Royalty and the People

William and MaryPolitical conflict increased when Charles was succeeded in 1685 by his Catholic brother, James. A blundering, tactless statesman, James II was determined to restore Roman Catholicism as England’s state religion. As a result, Parliament forced James to abdicate his throne. In 1688, James’s Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, the Dutch nobleman William of Orange, took the throne peacefully in what came to be known as the Glorious Revolution—a triumph of parliamentary rule over the divine right of kings. The next year, Parliament passed the English Bill of Rights,which put specific limits on royal authority.

As a Dutchman and a Protestant, King William (who ruled alone after Mary died) was a natural enemy of Catholic France and its expansionist threats to Holland. From the first year of his reign, with Whig support, he took every opportunity to oppose the ambitions of Louis XIV with English military power, beginning a series of wars with France that some historians consider a second Hundred Years’ War. A year before William’s death, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement, which permanently barred Catholics from the throne. In 1702, therefore, the crown passed to Mary’s Protestant sister, Anne, a somewhat stodgy but undemanding ruler who faithfully tended to her royal duties. During her reign, Scotland officially united with England to form Great Britain.

The House of HanoverOutliving all 16 of her children, Anne was the last monarch in the house of Stuart. With her death in 1714, the crown passed to a distant cousin, the ruler of Hanover in Germany, who as George I became the first ruler of Britain’s house of Hanover. The new king spoke no English and was viewed with contempt by many Tories, some of whom supported James II’s Catholic son, James Edward Stuart. The Whigs, on the other hand, supported the new king and won his loyalty. Because of the language barrier, George I relied heavily on his Whig ministers; and Robert Walpole, the head of the Whig party, emerged as the king’s prime minister(the first official to be so called)—a position he continued to hold under George II, who succeeded his father in 1727.

Toward the end of George II’s reign, another able prime minister, William Pitt,arose on the political scene. Pitt led the nation to victory over France in the Seven Years’ War(called the French and Indian War in America), which resulted in Britain’s acquisition of French Canada.

George II’s grandson became the first British-born monarch of the house of Hanover. As George III, he sought a more active role in governing the country, but his highhanded ways antagonized many. Scornful of the Whigs, George had trouble working with nearly everyone, partly because he suffered from an illness that affected his mind and grew worse over the years. During his reign, he led Britain into a series of political blunders that ultimately resulted in the loss of the American colonies.

Ideas of the Age

KEY IDEAS This period became known as the Age of Reason, because people used reason, not faith, to make sense of the world.

The Age of Reason

The period including the late 1600s and the 1700s is called the Enlightenmentor the Age of Reasonbecause it was then that people began to use scientific reasoning to understand the world. Earlier, most people had regarded natural events such as comets and eclipses as warnings from God. The new, scientific way of understanding the world suggested that by applying reason, people could know the natural causes of such events.

The Scientific MethodThe British scientist Sir Isaac Newtonset the tone for the era in his major work, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), in which he laid out his newly formulated laws of gravity and motion and the methodology by which he arrived at his conclusions. Newton’s scientific method,still employed today, consists of analyzing facts, developing a hypothesis, and testing that hypothesis with experimentation.

Newton’s findings were enormously important because they suggested that the universe operated by logical principles that humans were capable of understanding. Inspired by Newton’s example, scientists searched for these principles, making all kinds of discoveries along the way. Astronomers learned that stars were not fixed but moving and that the Milky Way was an immense collection of stars. Chemists isolated hydrogen, discovered carbon dioxide, and converted hydrogen and oxygen into water. Botanists and zoologists categorized literally millions of individual plants and animals, and in agriculture, breeding was improved, as were methods for cultivating and harvesting crops.

Enlightened PhilosophiesThe discoveries of Newton thrilled not only scientists but also philosophers. If nature operated by simple, orderly laws that could be worked out by logic, they asked, why not human nature as well? Why couldn’t scientific methods be used to predict economic trends, for instance, or to figure out what form of government was best? Believing that reasonable people could create a perfect society, philosophers such as John Lockeencouraged people to use their intelligence to rid themselves of unjust authorities. Rejecting the “divine right” of kings, Locke provided a logical justification for the Glorious Revolution (and, later, the American Revolution) by asserting the right of citizens to revolt against an unfair government.

Living WellThe spirit of the Enlightenment led to many improvements in living conditions. Early in the century, for instance, writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,wife of a British ambassador, brought back from Turkey the idea of inoculation, and by the end of the 1700s, scientist Edward Jenner had developed an effective smallpox vaccination.

Many British citizens lived well during the 18^th c., and a few lived sumptuously. Wealthy aristocrats built lavish country estates surrounded by beautifully tended lawns and gardens. When Parliament was in session, members relocated to their London townhouses on the spacious new streets and squares that had been laid out after the Great Fire. Writers, artists, politicians, and other members of society gathered daily in London’s coffeehousesto exchange ideas, conduct business, and gossip. Educated women sometimes held salons,or private gatherings, where they, too, could participate in the nation’s intellectual life. However, as the period drew to a close and the Industrial Revolution took hold, one writer noted, “No society can be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

A Changing Language: Restoration English

Standardizing the LanguageDuring the Enlightenment, emphasis on reason and logic led to efforts to stabilize and systematize the English language. In 1693, the influential writer John Dryden complained, “We have yet no prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary or grammar, so that our language is in a manner barbarous.” Over the next several decades, scholars worked to remedy the situation.

The DictionaryOne such scholar was Samuel Johnson, whose Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. Almost singlehandedly, Johnson created a work of gigantic proportions, consisting of 40,000 definitions and 110,000 quotations. Johnson recognized that language was always changing, but he also saw the value in having a standard for pronunciation, usage, and spelling. In his dictionary, he did not attempt to “fix the language”; he simply defined words as they had been used by the “best writers.”

GrammarSeven years later, Robert Lowth published A Short Introduction to English Grammar, in which he attempted to establish a system of rules for judging correctness in matters under dispute. Since early grammarians like Lowth based their ideas on Latin, however, their rules often proved inappropriate for English. For example, they considered the infinitive form of an English verb to consist of two words (“to stun”); but because Latin infinitives are single words, they deemed it incorrect to “split” an English infinitive with an adverb (“to completely stun”), thus creating a puzzling “rule” that has frustrated generations of school children.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 691