Part V
In this part . . .
In the eighteenth century, the English did a new and extraordinary thing: They created a new nation, “Great Britain”. Its people were to be no longer English or Scots or Welsh, but “Britons”. Not everyone was convinced: Britain’s American colonies rose in revolt against a corrupt government which had lost sight of its own most basic principles.
There were even greater changes afoot: Britain came to lead the world in industrial technology, building miles of railways and canals, and turning little villages into vast industrial cities. At the same time the British were spreading their ideas and their rule across vast dominions in India, Africa, and many other countries around the world.
Chapter 15
In This Chapter
● Why only a Protestant monarch would do
● Why Scotland signed up to a union with England
● How Ireland paid for backing a series of royal losers
● Why the English couldn’t stop fighting the French
● How the English created a whole new nation
What makes a country? Up until the seventeenth century there had been four “countries” in Britain: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Each one had its own separate sense of identity, its own history, even its own language. If you had asked folks at the time of the Civil Wars (1642-49, but see Chapter 13 for the gory details) what nationality they were, they probably wouldn’t have understood the question. If they had they would have said “English” or “Scottish” or whatever. But by the end of the eighteenth century you would have heard people using a new term: “British”, or “Britons” rather than “English”, “Scots”, and so on. You might have heard a new song (“Rule, Britannia”), seen a strange new flag (a mixture of the red and white cross of St George, the white-on-blue St Andrew’s cross, and after 1801, a diagonal red cross for Ireland) with an unusual name. Not the “English” flag, or even the “British” flag, but the Union flag, or Union Jack. Something decidedly odd was going on.
No Popery! No Wooden Shoes!
Far and away the most important point about the eighteenth-century English was that they were Protestant and proud of it. (For a quick run-down of the difference between Protestants and Catholics, see Chapter 12). This wasn’t just a question of religion; being Protestant meant standing for things like
liberty, free speech, and protection by the law. If you look back to Chapters 11 and 13, you’ll see that England’s experiences of Catholic rulers, whether home-grown like Mary Tudor, or foreign, like Philip II of Spain (the one who sent the Armada) had not been very happy. In any case, the English couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to be Catholic. In their view, all those statues and all that incense just kept people poor and subservient while their priests gorged themselves and got up to no good behind convent walls. Catholic rulers, like the King of France or the Pope, were the worst sort of tyrants they figured, locking innocent people up or handing them over to the dreaded Inquisition.
The English felt quite sorry for the French. They saw them as poor, half-starved creatures, who wore clogs because they could not afford anything decent to put on their feet. Whenever the English felt in danger of going the same way, the cry would go up: “No popery! No wooden shoes!”
These anti-Catholic protests had such a deep effect on British culture that they’re still remembered today. Take a look at the famous Lewes bonfire parade in Sussex each November 5th, and you’ll still see banners reading “No popery!” - though clogs seem to be okay.
All of this anti-Catholic feeling came to a head when King James II came to the throne in 1685.1688:
Glorious (?) Revolution (?)
James II was the younger brother of Charles II, but he didn’t have any of his brother’s political skill. Even more importantly, James was a Catholic. There had already been attempts to exclude him from the throne even during Charles II’s reign (Chapter 13 explains how all this had happened), but when James did succeed his brother in 1685, it seemed at first as if he was prepared to let bygones be bygones. But then things began to go badly wrong.
● 1685: Monmouth’s rebellion. James, Duke of Monmouth and illegitimate son of Charles II lands in Dorset and claims the throne. His main platform: he is a Protestant. Monmouth gathers support in the West Country, but his men are heavily defeated by James II’s army at the Battle of Sedgemoor. Victory for James, but then he goes and spoils it.
● 1685: The “Bloody Assizes”. James II sends Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys (often known simply as “Judge Jeffreys”) down to deal with Monmouth and his rebels. Monmouth is executed (very clumsily - it took five blows of the axe and the executioner had to finish the job with a carving knife). Then Jeffreys starts trying the ordinary people who had taken part in the rising. He bullies and screams at them, and sentences some three hundred of them to death, with hundreds more being flogged or transported to the West Indies. The country is appalled; James II is very pleased.
● 1686: James II starts appointing Catholics as army officers and to important posts, like Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the heads of Oxford Colleges, and sacking anyone who protests. He also reintroduces the Catholic Mass into Presbyterian Scotland (and see Chapter 11 if you want to see why this was so inflammatory).
● 1687: James II issues - without consulting Parliament - a Declaration of Indulgence. In theory this offers freedom of religion to all. In reality it is designed to promote the Catholic Church. Churchmen or civil servants who oppose it are sacked.
● 1688: James II’s attempt to prosecute seven Anglican bishops for opposing the Declaration of Indulgence fails when they are acquitted amidst huge rejoicing. So James tries to get the anti-Catholic Test Act repealed (see Chapter 13 for more about the Test Act) and sets about the wholesale rigging of the next elections in order to get a Parliament that will do it.
The final straw for Protestants came when James II’s Catholic Queen, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a healthy baby boy, named James Edward after his father. James II already had two grown-up Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, by a previous marriage, but as a boy little James Edward took precedence. That meant another Catholic King (since little James Edward would certainly be brought up as a Catholic) and probably another one after that, and so on. It didn’t bear thinking of. The time had come to act.
Going Dutch
On 5th November 1688 (5th November was an auspicious date for Protestants. It was the date when the Gunpowder Plot was foiled - see Chapter 13 for more about this) the Dutch ruler, Prince William of Orange, landed in Devon with an army to overturn James II. Immediately leading English nobles started joining William. When James’s army deserted to William, James knew it was all over. He fled to France, taking his wife and little James Edward with him. (Actually, James got caught at the coast and beaten up by some fishermen, so to avoid putting him on trial, which would have been highly embarrassing, not to mention constitutionally tricky, William had to “allow” James to “escape” again!)
William was James II’s son-in-law - he had married James’s daughter Mary.
He was also one of the leading Protestant princes in Europe. In fact, the main reason he landed in England was to make sure the English joined in the war he was planning with King Louis XIV of France.
Revolution? Are you sure?
Why call it a revolution? OK, it was a change of Kings, but it wasn't anything like as revolutionary as the Civil War (and if you're not sure what was so revolutionary about, have a look at all the shenanigans in Chapter 13). But for years the English called it the "Glorious Revolution", or even just The Revolution. What they meant was a revolution in the sense of a wheel coming full circle. They believed that after centuries of fighting for their liberties, going all the way back to William the Conqueror in 1066 (who? See Chapter 7 to find out), they had finally regained the liberties which they fondly believed the English had enjoyed in Anglo-Saxon times. The wheel had come full-circle - hence, Revolution. (See Chapters 5 and 6 for a slightly less rosy view of Anglo-Saxon times, and the rest of this Chapter for a less rosy view of the Revolution!)
Parliament decided that by running away James had in effect abdicated and it declared William and Mary joint monarchs - King William III and Queen Mary II - in his place. (They also declared William King of Scotland too, which figures in events later. Head to the section “Making Great Britain: Making Britain Great?” if you can’t stand the suspense.) And if you’re wondering about little James Edward, Parliament said that he wasn’t really the heir because he had been smuggled into the queen’s bed in a warming pan. Well, some people believed it.
The Bill of Rights
To the English, one of James II’s worst crimes was the way he had tried to rule without Parliament. They were going to make sure that no monarch - not even a Protestant one - ever tried to do that again. Parliament said that William and Mary could only become King and Queen if they agreed to a Bill of Rights, which said that they had to summon Parliament frequently, and that Catholics could not be King or Queen or hold any official post.
But if William and Mary thought they could relax, they were wrong. The very next year, James II was back. All those English politicians had forgotten the Catholic Irish. James hadn’t.
Ireland: King Billy of the Boyne
Although all technically “Irish”, there were three main types of Irish in the seventeenth century (have a look back to Chapters 11 and 13 to find out why):
● The Catholic Irish: These were the original inhabitants. The English saw them as dangerous savages - and Catholic savages at that.
● The Scots-Irish: These were Scottish Presbyterians - really strict Protestants - who had been “planted” in Ulster in Elizabeth and James I’s time to displace the Irish Catholics. These Scots were heavily financed by the City of London which is why they also renamed the old city of Derry “Londonderry”.
● The Anglo-Irish: Not so many of them but they owned nearly all the land worth owning in Ireland. They attended the Church of Ireland - the Irish branch of the Anglican Church - and they were the ones who voted in elections and sat in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. But don’t be fooled: These people were Irish, not English, and very proud of it.
The Catholic Irish had always been loyal to the Stuarts, so when a French ship brought James to Ireland in 1689 they flocked to join him. But when James’s apparently unstoppable force met the immovable object of the staunchly Protestant City of Londonderry, things began to go wrong. The Londonderry apprentice boys (these are the Scots-Irish we’re talking about here) shut the city gates in his face and declared “No Surrender!” James had to throw a barrier across the river and besiege the city, which took months and simply gave William time to get things ready in England. There was terrible starvation inside Londonderry, but things weren’t much better in James’s army. Finally ships arrived from England with supplies, broke through the boom and lifted the siege. James had to turn back.
But by now William was in Ireland with a huge army and a lot of money. In 1690 he caught up with James on the banks of the River Boyne and blew James’s army to pieces. James ran, all the way back to France.
The Orangemen
Those people you see banging drums and marching down the streets wearing bowler hats and orange sashes are members of the Orange Order, set up in memory of William of Orange - or King Billy, as they call him - after a battle with the Catholics in 1795. The Order was a bit like the Freemasons, and it was set up to defend working-class Ulster Protestants against attack by the Catholics. But it was also there to mark out Protestant territory and remind the Catholics who was in charge. The biggest parades each year are still held on 1st July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, and many Protestant banners and murals proudly proclaim "No Surrender!" or "Remember 1690!" Ulster is one land where history still lives - and that's the problem.
James spun out the rest of his life in the Chateau of St Germain near Paris, dreaming of the day he would be welcomed back to London. It was very sad, said Louis’s courtiers, but you only had to meet James to understand why he was there.
Bad Heir Day
Even with James II out of the way, William and Mary had a problem. There was no mini-William or Mary to take over when they died. Mary’s sister Anne wasn’t much help either. Although she got pregnant 18 times (don’t even go there), only five of her children were born alive and four of them died in infancy. Anne’s only surviving child was the little Duke of Gloucester, and in 1700, he died, too. It wasn’t just sad - it was urgent.
If William, Mary and Anne all died without an heir, the next in line would have to be James II’s son, James Edward Stuart. But the Bill of Rights said Catholics weren’t allowed to be Kings or Queens. So the royal genealogists had to get busy to try to find a Protestant with a claim - any claim - to the English throne.
They found what they were looking for: Back in 1613. James I’s daughter had married a German prince (now dead) and their (now dead) son’s wife was still alive . . . and she was a Protestant. (And you thought that soap opera scripts were far fetched.)
So in 1701 Parliament passed the Act of Succession, saying that the throne would pass in due course to the Electress Sophia (the living Protestant wife of the dead German prince whose mother was James I’s daughter) and her heirs and successors, and must never ever go to a Catholic. It’s still the law today. The law came just in time because suddenly everyone started dying:
● Queen Mary died in 1694.
● James II died, still in exile in France, in 1701.
● William III died in 1702.
So now Anne was Queen. But she had no living children and was not likely to have any more. Over in France, James II’s son, James Edward Stuart (now grown up), kept his eyes and ears open for any news from London. Meanwhile, even further away, in Hanover, the Electress Sophia sat waiting impatiently for Queen Anne to die.
Marlborough country
You don’t hear much of him nowadays, but in his day, and Queen Anne’s reign was his day, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough was the big star, a military hero and a political leader all rolled into one. He’s still generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders ever. Marlborough was the son of Sir Winston Churchill (no, not that one!) and he made his name fighting for James II, though he changed sides quickly when William of Orange landed in 1688 (see the earlier section “Going Dutch”).
William made Marlborough his Commander-in-Chief, which was good timing, because Europe was just about to go to war. The reason was because the King of Spain had died in 1701, and Louis XIV saw a chance to put his son on the Spanish throne. That would have created a sort of Catholic superstate of France and Spain (“The Pyrenees no longer exist!” exclaimed Louis, gleefully) and there was no way the European Protestant states were standing for that.
So an English Protestant army set off for Europe with the Duke of Marlborough at its head. The French would not know what had hit them.
Marlborough’s greatest weapon was speed. He could move his troops across huge distances much faster than anyone thought possible, and he knew how to use his cavalry. In 1705, Marlborough marched in record time from the coast right into the heart of Germany, and cut the French and their allies to pieces at the Battle of Blenheim. England went mad with joy. Parliament voted him a big house (called Blenheim, naturally) where the trees in the park were laid out in the shape of the battle. Marlborough went on to beat the French again at Ramillies, Oudenard, and the very bloody and close-run battle of Malplaquet.
Where Marlborough went wrong was in getting involved in politics. He and his wife were ambitious, and they were strong supporters of the Whigs (see the later section on “Whigs and Tories” for more info on these people), which was fine to start with, because the Whigs were in power. However, Queen Anne was getting tired of the Whigs and was also beginning to fall out with Marlborough’s wife so, after the bloodbath at Malplaquet, Anne thanked Marlborough very much for yet another famous victory and then sacked him. Having won the war, he was dropped.
Making Great Britain: Making Britain Great?
England and Wales had been united as one country since Tudor times (see Chapter 11), but Scotland and Ireland were still separate kingdoms, with their own Parliaments and laws. The following sections explain the reason why they both agreed to join England in a new United Kingdom and the battle over how united they were going to be.
Disaster in Panama
The Scots asked themselves: "Why is England so rich and powerful?" They realised that it was partly because she was bigger and partly because of all those English colonies in the New World. "So," they said "why not get a colony for ourselves?" They couldn't go to North America or the Caribbean because the English, French, and Spanish had taken it all, but Central America looked promising. It was in Spanish territory, but, hey, this is colonialism. In 1698, a small fleet of would-be colonists set off to found the Scottish empire at Darien in Panama.
Here's a tip. If ever you decide to settle on a swampy, fever-ridden coastline with hostile neighbours and slow communications, do your homework properly before you set out. Darien was a disaster. Everything went wrong. The first fleet set off with 1,200 people, and 200 of them were dead by the time they got there. The settlers had hardly built a fort when they started dying, too, first from fever and then from malnutrition as the food began to run out. They sent an urgent text back to Scotland to warn them not to send anyone else to this appalling hell-hole, but text messaging went by ship in those days, and by the time the message arrived in Scotland, the second fleet was already on its way. The folks from the second fleet found the colony deserted, the fort in ruins, and the Spanish closing in. Then they found they hadn't brought the right sort of tools or enough food, but they did have plenty of warm woollen clothing. Very useful in the tropics.
The English colonies in the West Indies refused to help them, and the colonists started dying. In large numbers. As the Spanish moved in for the kill, the Scots decided to call it a day. They got into three ships and sailed for home, but all three ships sank on the journey.
So it's not just the Scottish football team that doesn't travel well.
England and Scotland: One King, two Kingdoms
England and Scotland had had the same King since James VI became James I of England in 1603 (see Chapter 13 for the background to all the events in this section). But once the Stuarts got on the English throne, they seemed to lose all interest in Scotland.
James I used to talk about being King of Great Britain, and from 1608 Scots were officially English citizens, but no-one looked seriously into uniting the two countries until Oliver Cromwell did it by force in 1652. The Scots had never accepted his action.
Even Charles II, who was crowned King of Scotland before he became King of England, steered clear of Scotland once he got back to London. If the Scots had thought that getting the Stuarts on the English throne was going to help them, they could not have been more wrong.
That “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 (see the earlier section “1688: Glorious (?) Revolution (?)”) was deeply worrying for the Scots, because the English Parliament had also made William III King of Scotland. If the English were going to start deciding who was and who was not King of Scotland, then what was the point of having a Parliament in Edinburgh? Maybe it was time, thought the Scots, to remind the English and the world that Scotland was a proud and independent nation. And the best place to do it seemed to be - wait for it - the Isthmus of Panama. It was a disaster.
Glencoe - death at MacDonalds
Then came 1688 (you can read about that earlier in this chapter in the section “1688: Glorious (?) Revolution (?)”). The Scottish Protestants didn’t like James II (or James VII as he was to them) any more than the English did, but the Catholics in the Highlands did. When the English threw James out of England, these Catholics staged a rising against William and actually beat William’s men at Killiecrankie (nothing to do with the comedy duo “The Krankies”, although the thought is appealing). Of course, their victory didn’t change anything, but the Highlanders were about to pay a terrible price for that piece of defiance.
Once William was safely on the throne, he decreed that all the Catholic areas of Ireland and Scotland had to swear an oath of allegiance to him before a magistrate by January 1, 1692. The MacDonald clan left it late, partly out of cussedness but mainly because getting an entire clan to up sticks and move across country takes a bit of time. The MacDonald clan got to Fort William in time, but then they were told they were in the wrong place and that they needed to be at Inverary. Sixty miles away. They made it to Inverary and took the oath six days late. (Try it by train nowadays and see if you can do any better.)
A month later, a party of government soldiers under orders signed by King William, and led by Captain Robert Campbell, arrived at the MacDonald camp at Glencoe. The Campbells and the MacDonalds were old enemies, always stealing each other’s cattle, but this didn’t stop the MacDonald clan from welcoming their visitors and putting them up for twelve days. Early on the morning of February 13, the Campbell men set about systematically massacring their hosts. They lined them up and shot them and then gunned the elderly clan chief down as he was getting up.
King William was horrified: He had signed the order without realising what it was. The MacDonalds put the blame on the Campbells, and the feud runs deep to this day.
Act Two of Union: Scotland
The reason that Union finally happened was not because Scotland needed it (which it did) but because England did, to prevent a Stuart come-back. And they had reason to fear a return of the Stuarts.
The Scots had been very worried in 1688 about England dictating who was to be their King. Well, in 1701, the English did it again. The Act of Succession said that the throne would pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her heirs (see the section “Bad Heir Day” above). The Scottish Parliament refused to agree to it and even passed an act which said there was nothing to stop England and Scotland having separate Kings again. Which was an obvious hint that they might invite James Edward Stuart over to become King of Scotland. Over in France, James Edward Stuart was very interested in this development. Very interested indeed.
The English were alarmed. There was no way they would allow “James III” to become King of Scotland. They needed to get talking with the Scots, and fast.
Don’t get the idea that this was a straight English vs. Scots business. England was much richer and more powerful than Scotland, and plenty of Scots saw huge advantages in Union. All those important posts in Whitehall or in the English colonies would be open to Scots. The Scots who supported union thought the anti-English “Patriot” party were simply trying to keep Scotland in the Middle Ages. And above all, most Scots did not want a Catholic King any more than the English did.
In any case, the Scottish Dukes of Argyll and Queensberry bribed so many Scottish MPs with gifts and posts to get the Act of Union passed that the result was a foregone conclusion. There were furious anti-Union riots in the streets outside the Scottish Parliament building, but in 1707 the Act of Union received Queen Anne’s royal assent. With this act, Scotland lost her Parliament and her independence (though she kept her own legal system and lots of separate laws) and became part of a new country, to be called Great Britain.
Rebellions: The ‘15 and the ‘45
James Edward Stuart’s chance of becoming King of England came in 1714 when Queen Anne died. He had waited 26 years for this moment. And he blew it.
Sophia was dead by the time Anne died, so it was her son, Georg (George in English - you can read more about him and some other Georges later in this chapter) who crossed over to England. He didn’t like England, and the English didn’t like him. This was James’s chance - but he wasn’t ready! By the time he was it was too late: George had appointed a government, and the English were getting used to him. It was 1715 when James finally landed in Scotland - the wrong place and the wrong year. And, of course, still the wrong religion.
There were two major Jacobite rebellions. They were both based in Scotland, and they both failed:
The '15
So called because James Edward Stuart landed in Scotland in 1715. The Scottish Jacobites lost the Battle of Sheriffmuir. More importantly for James, the English Jacobites lost the Battle of Preston. James had to go back to France and George I could breathe easy. But for the Scots, the worst was yet to come.
The '45
By 1745 James Edward was getting a bit old for campaigning, but his son, Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, landed in the Highlands in 1745 to claim the throne for his father. Charles caught the government completely on the hop. He gathered a large army, took Edinburgh and Carlisle, sent a small government force packing at Prestonpans, and invaded England. Just like his father, Charles was interested in England, not Scotland. But the English were not interested in him. Hardly any English Jacobites joined him, and by the time Charles had reached Derby, it was clear that his mission to win English hearts and minds was getting nowhere; Charles had no choice but to turn round and go back. But by now he was being stalked by the Duke of Cumberland with a very large, well equipped English army.
The two armies met at Culloden Moor, near Inverness. The English had worked out how to deal with wild Highlanders, and it consisted mostly of blowing them to pieces with cannon or ripping their guts out with bayonets. Charles had to run for his life, and the English took terrible revenge. They hunted the Highlanders down and killed them; they destroyed whole villages, rounded up the people and either shot them or put them on ships to be transported. They banned highland dress and highland customs. It was eighteenth century ethnic cleansing.
Jacobites
James II's son was called James Edward Stuart (or King James III if you're a Stuart fan) so their supporters were called Jacobites from Jacobus, the Latin for James. The English called him the Old Pretender, to distinguish him from his son, Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender. It's easy to think of the Jacobites as Scots, but in fact there were plenty of English politicians who kept in close touch with the "King over the water". If you fancied making a discreet Jacobite toast (which was treason, remember) you simply raised your glass to "The King" while passing it over a handy bowl of water. And you just hoped no-one else saw you do it. Sneaky, heh?
Rob Roy
Most of the great Jacobite stories don't come from the eighteenth century at all, but were invented or embellished a hundred years later, usually by the nineteenth-century Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott. Rob Roy MacGregor is a case in point. Yes, he did exist, and yes he was a Jacobite. He fought for James II in 1688 and for "James III" in 1715. And he did have to escape from the wicked Marquis of Montrose.
But then, one of Rob Roy's men had run off with a lot of the Marquis's money. Rob Roy was almost certainly a cattle thief, like most of the Highlanders. But he wasn't fighting for Scottish independence or anything like it. If you like your Scottish heroes patriotic, read Sir Walter Scott or watch Liam Neeson on DVD, but keep clear of the history books.
There’s a strange epilogue to this story. Culloden was a big shock to both sides, and for years the English absolutely hated the Scots and everything Scottish. But towards the end of the century, they started to change and made a conscious effort to integrate the Scots more into English life.
More and more Scots joined the British army or went out to administer the colonies, and Scottish regiments were even allowed to wear the kilt and the tartan with their red coats. Soon English and Scots were used to standing together in battle against the French. As if to seal it all, George IV - great-great-grandson of George I - went to Edinburgh and wore a kilt. It looked foul, and there’s a painting to prove it, but apparently it went down very well with the Scots. Oh, and before you ask the obvious question: He wore flesh-coloured tights.
Ireland: Penal times
After the Battle of the Boyne (see the earlier section on “Ireland: King Billy of the Boyne”) William III made peace with the Irish in the Treaty of Limerick, which might have gone something like this:
The Treaty of Limerick said:
We won’t put a price on your head.
We want to be friends,
If you’ll just make amends,
Drop James, and take William instead.
But the English went back on their word
For the Ulstermen thought it absurd
Any Irish RC
Should get off scot-free
For treason to William the Third.
They said: “We need laws and decrees Stopping Catholics from being MPs.
They mustn’t own land,
And they must understand
Now we’ve won we can do as we please.”
So William III and the Irish Protestants brought in a series of penal laws stripping Catholics of their human rights. Under these laws, Catholics were forbidden to:
● vote or sit in Parliament
● own or inherit land or even lease it for more than 31 years
● go to university (even a foreign one) or be lawyers or teachers
● own any weapons or a good quality horse
In addition, a very close eye was kept on all Catholic priests. And it worked. The penal laws kept the Catholic Irish so poor and powerless that they took no part in all those Scottish Jacobite risings.
In fact, the laws were so harsh that they were in effect making Ireland a nation of paupers, which didn’t help anyone. Even the Protestant Anglo-Irish began to demand Catholic emancipation, which meant allowing Catholics to vote and to sit in Parliament but London wasn’t interested.
When the American War of Independence broke out in 1775 (see Chapter 17), the Anglo-Irish raised a military force called the Irish Volunteers in case the French landed. The leading Protestant Anglo-Irish MP, Henry Grattan, more or less told London that if they didn’t give Catholics the vote, the Irish Volunteers just might stage a rebellion. With the war in America going from bad to worse, London had to give in.
Getting the vote wasn’t quite as big a deal as it looked. Without landed property - and thanks to the penal laws Catholics weren’t supposed to have any - no-one, Catholic or Protestant, was allowed to vote. (See Chapter 17 for more on eighteenth-century Britain’s interesting idea of voting rights). Moreover, Catholics still weren’t allowed to sit in either Parliament - Dublin or Westminster.
Act Three of Union: Ireland
Despite the promising actions started by Henry Grattan, some Irish people thought Ireland’s only hope would be to pull away from England. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the French said they would help the Irish to do it. In 1796, a young Irishman called Theodore Wolfe Tone arrived in Bantry Bay at the head of a French army; he was turned back by bad weather!
Bonnie Prince Charlie
If ever a man was luckier than he deserved, that man was Charles Edward Stuart, known to history and to tourists buying shortbread as Bonnie Prince Charlie. He became a Scottish folk hero, mainly because the Highlanders sheltered him after Culloden and smuggled him out of the country. In fact, Charles Edward (he would have hated being called Charlie) couldn't stand Scotland, and he certainly didn't think of himself as a Scot: He was half Polish, and he had lived
all his life in very comfortable exile in France. By no means did all Scots support him, and plenty of Scots joined the government army to fight against him. Peter Watson's 1964 TV documentary Culloden gives a pretty good picture: "Aye, run you cowardly Frenchman", one of his officers shouted at him as he did just that. Bonnie Prince Charlie spent the rest of his life leading a complicated love life in France and Italy, while he slowly but surely drank himself to death.
Two years later the Irish staged a massive rebellion against the British. At least, it was meant to be against the British, but it quickly became a rising against all Protestants, English, Scottish - or Irish. The French didn’t turn up, so the British, who had spies in the rebel camp, got their forces together and crushed the rebels without mercy. Just when it was all over, the French arrived, and had to sail away again.
London was badly shaken, and Prime Minister William Pitt decided to tread carefully: He would grant full Catholic emancipation, but the Irish would have to give up their Parliament in Dublin and accept direct rule from London. At first the Protestants were against it, but when Pitt said they wouldn’t get any government posts unless they agreed to it, they soon changed their minds.
So in 1800, a second Act of Union was passed, creating yet another new country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. (And Catholic emancipation? George III vetoed it.)
George, George, George and, er, George
It wasn’t actually the law that eighteenth-century British kings had to be called George, but it began to look that way.
Politicians had to be really careful. They had to keep in with the King if they wanted to get anywhere, but if they thought the King wasn’t going to last long, they needed to see if there was any way of getting in with the Prince of Wales (the heir to the throne). The problem with doing so was that none of the Georges liked their fathers (or sons) much, so you were in deep doo-doos if you got it wrong. Being politicians, they even invented a term for coping with this dysfunctional family - they called it the reversionary interest.
The one and only, the original, George I
George I (1714-27) was quite happy being Elector of Hanover, which he was until he became King of Great Britain in 1714. He didn’t like England: He never bothered to learn the language and he spent as much time as he could back in Hanover. He was no fool. The English only tolerated him because he was Protestant, and he knew it. He was en route to Hanover when he died and that’s where you can visit his tomb. If you really want to.
Just when you thought it Was safe to go back to the water - George II
George II was a lot more interested in Britain and British politics than his father had been, and with good reason - it was in his reign that Britain really became a world-class power. George did not always get his way in politics, but he got Handel to settle in England, and it’s all because of him that people still have to stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus. George was a good soldier, and he was the last British King to lead his troops into battle, at Dettingen in 1743 (and he won, as well).
In keeping with Hanover family tradition, George II hated his eldest son, Frederick Prince of Wales, and Fred hated his father right back. But then Fred died, and George’s grandson, another George, became the new Prince of Wales. Suspense! Would young George hate his grandfather, the King? And the answer was . . . yes, he did! Well, at least someone was maintaining tradition.
The badness of George III
George III was British born and bred, and very proud of it. Poor old George has had a very mixed press ever since he came to the throne. Politicians at the time said he was trying to undermine the constitution and Americans blamed him for driving them to declare independence (see Chapter 17 for more about what went wrong in America). But more recently historians (British ones at any rate) have been more sympathetic. They say he was trying to bring the crown back into the centre of politics, but always by working closely with the Prime Minister, not by trying to take power away from parliament.
George became very unpopular after the American fiasco, but when his famous madness set in there was a big wave of sympathy for him. He spent the last years of his life completely blind, out of his wits, wandering around a deserted Windsor Castle. Very sad.
To complete your set of Georges
George IV was fat, vain, and lazy. As Prince of Wales, he married a Catholic widow, Mrs FitzHerbert, in secret and then lied about it. He spent ten years as Prince Regent, supposedly governing the country while his father was ill, but in reality spending money on himself while the country was going through the first period of serious industrial hardship and unemployment in its history. If you really want to know more about this appalling man, you can find the shameful details in Chapter 17.
Whigs and Tories
While the Scots and Irish were rising up or having Acts of Union forced on them, the English were forming the world’s first Parliamentary monarchy.
The Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights were a good start (you can read about them earlier in this chapter). Neither William III nor George I would have been King if Parliament hadn’t said so. Once George I was on the throne, Parliament became even more important, because George I wasn’t all that interested in English politics and he went to Hanover for as long as he could. At first, English politicians were a bit annoyed about this, but gradually they began to realise that this might not be such a bad thing after all. If George didn’t want to play, then they could govern the country without him. So they did.
There were two political parties in eighteenth century Britain:
● The Whigs who believed in the Hanoverian succession, Parliament, and equal rights for all Protestants, especially non-Church of England ones, called dissenters.
● The Tories who believed in the Crown, freedom of religion for all (as long as they were in the Church of England), and horsewhipping dissenters. In addition, many Tories secretly wanted to bring the Stuarts back.
Of course, there were areas about which they could agree. For instance, they all believed in the God-given right of all landowners to hang poachers, to set whatever rents they liked, and to hold on to their land tax-free. And they all hated Catholics.
Whig oligarchy
After the South Sea bubble, the Whigs were so powerful that for most of the century they were politics. They split into warring factions and competed for very lucrative government posts - especially the ones that didn’t involve any work - which all made for plenty of corruption and skullduggery.
The South Sea Bubble
In 1711, the Tories decided to launch a little money-making venture. The Whigs were doing very well out of the profits of the Bank of England, which they controlled, so the Tories responded by forming the South Sea Company, which won the contract for supplying slaves to the Spanish colonies in South America. Unfortunately, the company got over-ambitious and offered to take over a substantial chunk of the National Debt, paying it off from what it confidently expected would be huge profits. With government encouragement, everyone rushed to invest their money, either in the South Sea Company or in one of the other similar companies that suddenly started appearing. Just like on Wall Street in 1929, many of the schemes turned out to be scams. There was bound to be a crash, and it came in 1720 - investors were ruined and there were all sorts of tales of corruption and scandal involving ministers and even George I's mistresses. The Tories got the blame, and the Whigs got the benefit: They were in office for the foreseeable future.
The master Whig politician was Sir Robert Walpole. Walpole managed the House of Commons so effectively that people said Britain had become a “Robinocracy” or a “Whig oligarchy”, (“oligarchy” means rule by a small clique). Officially Walpole was First Lord of the Treasury, but increasingly people called him First or “Prime” Minister.
Walpole’s policy was easy - make money, not war. But that didn’t always go down well, at least the second part didn’t, and in 1739, Parliament went to war with Spain because of a Captain Jenkins (who said he’d had his ear cut off by the Spaniards and brought the ear with him to prove it!).
It was one of a whole series of wars with the French.
Fighting the French: A National Sport
There were lots of wars in the eighteenth century, but one thing was easy to remember: The British and the French were always on opposite sides. Since these wars can get a bit confusing, especially when they start merging into each other, here’s a handy guide to the fighting:
Round 1: War of the Spanish Succession 1701-14
Supposed to be about: Who’s to be King of Spain.
Really about: Is the King of France going to dominate the entire continent of Europe or is someone going to stop him?
● What happened: This is the war where Marlborough won his victories at Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenard, and Malplaquet.
● Result: Britain got handy bases at Gibraltar and Minorca, plus most of North America.
Round 2: War of Captain Jenkins’s Ear 1739
● Supposed to be about: Whether or not the Spanish have the right to cut an English sea captain’s ears off. The English think, on the whole, not.
● Really about: Whether or not the British should be allowed to muscle in on Spain’s monopoly of South American trade. The Spanish think, on the whole, not.
● What happened: It gets overtaken by Round 3.
Round 3: War of the Austrian Succession 1740-48
● Supposed to be about: Who’s to be Emperor - or Empress - of Austria.
● Really about: Is the King of France going to dominate the entire continent of Europe or is someone going to stop him (see Round 1)?
● What happened: George II defeated the French (himself, in person) at Dettingen in 1743. The following year they actually get round to declaring war! Good news for the Hanoverians at Culloden (see the earlier section “Rebellions: The ’15 and the ’45” ) but bad news at Fontenoy, where the French courteously invite the British to fire first, and then hit them for six.
● Result: A draw.
Round 4: The Seven Years War 1756-63
● Supposed to be about: A German invasion of part of Poland (sound familiar?).
● Really about: World domination (But British or French, not German).
● What happened: British Secretary of State William Pitt the Elder thinks globally, and fights the French in India and North America, as well as in Europe.
● Result: The British take Quebec, Guadeloupe, drive the French out of India, beat the French at the Battle of Minden and sink the French fleet in Quiberon Bay. All in all, a good war for the British.
George III never liked Pitt, though he did make him Earl of Chatham. Pitt supported the Americans in their dispute with Britain until the revolutionary war broke out, but by then he was a sick man, and he collapsed and died rather dramatically in the middle of a speech in the House of Lords. You can still see people in the House of Lords today who seem to have done the same thing.
Pitt the Elder
The first William Pitt made a name for himself by opposing Walpole and saying rude things about Hanover. Pitt didn't like fighting wars in Europe, but he was a great believer in creating a British trading empire, and he was happy to fight in Canada or India in order to get it. Or rather, to send other people to fight in Canada or India in order to get it.
People didn't quite know what to make of him. When Pitt was made Paymaster-General of the
forces, he didn't take the opportunity to embezzle large sums of public money. He became known as the Great Commoner because he believed in the House of Commons and wouldn't be bribed with a peerage. He had virtually created the British Empire by the time George III came to the throne, but George was determined to negotiate peace, even if it meant handing back many of the areas Pitt had won.