5. The stuarts and restoration britain

The Stuart monarchs were less successful than the Tudors. They quarreled with Parliament and his resulted in civil war. One of the Stuarts was executed. Another Stuart king was driven from the throne. When the last Stuart, Queen Anne, died in 1714, the monarchy was no longer absolutely powerful as it had been in the Tudor times.

These important changes were the result of basic changes in society. During the 17^th century economic power moved into the hands of the merchant and landowning farmer classes. The Crown could no longer raise money or govern without their cooperation.

Oliver Cromwell. Several MPs had commanded the Parliament army during the Civil War. The strongest of them was a gentleman farmer named Oliver Cromwell. He had created a new "model" army, the first regular force from which the British army if today developed. Instead of country people or gentry, Cromwell invited into his army educated men who wanted to fight for their beliefs.

Cromwell and his advisers captured the king in 1645, but they did not know what to do with In This was an entirely new situation in English history. They could either bring Charles back to the throne and allow him to rule, or remove him and create a new political system. By this time most people both Houses of Parliament, and probably in the con try, wanted the king back. They were afraid of the Parliamentarians and of the dangerous behaviour of the army. But some army commanders were determined to get rid of the king. These men were Puritans, who believed they could build God's kingdom in England.

Two-thirds of the MPs did not want to put the king on trial. They were removed from Parliament by Cromwell's army. The king was accused of trod son and found guilty of "making war against his kingdom and Parliament." On 31 January, 1649, King Charles I was executed.

Republic. From 1649 till 1660 Britain was a republic. But the republic was not a success. Cromwell and his friends created a government which was far more severe than Charles had been. They had got rid of the monarchy, and now they got rid of the House of Lords.

The Scots were shocked by Charles's execution! They invited his son, whom they recognized as King Charles II, to join them and fight against the English Parliamentarian army. But they were defeated, and young Charles himself had to escape to France. Scotland was brought under English republican rule.

Cromwell took an army to Ireland "to punish the Irish" for the killing of Protestants in 1641 and for the killing of Royalist rebellion there. He captured two towns. His soldiers killed the inhabitants of both towns, about 6,000 people. These killings were probably not worse than the killing of the Protestants in 1641, but they remained powerful symbols of English cruelty to the Irish.

The Levellers. There were people at that time who new ideas. Their ideas seemed strange to most people of the 17^th century. These people spoke it equality among all men. They called themselves Levellers. By and by the ideas of the Levellers began to attract more and more people. They also spread the army. There appeared Levellers among the officers and soldiers. In 1649 the Levellers in the army rebelled and put forward their demands. They said that Parliament must meet every two years and that all men over the age of twenty-one must have the right to elect MPs to it. They also demanded complete religious freedom, so that all religious groups could follow their religion in the way they wished.

Two hundred years later such demands were considered as basic citizens' rights. But in the middle of the 17^th century they had little support among the people. The rebellion of the Levellers was suppressed.

The Lord Protector. From 1653 Britain was governed by Cromwell alone. He became Lord Protector and had much more power than King Charles had had. But his efforts to govern the country through the army were extremely unpopular, and the idea of using the army to maintain law and order in the kingdom has remained unpopular ever since. 11, other innovations were unpopular too: people were forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter, or to play games on Sunday.

When Cromwell died in 1658, he was succeeded by his son Richard. But Richard Cromwell was a poor leader and could not control neither the army, nor Parliament. Nobody governed the country. It was clear that the situation could be saved only by the restoration of monarchy. In 1660 Charles II was invited to return to his kingdom. The republic was over.

With the restoration of monarchy, Parliament once became as weak as it had been in the time of James I and Charles I. However, the new king, Charles В 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 shared his father's belief in divine right, and lie greatly admired the all-powerful, absolute ruler if France Louis XIV.

Charles hoped to makepeace between the different religious groups that existed in Britain at that time. He wanted to allow Puritans and Catholics, who disliked the Church of England, 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 Glorious Revolution. The struggle over Catholicism became a crisis when James I became king after his brother's death in 1685. James II was a Catholic. He tried to revive the importance of the Catholic Church and give 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, William of Orange. 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 not really a revolution: in fact it was a coup d'etat organized by the ruling class. 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 union with Scotland. Scotland was still a separate kingdom, although both countries had the same king (James II was James VII of Scotland). The English wanted England and Scotland to be united. Scot land wanted to remove the limits on trade with Eng land 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.

After the First World War Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi Party in Germany. Together with his followers he began to spread his beliefs. Hitler called the German people a superior race, which must rule the world.

Soon Hitler made himself dictator of Germany and began preparing for war. The Nazis oppressed anyone whose race, religion or politics they did not like. They built huge concentration camps. Jews, Catholics, Poles and others whom Hitler considered enemies were sent to these camps. In the concentration camps people who were strong enough were forced to work as slaves. Those who were too weak to work, children and old people, were killed soon after they arrived at the camps.

Germany was not the only country in Europe ruled by a dictator. Benito Mussolini, who had come to power in Italy, was making plans to revive the glory of the Roman Empire.

In Asia, a military group came to power in Japan. They also believed in the "glory" of ruling over other nations. They wanted to take control of other countries in Asia and islands in the Pacific Ocean.