The first political parties WHIGS and TORIES
Lecture 5. Britain in XVII-XVIII centuries
Plan
1. Life in the Stuart Age
2. The Civil War
3. The first political parties. The Glorious Revolution
4. Revolution in scientific thinking
1. THE STUARTS
The Stuart monarchs were less successful than the Tudors. They quarreled with Parliament and this resulted in civil war. Oneof the Stuarts was executed. Another Stuart king was driven from the throne. When the last Stuart, Queen Anne, died in 1714, the monarchy was no longer absolutely powerful as it had been in the Tudor times.
These important changes were the result of basic changes in society. During the 17th century economic power moved into the hands of the merchant and landowning farmer classes. The Crown could no longer raise money or govern without their cooperation.
Life in the Stuart Age
The situation for the poor improved in the second half of the 17th century. Many who started life as yeoman farmers or traders became minor gentry or merchants.
Trade in Britain greatly developed in the 17th century. Different regions of the country became less economically separated from each other. No place in Britain was more than 75 miles from the sea, and very few places were more than 20 miles from a river or canal. These waterways became important means of transport.
Before the 17th century most towns did not have shops. They had market days on which farmers and manufacturers sold their produce in the town square or marketplace. By 1690, however, most towns also had proper shops. Shopkeepers travelled around the country to buy for their shops new goods, which drew people from the countryside to see and buy them. The towns which had shops grew larger.
London. London remained much larger than any other town. By 1650 more than 500,000 people lived in it. The next largest cities, Norwich!, Newcastleand Bristol had only 25,000 each.
In London there was a new class of aristocrats. These people were rich, and most of them were representatives of old nobility.
Some of the aristocrats, however, were "new nobility" who had bought themselves titles for much money. Some of the older Tudor nobility did not want to accept the "new nobles" as equals. They called themselves squires (which means the ruling class of the countryside) and looked down upon the upstarts (вискочки).
After1650 the rich began to meet in the new coffee-houses, which quickly became the meeting places for conversation and discussing politics. These coffee-houses later developed into present-day clubs, which are so popular in England today.
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Family life. In the 17th century the authority of the father in the family continued to grow. It was the result of the increasing authority of the Church. The Protestants believed that teaching religion in the family was important, and put the responsibility on the head of the family. The father always led daily family prayers and Bible reading. In some ways he had taken the place of the priest. Absolute obedience on the part ofhis wife and children was expected. Disobedience was considered an act against God as well as the head of the house.
One result of this growth of the father's authority was that children were frequently beaten to break their "sinful" will. The child who was not beaten was unusual.
QUESTIONS:
1. How did the life of people improve in the 17th century?
2. Trade in the 17th century greatly developed, didn't it? Why did different regions of the country become less separated from each other?
3. How many people lived in London in 1650?
4. What was the new class in London? Who was this new class represented by? Who were "new nobility"?
5. What were the coffee-houses? What did they later develop into?
6. Who was considered the person of authority in the 17th-century family? What was the father of the family responsible for? What were his religious duties in the family?
7. What was expected on the part of the wife and children? How was disobedience regarded?
8. What was the negative result of the enormous growth of the father's authority in the family?
The Civil War
London, where Parliament's influence was stronger, locked its gates against the kingand Charles moved to Nottingham, where he gathered an army to defeat those MPs who opposedhim. The Civil War had started.
Most of the House of Lords and a few from the House of Commons supported Charles. The Royalists, known as Cavaliers, controlled most of the north and west. Parliament controlled the east and southeast, including London. At first Parliament's army consisted of armed groups of London apprentices. Their short hair gave the Parliamentariansoldiers popular name of Roundheads.
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The forces were not equal. Parliament was supported by the navy, by most of the merchants and by the population of London. So it controlled the most important national andinternational sources of wealth. The Royalists had no money. The soldiers of the Royalist army were unpaid, and as a result, they either ran away or stole from local villages and farms. In the end, at the battle of Naseby in 1645, the Royalist army was finally defeated. That was the end of the Civil War. People in the countryside and in the towns did not want this war, and they were happy when it was over.
QUESTIONS:
1. How did the Civil War start?
2. Who were Cavaliers and Roundheads?
3. What parts of the country did the Royalists control? What parts were controlled by the parliamentarian army?
4. What were the advantages of Parliament in the Civil War?
5. When and where was the last battle of the Civil War fought? What was the result of battle?
The first political parties WHIGS and TORIES
The first political parties in Britain appeared in Charles II's reign. One of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as Whigs, a rude name for cattle drivers. The Whigs were afraid of an absolute monarchy and of the Catholic faith with which they connected it. They also wanted to have no regular army.
The other party, which opposed the Whigs, nicknamed Tories, which is an Irish name for thieves. The Tories, who were natural inheritors of the Royalists of the Civil War,supported the Crown and the Church.
These two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, became the basis of Britain's two-parliamentary system of government.
The Glorious Revolution. The struggle over Catholicism became a crisis when James II became king after his brother's death in 1685. James II was a Catholic. He tried to revive the importance of the Catholic Church and give Catholics important positionsin government and Parliament. Parliament was alarmed and angry. The Tories united with Whigs against James. They decided that James II had lost his right to the crown.
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James's daughter Mary was a Protestant, and she was married to the Protestant ruler of Holland, William of Orange. Parliament invited William of Orange to invade England.
In 1688 William entered London. James was in danger and fled from England. The English crown was offered to William and Mary.
The events of 1688 went down into history as the GloriousRevolution. It was not really a revolution: in fact it was a coup d' etat (фр. переворот) organized by the ruling class. Now Parliament was much more powerful than the king. Its power over the monarch was written into the Bill of Rights (Білль про права) in 1689. The Bill of Rights stated that the king could not raise taxes or keep army without the agreement of Parliament.
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