2. Great Britain

The United Kingdom of Great Btitain and_northern Ireland is situated off the Northwest coast of Europe. The UK consists of four parts. They are: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK lies on the British Isles. There are some 5.500 islands. The two main islands are: Great Britain and Ireland. They are separated from the continent by the English Channel and the Strait of Dover. The west coast of the country is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea, the east coast is washed by the North Sea. The area of the UK is some 244,100 km². Its population is over 57 million people.

English is the official language, but it is not the only language which people speak in the country.

Britain has been many centuries in the making. The Romans conquered most part of Britain, but were unable to subdue the independent tribes in the West and .in the North. Other invaders were Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings and Normans. For many centuries this country was known simply as England. It had a strong army and navy. It waged numerous colonial wars. In the modern world England was the first country, where capitalism was established.

Geographically Great Britain is divided into Lowland Britain and Highland Britain. Lowland Britain comprises Southern and Eastern England. Highland Britain includes Scotland, Wales, the Pennines and the Lake District. The highest mountain — Ben Nevis — is in Scotland. The flora of the British Isles is much varied and the fauna is similar to that of the north-west of Europe. The country is not very rich In natural resources.

There are many rivers in Great Britain. The Severn is the longest river, the Thames is the most important one.

London is the capital of the UK.

The largest cities of Great Britain besides London are: Birmingham, Glasgo, Liverpool, Manchester, . Sheffield, Bristоl, Leeds, Edinburgh.

Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy. The powers of the British Queen are limited by Parliament. The British Parliament consists of the sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Throughout British history religion has been closely connected with kings, queens and politics. England was a Roman Catholic country until 1534. Why did this change?

In 1525 King Henry VIII decided to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon who, at the age of forty, was five years older than Henry. Also, she had only given him a daughter, and Henry wanted a son. He fell in love with Anne Bolleyn who was younger, but when Henry asked the Pope for permission to divorce Catherine, he refused. Henry was so angry with the Pope that he ended all contact between England and Rome, divorced Catherine of Aragon without the Pope's permission and married Anne Boleyn. In 1534 Parliament named Henry head of the Church of England. This was the beginning of the Anglican Church. This quarrel with Rome was political, not religious. The Anglican Church did not start as a Protestant Church and Henry certainly did not regard himself as a Protestant. In fact, the Pope had given Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith" in 1521 for words he wrote attacking Martin Luther, the German Protestant. (British kings and queens still have this title, and you can see the letters FID DEE or F. D. on British coins today. However, the Protestant movement in Europe was growing very strong at this time. When Henry quarrelled with Rome and ordered the Bible to be translated into English, the way was open for Protestantism to spread in England. Over the years many people changed to this new religion.

By the way son Генри VIII was Edward VI.

This English king (prince at the beginning) was meant Mark Twain when he wrote his "The Prince and the Pauper". Of course, the boy did not change clothes with a pauper boy just before his father's death and did not brood through his country in rags, this is the author's fancy. I think that his father was not so fond of him as he is described in the book, because Henry VIII was not the like person to be attached to somebody — but, however, "The Prince and the Pauper" is a fiction book and the author had his right to show the circumstances just as he imagined them, as he was close to the historical truth in main things and in details.

In reality Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while that latter was under age, and another council of twelve to help the first one. The most powerful of the first council was the Earl of Hertford, the young King's uncle, his late mother's brother, who lost no time in bringing his nephew with great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for his father's death.

There was a curious part on the late King's will, requiring his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke of Somerset (in Mark Twain's book Tom Canty did it!), and made his brother Edward Seymour a baron. To be more dutiful, they made themselves rich out of the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset proclaimed himself Protector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King, as the chief power was all in his hands. He was an ardent Reformer and very soon introduced great changes, not in Church government, but in doctrine and ritual. The young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the principles of the Protestant religion, and all the Protestants therefore knew that their day of triumph had come, they committed all manner of excesses, breaking images and otherwise insulting the majority of their countrymen. The Act of the Six Articles was repeated, and violent hands were laid on church property.

These religious changes, sufficiently unpopular with the majority of Englishmen, were accompanied by social evils not altogether unconnected with them.} The new landowners, selfish and grasping, keener on enclosing common lands than on providing work for the rural population, compared badly with their predecessors, the monks. Devon and Norfolk rose in revolt, and although the Duke of Somerset, who understood the causes of the rising well enough to symphathise with them, more or less succeeded in restoring order, the Council was able to put the blame for misgov-ernment upon him, and ordered his imprisonment. His successor, the Duke of Northumberland, ambitious and unscrupulous, did all in his power to further the Reformation as the best means to wealth and power. But while he and his friends grew rich the country at large grew poorer, and some helped to overthrow the government with the help of Somerset.

When the Duke of Somerset was still Lord Protector, he was anxious to have the young King engage in marriage to the young Queen of Scotland (Mary Stuart) in order to prevent this princess from making an alliance with any foreign power; but as a large party in Scotland were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that country. His excuse for doing that was that the Border men — that is, the Scotch who lived in that part of the country where England and Scotland joined — troubled the English very much. But the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and through many long years there were perpetual border quarrels which gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs.

"High upon Highlands And laigh upon Tay, Bonny George Campbell Ride out on a day: Saddled and bridled, So gallant to see, Home came his good horse, But never came he.

Saddled and bridled

And booted rode he

A plume to his helmet,

A sword at his knee;

But toom came his saddle

A bloody to see,

О home came his good horse,

But never came he!"

However, the Protector invaded Scotland; and the Scottish Regent with an army twice as large as his, advanced to meet him. They met on the banks of the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; and there the Protector promised to retire if the Scotch would only engage not to marry their princess to any foreign prince, and the Scottish Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake; for the English soldiers on land and the English sailors on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they fled, and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dreadful battle. The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid themselves in streams and were drowned; some threw away their armour and were killed while they run; but in this battle of Pinckey (1547) the English lost only two or three hundred men. They were much better clothed than the Scotch.

Now, we must return to the story of Devonshire and Norfolk revolts. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand men united within a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But the rebels were defeated, and one of the leaders, the vicar, was hanged on his own church steeple.

In Norfolk the popular leader was a man named Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first instance, excited against the tanner by the one John Flowerdrew, a gentlemen, whc owned him a grudge; but the tanner soon got the people on his side, and established himself near Norwich with quite an army. There was a large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation; and under its green boughs he and his men sat, in the midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of state. They even allowed some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into that Tree of Reformation; and point out their errors to them, while they lay listening in the shade below. At last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors, if they did not disperse and go home at once, in which case they were to receive a pardon. But Ket and his men became stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient force and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as a traitors, and their limbs were sent into various country places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have withered away.

As we already mentioned, the Duke of Somerset was arrested as a traitor and took to the Tower.

He was ordered to be headed on the Tower Hill at eight in the morning, and proclamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten. They filled the streets, however, and crowded the place of execution as soon as it was light; and with sad faces and sad hearts saw the once powerful Duke ascent the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage, and telling them, in particular, how it comforted him to have assisted in reforming the national religion, a member of the Council was seen riding up on horseback. They again thought that the Protector was saved, and again shouted with joy. But the Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow.

Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their hand kerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection.

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle was in prison under sentence of death, the young King was being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham fights: but there is no doubt in it, for he kept a journal himself.

There were only two victims in this period who perished because of their holding the Catholic religion. One of them, a woman Joan Bucher, the other — a Dutchman. Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman execution and shed tears before he made so.

Edward's sister Mary, whose mother had been Catherine of Aragon, and who inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated the reformed religion as connected with her mother's wrongs and sorrows - she knew nothing about it, always refusing to read a single book in which it was truly described - the Princess Mary held by the unreformed religion too, and was the only person in the kingdom for which the old Mass was allowed to be performed. In 1533 Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, became Queen of England. Because she was a Roman Catholic, the country re-entered the Roman Church. While Mary was Queen, many Protestants were burned at the stake for their beliefs. She also put her non-Roman Catholic sister, Elizabeth (the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn), into prison in the Tower of London.

Edward always viewed it with horror; and when he fell ill — first of the measles, and then of the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and Mary was the next heir to the throne succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set up again. In 1552 very soon after Somerset's execution, the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI was published, and it was distinctly Protestant in tone.

Protestants were glad when Mary died in 1557 and Elizabeth became Queen. Elizabeth also became Head of the Anglican Church, like her father, and Roman Catholicism was never again the established (official) religion in England.

After Elizabeth became Queen, a group of Protestants wanted to "purify" the Church of England of all Roman Catholic influence. These people were called Puritans — they were the English Protestants. They dressed very simply and believed that all pleasures, such as fine clothes and the theatre, were wicked.

When James I was King (1603 — 1625) the Puritans were often put in prison and sometimes even killed. Some of them decided to leave England to find freedom in a new country.

They sailed from Plymouth in 1620 in a ship called "Mayflower", and these "Pilgrim Fathers" — as they were called — started a new life in America.

Under the rule of James I's son, Charles I, the Puritans were treated even worse. Many people sympathized with the Puritans, and the Court was unpopular because it was suspected of being a centre of Roman Catholicism. (This was because S Charles's wife was a Roman Catholic). This religious split between the Puritans and the Court was one cause of the outbreak of civil war in 1628 and the eventual execution of Charles I. Following this, from 1649 to 1660, Britain was a republic for a short while.