leaders. It is most improbable that either Russell or Sidney knew anything about the Rye House Plot, but they were certainly not believers in the doctrine of non-resistance. Sidney's conviction was obtained largely by his republican (though unpublished) writings.

"To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in this merry reign," Ch. Dickens writes, "would occupy a hundred pages". The Scots would not have bishops, and were resolved to stand by their Solemn League and Covenant, and such cruelties were inflicted upon them, that the blood of any man could run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through the country to punish the peasants for deserting the churches; sons were hanged up at their father's doors for refusing to disclose where their fathers were concealed; wives were tortured to death because they did not want to betray their husbands; people were taken out from their fields and gardens and shot on the public roads without trial; lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and a most horrible torment called the Boot was invented, when the victim's legs were tortured with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners. All the prisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy with bodies; murder and plunder flourished in the whole country. In spite of all, the Covenanters were by no means to be dragged into churches and persisted in worshipping God as they thought right.

Archbishop Sharp always had aided and abetted these outrages. But once he was seen in his coach and six coming across the moor, by a body of men, headed by John Balfour. It was at the moment when the injuries of the Scottish people were at their height. The men cried that Heaven itself had delivered the Archbishop into their hands, and killed him with many wounds.

Now Charles II had an excuse for a greater army than the Parliament was willing to give him, he sent his son, the Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief with the instruction to attack the Scottish rebels whenever he came up with them. Marching with four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the river Clyde, which is on the Border, he soon dispersed them. Very soon James, the Duke of York, resided in Scotland as the King's representative, and he directed the dreadful cruelties against the Covenanters. After he had finished his activity there, the Duke of York returned to England and resumed his place at the Council, and his office as High Admiral.

On the second of February, 1685, Charles II fell down in a fit of apoplexy. In two days it became clear that his case was hopeless, and he was told so. He died on the 6th of February, in the 55th year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his reign.

Comprehension questions

1.Christopher Wren’s work.

2.The Cabal.

3.Charles II’s maneuvers (or double-dealing) in the foreign policy.

4.Why was the war with Holland unpopular?

5.What was the Test Act?

6.Titus Oates’ plot. The Habeas Corpus Act.

7.The Whigs and the Tories.

8.The plight of Scotland. The Scottish uprising and its suppression.

63.ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLAND DURING THE REFORMATION AND BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION

The 16-17th cc. was the period of brisk capitalist development. The 17th c. went down in the history of England as the century of the bourgeois revolution, one of the earliest in the history of Europe. The capitalist way of production triumphed, and it influenced the

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development of other countries of Europe and North America. It was combined with important events in the religious life of the country: the Reformation, the negation of Roman Catholicism, which implied the rejection of the centralized rule of Rome. Instead of it, Anglicanism asserted its dominance, with the centralized power of the English monarch and the aristocracy (absolute monarchy), independent of the Roman Catholic Church. Alongside with it, there was an expansion of Protestantism, which epitomized the creed of the nascent and developing bourgeoisie. The causes of these processes lay deep in the social and economic conditions, in the political life of the country, and the form it took was dictated by the level of England's economic, political and cultural development.

The Social Structure

The social structure of 17th-century England was topped by the king, the feudal nobility, the highest clergy, bishops and the like. Lower down, the next rung of the social ladder was occupied by the gentry, smaller landowners turned bourgeois in their interests and way of life, and the bourgeoisie, in its turn divided into three layers: the great city magnates, the middle merchant class and the petty bourgeoisie, small shop owners and the like. Still lower down were the workmen, some of them close to the petty workshop owners, and also enjoying some sort of property, others (in big centralized manufactories) working fiftееn or more hours, deprived of political rights. In the countryside the yeomanry, freeholders (whose status implied almost actual ownership of land which they held on general grounds and could lease it if they wished), соруholders, holding their land for life, paying rent to the owner, paying when they came into it after their parents' death and even having to pау for it in lаbour if the owner so desired; leaseholders (anybody wishing tо augment his holding соuld get some on lease for payment agreed upon for a certain term). Есоnоmiсаllу, the wealthy copyholders and freeholders whose lands were more or less extensive, constituted the yeomanry's top layers.

The lowest and poorest layers of the peasantry were the cotters, landless hired men exploited by the capitalist farmers, the gentry and the top layers of the yeomanry. The gentry were a sort of link between landowner and merchant for they exploited the land they possessed or leased, and the labourers they hired, organizing agricultural production along capitalist lines.

The first Stuart king, James I, directed persecution against the Puritans who were bearers of bourgeois-revolutionary ideology. The persecution, religious in form, was in fact a method of repression against political opponents. It was typical, since the opposition to the Stuart monarchy was not yet ripe for а definite political platform and was consequently clothed in religious garments.

The Puritans wanted the Anglican church to be purified of all remnants of Catholicism. They were Calvinist-type protestants, dissatisfied with the incompleteness of the Reformation that took the form of Anglicanism. They wanted it to reach completion. As the more or less wealthy layer of the population (middle class mostly), they made their convictions public late in the 16th c., when all hopes of Elizabeth's completing the Reformation collapsed. They were especially influential in the counties of East and South-East England where the traditions of Lollardism were still alive.

They assumed gravity of demeanour, dressed soberly in practical dark clothes, extolled the virtues of family life and frugal economy, wore no wigs or fancy curls but generally had their hair cropped closely (а custom that later earned them the nickname of Roundheads) and believed аll forms of merrymaking but hymn-singing to be the very thing the Devil was most pleased with. Аll this may be an exaggerated account, but the more devout ones were certainly that way.

The Puritans wanted a "cheap" church, spoke against rich ornament and complexity of the church ritual, asserting the austere morality of early Christians. Yet it is clear, that they themselves differed from the Biblical ethics, as they extolled wealth and despised poverty. They believed that perversion of human nature, such qualities as sloth, pride, concupiscence,

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etc. result in man's sinfulness. Man alone is to blame for his life situation, he rises to the level where it is able to determine himself, which may be a perverted, destructive selfdetermination. Protestants ignored the social causes of “sinfulness”, the fact, that the primary cause of "human perversion" was the class divide of humanity in general, and the degradation of broad masses of labourers resulted from their intolerable social position, which they were unable to transgress.

There was another aspect to Puritanism, though, which made itself felt more and morе as time went by: its bearers were aware of their historical significance as a class of bourgeoisie, destined to triumph over the decaying feudal figures of the past, and clothing this feeling in the religious terminology of the moment. They were heard to refer to themselves as God's chosen people with a mission to transact.

At the beginning of the Stuart reign Puritanism was no more than a religious trend differing from the Established church in certain details of worship. However, even then there was a "left wing" that was more in favour of Scottish Presbyterianism, with which they wanted to replace Anglicanism in Englаnd.

There wеге several sects, the two most prominent ones being the Presbyterians who wanted the church to be governed by church aldermen, presbyters, instead of bishops, and the Independents who wanted no centralization whatever and a complete independence of religious organizations. But аll the Puritans had common political and constitutional theories that were to play an important role in the Bourgeois revolution, the main ideas being moderation (“moral purity”, “ecclesiastical purity”) and an almost unrestrained freedom of enterprise.

When the absolute monarchy was established by Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, it was welcomed by the merchants and the landed gentry as a rescue from the bloody feudal conflicts deadlocking the country, precluding any chance of bourgeois development. The merchants and the gentry, "the new nobles" were ready to give the crown every support and aid, so that no permanent army or any sort of paid bureaucratic service was wanted, soldiers being hired and paid out of the city coffers when those coffers' interests were at stake. After the thrifty, parsimonious and resourceful Henry VII, no Tudor had any superfluous income to make him independent of the moneyed nobles, for every Tudor could always rely upon the Parliament to vote the necessary supplies, and Elizabeth I is said to have always been on friendly terms with the London gold-smiths acting as bankers, ready to lend any sum - in reason of course. So the bourgeoisie supported monarchy as long as they wanted the crown's protection. But the other feudal component of monarchy was always there and when those feudal survivals came to be felt as obstacles while the bourgeoisie came to realize its economic power, they started getting impatient to feel the chains of absolute monarchy hindering the further progress of the country's bourgeois growth.

Elizabeth knew the value of support offered by the growing merchant class and spared no effort to promote the interests of trade and commerce (hence her struggle against Spanish rivalry on the seas).

When she died and James I was crowned (1603-1625) the situation was quite different. He came from. Scotland where industry and foreign trade were practically undeveloped, аnd the merchant class not half so influential as in London. He was lavish, for, being unused to the glamour of the English court and the country's apparent: wealth by contrast with Scottish comparative poverty, he committed еrrоrs of judgement and so very soon had to approach the Parliament with money requests; where Elizabeth took things as a matter of course and thought little of pompous speech-making and the putting on of airs, he kept voicing his royal theories of the divine right of kings, etc. Where Elizabeth was protective, James proved to be obtuse, paying no attention to the suppression of Spanish marine power, doing little or nothing to uphold the power of the English fleet. He made peace with Spain that did not promise the London merchants any profit for it did not stipulate their right of trading with the colonies of

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Spain. No wonder the king made enemies of the powerful London merchants, while he made friends of those merchants' enemy: he became friendly with the Spanish king.

Thus neglecting the interests of the capital, historically gaining power, James Stuart had a Parliament opposition formed against him, growing during his reign and coming to a head during the reign of his son, Charles I (1625-1649). Both had to dissolve their Parliaments more than once, mostly because they tried to consolidate their absolute power and build up a new state apparatus.

Attempts to create a standing army and state bureaucracy involved taxations, and the taxes had to be voted, while the merchants were ready to fight for their purses fiercely. In 1628 the Parliament opposition, uniting the bourgeoisie and the gentry, scored a victory: the king was made to sign the Petition of Right, limiting his power. It formulated their demands that no one should be arrested or kept in prison without being charged with a definite crime, that noone should be compelled to yield any property without a common consent to confiscate it by an Act of Parliament. Charles I had to sign the Petition as he needed money quite badly.

He never meant to abide by the Petition, though, and when in 1629 the oppositon-ruled Parliament voted for the King Tonnage and Poundage, customary royal sources of revenue, to be one year only instead of for life (as was the custom), Charles dismissed the Parliament and did not summon it again for eleven years (1629-1640). He also arrested and imprisoned some of the leaders of the opposition. During the eleven years of rule without Parliament Charles and his counsellors were desperate to invent some sources of revenue. The wars were finished, but everyday state expenses had to be met, so Charles went all lengths to fill his coffers. For example, he revived the Forest Law, forcing the owners of lands that had anciently been royal forest, to pay for their claims of ownership (many nobles were alienated from the crown in that way, for they hated to have to pay for what they had always thought was theirs); baronetcies were sold; new monopolies were sold; new customs imposed; finally an old tax, the so called ship money, was revived. The King meant from thenceforth to impose it as a regular and universal tax. The ship money was ostensibly intended for the benefit of the navy, which was really badly in want of repairs. All those steps ought to have made the King independent of the Parliament.

In 1636 some of the leaders of the opposition refused to pay the tax; the example was followed by wide masses of the people, but the movement was suppressed, and the tax was levied again. The king's archbishop, Laud organized a high church party, small and isolated at first but quite influential later. During the eleven years of no Parliament, Laud thrust his high church, a sort of exaggerated Anglican Church, on everyone, and Puritans were fiercely persecuted. Many of them emigrated to America founding colonies in what is now New England, Massachusetts, Connecticut etc.

Persuaded by Archbishop Laud, Charles thrust his high church prayer book on Scotland where Presbyterianism was the prevailing religion. The Scots took it as an infringement on their religious and political independence; the Scottish nobles were afraid that the land they had got during the Reformation would be taken away while the bourgeoisie and the people hated the idea of religious unification with England. They were sure it was the first step of the English to lord it over them in the long run. So the Scots bound themselves by a solemn Covenant to fight against Catholicism and against every attempt to infringe upon their religious and political independence. They rebelled and rose for their independence; they were a success, and in 1640 they occupied the northern part of the country, Northumberland and Durham, and seeing their army threaten to move further Charles hastened to make peace with them at any cost, and the cost was high enough; Charles had not only to promise not to interfere with the Scottish political and religious liberties, but as a condition for the Scottish army's withdrawal had to pay the costs of the campaign. His credit in the city was exhausted, he did not see where he could borrow any more money to pay the Scots, so the only way out was to convene Parliament and to get it to vote new taxes.

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