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28 de jul. de 2016 · Explore 18th-century Britain, which encompasses the battle of Blenheim to the discovery of the vaccine, with our timeline.
- Nicola Rayner
This is a timeline of British history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in the United Kingdom and its predecessor states.
- Overview
- The supremacy of the Whigs
- Robert Walpole
- George II and Walpole
- Foreign policy
- Religious policy
- Economic policies
- The electoral system
When Georg Ludwig, elector of Hanover, became king of Great Britain on August 1, 1714, the country was in some respects bitterly divided. Fundamentally, however, it was prosperous, cohesive, and already a leading European and imperial power. Abroad, Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). It had acquired new colonies in Gibraltar, Minorca, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson’s Bay, as well as trading concessions in the Spanish New World. By contrast, Britain’s rivals, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic, were left weakened or war-weary by the conflict. It took France a decade to recover, and Spain and Holland were unable to reverse their military and economic decline. As a result Britain was able to remain aloof from war on the Continent for a quarter of a century after the Hanoverian succession, and this protracted peace was to be crucial to the new dynasty’s survival and success.
War had also strengthened the British state at home. The need to raise men and money had increased the size and scope of the executive as well as the power and prestige of the House of Commons. Taxation had accounted for 70 percent of Britain’s wartime expenditure (£93,644,560 between 1702 and 1713), so the Commons’ control over taxation became a powerful guarantee of its continuing importance.
Britain’s ability to pay for war on this scale demonstrated the extent of its wealth. Agriculture was still the bedrock of the economy, but trade was increasing, and more men and women were employed in industry in Britain than in any other European nation. Wealth, however, was unequally distributed, with almost a third of the national income belonging to only 5 percent of the population. But British society was not polarized simply between the rich and the poor; according to writer Daniel Defoe there were seven different and more subtle categories:
1. The great, who live profusely.
2. The rich, who live plentifully.
3. The middle sort, who live well.
Even before he arrived in Britain, George I had decided to exclude the two leading Tory ministers, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. In their place he appointed two Whig politicians, Charles, Viscount Townshend, and James, Viscount Stanhope, as secretaries of state. Townshend’s brother-in-law, Robert Walpole, became paymaster general. Walpole, who came from a minor Norfolk gentry family, was an extremely able politician, shrewd, greedy, and undeviatingly Whig. He encouraged the new king’s partisan bias, turning it unremittingly to his advantage. A general election was held in February 1715, and, due in part to royal influence, the Whigs won 341 seats to the Tories’ 217. In December the Old Pretender landed in Scotland, provoking an armed rebellion that was quickly suppressed. The proved involvement of a small number of Tory landowners led to Tories being purged not only from state office but also from the higher ranks of the army and navy, the diplomatic service, and the judicial system. To make their capture of the state even more secure, the Whigs passed the Septennial Act in 1716. It allowed general elections to occur at seven-year intervals instead of every three years, as mandated by the Triennial Act of 1694. The intention was to tame the electorate, which during Anne’s reign had shown itself to be volatile and far more inclined to vote Tory than Whig.
Having defeated their Tory opponents, the Whig leaders began to quarrel among themselves. In 1717 Walpole and Townshend left office and went into open opposition. Stanhope stayed on, with Charles Spencer, earl of Sunderland, now serving as secretary of state. At the same time the heir apparent to the throne, George, prince of Wales, quarreled with his father and began to flirt with Opposition groups in Parliament. These events set the pattern for future political conflicts. From then on until the 1750s the Opposition in Parliament would be a hybrid group of Whig and Tory sympathizers. And from then on until the early 19th century Oppositions in Parliament would enjoy sporadic support from successive princes of Wales. In 1717 the rebel Whigs were a serious threat in large part because Walpole was such a skillful House-of-Commons politician. As peers, Sunderland and Stanhope were confined to the House of Lords and lacked spokesmen in the Commons who could match Walpole’s ruthlessness and talent. He showed his power by mobilizing a majority of MPs against the Peerage Bill in 1719. Had this legislation passed, it would have limited the king’s prerogative to create new peers, thereby cementing the Whig administration’s majority in the House of Lords. To prevent further blows of this kind, the Whig elite ended its schism in April 1720. The royal family temporarily buried its differences at the same time.
The restoration of unity was just as well, as 1720 saw the bursting of what became known as the South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company had been founded in 1711 as a trading and finance company. In 1719 its directors offered to take over a large portion of the national debt previously managed by the Bank of England. The Whig administration supported this takeover, and in return the company made gifts (in effect, bribes) of its new stock to influential Whig politicians, including Stanhope and Sunderland, and to the king’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal. In 1720 investing in the South Sea Company became a mania among those who could afford it and some who could not; South Sea stock was at 120 in January and rose to 1,000 by August. But in September the inevitable crash came. Many landed and mercantile families were ruined, and there was a nationwide shortage of specie. Parliament demanded an inquiry, thus raising the possibility that members of the government and the royal family would be openly implicated in financial scandal. This disaster proved to be Walpole’s opportunity, and he did not waste it. He used his influence in the Commons to blunt the parliamentary inquiry and managed gradually to restore financial confidence. The strain of the investigation killed Stanhope, and Sunderland too died in 1722. Walpole duly became first lord of the treasury and chancellor of exchequer, while Townshend returned to his post as secretary of state.
Walpole’s position as the king’s favourite minister was finally assured when he exposed the Atterbury plot. Francis Atterbury was bishop of Rochester. Always a Tory and High Churchman, he drifted after the Hanoverian succession into Jacobite intrigue. In 1721–22 he and a small group of conspirators plotted an armed invasion of Britain on behalf of the Old Pretender. The plot was uncovered by the secret service, which was more efficient in this period than it was until World War II. Atterbury was tried for treason by Parliament and sent into exile. This coup, one politician aptly wrote at the time, was the “most fortunate and greatest circumstance of Mr Walpole’s life. It fixed him with the King, and united for a time the whole body of Whigs to him, and gave him the universal credit of an able and vigilant Minister.”
Walpole has often been referred to as Britain’s first prime minister, but historically this is incorrect. The title had in fact been applied to certain ministers in Anne’s reign and was commonly used as a slur or simply as a synonym for first minister. During Walpole’s period of dominance it was certainly used more frequently, but it did not become an official title until the early 20th century. Some historians have also claimed that Walpole was the architect of political stability in Britain, but this interpretation needs to be qualified. There is no doubt that from 1722 to his resignation in 1742 Walpole stabilized political power in himself and a section of the Whig party. Nor can there be any doubt that his foreign and economic policies helped the Hanoverian dynasty to become securely entrenched in Britain. But it should not be forgotten that Walpole inherited a nation that was already wealthy and at peace. He built on foundations that were already very strong. And, although he was to dominate political life for 20 years, he never succeeded in stamping out political, religious, and cultural opposition entirely, nor did he expect to do so.
Opposition to Walpole in Parliament began to develop as early as 1725. When William Pulteney, an ambitious and talented politician, was dismissed from state office, he and 17 other Whig MPs aligned themselves with the 150 Tory MPs remaining in the House of Commons. These dissidents (who called themselves Patriot Whigs) grew in number until, by the mid-1730s, more than 100 Whig MPs were collaborating with the Tories against Walpole’s nominally Whig administration. Some were motivated primarily by disappointed ambition. But many Whigs and Tories genuinely believed that Walpole had arrogated too much power to himself and that he was corrupt and an enemy to liberty. These accusations were expressed not just among politicians in London but also in the growing number of newspapers and periodicals in Britain at large. In 1726 Pulteney and the one-time Tory minister Lord Bolingbroke founded their own journal, The Craftsman (the implication of the title being that Walpole governed by craft alone). It was widely read among the political classes, not least because many of the most gifted writers working in London had been drawn into the Opposition camp. Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and, for a time, Henry Fielding all wrote against Walpole. So did John Gay, whose triumphantly successful The Beggar’s Opera (1728) was a satire on ministerial corruption.
George I died in June 1727 and was buried in Hanover. He was succeeded by his eldest son, who became George II. Initially the new king planned to dismiss Walpole and appoint his personal favourite, Spencer Compton, in his place. Closer familiarity with Walpole’s gifts, however, dissuaded him from taking this step, as did his formidable wife, Queen ...
Once the Hanoverian succession had taken place, Whig ministers became as eager to remain at peace with France as the Tories had been. Walpole certainly adhered to this view, and for good reasons. Although Britain now possessed the world’s most powerful navy, it could not match France in land forces. War with France, moreover, was likely to lead to ...
Walpole’s religious policy was also designed to foster social and political quiescence. Traditionally the Whig party had supported wider concessions to the Protestant dissenters (Protestants who believed in the doctrine of the Trinity but who refused to join in the worship of the state church, the Church of England). They had been given freedom of worship under the Toleration Act of 1689 but were barred from full civil rights and access to university education in England. In 1719 the Whigs had repealed two pieces of Tory legislation aimed against dissent, the Schism and the Occasional Conformity acts. These concessions ensured that Protestant dissenters would be able to establish their own educational academies and hold public office in the localities, if not in the state.
There was always a danger, however, that too many concessions to Protestant dissent would alienate the Church of England, which enjoyed wide support in England and Wales. There were 5,000 parishes in these two countries, each containing at least one church served by a vicar (minister) or a curate (his deputy). For much of the 18th century these Anglican churches provided the only large, covered meeting places available outside of towns. They served as sources of spiritual comfort and also as centres for village social life. At religious services vicars would not only preach the word of God but also explain to congregations important national developments: wars, victories, and royal deaths and births. Thus churches often supplied the poor, the illiterate, and particularly women with the only political information available to them. Weakening the Church of England therefore struck Walpole as unwise, for at least two reasons. Its ministers provided a vital service to the state by communicating political instruction to the people. The church, moreover, commanded massive popular loyalty, and assaults on its position would arouse nationwide discontent. Walpole therefore determined to reach an accommodation with the church, and in 1723 he came to an agreement with Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. Gibson was to ensure that only clergymen sympathetic to the Whig administration were appointed to influential positions in the Church of England. In return, Walpole undertook that no further extensive concessions would be made to Protestant dissenters. This arrangement continued until 1736.
Finally, Walpole’s long tenure of power was assisted by national prosperity. The gross national product rose from £57.5 million in 1720 to £64.1 million in 1740, an increase of 11.5 percent. Walpole encouraged trade by abolishing some customs duties, but his main economic concerns were to reduce interest payments on the national debt and to foster ...
The fiasco over the excise might have toppled Walpole, since a general election was scheduled for 1734. In fact, however, his administration retained a comfortable majority in the House of Commons. One reason for this was that Britain’s electoral system at this time did not adequately reflect the state of public opinion. Until the Reform Act of 1832 England returned 489 MPs. Eighty of these were elected by the 40 county constituencies; 196 smaller constituencies called boroughs returned two MPs each, and two other boroughs, including London, the capital city, returned four MPs each. Oxford and Cambridge universities were also allowed four representatives in Parliament. Wales returned only 24 members of Parliament and Scotland 45. Their limited representation indicated the extent to which these countries were subordinated to England in the British political system at this time.
The system was not even remotely democratic. Power in this society was intimately and inextricably connected with the possession of property, particularly landed property. To be eligible for election as an MP, a man had to possess land worth £600 per annum if he was representing a county constituency and worth £300 per annum in the case of a borough constituency. To vote, adult males had to possess some kind of residential property or, in certain borough constituencies, be registered as freemen. Women were not given the vote until 1918.
1755. Braddock expedition in North America fails to take Fort Duquesne from French, French surrender to British at Fort Beausejour, French defeated at Battle of Lake George. Anglo-Austrian Alliance dissolved. Lisbon earthquake, Smallpox outbreak in South Africa ravages Khoisan, Casanova imprisoned.
4 de jul. de 2021 · 1727. George I dies. George II becomes king. Isaac Newton dies. 1733 John Kay invents the flying shuttle. 1735 The Prime Minister moves into 10 Downing Street. 1739. The highwayman Dick Turpin is hanged. 1742 Prime Minister Robert Walpole resigns. 1745 The second Jacobite uprising.
31 de jul. de 2019 · In the mid-18th century, Liverpool slave ships made around 49 voyages a year against Bristol's average of 20. Bristol had itself overtaken London as the main slave trading port in 1737.
Early modern Britain - Wikipedia. Contents. hide. (Top) England during the Tudor period (1485–1603) Scotland from 15th century to 1603. Early Stuart era: 1603–1660. Later Stuart era: 1660–1714. 18th century. See also. Notes. Further reading.
