The restoration of the monarchy
The death of the Protector, in his fifty-ninth year, threw all his achievement into disarray. His son Richard, aged thirty-eight, named as his successor, was well-intentioned but not of his father's calibre, and had not grown up with the training, expectations and advice of an heir-apparent. Nor could he command the historic obedience given to a king.
The Great Seal of Richard Cromwell Richard Cromwell
At first he was backed by the army, but soon it was plain that the army commanders had conflicting views about the way forward. People who supported, or were working for, the accession of Charles II were pleased to see the army begin to disintegrate into factions, some supporting a return to the republican ideals of 1649, some looking for a generalissimo-figure to assume control. The parliament called by Richard was equally riven by contrary opinions, with many royalist sympathisers. He dissolved it in April 1659 and resigned his post, retiring to obscure country life. Casting about with a degree of desperation for a national authority with some claim to legitimacy, a military committee recalled the surviving members of the Rump Parliament so ignominiously dismissed by Oliver Cromwell. Forty duly appeared, to be blown hither and thither in their discussions by pressure from different generals, until one of the two most determined soldiers, John Lambert, forced its dissolution. While royalist demonstrations and local risings became more frequent, the other soldier, George Monck, commanding in Scotland, crossed into England with his army. Already in communication with Charles II and his advisers, he destroyed Lambert's efforts to resist his advance, and took control of London. Here he summoned, not the residue of the Rump again, but all the surviving members of the Long Parliament, as it was before Pride's purge. Monck was now in open negotiation with the exiled court at Brussels, but it was in the end this 'Convention Parliament' which, in May 1660, formally invited Charles, Prince of Wales and already King of Scotland, to assume his father's English crown.
Part IV
18Th century Britain (Development of political institutions.
The America War of Independence. Conquest in India.
The beginning of industrial revolution. Luddites.).
19Th century Britain. (The growth of the British Empire.
Colonies and colonial Trade. The Bank of England.
The industrial revolution. The 1832 Reform Bill.
The Charter and Chartism. The Victorian Age. The emergence of Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies. The post office.
The Education Acts of 1870, 1880, 1891.).
War with the american colonists
Though North is inevitably associated with the loss of the American colonies, their alienation had begun earlier. Some of the colonies, like Massachusetts, had been founded by men and women who had felt forced to leave England and their descendants had not forgotten the fact. Pennsylvania had been а ‘hо1у experiment' in social and religious freedom. The spirit of the colonists did not fit well with the attitudes of the governors and military men sent out from England for short terms of office. In 1766, at Pitt's urging the stamp tax had been repealed, but Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last cabinet before North's, applied taxes to American imports of lead, paper, glass, painters' colours and tea, causing furious protest. North repealed all these, except the tax on tea. This was not enough to placate the colonists, especially as the duty was kept not for the revenue it generated but to maintain the principle that parliament could tax the colonies. In 1773 the East India Company was in financial trouble, which the government tried to resolve by giving it the monopoly on tea supply to America. This offended the American merchants and led to smuggling and Company ships being turned back, and to the celebrated Boston Tea Party, when colonists disguised as Indians threw part of a cargo into Boston Harbour. Heavy-handed British action to obtain compensation from Massachusetts, and then to annul its constitution, led to the Continental Congress of September 1755: the colonies found unity in opposition, and British attempts to divide them failed. Fighting began on 19 April 1775, at Lexington, though the American Declaration of Independence was not made until 4 July 1776.
This was a war quite different to any later colonial wars. English principles, English pronouncements, and the words of English philosophers like John Locke, were turned against the London government and its apologists by the rebel colonists. But the war was not waged in any apologetic spirit by the British, and majority public opinion in England was firmly on the government side, with only those of strong radical sympathies against it. The final 'olive branch petition' from the Congress was ignored, and an army of 20,000 men was mustered. Many were German mercenaries from Hesse and Hanover. Whilst the British armies could win battles, they were not equipped to deal with a mobile enemy spread across a vast countryside, nor, after victory, to hold down a hostile, well-organized and resourceful population. In October 1777 General Burgoyne, with an over-extended army, surrendered at Saratoga. Soon after this news was known, France, under Louis XVI, recognized American independence and declared war on Great Britain. Just before his death, in 1778, Chatham made his last speech in parliament, urging the House of Lords to make a reconciliation with America, but the king's policy was to fight on all fronts, and North was his obedient servant. By 1780 Spain had also declared war, and war was declared against Holland, which refused to allow its merchant ships to be searched for American supplies. Russia and the Scandinavian countries adopted a posture of 'armed neutrality' for the same reason. Britain was again involved in international conflict. Colonial empires, and control of the vital sea-routes, were still the great prizes, and the French fleet had been re-established as a formidable force.
Treaty of Versailles ends War of American Independence with British acceptance of American colonies’ independence.
The national debt was around £860 million in 1816; in The Common People G.D.H. Cole and Raymond Postgate reckoned that 'each citizen of the country owed his fellow-citizens nearly £45' - this was at a time when agricultural wages were falling from a wartime high of sixteen shillings a week to a level of eight or nine shillings, less than £24 a year. On this basis the involuntary 'debt' was more than two years' wages. And, as these authors point out, it was chiefly from the poor that the government was to claim the funds. Income tax, which, although widely dodged, was collected from the wealthier citizens, was abolished immediately after the war's end.
The government needed to raise £31,500,000 each year simply to pay interest on the national debt. Tea, sugar, beer, soap and candles were all heavily taxed. Another important concern was corn prices. The prices of most commodities fell after the war. But in 1815, at the urging of the strong farming interests represented in parliament, a Corn Law was passed, forbidding the import of corn unless the price rose above £4 a quarter (or £3 10s. in the case of wheat from Canada). The result of this was to keep the price of bread artificially high at a time of plummeting wages and high unemployment.
A further issue for the government was law and order. Over three hundred thousand men returned from the army to civilian life to find that a slump in demand both at home and abroad had drastically reduced industrial production. There were few jobs to be found, and wages were very low. Factory owners preferred to employ women and children, who were cheaper and more controllable. The government did not see unemployment as a matter for its attention, but it was concerned about the unemployed as a source of public disturbance. There was already industrial trouble for another reason. The invention of the power loom had placed the thousands of cottage-based hand-loom weavers at an increasingly severe disadvantage. Factory production did not monopolise the industry but left a varying, marginal amount of work for the hand-loom weavers. In a period of slump, this meant destitution for the weaving households, whose numbers had greatly increased through immigration from Ireland. Competition for work in a declining market led to a breakdown in the traditional system of apprentice and journeyman. From 1811 the 'Luddite' movement arose in Cheshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. It was not a campaign against new machinery as such, at least not in its initial stage: the machines of employers who broke the rules were smashed. The machine breakers, supposedly led by the elusive 'Ned Ludd', appeared to be well organized and had the passive support of their fellow-workers.
Restoration of the gold standard, in 1819, was the main element in economic policy, and, like most aspects of the Liverpool government's thinking, it betrayed a yearning for the old days before 1792, when Pitt had presided over a prosperous and peaceful country. Like all such nostalgic views, it omitted any sight of the problems that Pitt had ignored or failed to resolve, almost all of which, in a more modern guise, remained, and now demanded action. From 1820, as economic recovery gradually began, and the panic sense of an imminent revolt decreased, the government began taking some account of these.