Stuarts
For more than a hundred years the Welsh House of Tudor had ruled England. Now, on Elizabeth's death, was to come the turn of the Scottish House of Stuart. This famous family had now been reigning in Scotland since the days of Edward III. Its ancestor, the Steward of Scotland, married a daughter of Robert Bruce, and their son thus became King of Scots. In 1603 the Steward's descendant, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the great-great-grandson of Henry VII. Thus, after a hundred years, the good results which Henry VII had hoped for from the marriage of his daughter Margaret with James IV of Scotland were at last brought about. For hundreds of years the English and Scots had always been quarrelling with each other. Now they were brought together peaceably under the rule of a single king.
The Restoration of the Crown was soon followed by another 'Glorious' Revolution. William and Mary of Orange ascended the throne as joint monarchs and defenders of Protestantism, followed by Queen Anne, the second of James II's daughters. The end of the Stuart line with the death of Queen Anne led to the drawing up of the Act of Settlement in 1701, which provided that only Protestants could hold the throne. The next in line according to the provisions of this act was George of Hanover, yet Stuart princes remained in the wings. The Stuart legacy was to linger on in the form of claimants to the Crown for another century. When the Declaration of Right, which settled the Crown, after William and Mary, upon the posterity of Mary, then on Anne and her posterity, and then on the posterity of William was, in 1689, turned into the Bill of Rights, the additional proviso was inserted that no person in connexion with the Church of Rome or married to a member of it should be capable of inheriting or possessing the Crown.
The youth of James gave great promise; his manhood disappointed the most moderate expectations. James VI and I (1566-1625), the Scottish Solomon, would have been untrue to himself had he not even in boyhood cherished the ambition of gaining fame as an author. 'The wisest fool in Christendom' was exceptionally well educated, and had some literary aptitude: Macaulay, exaggerating antitheses as usual, affirmed that he was made up of two men-'a nervous drivelling fool, who acted,' and 'a witty well-read scholar, who wrote, disputed, and harangued.' But his writing, like his disputing and haranguing, was mostly tedious and to little purpose.
In the hands of all, James seems to have been the mere puppet of royalty, in whose name Faction promulgated her own decrees, and perpetrated many crimes. He seems literally to have had no mind of his own, but to have resigned himself and his government to one favourite after another, with as much facility as these minions were changed. James was a sovereign at once weak and ambitious, unstable and tyrannical; and however mediocre his poetry may be deemed, his claims on our regard are much stronger as a poet than as a man or a king.
The supreme object of James' wishes was his succession to the English crown. He was in constant communication with his ambassadors in England during the three years prior to the death of Elizabeth, and directed their measures with a degree of skill and knowledge of life, which could scarcely have been expected from his previous management in Scotish affairs. He tampered with the influential men of all parties in Elizabeth's court; and at last, when the demise of this Princess opened the way to his advancement, he ascended the throne of England with the good wishes of all.
James was proud of being the king of the two countries. Not content with being styled King of England and Scotland, he described himself King of Great Britain. Before very long people born in either England or Scotland called themselves Britons, though this was really the old name of the Welsh. The Stuart dynasty reigned in England and Scotland from 1603 to 1714, a period which saw a flourishing Court culture but also much upheaval and instability, of plague, fire and war. It was an age of intense religious debate and radical politics. Both contributed to a bloody civil war in the mid-seventeenth century between Crown and Parliament (the Cavaliers and the Roundheads), resulting in a parliamentary victory for Oliver Cromwell and the dramatic execution of King Charles I. There was a short-lived republic, the first time that the country had experienced such an event.
England more than ever needed a king who should be resourceful, sagacious, and broad enough in his sympathies to touch all the manifold interests which the crown had come to represent at the opening of the seventeenth century. But unfortunately James I. possessed no one of these needed qualifications. He was thirty- seven at the death of Elizabeth and had been a king since infancy; but he belonged to that class of minds who never learn anything and never forget anything; hence his experience in Scotland had profited him little. He had been well educated and knew more of the history of his own country and of neighboring peoples than most of the statesmen of his time. But his learning had brought him little wisdom and left him only a conceited pedant, absurdly vain of his accomplishments, with unlimited confidence in his own powers, and ready to be victimized by the first designing courtier who loudly sounded his praises as "the British Solomon." His contemporary Henry IV. of Franco called him the "wisest fool" in Europe. lie was, moreover, incapable of "taking trouble in thought or action," and hence was irresolute, suspicious, dependent, and "an easy prey to the passing feelings of the hour." He had none of the Tudor trait of securing personal respect; he was tactless in managing those who opposed him; but tolerated familiarity in men who posed as his confidential friends, who fawned upon him and secretly despised him.
Under James I the English Colonial Empire began. The sailors and explorers of Elizabeth's reign had shown the way to the fresh and untilled lands of North America. Soon after James became king, the first successful English colonies were planted in the new world. The first of these to be established was called Virginia. It took its name from Queen Elizabeth, the virgin queen. During her reign Sir Walter Raleigh had made unsuccessful attempts to have it colonized. The first permanent settlement, however, was made in 1607, after Raleigh's disgrace and imprisonment. A little later other colonies were set up in the colder lands that lay far north of Virginia. This district was called New England, and most of those who settled there were Puritans.
James I wanted to govern England as Elizabeth had ruled, but he did not know how to carry on her policy. Though he was learned and shrewd, he was conceited, and cowardly. He never understood Englishmen. He was not thrifty and saving, like Elizabeth, but was always in want of money. His chief way of getting money was by asking parliament to raise new taxes for him. He took no trouble to please his parliaments, and was always quarrelling with them. He therefore got very small supplies from them, and they were always grumbling at what he did.
James was fond of peace. As soon as he became king he ended the long war with Spain. He was always anxious to be friendly with the Spaniards, and at last proposed that his son Charles should marry an Infanta, that is to say, a daughter of the Spanish king. The English did not like the match, because they wished Charles to many a Protestant. Even the Spaniards were not in earnest about it, because they were unwilling for their king's daughter to marry a heretic. James I died in 1625.
Prince Charles now became King Charles I. He was good-looking, serious, and dignified. But he was not so shrewd as his father, and was and neither clear-headed nor straightforward. Charles quarrelled with his parliaments even more bitterly than James I had done. Yet the new king needed the help of parliament even more than his father. James had generally been at peace, but Charles was at war with Spain, and required much money in order to pay soldiers and sailors to fight his enemies. When he asked his parliaments for money, they refused. As parliament would not help him, Charles turned for aid to the King of France, and married Henrietta Maria, the sister of the French king. In a short time he quarrelled with France as well as with Spain. This fresh war made him more helpless than ever, and gave parliament a good chance to have its own way.
For forty years, England and Scotland, like Ireland, had suffered under the tyranny of King James I. and King Charles I. These men sought to deprive the Scots of their Presbyterian religion, and the English of their free Parliament. They were also charged with the design of restoring Popery in both kingdoms. The Scots were the first to take arms, they were no sooner in the field than the leaders of the popular party in England secretly invited them to invade England, showing them that the king would be thus forced to call a Parliament to obtain supplies for the war; and they engaged that this Parliament, instead of providing funds to carry on the war against the Scots, should pay them the costs of their invasion, and should help to redress the grievances of Scotland by impeaching the king's ministers, the authors of the common calamities of the two kingdoms. The king got ready an army in England to chastise the Scots. But he determined to make himself master as well of the discontented English as of the Scots, by wielding Ireland against them.
In 1642 Charles went to war against parliament. The Great Civil War lasted for more than four years. Englishmen were pretty equally divided between king and parliament. Those who fought for the king were called Royalists or Cavaliers - that is, horsemen or gentlemen. Those who fought for the parliament were nicknamed Roundheads, because the Puritans cut their hair so short that their heads looked round. The best soldier that fought for the parliament was a Huntingdonshire gentleman named Oliver Cromwell. He belonged to the same family as Thomas Cromwell, the minister of Henry VIII. Cromwell himself became one of the army's chief leaders. This reform of the parliamentary army settled the fate of the war. In 1645 the New Model defeated Charles completely. Charles was condemned to death, and on January 30, 1649, his head was cut off before his own palace in London.
The Parliament now voted that England should have no more kings, but should be henceforth a Commonwealth or Republic. They abolished the House of Lords as well as the Monarchy, so that the House of Commons became the only thing in the state that was left. In 1653 he put an end to the House of Commons. Cromwell was made Protector, and with this title he governed England until his death. Cromwell now showed that he was as wise as a statesman as he had been as a general.
Since Elizabeth's days England had lost most of its influence and foreign abroad. Cromwell now revived its old glory. He Defeated the Dutch and thereby increased English commerce. Like Elizabeth, he joined France against Spain. France was now ruled by Louis XIV., the most powerful of its later kings. Cromwell and Louis won victories over the Spaniards both by sea and land. He took the West Indian island of Jamaica from the Spaniards.
Oliver died in 1658. His son, Richard Cromwell, was made Protector in his stead. Richard was a lazy and foolish fellow, who did not care at all to be the head of the state. A new parliament met in 1660, and at once asked the son of Charles I to return to England and take up the government. On May 29, 1660, which was his birthday, Charles II entered London. Thus was brought about what was called the Restoration.
Charles II. was by far the ablest of the Stuart kings. Brought up in exile and in poverty, he had learned many useful lessons during those hard days. He understood Englishmen better than his father had done, and was willing to let them have some of their own way so long as they were willing to keep him as their king. But he was selfish, extravagant, lazy, and pleasure-loving. He set a very bad example to his subjects, which many of them followed too faithfully.
Charles II was as careful as Cromwell to protect English commerce and colonies. He fought two wars against the Dutch, England's chief rival on the sea. As time went on'the English took away from the Dutch much of their trade. Later the Dutch and English became better friends, as they both had to join together against Louis XIV. In one of the wars against the Dutch, England captured New Amsterdam, the chief Dutch colony in North America. The English now gave it the name of New York, in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York. Other new colonies were also set up in America. One of them was called Carolina, after Charles himself, and another Pennsylvania, after its founder, William Penn.
Charles II died suddenly in 1685, and the Duke of York became King James II. The new king was much duller than his brother, and had many of the faults of his father, Charles I; but he remained steadfast in his devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. He had run the risk of losing the throne rather than give up what he believed to be true. Now that he had become king, he saw that he owed his throne to the support of the Tories, who were mostly Protestants. He said that he would let the Protestant Church go on as it was, provided that he was allowed liberty to worship God after his own fashion. For a short time everything went well, but he so alienated the sympathies of the nation by his unconstitutional efforts to further the Catholic religion that an invitation was sent to the prince of Orange to come “to the rescue of the laws and religion of England.”
Unable to win power by other means, some of the Whigs started a revolt against James. Their leader was the king's nephew, the Duke of Monmouth. James put down the rebellion at the Battle of Sedgemoor (1685), in Somerset, the last pitched battle fought in England. Mou- mouth was put to death, and his followers were very cruelly treated.
James now began to adopt a bolder policy. He thought it very unfair that Roman Catholics should be kept out of all offices by the Test Act, and asked parliament to repeal that law. Parliament refused, thinking that the Test Act was more than ever necessary under a Catholic king. James then set to work to get round the law in all those indirect ways which Charles I had been so fond of. He claimed what was called a Suspending Power, that is, a right of stopping the carrying out of any law if he were so minded. By virtue of this suspending power, he practically put aside the Test Act and many other laws against Roman Catholics.
James was an old man, and till now his next heir had been his daughter, the Princess Mary. She was a good Protestant, and had been married to her cousin, William, Prince of Orange, the chief ruler of the Dutch Republic, and the leading Protestant in all Europe. Now a son was bom to James. This child would be brought up a Catholic, and it looked as if the line of Roman Catholic kings would go on forever. This was more than the English could endure. Some leading men of both the Whig and Tory parties met together, and agreed to invite the Prince of Orange to come over to England and save the country from King James. James found that no one would fight for him, and ran away to France.
A parliament met, and declared the throne vacant. Then it offered the throne to William and Mary, who accepted. Thus was brought about what Englishmen long called the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It ended the long struggle of king and parliament that had begun with the accession of James I. It ended it by driving out the king, who had tried to set himself up against his people, and by making a new king by Act of Parliament, Parliament thus defeated the crown, and became the strongest power in the English state.
Parliament now passed a law that if William and Mary died without children, the next ruler should be Mary's younger sister, Anne. If Anne died without children, Sophia, Ulectress of Hanover, and her Protestant descendants were to succeed to the throne. Sophia was a granddaughter of James I. She was chosen because she was the nearest Protestant relative of the king and queen. It is by reason of this law that all English kings and queens, who have reigned from this period down to the present day, have had a right to rule.
One result of this growing power of parliament was that William was gradually forced to choose all his ministers from the party that was strongest in parliament. At first William chose some Whigs and some Tories to be his ministers. But a Whig parliament so disliked William's Tory ministers that they forced him to dismiss them from office, and keep no ministers except Whigs. When, a few years later, the Tories got the majority in parliament, William was forced to have none but Tory ministers. Thus began what is called "party government" in England.
The Irish Roman Catholics supported James long after he had been driven from England. At last James himself went to Ireland and reigned there for some time. In 1690 William defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne, and soon drove him out of the country. Thus Ireland was once more conquered. The Catholics were punished for supporting James by being treated very badly. Before long the Highlanders, who dwelt in the hills in the north of Scotland, rose in revolt in favor of James II. But after winning a battle at Killiecrankie, the Highlanders went home, and the friends of King William finally got the upper hand.
After James II. was driven from England, he got much help from Louis XIV. of France. William III. had already been struggling against the The war power of France for nearly twenty years. He now persuaded the English to declare war against Louis. For eight years the English and French went on fighting. This war, known in Europe as the War of the Palatinate, was called in. America King William's War. England was not veiy successful on land, but gained a complete victory over the French at sea at the battle of La Hague.
Queen Mary died in 1694. William III died in 1702. Queen Anne was kind and good-natured, but not very gifted. Had she really had to govern the country, she could hardly have done it very well. The Duke of Marlborough, was the chief general England then had. This was very lucky, for war with France was just beginning, and Marlborough was by far the best man to manage the affairs of England. For several years he was both general of the army and chief minister. The War of the Spanish Succession found England, Holland, Austria, and many other Succession, states joined together in what was called the Grand Alliance in order to prevent Louis XIV from making his grandson Philip king of Spain. Marlborough won many famous victories over the French. The first of these was at Blenheim, in Germany, in 1704. A great event of Queen Anne's reign was the union between England and Scotland. In 1707 the Act of Union was passed. Henceforward there were no longer separate English and Scottish parliaments.
Lord Bolingbroke was the most brilliant but the least honest of the Tory statesmen. He formed a plan for securing the throne for Anne's brother, the son of James II, whom most Englishmen called The Pretender. However, before his plans were ready, Anne suddenly died. The Elector of Hanover was now proclaimed George I. without opposition, and Bolingbroke had to flee the country. Thus Queen Anne was the last of the House of Stuart. Henceforward the House of Hanover reigned in its stead.
On the death of Anne in 1714, George, elector of Hanover, eldest son of Sophia, electress of Hanover (only surviving child of the princess Elizabeth), and Ernest, youngest son of George, duke of Brunswick, consequently became sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland, and, notwithstanding somewhat formidable attempts in behalf of the elder Stuart line in 1715 and 1745, the Hanoverian succession remained uninterrupted, and ultimately won universal assent.
The female line of James II. ended with the death of bis daughter, Queen Anne. James, called James IIL by the Jacobites and the Old Pretender by the Hanoverians, had two sons,—Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, who died without legitimate issue in 1780, and Henry, titular duke of York, commonly called Cardinal York, at whose death in 1807 the male line of James II came to an end. He was also the last lineal male representative of any of the crowned heads, so far as either England or Scotland was concerned, and excepting of course the Hanoverian line.
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