Chapter 3: A Long and Illustrious History

The Stuarts, Civil War and the Glorious Revolution

آخر تحقق: 15 July 2026

• 1When Elizabeth I died in 1603 with no children, her cousin James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, Wales and Ireland — uniting the crowns (but not yet the parliaments).
• 2During James I's reign a new English translation of the Bible was produced — the King James Bible (Authorised Version), still used in many Protestant churches; not the first English Bible but the first authorised for the Church of England.
• 3In Ireland, English governments encouraged Protestant settlers from England and (mainly) Scotland to take over land from Catholic landholders in Ulster — settlements known as plantations; these had lasting consequences for Irish history.
• 4James I and his son Charles I believed in the "Divine Right of Kings" — the idea that the king was appointed directly by God to rule.
• 5Charles I tried to rule without Parliament for 11 years (from 1629).
• 6Charles I tried to impose a revised Prayer Book on Presbyterian Scotland; the Scots rebelled and raised an army, forcing Charles to recall Parliament in 1640 to ask for funds.
• 7Civil war between king and Parliament began in 1642.
• 8The king's supporters were called Cavaliers; Parliament's supporters were called Roundheads.
• 9Parliament's armies defeated the king at the Battles of Marston Moor and Naseby.
• 10Charles I was held prisoner and executed in 1649 — England declared itself a republic, called the Commonwealth.
• 11Oliver Cromwell led the republic's army; in Ireland he used violence to establish English authority (e.g. at Drogheda), and he remains a controversial figure in Ireland today.
• 12The Scots did not accept the execution of Charles I: they crowned his son Charles II king of Scotland; Cromwell defeated Charles II's Scottish army at the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester.
• 13After defeat, Charles II famously hid in an oak tree to escape, then fled to Europe.
• 14Cromwell was made Lord Protector and ruled until his death in 1658; his son Richard proved unable to control the army and government.
• 15In 1660 Parliament invited Charles II back from exile in the Netherlands — the Restoration of the monarchy; Charles II made it clear no single person should have unlimited power.
• 16Under Charles II the Royal Society was formed — the oldest surviving scientific society in the world; early members included Sir Edmund Halley and Sir Isaac Newton.
• 17In 1665 a major outbreak of plague hit London (the last such outbreak); in 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the city, including many churches and St Paul's Cathedral.
• 18St Paul's Cathedral was rebuilt to the design of Sir Christopher Wren.
• 19The Habeas Corpus Act became law in 1679: no one could be held prisoner unlawfully — every prisoner has the right to a court hearing.
• 20Isaac Newton (1643–1727), educated at Cambridge, published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica showing gravity applies throughout the universe; he also showed white light is made up of the colours of the rainbow.
• 21Charles II had no legitimate children; his brother James II (James VII of Scotland), a Roman Catholic, became king in 1685.
• 22James II favoured Roman Catholics, allowed them to be army officers, and acted against the law and Parliament's wishes; people feared he wanted to make England Catholic again.
• 23In 1688 important Protestants invited William of Orange — a Dutch Protestant married to James II's daughter Mary — to invade and proclaim himself king.
• 24William invaded; James fled to France; this bloodless (in England) change of monarch is called the Glorious Revolution — it guaranteed the power of Parliament over the monarch.
• 25James II tried to regain the throne through Ireland; William defeated him at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690 — a victory still celebrated by some in Northern Ireland today.
• 26In Scotland, supporters of James II were called Jacobites; some clans initially resisted William.
• 27The MacDonalds of Glencoe were killed for being late to take the oath of loyalty to William — the Glencoe massacre; it increased Jacobite feeling.
• 28The Bill of Rights, 1689, confirmed the rights of Parliament and the limits of the king's power: the monarch must be Protestant, a new Parliament had to be elected regularly, and the monarch needed Parliament's agreement to renew funding for the army and navy every year.
• 29After 1689 monarchs needed ministers who could command support in Parliament — the beginning of constitutional monarchy and party politics.
• 30The first political parties emerged: the Whigs and the Tories.
• 31From 1695 newspapers could operate without a government licence — the start of a free press in Britain.