Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Protestant nobility. They invited James's Protestant daughter from his first marriage
and her Dutch husband William of Orange to take the throne.
Glorious Revolution (1689)
William of Orange arrived with a small army and was supported by the English mili-
tary chiefs who James had alienated, marching on London in what became known as
the Glorious Revolution. James fled, and a new Parliament declared his abdication in
1689, leaving the throne free for the joint monarchs William III and Mary II. Their
reign brought the end of a monarch's divine right to rule England and Wales. Parlia-
ment passed the Bill of Rights, preventing the throne from passing laws or raising
taxes without Parliament's consent, so a monarch could never dismiss Parliament.
The Bill also prevented Catholics from taking the throne.
Mary died of smallpox in 1694 and William died in 1702. They had no surviving
children so Mary's sister, Anne, succeeded William. Anne attended Parliament regu-
larly, restored the income from tithes to the Church, and it was during her reign that
England and Wales became politically united with Scotland to create the United
Kingdom of Great Britain with the 1706 Act of Union.
One of the greatest legacies of Anne's reign was architecture. Queen Anne build-
ings are particularly notable, and among the best known is
Blenheim Palace
(p. 226) in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. It was built for the Churchill family by Queen
Anne to reward the first Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill) for leading British
troops to victory over the French in the 1704 Blenheim Battle (part of the Spanish
Succession wars). Sir Winston Churchill was born there in 1874.
Anne had 17 children but only one survived birth—and he died at age 11. Parlia-
ment had already passed the Act of Succession to ensure the Protestant heirs of
Sophia of Hanover (James I's granddaughter) could claim the throne, rather than
James II's Catholic heirs, so Anne was succeeded by George of Hanover in 1714.
The Georgians (1714-1830)
George I and his son George II never learned to speak English, sticking to their
native German. Unsurprisingly they were disliked by the people. George III was
the first English-born king in the Hanover line, and although he is chiefly remem-
bered for losing the American colonies and going mad (as portrayed in Alan Ben-
nett's 1991 play and the subsequent film
The Madness of King George
), at least he
could speak English.
Georgian England was a cruel and lawless period. This was the era of Dick Turpin,
the highway robber who brought terror to Essex until his death in 1739. It was also a
time of piracy: Blackbeard was born in Bristol in 1718 and looted ships off North
Carolina. There were at least 200 hanging offenses—from murder to stealing fish—
while bear-baiting, badger-baiting, cock fights, and goose-riding were regarded as
entertainment.
The Georgians were pretty stylish, though, as we can see from the period's archi-
tecture. In London, architect John Nash was responsible for
Regent Street
and
remodeled
Buckingham Palace
(p. 86). The London churches of Nicholas
Hawksmoor are also revered—and, according to Peter Ackroyd's 1985 novel
Hawksmoor
, built under the influence of Freemasonry—while architect John Soane
designed the Bank of England in the City. The churches (and Jack the Ripper) also
feature in Alan Moore's graphic novel
From Hell
, and the subsequent film of the same
name starring Johnny Depp. Ackroyd, a poet, novelist, and biographer, is London to
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