitie s. Andros fortunes turned sour come the spring of 1689, when newsof the Glorious Revolution reached America.

THE GLORIOUS R EVOLUTION While Andros had been delighting in his torment of the colonists, across the Atlantic

James II had been facing perils of his own. James II was Catholic and pro-France whilemost of England was Protestant and anti-France (despite the English alliance withFrance against the Dutch in the preceding war). James II advocated religious tolerancefor Catholics, and though both Parliament and the English populace were concernedabout the religious and political state of England under James II, they held out hope: hissuccessor was his daughter Mary, a Protestant and the wife of William of Orange. Thesehopes were dashed when James II had a son in 1688, who usurped Mary as heir. TheProtestants realized that their fears of an Anglo-French alliance and the establishment ofa Roman Catholic dynasty between the two kingdoms might become a reality.Parliament plotted against James II, and several Anglican bishops and aristocrats secretly

wrote to William, the Dutch Prince of Orange, urging that he come to England with anarmy to intervene on behalf of the Protestant cause. William was the nephew and son-in-law of James II, and thus he and his wife, Mary Stuart, were a Protestant alternativefor the English throne. The plotters intended on compelling James II to recognizeParliaments power and to name a Protestant successor, but William saw an opportunity

to seize the English crown for himself. Being the military leader of the Dutch Republic, William desperately needed to wean England from its pro-French policy to protectDutch interests, for the Dutch in 1688 were facing a renewed war with France, and


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England virtually fell into his lap as Parliament opened the door for an invasion. Aidedby collusion in the disaffected English army and navy, Williams invasion fleet crossed

the North Sea and English Channel unopposed and landed absent resistance inNovember. Rallying to the stronger side, most English officers and aristocrats defectedto join William of Orange, and after only two minor clashes between the two opposingarmies and anti- Catholic riots in a handful of towns, James IIs regime collapsed. He andhis wife fled the nation, though he returned to London for a two-week period beforeleaving for France at the end of December, seeking sanctuary in the court of Louis XIV.His departure left a power vacuum in England that William of Orange was more thanhappy to fill. His Dutch regiments occupied London, and though Parliament wanted toretain power, William threatened to remove his armies from English soil, thus leavingthe Parliamentary conspirators open to a bloody recompense at the hands of those stillloyal to James II, who would most likely return and retake the throne, exacting

vengeance on those who sought to oust him. William thus convinced Parliament totransfer the throne to him and his wife as joint sovereigns (though Mary left governanceto her husband). The new monarchs promised to cooperate with Parliament and touphold the Anglican establishment. Prince William of Orange became known as King

William III, and his wife became Queen Mary II. In the spring of 1689, William IIIensured religious toleration for dissenting Protestants, who had enthusiasticallysupported the coup, as well as for Catholics, who hadnt.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had a marked effect on the English coloniesoverseas with the Declaration of Rights, a formal document in which William III andMary II accepted the limitations on royal powers that Parliament had wrested from theStuarts throughout the Civil War, powers which theyd been forced to endure againthrough the reigns of Charles II and James II. The Declaration established that noRoman Catholic could ever be sovereign in England, the succession of the throne wouldpass through the heirs of Mary, and most poignantly, a Bill of Rights was attached to theDeclaration. This Bill of Rights reaffirmed the rights that Englishmen felt theyd lostunder t he Stuart kings: the right of trial by a jury of ones peers in the vicinage orneighborhood; freedom of speech and assembly; the right to just and equal laws;freedom from self-incrimination; and freedom of worship (except, of course, forCatholics). Cherished by the colonists in the latter years of the 17 th century and into the

18th

century leading up to the American Revolution, the Bill of Rights also establishedthat no Englishman could henceforth be taxed without his consent, as channeled through his elerepresentative in the House of Commons . The political turmoil of England in the 17 th century


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gave birth to the Declaration of Rights and its attendant Bill of Rights, and by themiddle of the 18 th century, the English obsession with rights had died down in Great

Britain, but those in the colonies didnt forget. The colonists continued to live in thespirit of the Glorious Revolution, and their impassioned cries for their rights asEnglishmen increased in measure with what they perceived to be an escalation of thegovernments abuse of those rights. One exasperated English official has been reportedas saying, Ask a colonist for some money to help protect his borders against the Frenchand Indians , and he will deliver you a lengthy lecture on his rights.

THE F IRST AMERICAN R EVOLUTION Andros iron fist under the authority of James II had been rendered redundant with thecrowning of a new king. When the news came, Andros and his Dominion croniesfretted about trying to ascertain whether the rumors were true while simultaneouslyseeking to suppress the rumors. Such suppression involved arresting those whodisembarked from ships in Boston and New York bearing news of the revolution inEngland. The refusal of Andros and the other Dominion officials to admit the truth of

the news made the colonists wonder if they werent closet Catholics opposed to the newProtestant monarchs. Rumors went wild that the Dominion leaders meant to take a stabat the new Protestant rulers by handing the colonies over to the French and Indians in alast-ditch middle-finger salute. Fearing such a fate, the colonial protests moved tooverthrow the Dominion and to prove their fidelity to the new rulers of England. InMassachusetts, April 18, 1689 saw rebel leaders filling the streets of Boston with 2000militiamen drawn from the surrounding rural towns. The rebel leaders arrested Andros,forcing him and the soldiers and sailors under his command to surrender the harborsfort and the warship at anchor in the bay. Twenty-five Dominion officials, Androsamong them, were thrown in prison. Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island, andConnecticut quickly revived their separate governments under the old charters andrestored their elected officials. They professed loyalty to King William III and his wifeMary, hoping their revolt would be seen in the best light possible. In late May, New

York City militia seized the citys fort without bloodshed, and the deputy governor fledacross the Atlantic. In Maryland, the end of summer saw a planter named John Coode

arming and organizing a rebel militia under the banner of The Protestant Associators.Bent on expelling Dominion officials from Maryland and proving their loyalty to thenew English monarchs, the Protestant Associators mustered 600 men and intimidated


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the 160 militia loyal to the Catholic governor, who surrendered on August 1 withoutfiring a shot. The rebels vowed fidelity to King William III and urged Maryland to be

converted from a proprietary to a royal colony. In Virginia, the rebels didnt rebel, butnot because they were of differing sentiments. The Dominion governor was absent, andin his absence his council voraciously declared their support for William and Mary on

April 26, da ys after Andros overthrow in Boston. And so the first AmericanRevolution came to an anticlimactic close.

THE N INE Y EARS W AR King William III, on the throne in England, sought to consolidate his control inEngland and to settle Dutch scores with France with a renewed war against that poweracross the Channel. Because the English colonies bordered New France, he sought tomobilize colonial resources for the war effort. To keep things running smoothly on thehome front, he retained most high officials in London, even the ones who had helpeddesign the Dominion. He liberated Sir Edmund Andros to discourage future colonialrebellions, and he instated Andros as governor in Virginia in 1692. Because William III

needed colonial support for the burgeoning war with France, he sought to indulge them.In Maryland, he appointed an Anglican military officer as governor and placed theleading rebels on his council. Because Marylands pro -Catholic slant was such a bone ofcontention, William III made sure the new governor and the rebel council acted inconcert with the colonial assembly to endow the Church of England with tax supportand to bar Catholics (and Quakers!) from holding any sort of public office. Because

William Penn in Pennsylvania had been a favorite of James II, he fell from power under William IIIs rule. The crown suspended Penns charter and turned the proprietarycolony into a royal one. In 1692, William III entrusted the colony to a military governor,

which ran against the pacifist sensibilities of the Quakers. Quaker assemblies sought toobstruct every effort by the military governor, and in 1694 the crown realized it wasnt

worth the trouble and restored Penns charter and authority in the hopes thatPennsylvanians, bordering the frontier, would provide men and supplies for the waragainst France. The reinstituted Quakers, avowed against war, only offered tokensupport. The colonists in Massachusetts yearned for a restoration of their 1629 charter

permitting home rule, republican government, and Puritan preeminence, but William III wouldnt budge from holding Massachusetts as a royal colony. William III sought tocompromise with a colonial charter mandating both a royal governor and an elected


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assembly, and the colonists took what they could get. The governor held veto powerover legislation, but the assembly controlled taxation and the governors salary. The

assembly was allow ed to choose members of the governors council, but the governorhad to approve their selections. Old school Puritans despised the new charter fortolerating all Protestants and opening the vote to all property-holders; formerly, only fullmembers of Puritan churches had a voice in voting. Perhaps most significantly, the newcharter dissolved the Plymouth colony and incorporated it into Massachusetts. Althoughmany Massachusetts colonists felt stiffed by the new charter, they knew life was betterthan it ha d been under the Dominion, and 1691 wasnt the time for rebelling against thecrown, as New England grappled with devastating frontier raids by the French and theirIndian allies. William IIIs reorganization of the colonies following the collapse of theDominion worked out the parameters of colonial rule that held until the imperial crisisof the 1760s. In 1693 the crown reduced the Sugar Tax to its former level (it had beendoubled by James II) and terminated the slave trade monopoly mastered by the Royal

African Company, in which James II had been a leading shareholder. Open competitionin the slave market doubled the slave trade, and sugar, tobacco, and rice planters swelledin importance and profit. The interconnectedness of the English colonies and England

proper across the Atlantic fostered good sentiments among the colonists, and theyprided themselves in their English heritage and felt that their rights as Englishmen werebeing honored.

The reorganization of colonial infrastructure and Englands rel ationship withthe colonies wasnt done for the benefit of the colonies but for William IIIs ulteriormotives of renewed war against France, a war that lasted from 1689 to 1697. William IIIsought to uphold the Protestant regime and maintain Englands hol d over Ireland, as

well as to preserve the American colonies and to protect the newly-favored Dutch fromthe threat of an overwhelming French invasion. In order to successfully wage waragainst the superpower of France, England had to build a larger and more professionalarmy and navy, and this buildup required taxes that, prior to William III, wouldve beenseen as horrendous. Under William IIIs leadership, England turned into a sort of fiscalmilitary power; Parliament, under the direction of the crown, expanded the army toincredible numbers: 48,000 English soldiers plus 21,000 mercenaries from the Germanstates. Sixty-one new warships were built, making Englands navy the largest and most

powerful in the world. The military buildup ironically turned Parliament, formerly ahedge against disliked taxes and arbitrary crown authority, into a sort of nationalcollections agency. Prior to William III the English people had been one of the most


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THE W AR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION The peace following the Nine Years War did nt last long. King Louis XIV of Franceused the brief respite in war to refocus his attention on the French military and hisseething ambitions to expand the French empire. Tensions between England and Francereached a head when King Charles II of Spain died without an heir, leaving the throneripe for the plucking. Louis XIV wanted the throne to go to his grandson, Philip deBourbon; by doing so, he would unite the French and Spanish empires, in a sensemerging the two empires militaries, upsetting the E uropean balance of power and tiltingit in their favor. England, and the rest of Europe, werent fond of the idea, and to

counter this European merger, William III formed the Grand Alliance, which set severalEuropean powers England, Holland, Prussia, Austria, and most of the Holy RomanEmpire states against France and Spain. William IIIs wife died in 1694, three yearsfrom the termination of the Nine Years War, and when William III died in 1702, he hadno heirs and the throne went to Marys sister Anne. Q ueen Anne inherited the Allianceand the burgeoning war against France and Spain, a war centered on the question of

who would take the throne of Spain, a war which was then known as The War of theSpanish Succession. England won a series of smashing victories in Europe, but things

didnt go as smoothly across the Atlantic, where the English colonies found themselvespinned between France to the north and Spain to the south.

In 1702, Carolina colonists attacked San Agustin, the Spanish capital of Florida,but the Spanish proved too strong. The Carolinians retreated in a panic, leaving theirartillery behind and scuttling their trapped ships. The French used their age-old tactics ofrousing the Indians, notably the Abenaki, and pressing them against the frontier townsof New England. Though the colonial war on land didnt fare well, the colonists hadbetter luck on the high seas. In 1710, a force of royal navy ships and colonial volunteerscaptured the French settlement of Port Royal in Acadia. This victory was offset the nextyear when an even larger expedition set itself against Quebec and sailed up the St.Lawrence. The treacherous, foggy mouth of the river saved Quebec, wrecking eighttransports and taking 900 sailors to their graves. In Europe, Emperor Joseph I of

Austria died, and his brother Charles, who had been the Grand Alliances candidate forthe throne of Spain, became the Emperor of Austria. This new dynamic changed things,for England feared an alliance under the Hapsburgs between Spain, Austria, and

scattered German states more than they feared France and Spain united under theBourbons. Queen Anne and Parliament urged an end to hostilities, which came in 1713

with the Treaty of Utrecht.


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The English accepted Philip de Bourbon as the Spanish king, with the provisothat the French and Spanish crowns remain separate. Spain surrendered Gibraltar and

the Mediterranean island of Minorca to England, and the French surrendered theirclaims to Acadia, Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and the West Indian island of St. Kitts toEngland. British merchants won the asiento de negros , a thirty-year monopoly contract toprovide African slaves to the Spanish colonies in the New World. France retained thefortress of Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island, and they went about fortifying the islandand in doing so keeping the loyalty of the Acadians on Nova Scotia, who were nowsubjects of England. After the war, France built Fort Saint Frederic on Lake Champlainjust south of Montreal, a bastion against one of the greatest portages the English coulduse to strike into New France come the inevitable next war. The French built FortNiagara on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River, and on the MississippiRiver they established two more outposts on the Wabash River and the lower OhioRiver. French Louisiana became firmly established with the founding of New Orleans in1718. The threat of New Orleans, coupled with Spanish Florida, prompted England togive General James Oglethorpe a land grant to settle a buffer zone between t heEnglish colonies and the French and Spanish. This buffer zone would become know

as Georgia in 1733, and it would become a fly in the ointment of Spains territorialambitions.

THE EMERGENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN One of the more notable results of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 was the recognition ofthe new English union with Scotland. Since 1603, when the Scottish king took theEnglish throne as James I, the crowns of England and Scotland had been united, eventhough both remained legally distinct with their own established church (Anglicanism inEngland, Presbyterianism in Scotland), their own legal systems, and their ownParliaments. During the War of the Spanish Succession, tensions between theneighboring crowns intensified, and in 1705 England threatened to deny trade withScotland unless Scotland willed a more solid union. Because Scotland was so poor andsmall in comparison to England, she couldnt afford to lose her trade. In 1707, theScottish Parliament narrowly approved a union that created a new realm by the name

of Great Britain. The Scottish Parliament was dissolved, and they were given a handfulof seats in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the EnglishParliament. Great Britain, as she was to be known, would have common coinage, a


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common treasury, a common navy and army, a common foreign policy, and a commonflag, but England and Scotland would remain distinct legally, educationally, and in

reference to church establishments. The creation of Great Britain turned one of the w orlds naval superpowers into the world superpower.

THE W AR OF JENKINS E AR The British were quite tired of war after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession,and British politician Sir Robert Walpoles peace program caught Great Britain by storm.

Walpole determined to preserve the peace and foster stability in Great Britain ratherthan continuing the relentless wars against France. As the years dragged on, the British,comfortable in their peace, grew alarmed at Frances growth, most notably in the WestIndies, where French sugar plantations outranked those of the British. Britains hesitancyprevented her from declaring outright war against growing France, but the British hopedto stem the French tide by indirectly attacking Frances ally Spain. Th e Spanish empirehad a presence on many of the scattered islands in the Caribbean, and the British, withtheir low view of the Spaniards a s a weak but wealthy empire, believed their shipping,

ports, and islands would be easy prey. This worked out well for thousands of naval seamen who had been put out of

work following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. These freebooters asthey came to be called were skilled in hunting on the high seas, and between 1717 and1726 alone, around 5000 pirates sailed the beautiful waters of the Caribbean. TheBahamas became the epicenter of piracy in the West Indies: a Spanish flotilla laden withgold had floundered in the Bahamas in 1717, and the pirates prowled about in search forscavengers. The Bahamas had another lure: they were close to the Florida Channel, a

well-traversed sea lane that dropped ships right into the Gulf Stream. For a while theBritish turned a blind eye to the pirates, since they were weakening with each strike thebloated Spanish Empire. The problem quickly grew out of hand, however, and piratesbegan turning on British ships. Great Britain responded by outlawing piracy in 1730, butthe pirates didnt seem to care. British warships sailed the West Indies searching forpirates, and when they were captured, the ringleaders were tried and subsequentlyhanged. Their corpses were often left on the gallows as a warning to those who might

consider going into piracy, and many slain pirates were put in cages where they rotteddown to the bone. Nevertheless, the Spanish Empire had been weakened, but it hadntbeen debilitated. The British would quickly discover this to be the case following a


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strange mans tale that blossomed into full -scale war. Friction had been intensifyingbetween the English South Sea Company and Spanish monopolies over trade in the

West Indies, and this friction became explosive with the story of Jenkins ( hewn) ear.English sea captain Jenkins, who was a smuggler on the best of days and a pirate

on the worst of them, relayed the story of how the Spaniards had captured him and cutoff his ear with a cutlass. The war partisans opposed to Walpoles peace program leapton the story, lamenting that Jenkins had lost his ear to Spanish injustice. Parliamentseethed for war, and in 1739 Walpole was overturned, and Parliament ordered royalnavy ships to strike at the Spanish in the Caribbean. In November that year, the Britishcaptured the Spanish port of Portobello, convincing the British that the Spanish were

weak and could be trifled with. A grave assumption that was, for the next year theSpanish repelled a British assault on San Agustin in Florida, and in 1741 the Spanishrepulsed another invasion attempt on the West Indies seaport of Cartagena. Britains

worst enemies werent the Spani sh defenses but tropical disease: 3500 Americancolonists joined the British expedition against Cartagena, but yellow fever ensured thatonly half of them would return home disillusioned. The Cartagena affair convinced thecolonial volunteers that the British were inept puppets; the British blamed their loss on

the cowardly Americans. The year after Cartagena, the British were able to mimic theSpanish in repelling a Spanish attack on General Oglethorpes new colony of Georgia.

The Spanish forces number nearly 2000 strong invaded Georgia in the summerof 1742, led by Governor Don Manuel de Montiano. Oglethorpe had less than 1000soldiers with which to defend his colony, and most of these werent trained soldiers at allbut American militia and Indian allies. On July 5, Montiano landed nearly 1900 men nearGascoigne Bluff, close to the Frederica River. Oglethorpe had no choice, faced withsuch overwhelming odds, to abandon Fort St. Simons, spiking the cannon and damagingthe fort as best he could so that the Spanish wouldnt be able to use British weaponry.Montiano seized the fort quickly, sending out scouting patrols to try and determine

where the British had fled. One such patrol stumbled into Oglethorpes main body, andthe British had the upper hand: nearly a third of the Spaniards were killed or captured,and they ran helter-skelter back towards Fort St. Simons. Oglethorpe pressed theinitiative, but he was still outnumbered by the larger body of Spanish troops. He soughtto curry the odds in his favor by using a spy to spread misinformation among the

Spanish that the British had superior odds. As British reinforcements began to arrive,Montiano abandoned Fort St. Simon and headed back the way he had come.


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The War of Jenkins Ear didnt have a conclusion of its own, as events beyondthe Caribbean and Georgia enveloped the conflict into an even greater war known as

The War of the Austrian Succession.

THE W AR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION Tensions in Europe had been strained long before the breakout of the War of JenkinsEar, tensions which reached a climax in 1744 when France came into the war on the sideof Spain. Following the Treaty of Utrecht 1713, Charles VI of Austria sought to ensure

the territorial integrity of his Austrian Empire by naming his daughter, Maria Theresa, ashis heir since he had no sons. When Charles VI died in 1740, shortly after the death ofFrederick William I of Prussia, Frederick Williams son, also named Frederick, didntcare to see Maria Theresa on the Austrian throne, despite his fathers approval of her assuch. Lusting after the rich Austrian province of Silesia, Frederick II marched into

Austrian territory. Louis XV took sides with Prussia, hoping to leech spoils off FrederickIIs victory. England sided with Austria. As the European powers set their teeth againstone another, France went to the support of Spain, thus enveloping the War of Jenkins

Ear into the War of the Austrian Succession. This shifted t he wars focus from the American frontier to the heart of Europe, where gigantic armies clashed and bled inFlanders and Germany. Great Britains focus had to be on the war raging across theChannel, and so they left the matter of war in America in the hands of the colonists,expecting (because of the colonists renown for being undependable and cowardly) astalemate. The French Canadians and their Indian allies did what they always did: theyravaged the frontier settlements of New England, but this time the New Englanders

werent so keen on being pushed around. They took to the offensive and won asmashing (though, as it would turn out, fruitless) victory in the capture of the iconicFrench fortress of Louisbourg.

Fortress Louisbourg defended New Frances supply line up the St. LawrenceRiver to Quebec as well as the French fisheries in the gulf of Nova Scotia (formerlynamed Acadia, the province went under a new name following its incorporation intothe British Empire in the Treaty of Utrecht 1713). Fortress Louisbourg boastedtowering stone walls laced with cannon and garrisoned with 1500 regular French

soldiers, quite a number by colonial American standards. This made it the mostimposing fortress in America north of Cuba. 4200 French colonists called Louisbourghome, dwarfing even Quebec. Because Louisbourg was situated on the St. Lawrence


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between Quebec and the Atlantic, any attack on Quebec, if not taken by the wearyingand Indian-fraught land portages, would have to deal with Louisbourg first. When the

commander at Louisbourg first received news of France being pulled into war againstGreat Britain, he at once began ordering assaults on the British fishing stations andboats in Nova Scotia, and he authorized privateers (officially commissioned pirates) toset their teeth against New English shipping. William Shirley, the royal governor ofMassachusetts, saw an opportunity for self-advancement: by putting together anexpedition against Louisbourg, not only would he garnish British respect, he would alsogrow in popularity with the frustrated New Englanders suffering under the Frenchprivateers. 4000 colonists, assisted by a British naval squadron, sailed againstLouisbourg. William Pepperell, a merchant from Maine (which was a part ofMassachusetts at this time) led the troops with the backing of the Royal Navy. Thecolonial troops landed on Cape Breton Island several miles outside Louisbourg in April1745, and Pepperells troops wrought such chaos that the French commandersurrendered the fortress six months later. The French sought to both recaptureLouisbourg and burn Boston in retaliation for the loss, but Atlantic tempests and aplague of scurvy scuttled the fleet before it could even loose a single cannonball. The

Americans were enthralled with the capture (and keeping) of Louisbourg; to them, itsignified their prowess in matters of war, and set them against the British stereotype ofcolonial volunteers as rugged, backwards, and inept soldiers. Thus when the 1748 peacenegotiations handed Louisbourg back to France (in return for securing French

withdrawal from conquests in India and Flanders), the colonists were incensed, declaringthat that the power- players in England werent simply ignoring the colonists but riskinglosing their colonies to powerful New France.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle brought an end to the War of the AustrianSuccession. Frederick II retained Silesia, and this only hardened Maria Theresas hatredtowards him. The major European powers involved in the conflict Great Britain,France, Austria, and Prussia knew this peace wouldnt last long, and all knew theymustnt let down their guard: war would erupt again soon enough. The treaty made amockery of the war and all the lives lost, as everything was returned to where it had beenat the onset of the war (even the trading issues lying behind the War of Jenkins Ear

werent addressed). The treaty thus inspired the French expression bte comme la paix , as

stupid as the peace.


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THE FRENCH & INDIAN W AR The stupid peace would only last half a decade before the eruption of the war thattopped all the wars preceding it. Samuel Eliot Morison, awed at the wars global scope,remarked, This should really have been called the First World War. The Seven Years

War would span the globe, comprising four different theaters under their own names:the Pomeranian War (fought in Sweden and Prussia), the Third Carnatic War (fought onthe Indian subcontinent), the Third Silesia War (fought in Prussia and Austria), and theFrench and Indian War (fought in North America). Every major European power tookup arms across four continents: North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe; and its

estimated that just under 1.5 million people lost their lives in the conflict. Tensionsbetween the European powers had nt been resolved at the Treaty of Aix -la-Chapelle,and the tensions only broiled. The eruption came in the Pennsylvanian backcountry dueto the inexperience and ineptitude of a relatively-unknown Virginian provincial namedGeorge Washington.

Because the French had retained Fortress Louisbourg following the conclusionof the War of the Austrian Succession, Great Britain countered its presence by buildinga fortified town and navy base at Halifax in Nova Scotia. The French countered this

move by building two new forts of their own at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy.Simultaneously, to the west beyond the Alleghenies, Virginian land speculators covetedthe rich and fertile Ohio River Valley. The colony of Virginia claimed the land belongedto her; New France adamantly insisted the land belonged to them. The land, of course,

was already taken by vast numbers of native Americans, and both the French andEnglish wrestled for the benefits of trade with the indigenous peoples. As Englishtraders flooded the Ohio River Valley, the French began erecting new forts in theinterior, the biggest being Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio. The Britishinterpreted this as a French attempt to strangle English trade and stifle British expansionbeyond the Alleghenies. In 1754, the governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, sought toexpel the French from the Forks of the Ohio. He sent a small detachment of colonialtroops, led by a young George Washington, to force the French to abandon their petproject at Fort Duquesne. Washington blundered by ambushing and wiping out a smallFrench patrol which, as it turns out, was actually a peace envoy en route to deliberate

with Washington. Washington, realizing with horror his mistake, retreated with the main

French force hot on his heels. He hastily constructed a wooden fort, dubbed FortNecessity, to try and repel the French assault. The French, aided by their Indian allies,

were too much for Washingtons small force, and he had no choice but to surrender,


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and he did so on July 4 th of 1754. In his capitulation he signed a French document in which he admitted to assassinating a French peace diplomat. At this time, such a

declaration was a causus belli for war. Tensions between the European powers had been in delicate limbo since the

Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle, and Washingtons blunder in the dark forest of Pennsylvaniaserved as the catalyst for the eruption of the worlds first true world war. The next year,1755, the British sent troops and supplies across the Atlantic to seize the interior fromthe French. The British were successful in taking the forts at the head of the Bay ofFundy, and they deported the Acadian French still living in Nova Scotia, hardening theresolve of the sympathetic Canadians. British victory in the north was offset by disasterin the west: an expedition to destroy the French at Fort Duquesne, led by GeneralEdward Braddock, was all but annihilated in an ambush orchestrated by the French andtheir Indian allies. Braddock lost his life, and Washington took command, executing ahasty but orderly retreat. The expedition had only come within ten miles of FortDuquesne before being waylaid. Braddocks defeat emboldened the Shawnee and LenniLenape, and these natives began attacking colonial settlements in Virginia, Maryland, andPennsylvania. The frontier rolled back to within 100 miles of Philadelphia as Indian

savagery forced thousands to flee towards the coast to escape the tomahawk and keeptheir scalps. In 1756, the French captured the British fort on Lake Ontario, and theyfollowed up that victory with another in 1757, seizing the British fort on Lake George.

Thus far Great Britain had been humiliated by the French, and a politician bythe name of William Pitt swore he knew how to turn bitter defeat into sweet victory.

The English people listened, and he focused on America First in the Seven Years War, redirecting the bulk of Great Britains efforts on ousting the French from North America. His program thrust Great Britain into massive debt, but he was able to turn thetide of war. In 1758, 45,000 British troops (half regulars and half colonial volunteers) settheir teeth against 6800 French regulars and 2700 provincials, aided by their Indian allies.

The French were even worse off than numbers tell, for the last year had been a bad onefor crops, and they were on the brink of starvation; and as Pitt turned Great Britainsfocus onto North America, France expelled her energies on the war in Europe and inprotecting her islands in the Caribbean. New France was virtually left on her own, andthe war shifted as the spring of 1758 blossomed.

The French at Fort Duquesne were abandoned by their Indian allies. Unable to withstand the massive onslaught of British troops marching their way, the French blewup the fort and fled north. The British rebuilt the fort and renamed it Fort Pitt after


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William Pitt. That same year the British captured Louisbourg, opening the St. Lawrencefor the capture of Quebec in 1759. With Quebec and Louisbourg in the sack, the British

marched on Montreal in 1760, and overwhelmed by enemy forces, the Governor-General of New France had no choice but to surrender. The Seven Years War lasted foranother three years, but the war in North America had all but reached an end (Indianuprisings following the surrender of their French allies waged on, but the colonistsrejoiced knowing Frances grip on the continent had been expelled, and they wereconfident that nothing but good years lay ahead of them as English subjects). They wereright for a time.

But the war was expensive.Someone had to pay for it.

And that meant taxes.

an empire in chaos

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