Catholics, too, hoped for favours from James, whose mother, Mary Stuart, had been a devoted Catholic. Disappointed with the new monarch, a group of Catholics decided to blow up the king when James opened the new session of Parliament, but the plot was discovered, and Guy Fawkes [`gai `fo:ks] and other plotters were arrested and executed. Since then the deliverance of the king, Parliament and Protestantism has been celebrated each year on the 5th of November.
James was very unpopular. Parliament didn’t improve his home and foreign policy. The sale of titles and monopolies [mз`nopзliz], which allowed the holder to control the sales distribution of a product, caused widespread irritation. Another source of friction between the king and the House of Commons was foreign policy. Peace was made with Spain in 1604 but this was unpopular. Commons, particularly the Puritan element, wanted England to support Protestantism on the Continent. So in 1624 they made James to declare war on Spain.
When Charles I (1625–1649) succeeded his father in 1625 Parliament refused to grant him the traditional taxes for life. Charles dissolved [di`zolvd] the Parliament in anger. A second Parliament was also dissolved quickly. Charles hoped that his third Parliament would be more cooperative [kou`opзrзtiv], but it went further in its opposition to the king, and in 1629 Charles dissolved the Parliament and determined never to call another. From 1629 until 1640 Charles ruled without Parliament.
In 1640 Charles got up a war with the Scots, but the Scottish army expelled [iks`peld] Charles’s forces from Scotland. The king needed money to fight the war, so in April 1640 he called a Parliament, known as the ‘Short Parliament’, which Charles threw out in twenty-three days. The Scots landed in England, and the king had to call a new Parliament, since famed as the ‘Long Parliament’ – one of the most famous Parliaments in English history.
In 1641, at a moment when Charles badly needed a period of quiet, the Irish rose and put the English in Ulster [`Λlstз] to death. In London Charles and Parliament quarelled over who should lead an army to defeat the Irish. Many MPs were afraid to give an army to Charles: they thought that Charles would use the army to dissolve Parliament by force and to rule alone again. In 1642 Charles came with five hundred men to Parliament to arrest the head men there who opposed his acts. They were warned of his coming and got out of the way; as Charles said, ‘the birds had flown’.
London, where Parliament’s influence was strong enough, locked its gates against the king and Charles moved to Nottingham [`notiŋзm], where he gathered an army to defeat those MPs who opposed him. The Civil War had started.
Vocabulary
James I – традиц. Яков I
purify – очищать
Puritans – пуритане
Anglicanism – англиканство
Hampton Court – Хэмптон Корт (королевский дворец)
condemn – осуждать
conform – подчиняться, принимать
sympathy – сочувствие
Bible – Библия
Guy Fawkes – Гай Фокс
deliverance – избавление
monopoly – монополия
Charles I – Карл I
dissolve – распускать (парламент)
cooperative – объединенный
expel– изгонять
Ulster – Ольстер
Nottingham – Ноттингем
10. The Civil War, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution
Most of the House of Lords and a few of the House of Commons supported Charles. The Royalists [`roiзlists], known as Cavaliers [,kævз`liзz], controlled most of the north and west. Parliament controlled the east and south-east, including London. Their short hair gave the Parliament soldiers their popular name of Roundheads.
The forces were not equal. Parliament was supported by the navy, by most of the merchants and by the population of London. So it controlled the most important national and international sources of wealth. The Royalists had no money. The soldiers of the Royalist army were unpaid, and as a result, they either ran away or stole from local villages and farms. In the end in the battle of Naseby [`neizbi] in 1645, the Royalist army was finally defeated. Charles kept up the fight till the following spring, when he gave in to the Scots, who in January 1647 handed him over to the English Parliament for ₤200,000. That was the end of the Civil War.
In January 1649 Charles I was executed. He 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 [`olivз `kromw(з)l], became ‘Lord Protector’ of a republic with a military government.
Britain was a republic from 1649 till 1660, but from 1653 Britain was governed by Cromwell alone. He had more power than King Charles had had. But his efforts to govern the country through the army were extremely unpopular. His other innovations [,ino(u)`vei∫зnz] were unpopular too: people were forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter, or to play games on Sunday.
When Cromwell died in September 1658 the Republic died with him. His son, Richard, resigned [ri`zaind] the title of Protector which he had inherited from his father. General Monk [mΛŋk], the leader of the army in Scotland, took control of the country. It was clear that the situation could be saved only by the restoration [,restз`rei∫зn] of monarchy. In 1660 the surviving members of the Long Parliament invited Charles II (1660–1685) to return as king.
With the restoration of monarchy, Parliament once more became as weak as it had been in the time of James I and Charles I. However, the new king did not want to make Parliament his enemy. He punished only those MPs who had been responsible for his father’s execution. Many MPs were given positions of authority or responsibility in the new monarchy. But in general Parliament remained weak.
Charles II hoped to make peace between the different religious groups that existed in Britain at that time. He wanted to allow Puritans and Catholics to meet freely. But Parliament, whose members belonged to the Church of England, did not want to allow this. Charles himself was attracted to the Catholic Church. Parliament knew this, and many MPs were worried that Charles would become a Catholic.
The first political parties in Britain appeared in Charles II’s reign. One of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as Whigs [wigz], a rude name for a cattle driver. The Whigs were afraid of an absolute monarchy and of the Catholic faith with which they connected it. They also wanted to have no regular army. The other party, which opposed the Whigs, was nicknamed Tories [`to:riz], who were natural inheritors [in`heritзz] of the Royalists of the Civil War, they supported the Crown and the Anglican [`æŋglikзn] Church. These two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, became the basis of Britain’s two-party parliamentary system of government.
Charles II had fourteen children by his mistresses, but his wife, a Portuguese [,po:tju`gi:z] princess, bore no children. So after Charles II’s death in 1685 his younger brother James became king James II. He was a Catholic. He tried to revive the importance of the Catholic Church and gave Catholics important positions in government and Parliament.
Parliament was alarmed and angry. The Tories united with the Whigs against James. They decided that James II had lost his right to the crown. James’s daughter Mary was a Protestant and she was married to the Protestant ruler of Holland [`holзnd], William of Orange [`wiljзm зv `orind3]. Parliament invited William of Orange to invade England.
In 1688 William entered London. James was in danger and fled from England. The English crown was offered to William and Mary. The events of 1688 went down into history as the Glorious Revolution. (It was called ‘glorious’ because it was bloodless.) It was established that a monarch could rule only with the support of Parliament. Now Parliament was much more powerful than the king. Its power over the monarch was written into the Bill of Rights in 1689. The Bill of Rights stated that the king could not raise taxes or keep an army without the agreement of Parliament. The king was given a sum for life and other sums as needed. There could be no possibility of the king making himself independent of Parliament.
Scotland was still a separate kingdom, although both countries had the same king. The English wanted England and Scotland to be united. Scotland wanted to remove the limits on trade with England from which it suffered economically. The English Parliament promised to remove these limits if the Scots agreed to the union with England. Finally, in 1707, the union of Scotland and England was completed by an Act of Parliament. The state got a new name: Great Britain. The separate parliaments of both countries stopped functioning. A new parliament, the Parliament of Great Britain, met for the first time.
Vocabulary
Royalists – роялисты (сторонники короля)
Cavaliers – кавалеры
Roundheads – круглоголовые
Naseby – Нейсби
Oliver Cromwell – Оливер Кромвель
innovation – нововведение
resign – зд. отказываться, уходить в отставку
Monk – Монк (Джордж)
restoration – реставрация (монархии)
Whigs – Виги
Tories – Тори
inheritor – наследник
Anglican Church – Англиканская церковь
Portuguese princess – португальская принцесса
Holland – Голландия
William of Orange – Вильгельм Оранский
Glorious Revolution – “славная революция”
Bill of Rights – Билль о правах
LECTURE 3
Great Britain in XVIII–XX centuries
Plan:
1. Great Britain in XVIII century
2. Great Britain in XIX century
3. Great Britain in XX century
1. Great Britain in XVIII century
Politically, this century was stable. Monarch and Parliament got on quite well together. Anne Stuart, who was King James’s daughter, became queen after her sister Mary and William of Orange. Queen Anne (1702–1714) took more interest in drinking tea (a new fashion) and betting on horse races than in affairs of state. But none of Anne’s 17 children lived so there were problems connected with the succession.
King James had a granddaughter, Sophia [`soufiз], who was a Protestant. She married the Elector [i`lektз] of Hanover [`hænзvз], also a Protestant. The British Parliament declared their son, George Hanover [`hænзvз], the heir to the English throne. When Queen Anne died in 1714, George Hanover ascended the English throne as George I, thus starting a new dynasty.
George I was a strange king. He was a true German and did not try to follow English customs. He could not speak English and spoke to his ministers in French. But Parliament supported him because he was a Protestant.
The power of the government during the reign of George I was increased because the new king did not seem very interested in his kingdom. In 1716 the special Act extended the life of Parliament from three to seven years. In order to govern, the Crown was obliged to secure the confidence of the house of Commons. This was body of 558 Members – 489 English, 24 Welsh and 45 Scottish. They were all wealthy landlords and rich merchants. Family groupings in the Commons were very important. Great lords probably controlled a number of parliamentary seats. The noblemen themselves sat in the House of Lords, but their sons and relatives, or men whom they favoured with their patronage [`pætrзnid3], sat in the Commons.
But the largest group in the Commons was not dependent on great lords or the king. Each county and each town sent two representatives to Parliament. These were independent Members, country gentlemen who represented the area where they lived and had their own property. They prided themselves on their independence, and voted for or against measures as they saw fit. They had a deep loyalty [`loiзlti] to the Crown and would give the king’s government their support unless they believed it was in serious error. Many of these members were Tories. In the 19th century the Tories became the Conservatives [kзn`sз:vзtivz] and the Whigs became the Liberals [`libзrзlz].
The greatest political leader of the time was Robert Walpole [`wo:lpoul]. He is considered Britain’s first Prime Minister. He was determined to keep the Crown under the firm control of Parliament. Walpole developed the political results of the Glorious Revolution. He insisted that the power of the king should always be limited by the constitution. The limits to royal power were these: the king could not be a Catholic; the king could not remove or change laws; the king depended on Parliament for his money and for his army.
The most important political enemy of Walpole was William Pitt the Elder, later Lord Chatham [`t∫ætзm]. Chatham was sure that in order to be economically strong in the world, Britain should develope international trade. Trade involved competition. France was the main rival of Britain because it had many colonies. Chatham was certain that Britain must beat France in the competition for overseas markets. He decided to seize a number of French trading ports abroad. Walpole was against the war because it took a lot of money.
The war with France broke out in 1756 and went on all over the world. In Canada the British took Quebec [kwi`bek] in 1759 and Montreal [,montri`o:l] the following year. This gave the British control of the important fish, fur and wood trades. In India the army of the British East India Company defeated French armies both in Bengal [`beŋgo:l] and in the south near Madras [mз`dra:s]. Soon Britain controlled most of India.
During the rest of the century Britain’s international trade increased rapidly. By the end of the century the West Indies [`west`indjзz] were the most profitable [`profitзbl] part of Britain’s new empire. They formed one corner of a profitable trade triangle [`traiæŋgl]. Knives, swords and cloth made in British factories were taken to West Africa and exchanged for slaves. The slaves were taken to the West Indies where they worked on large plantations growing sugar. From the West Indies the ships returned to Britain carrying great loads of sugar which had been grown by the slaves.
In 1764 there was a serious quarrel over taxation [tæk`sei∫зn] between the British government and the colonies in America. The population of the British colonies in America was rapidly growing. In 1700 there had been only 200 000 colonists, but by 1770 there were already 2,5 million. American colonists paid high taxes, but they had not their own representatives in British Parliament. In 1773 a group of colonists at the port of Boston [`bostзn] threw a shipload of tea into the sea because they did not want to pay a tax on it which the British government demanded. The event became known as ‘the Boston tea-party’. The British government answered by closing the port. The colonists rebelled [ri`beld]. The American War of Independence began. The war in America lasted from 1775 until 1783. The result was a complete defeat of the British forces. Britain lost all its colonies in America, except Canada.