James I

James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death.

The Stuarts ruled Scotland since 1371

James VI was the 1^st Stuart king of England

Throughout his youth, James was praised for his chastity, since he showed little interest in women. After the loss of Lennox, he continued to prefer male company. A suitable marriage, however, was necessary to reinforce his monarchy, and the choice fell on the fourteen-year-old Anne of Denmark, younger daughter of the Protestant Frederick II. Shortly after a proxy marriage in Copenhagen in August 1589, Anne sailed for Scotland but was forced by storms to the coast of Norway. On hearing the crossing had been abandoned, James, in what Willson calls "the one romantic episode of his life", sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally. The couple were married formally at the Bishop's Palace in Oslo on 23 November and, after stays at Elsinore and Copenhagen and a meeting with Tycho Brahe, returned to Scotland on 1 May 1590. By all accounts, James was at first infatuated with Anne, and in the early years of their marriage seems always to have showed her patience and affection.The royal couple produced three surviving children: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died of typhoid fever in 1612, aged 18; Elizabeth, later queen of Bohemia; and Charles, his successor. Anne died before her husband in March 1619.

Gunpowder Plot: On the night of 4–5 November 1605, the eve of the state opening of the second session of James's first English Parliament, Catholic Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings. He was guarding a pile of wood not far from 36 barrels of gunpowder with which Fawkes intended to blow up Parliament House the following day and cause the destruction, as James put it, "not only ... of my person, nor of my wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in general". The sensational discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, aroused a mood of national relief at the delivery of the king and his sons which Salisbury exploited to extract higher subsidies from the ensuing Parliament than any but one granted to Elizabeth. Fawkes and others implicated in the unsuccessful conspiracy were executed.

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke of Kent and the King died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died without surviving legitimate children.

Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.

Her reign of 63 years and seven months, which is longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history, is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father.

3200 to 22000 km of railways, underground railway, railway time – Greenwich, motor cars, roads, submarine, Alexander Bell – telephone, photocameras, Michael Faradey – electricity, telegraph, Thomas Edison – phonograph, Singer – dewing machine, Islambard Kingdom Brunel – engineer, The Great Exhibition May 1- October 15, 1851

This great industrial empire was supported by a strong banking system

The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times

1776 – 13 colonies gained independence

1600 – East India Company

These countries were the paths of the British Empire in the Victorian times:

• Canada

• South African Republic

• India

• West Indies

• Australia

There were two Boer wars, one ran from 16 December 1880 - 23 March 1881 and the second from 9 October 1899 - 31 May 1902 both between the British and the settlers of Dutch origin (called Boere, Afrikaners or Voortrekkers) who lived in South Africa. These wars put an end to the two independent republics that they had founded. [Oranje Vrijstaat (Orange Free State) and the Republiek van Transvaal (Transvaal Republic)]

Inventors:

• Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871), English mathematician and computer pioneer: invented the precursor of the modern computer, the Analytical Engine in 1837.

• Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), English naturalist: suggested the theory of evolution by natural selection in his On the Origin of Species.

• Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867), English chemist and physicist: discovered electro-magnetic induction in 1831 and Faraday's laws of electrolysis in 1834.

• James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879), Scottish physicist and mathematician: formulated classical electromagnetic theory - his Maxwell's equations demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon, namely the electromagnetic field.

• Alexander Bell – telephone, 1875

Writers:

• Charles Dickens:

  • The Pickwick Papers

  • Oliver Twist

  • Dombey and Son

  • Bleak House

  • Great Expectations

  • Little Dorrit

  • Our Mutual Friend

• Bronte sisters: Anne – ‘Ages Grey’, Emily – ‘Wuthering Heights’, Charlotte – ‘Jane Eyre’ [1847]

• Rudyard Kipling – journalist, poet, writer; ‘Jungle Book’