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The Restoration of the Monarchy

The XVII century

When James I became the first English king of the Stuart dynasty, he was already king of Scotland, so the crowns of these two countries were united. Although their parliaments and administrative and judicial systems continued to be separate, their linguistic differences were lessened in this century. The kind of Middle English spoken in lowland Scotland had developed into a written language known as 'Scots'. However, the Scottish Protestant church adopted English rather than Scots bibles. This, and the glamour of the English court where the king now sat, caused modern English to become the written standard in Scotland as well.

In the sixteenth century religion and politics became inextricably linked. This link became even more intense in the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the century, some people tried to kill the king because he wasn't Catholic enough (Gunpowder Plot, 1605). By the end of the century, another king had been killed, partly because he seemed too Catholic, and yet another had been forced into exile for the same reason.

This was the context in which, during the century, Parliament established its supremacy over the monarchy in Britain. Anger grew in the country at the way that the Stuart monarchs raised money, especially because they did not get the agreement of the House of Commons to do so first. This was against ancient tradition. In addition, ideological Protestantism, especially Puritanism, had grown in England. Puritans regarded many of the practices of the Anglican Church, and also its hierarchical structure, as immoral. Some of them thought the luxurious lifestyle of the king and his followers was immoral too. They were also fiercely anti-Catholic and suspicious of the apparent sympathy towards Catholicism of the Stuart monarchs.

This conflict led to the Civil War, which started in 1642 and ended in 1649 with complete victory for the parliamentary forces. The Civil War is popularly remembered as a contest between fun-loving, aristocratic, royalist 'Cavaliers', who nevertheless were 'wrong' in their beliefs, and over-serious, puritan parliamentarian 'Roundheads' (because of the style of their haircuts) , who nevertheless had right on their side. The king (Charles I) was captured and became the first monarch in Europe to be executed after a formal trial for crimes against his people. The leader of the parliamentary army, Oliver Cromwell, became 'Lord Protector' of a republic with a military government which, after he had brutally crushed resistance in Ireland, effectively encompassed the whole of the British Isles.

But when Cromwell died, he, his system of government, and the puritan ethics that went with it (theatres and other forms of amusement had been banned) had become so unpopular that the son of the executed king was asked to return and take the throne.

The Restoration of the Monarchy

The monarchy (together with the Anglican Church and the House of Lords) was restored in 1660, two years after Cromwell's death, when Charles II was invited to sit on the throne of a country tired of the harsh morality of Puritan rule. The Plague, which killed almost 70,000 of London's inhabitants, and the Great Fire (1666), which destroyed most of the city during his reign, were considered signs of God's wrath by the Puritans.



Although Charles II had restored some power to the monarchy by the time James II came to the throne, Parliament's support was necessary to govern the country. The conflict between monarch and Parliament soon re-emerged. James II tried to give full rights to Catholics, and to promote them in his government. So, the Protestant William of Orange and Mary (James II's daughter) were invited to take the Crown as joint sovereigns. In this way it was established that a monarch could rule only with the support of Parliament. This Glorious Revolution (1688, so-called because it was bloodless) was accompanied by a Bill of Rights, which made it obligatory for the sovereign to rule with Parliament's assistance and outlawed Catholicism for all Englishmen, including the King.

James II, meanwhile had fled to Ireland. But the Catholic Irish army he gathered there was defeated in the Battle of the River Boyne (1691).James left Ireland for France. Laws were then passed forbidding Catholics to vote or even own land. In Ulster large numbers of fiercely anti-Catholic Scottish Presbyterians settled. The descendants of these people are still known as Orangemen (after their patron William of Orange). They form one half of the tragic split in society in modern Northern Ireland, the other half being the "native" Irish Catholics.

 


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1640


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