A Bit of Everything and Nothing At All

I thought that for once it might be a good idea to keep an online diary, as opposed to a written one, I mean I do love the sensation of having a pen in my hand and hearing the sound of the gel pen scratch against the page when the pen starts to run out, their's nothing like it, it's like when you read a really old book, and you hear the pages make that crinkle sound, and you can smell the musty odour on the pages, anyway enough about that, I wish things were different and we could win the lottery or at least a few thousands pounds, enough to sort out all our bills, and be able to pay off my credit card bill, and get myself an Alienware laptop, because it's the ultimate gaming laptop, I wouldn't need to get another one, I've had a really bad stomach all day long, well I had one this morning, but it settled down once I'd been to the toilet, but then when I ate my second sandwich, it kicked off even worse, and I couldn't even manage my third because of it, anyway I've finally started watching a few of my films that I've had backlogged since christmas, and even before christmas when I put a load of films into my pink disc case to watch, II've still got quite a few to watch in there as well, and I intend to re-watch the first 3 Underworld films, as soon as I can get a decent download of: Underworld Awakening, I can't wait to see it, apparently Selene wakes up in the future and she can't find Michael anywhere, and apparently the humans know all about the vampires and lycans and their trying to eradicate them all, by mass genocide I suppose you'd call it, anyway I might go up the library tomorrow, or I could potentially wait and ask dad if he could take me to Corringham, because I need to get a couple of bottles of Schwepps lemonade, to tide me over until mum + dad go shopping again, and I also need to go into Tesco's again and get one of those huge boxes of Thornton's the Classic Collection box, for mum + dad's wedding anniversary, which is on the 4th February, I decided upon that box of chocolate's mainly because I couldn't think of anything else, and because when aunt Jane bought them a box for christmas to share between them, and it so happens that it was the same box that I bought for nan + grandad for christmas as well, lol, great minds think alike I guess, anyway I finally watched: Super 8, last night, it was really good, I liked the way they made the alien in it, anyway I better go for now, I left: Johnny Mnemonic, on pause, and I'm right near the end, so bye for now.

Victorian Pharmacy

This established a rigorous system of apprenticeship, typically lasting years. If the cost of training to become a physician was prohibitive to all but a privileged few, the cost of an apprenticeship to an apothecary was still considerable; in the firts half of the nineteenth century these typically were set at around 500 guineas (£28,000 in today's money). Oral examinations were conducted by members of the society to ensure the candidate was proficient in recognising ingredients as well as in the craft of handling and mixing medicines. It was only after the exam had been passed that the newly qualified apothecary could own or keep a shop. Between 1815 and 1834, six thousand new apothecaries' licenses were issued, half to surgeons who were allowed to have the dual role of apothecary and surgeon. Apothecaries did not have the social standing or wealth of the physicians, who commanded large fees from their well-to-do customers. Instead, they offered healthcare services to everyone - as was true throughout history; the first record of an apothecary's shop dates ro 1345. During the Civil War (1642-49), when the rich fled the cities and were followed by their physicians, the apothecaries remained to tend to the people. Again, when the Great Plague hit London in 1665, it was the apothecaries who dared to stay. The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) wrote in 1790 that apothecaries were 'the physicians of the poor at all times and the rich when the danger is not very great.' From early in the eighteenth century apothecaries were legally ratified as members of the medicinal profession. Their role developed from dispenser of medicene, to practitioner and dispenser of medicine as they were allowed to prescribe medicines, a progression the physicians were busy defending their position in the market, new traders called chemists and druggists recognised a lucrative gap in the market and slipped in to steal a portion of the trade. This sparked the fury of both physicians and apothecaries, who accused the interlopers of muscling in on their territory, generating even more ill-feeling.
Each group bickered with the other, fighting for business and professional recognition and undermining specialised professional development. Indeed, the only thing they appeared to agree about was the exclusion of women from any medical profession. However, the Apothecaries Act of 1815 gave tacit approval to the apothecary's new role of general practitioner of medicine. It also recognised the right of chemists and druggists to prepare, compound, dispense and sell drugs and medicines. The emergence of chemists and druggists marked the true start of the pharmacy industry. They had first appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century and spread with the increase in urbanisation offering customers a reliable outlet for the purchase of over-the-counter medicines. They stayed open for long hours and were available in emergencies, meeting the needs of a population which, far from fields, hedgerows and cottage gardens, no longer had access to the raw materials they needed for homemade remedies. Moreover, despite the furore, they were not breaking any rules, since there was no regulations for the sale of deadly poisons, such as arsenic, or addictive, over-the-counter medicines, such as laudanum, they were free to muscle in on the market. These interlopers also supplied all manner of ready-made 'proprietary' medicines: miracle cures such as Clarke's Blood Mixture, 'The World Famous Blood Purifier and Restorer'; or Burgess's Lion Ointment, 'Amputation avoided - the knife superseded.' Chemists and druggists were not required to have dispensing qualifications. At best, they might have undertaken an apprenticeship with an apothecary, but there was no requirement for them to pass any exams. They were not permitted to prescribe as apothecaries could. Unofficially, though, they engaged in 'counter practice', recommending products for various ailments, or hurrying their customer away to seek the advice of an apothecary or physician post-haste. A bill introduced in 1841 proposed that after 1 February 1842 no person could practice medicine without a certificate, and that after December 1842 no one could carry out the business of a chemist or druggist without a certificate. Practising medicine was defined as recommending, prescribing or ordering any medicine, remedy or application, while the chemist and druggist was defined as a person able to dispense or mix for sale any drug or medicine. However, the bill failed to get support in the House of Commons. The group behind the bill did not give up the fight. In 1841, they proposed the formation of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (PSGB), whose function was to elevate the status of the practice of pharmacy. It aimed to head a defined and regulated programme of professional education and to unite the profession into one body. Chemists and druggists instead of being excluded, as they had always previously been, were invited to participate in the formation of the Society. Within two years, the Pharmaceutical Society had established a School of Pharmacy and had won a royal charter (1843). The title 'Royal' was granted to the society in 1988.
Legislation from 1852 established a Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists for those who had passed The Pharmaceutical Society's exams. It is at this time that the terms pharmaceutical chemist, pharmacist and pharmacy begin to enter into popular usage - the first recorded use of the word in England does not appear until the 1830s. While its use indicates the attainment of formal professional
standards, the public then, as now, mixed the terms chemist, druggist and pharmacy freely to describe a shop that sold medicines. The Medical Act of 1858 saw the faltering beginnings of a much needed process of reform; formal programmes of education were laid down to ensure that students achieved minimum standards of competence in medicine, surgery and midwifery. Regulations controlling the sale and compounding of medicines followed behind. The Pharmacy Act of 1868 restricted sale, dispensing and compounding of poisons to people who had been examined and registered by the PSGB. At this time the term 'Chemist and Druggist' was used by the PSGB to describe those who had passed its minor examination and therefore met with the minimum requirement to register as a pharmacist and the use of the title 'chemist and druggist' was restricted to legally registered pharmacists. The formation of the Pharmaceutical Society in 1841 also saw the launch of The Pharmaceutical Journal, a monthly with a firm emphasis on pharmaceutical education and science, until 1870 when it became weekly. The Chemist & Druggist, a monthly trade circular, was launched in competition in 1859, it was more popularist in approach, and included regular features on the trade prices of medicinal compounds, court reports detailing many mishaps from accidentally poisoning to bankruptcy. A popular feature was the exchange of recipes.

Despite legislative controls standards were not what we might expect today. As late as 1899, (1850-1931), the man who established Boots the Chemist, commented:

I thoroughly welcome legislation that will compel every chemist's and druggist shop, whether belonging to a company or otherwise, to be wholly and solely under the control of a registered chemist or manager. I will go further than that, and state that I should be equally glad to welcome that legislation should enforce the work of dispensing medicines should also be confined in every shop to a registered chemist.

At the turn of the century, Jesse Boot advocated a new approach. He himself had had no prospect of becoming a qualified pharmacist since his family lacked the funds. He instigated a scheme to recruit and support promising boys through an apprenticeship, and paid them 10 shillings (10/-) weekly in the first year of apprenticeship, 12 shillings and sixpence (12/6) in the second, 15/-in the third, and 17/6 in the fourth. Assistants who had worked for Boot for more than two years were eligible to compete for four scholarships offered annually, to enable them to take six-month full-time course at a recognised school of pharmacy and to sit the Minor examination. Jesse Boot commented:

Formerly the drug trade was one that could only be enetered into by those having money and friends. With us a good salary is given during apprenticeship, scholarships to our assistants, and after passing their examinations good and improving situations are found for them. To me the most satisfactory feature of our business is that we have men on the staff who have passed their qualifying examination with credit, and for this not to have cost their parents or friends a penny.

Boot also encouraged chemists to give young assistants a lesson in Latin before they started work at 8 a.m. and provided training for dispensing assistants.
In the 64-year reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), there were revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of many life-threatening diseases, as well as in education and laws relating to healthcare and the provision of medicines and poisons. Consumer medicine reached the high street, creating a new medical industry that sold traditional herbal remedies as well as the newest proprietary medicines and which played a role in transforming public health. Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914), physicist, chemist and inventor of the incandescent electric light bulb, maintained that an educated pharmacist was 'one of society's most useful and necessary members.'

Victorian Pharmacy

                                                       HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

People wanting their teeth pulled, or to be bled, might visit a barber, or even a surgeon, who combined skills in hairdressing, dentistry, blood-letting and surgery. Surgeons were craftsmen, who learned their skills in long apprenticeships. It was easier to become a surgeon than a physician because a would-be surgeon needed only to rause sufficient funds for an apprenticeship. By 1800, there were 8000 members of the Royal College of Surgeons. Physicians, on the other hand, required a university education - an expensive business, which restricted access to the profession. Theoretically they were the most knowledgeable practitioners. In an era when it was rare for the sick to attend hospital, physicians made home visits, diagnosing illness and prescribing treatments. They were not, however, permitted to act as surgeons, or to dispense drugs. Indeed, physicians were often quite ignorant of the properties of the drugs they prescribed. There were far fewer practising physicians than surgeons or apothecaries: at the start of the nineteenth century, there were just 179 licensed physicians in London; by 1847, there were 643. Each might expect to earn between £1500 and £2000 per year - £88,000-117,000 in today's money. The Victorian apothecary was a cross between a General Practitioner and a dispensing chemist. But his shop was like nothing we would recognise. There were no tempting displays of medicines, herbs or other sundries - medicines were made to order.
The business of selling medicines and drugs was not a licensed activity. Indeed, grocers prescribed medicines, booksellers sold proprietary medicines, and the mail-order business in patent pills, creams and medicines was booming.

                                                                       FIRST AID KIT

                                                           Press an ivy leaf on a cut - the rough side cleans
                                                           the wound and the smooth side helps to heal it;
                                                           eat an onion (raw), if one is unfortunate enough
                                                           to be stung by a wasp in the throat; a soap and
                                                           sugar poultice will draw out a splinter.

                                                                    OIL OF EARTHWORMS

                                                       A useful linament for muscular aches and pains.

                                                                           Dried earth worms 7 oz
                                                                           Olive oil 32 fl oz
                                                                            Wine 2 fl oz

                                                                    Boil together until wine has evaporated.
                                                                    Apply by rubbing the oil into the skin.

                                                           ATTEMPTS AT REGULATION

All those involved in the dispensing of drugs - apothecaries, chemists and druggists - relied on the ever-increasing number of pharmacopoeias available to learn about the latest treatments and practices. New substances were continually being uncovered. In the early past of the nineteenth century, morphine, quinine and strychnine appeared for the first time.
One of the main sources of information for physicians and apothecaries were herbals and pharmacopeia' both offering reference sources on the medicinal properties of plants and minerals. The first London Pharmacopoeia was not published until 1618 when a royal proclamation instructed all apothecaries follow its guide. From 1846, all the various pharmacopoeia editions - London, Edinburgh and Dublin - were absorbed into the single authoritative voice of the British Pharmacopoeia. Unfortuneately, there was still such ignorance of the causes of disease that many of the so-called cures were mere panaceas. Nicholas Culpeper's books, The English Physitian (1652) and The Complete Herbal (1653) were radical in that both were published in vernacular English and were designed to be self-help books for use by the poor who could not afford medical help, though doubtless those who would benefit the most were not literate enough to do so. Nevertheless Culpeper's books are said to be the most successful non-religious text ever and have been in print continuously since the seventeenth century. They provoked fury in both physicians and apothecaries alike who saw the work as a threat to their lucrative business. But then Culpeper was highly critical of physician's skills: 'They are bloodsuckers, true vampires, have learned little since Hippocrates; use blood-letting for ailments above the midriff and purging for those below. They evacuate and revulse their patients until they faint. Black Hellebor, this poisonous stuff, is a favourite laxative. It is surprising that they are so popular and that some patients recover. My own poor patients would not endure this taxing and costly treatment. The victims of physicians only survive since they are from the rich and robust stock, the plethoric, red-skinned residents of Cheapside, Westminster and St James.'

                                                                          Stramonium

The Dratorium stramonium cultivated in Britain. The leaves dried, collected when the plants are in flower, and the ripe seeds. Medicinal Properties: Influences especially the respiratory organs. Much used in asthma; the leaf chiefly by smoking in the form of cigarettes. The extract and the tincture made of the seeds are used in convulsive coughs as antispasmodics and as anodynes in gastrodynia and other painful affections.

Apothecaries were responsible for the supply, compounding and sale of drugs, and this was how they madde their living. They could also make home visits, provide medical advice and prescribe medication, but could not charge for this service. They had established their independence from the Company of Grocers in 1617 when King James I permitted the creation of The Worshipful Society of the Art and Mystery of the Apothecaries.

Victorian Pharmacy

                                                                Public Health

At the start of Queen Victoria's reign, the public had long been in the habit of self-medicating. This was partly because of the scarcity of public health provision, but principally because most people simply did not have the pennies to spare on physicians or apothecaries. Many people, notably the working class, had a deep mistrust of physicians, whose cures were often as bad, if not worse, than the original problem. Illnesses were managed rather than cured, and it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that real advances were made in the understanding of the causes of ill health, as well as its management and treatment. Medical thinking was still dominated by the theories of Hippocrates (460-c.370 BC). He suggested that illness was caused by an imbalance in the four humors - blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. This approach began to be revised only after 1860. Treatments to 'rebalance the humours' and clear the 'miasma of bad air' were vigorous - and not for the faint-hearted. The principal therapy was blood-letting, but purging and laxative treatments were popular, as were enemas and blistering plasters. The latter were applied to various parts of the body with the intent of causing irritation to the skin; it was common, for example, to fix them behind the ears as a means of alleviating toothache. Medicenes and ointments frequently contained highly toxic substances such as antimony, mercury and arsenic. These tortuous therapies were commonplace and left patients debilitated or created an addiction. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) remarked that medicene is 'a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.'

                                                           Blistering Ointment

                                                  Cantharides in coarse powder 600 grammes 
                                                        Powdered euphorbium 200 grammes
                                             Black pitch and yellow resin, of each 400 grammes
                                                                    Yellow wax 300 grammes
                                                                    Olive oil 1000 grammes

Mix the wax, pitch and resin at a gentle heat; add the oil, constantly stirring; strain through cloth. Put the cantharides and the euphorbium in the vessel and damp with water. Add, little by little, half the resinous mixture, and heat to evaporate the water. Then add the rest of the mixture; heat for a few seconds; withdraw from the fire, and stir well till quite cold.

                                                         The Cities And Disease

The living conditions in Victorian Britain gave rise to many of the underlying health problems. Of particular significance was the huge shift from rural to urban life. In 1801, only one-fifth of the population lived in towns and cities; by 1850, the figure had risen to approximately half of the population; and by 1901, the ratio had shifted again with four-fifths residing in urban enviroments. Towns and cities offered employment and escape from rural poverty, but conditions were shocking. 
Rapid urban development had been unregulated, and the ramshackle, severely overcrowded housing left inhabitants more susceptible to infectious diseases. Access to fresh water was limited, with water companies providing a supply only two to three times a week for just a few hours at any one time. This was a situation that did not improve until halfway through Victoria's reign: it was not until 1870 that a continuous supply of water was made available to Londoners for the first time, though for the majority of people this still meant using a street pump. Refuse was either stored in the home or left in piles for the scavengers' cart to collect. The dustbin did not make an appearance in Britain until after 1900. As well as being littered with rubbish, the streets were full of horse manure, so there were flies everywhere in summer. The removal of horse manure was almost as big a problem as that of human waste. Indeed, the management of human sewage was primitive: latrines and cesspits were common, and in the towns and cities a night soil collector made the rounds for those who used only pails. Tons and tons of human waste were removed from the city and despatched to the countryside by boat or train, where it was spread on the fields, thus neatly extending the range of waterborne diseases. The first public water closets were seen at The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. To use them, you had to spend a penny - hence the phrase. Theoretically, flush toilets resolved the sewage dilemma, albeit for only the fortunate few. But the disposal of flushed waste was no more ethical; it was pumped into the sewer, and then directed straight into the nearest river - the source of drinking water. As a result, and typhoid, waterborne diseases, were transmitted through contaminated faeces - a fact that was not recognized until the 1850s. Legislation to improve London's water supply was implemented in 1855, and for the first time water was drawn from outside the city and filtered. The government was forced to take further action after the Great Stink of 1858. In an unusually hot summer, the River Thames and its tributaries overflowed with raw sewage creating an unbearable stench. The following year, the civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) started work on the construction of the central London sewage system. The rest of the country followed London's lead to improve water quality, at least in the towns, after 1870.

Lemon Wash Balls

A lovely lemon-scented soap for handwashing clothing.

Cut 6lbs of soap into very small pieces; melt it into a pint of water in which 6 lemons have been boiled. When melted, withdraw the soap from the fire and add 3lbs of powdered starch and a little essence of lemon; knead the whole into a paste and form into balls of the required size.

Malnourishment And Pollution

But if water supplies and water quality are not what we are used to today, neither was the food. There was little legislation to control the sale of consumables: meat was often rotten and foodstuffs contaminated with dangerous additives as manufacturers competed to produce the cheapest goods. Bakers added alum or chalk to their flour, and mashed potatoes, plaster of Paris or sawdust to increase the weight of their loaves. Brewers added bitter substances, such as strychnine, to their beer to improve taste and save on the cost of hops. People developed a taste for adulterated food, and even principled purveyors were forced to adopt less upright practices because consumers complained that their food didn't 'taste right' without the additives. Legislative controls were not implemented until the Food, Drink and Drugs Act of 1872. Many working class families were therefore malnourished. Women and children suffered the worst with a diet comprising of bread, margarine and tea with sugar. A survey conducted by Charles Booth over a period of 17 years, and published in 1889, revealed that 35 per cent of London's population lived in abject poverty. Surveys from other cities revealed much the same picture. The memoir Mrs John Brown: 1847-1935 describes a typical tragedy from the late 1800s:

In the bed was a young woman, wan and dazed. She was holding a week-old baby to her empty breast. It was so pitiful I did not know what to say. 'I thought there were two children.' 'There was three days to ago,' the woman said. 'Show her, Jem.' The man got up heavily and opened the bottom drawer of a rickety chest, and there lay a little dead child of about two. I gasped. He said, 'We be waiting for the parish to come and bury her.' The mother said, 'We couldn't put her upstairs, alone, in the empty room.' I stood still, sobbing, but the parents shed no tears, nor said a word, except when Jem closed the drawer. 'She were a nice little lass, she were,' he said.

Pollution was a further problem. The air in towns and cities was heavy with smoke from coal fires, which provided the only means of cooking, hot water and heating. It has been estimated that about two-and-a-half million tons of soot were produced annually by domestic consumption alone. This made day-to-day life squalid and dirty for most people, no matter how hard they might try to keep up appearances. More importantly, the soot contributed to the famous London fogs, or London Peculiars, where visibility was reduced to a couple of feet. They were not, however, limited to the capital; towns all over Britain were plagued by them. The fog was thick and brownish yellow in colour, with a sulphurous, sooty, smoky smell. Unlike most fogs, they did not diminish as the sun rose, but became thicker. Horse-drawn coaches and omnibuses had to be led by men carrying torches to warn of their approach. The respiratory diseases that followed were a major source of ill-health and death. In December 1873, the Medical Times and Gazette described a recent fog as 'one of the most disastrous this generation has known. . . . To persons with cardiac and respiratory disease it has in numerous instances proved fatal.' The fogs would not abate until the 1960s. Indeed, the last of the great London fogs went on for four days in December 1952, and is estimated to have killed 4000 people.
This air pollution was also implicated in the high incidence of rickets. Children were more susceptible to this nutritional disease, because thick pollution reduces exposure to sunlight. Rickets were first noted in Britain back in the 1600s, but by the nineteenth century it was widespread. The disease causes softening of the bones, leading to fractures and deformity. A survey undertaken by the British Medical Association in the 1880s revealed a sharp difference between the high incidence of rickets in the urban centres and its virtual absence from small towns, villages and the countryside.
Curiously, bread was implicated. The incidence of rickets was higher in the smoky south because coal was expensive, meaning that it was cheaper for people to buy their bread. Commercially prepared bread was commonly adulterated with alum, an ingredient believed to increase susceptibility to rickets. In the smoky north, where bread was home-baked, children were less susceptible to the disease.

                                                                     SELF-HELP

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it began to dawn on doctors and scientists that this devastating combination of enviromental problem was the root cause of many epidemics.
Progress was slow, however, and the sick face a dilemma: to bankrupt themselves consulting a qualified physician or apothecary, who anyway had little real understanding of disease; or to consult a chemist and druggist for a fraction of the price. For the most of the nineteenth century, the chemist and druggist, or pharmacist, was the main source of medical provision for poor and rich alike.
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published in 1859, gives some idea of the lengths to which the ordinary housewife was prepared to go when it comes to First Aid. She was advised to keep the following items at home in case of emergenices:

The London illustrated News of 1847 reveals the severity of the thick, sulphurous fogs which caused many deaths.

Antimonial Wine, Antimonial Powder, Blister Compound, Blue Pill, Calomel, Carbonate of Potash, Compound Iron Pills, Nitre, Oil of Turpentine, Opium (powdered), Laudanum, Sal-Ammoniac, Senna Leaves, Soap Liniment, Opoldeldoc, Sweet Spirits of Nitre, Turner's Cerate. To which should be added: Common Adhesive Plaster, Isinglass Plaster, Lint, a pair of small Scales with Weights, an ounce and a drachm Measure-glass, a Lancet, a Probe, a pair of Forceps, and some curved Needles.

Many of these medicenes contain lead, mercury and antimony, all of which are highly toxic. As for the forceps and needles, the average housewife was equipping herself with the means to haul a baby into the world, and to stitch up a wound, should the occasion demand. It's an approach more robust than that of the shrinking violet more commonly associated with Victorian womanhood. And it's approach that was cultivated out of necessity. Even amongst what we would now call healthcare professionals, there was still very little real understanding of the cause of illness and disease - and only a rather hazy understanding of anatomy. Healthcare was a private business, a commercial enterprise like any other and it operated much as it had for centuries. (There was no National Health Service until 1948). The only free medical care came from charity hospitals, such as the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead and some teaching hospitals. Friendly Societies sprang up in the late eighteenth century. Members made regular payments in return for which they received help with the cost of paying for a doctor or, indeed, for a funeral. By the end of the ninteenth century, there were more than 30,000 Friendly Societies, which offered working men and women some security in times of need and protected them from debt through illness, death or old age.

British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

On December 15th, 1620 a very different colony was established father north by just over 100 English Puritan farmers and craftsmen. These colonists became known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were seeking a place where they could worship without persecution. They left Plymouth in a ship called the Mayflower and dropped anchor off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The colony flourished when native American farmers taught the settlers how to grow corn (maize). In the autumn of 1621 they held their first harvest supper. They feasted on geese, turkeys, duck, shellfish, watercress and wine and invited the native Americans to the first Thanksgiving Day. That day, towards the end of November, is now a national holiday in the United States. Families and neighbours meet together to share the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

THE EARLY SETTLERS

The first settlers' houses were built of wood, of which there was plenty in the surrounding fortress. The roofs were made of thatch and later of thin sheets of hardwood called shingle. The first chimneys were made of stone and later of brick. The colonists' life was hard: they spun thread, wove cloth, and tanned leather for jackets and shoes, and made candles from fat or beeswax. Although there was plenty of land to grow crops and they were free from religious persecution life was tough for these first settlers so that even after ten years, their colony still numbered only about 300 people.

In 1636, Roger Williams established a permanent settlement at Providence, Rhode Island (the smallest state in the United States). Williams was a Puritan minister who was driven out of Massachusetts because he accused the Puritans of not being tolerant enough. Williams bought the land from two native American Narragansett chiefs. Setting up a new colony held many dangers - land had to be cleared, even in the harsh winter, and supplies were scarce. However, by 1643 there were four settlements in Rhode Island which united in 1663.

The Mayflower took 102 Puritan colonists and 47 crew safely across the Atlantic. The ship was only about 30 metres long and 6 metres wide. The height of the space below deck was only one metre (high enough for a small child) and there were no portholes. Here the men, women and children rolled about and were sick as the ship was tossed around by the ocean swell for two months. The only water available for washing was sea water. Nevertheless, only one colonist and four crew died on the epic voyage.

1620: Pilgrim Fathers sail from Plymouth to colonize America. They arrive at Cape Cod and found the Plymouth Colony.

1621: James I calls third Parliament: it votes money for English involvement in Thirty Years War. Great Protestation asserts the rights of Parliament; petition against Catholicism.

1623: George Villiers, Jame's favourite, becomes Duke of Buckingham. Charles and Duke of Buckingham fail to negotiate Spanish marriage. First English settlement in New Hampshire.

1624: James calls fourth Parliament. Marriage arranged between Charles and Henrietta Maria of France.

1625: James dies: succeeded by Charles I. Charles marries Henrietta Maria. Parliament votes customs' duties for king for one year only.

1626: Charles summons second Parliament which impeaches Buckingham and is dissolved. War with France. Charles collects taxes without Parliament's approval.

1628: Charles calls his third Parliament: MPs present Petition of Right, and oppose king's collction of taxes.

CHARLES I

ON JAMES I'S DEATH IN 1625, his son Charles I inherited a difficult financial situation. Parliament believed that ''the King should live of his own'', meaning that money from taxes and Crown lands should pay all government expenses, and also the expenses of the Court.
It was usual for Parliament to vote a new sovereign money for life in the form of customs duties. However, James I had found expenses rising faster than income. This was partly due to inflation, caused by the arrival of gold and silver from the Americas. James resorted to a variety of methods to raise money, including creating the title of baronet and selling it to wealthy candidates. Irritated at Charles's attempts to ignore them, Members of Parliament voted taxes to Charles for one year only. Charles had a constant struggle to find money by other means to finance himself. Finally he raised taxes without Parliament's consent, but this led to a bitter conflict with those wanting to protect the rights of Parliament.

PARLIAMENT'S PETITION OF RIGHT

In the first four years of his reign Charles I called three Parliaments and disagreed with all of them. At the root of the problem were money and war: first against Spain, and then against France to support the Huguenots (the French Protestants). Parliament was all for the war, and voted funds for it - but at a price. That price was embodied in the Petition of Right, presented to the king by the House of Commons in 1628. It demanded an end to: martial law; billeting of troops on people; imprisonment without trial; and forced loans and taxes (raised without the consent of Parliament). The king was forced to accept the petition.

KING AGAINST PARLIAMENT

The quarrel between the king and Parliament continued, because Charles refused to stop collecting his own taxes after the time limit set by Parliament. The Commons passed three resolutions condemning the actions of Charles and his ministers. When the Speaker of the House, Sir John Finch, tried to announce that the king had dismissed Parliament, the Members of Parliament held him in his chair while the resolutions were put to the vote, and the doors were barred against Black Rod, the royal messenger from the House of Lords. Today, the Commons slam their door in Black Rod's face whenever he comes to summon them to hear the Queen's Speech in the Lords at the opening of Parliament. After this incident Charles did dissolve Parliament, and he ruled for 11 years without it. Like his father James I, Charles firmly believed in the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and rejected the role of Parliament to run the country.

THE CIVIL WAR

THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR OF 1642 to 1646, or Great Rebellion as some people called it, was sparked off by religion. Charles tried to impose bishops on the Scottish Church, and the Presbyterians refused to accept them. They signed a Covenant to resist, and raised an army. Charles made peace, but it did not last. He had to summon Parliament to obtain money to pay for his army, but dissolved it after three weeks. Then the Scots invaded England, and Charles persuaded them to halt on payment of £850 a day. Desperate, he had to call Parliament again in 1640.
This Parliament began by impeaching Strafford and Laud, the king's hated ministers, for treason, and later had Strafford executed. They abolished two ancient courts - Star Chamber and High Commission - which Charles had used to raise money illegally. John Hampden and John Pym led Members of the Commons to insist on reforms. Charles tried to arrest them and three other Members for treason. He failed, and soon armed conflict broke out. The opposing sides were the Parliamentarians, or Roundheads (they had their hair cut short), and the Royalists, or Cavaliers - because they wore long hair like the knights (chevaliers in French) of old.

BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR

The king's main support was in the west; Parliament held the east, and London. The actual fighting took place in a relatively small part of the country. But the impact of the Civil War was felt everywhere, not least because family loyalties were split. Early battles were inconclusive: the king's forces had better cavalry under the command of his nephew Prince Rupert )who had fought in Europe in the Thirty Years War). But the Parliamentary army, with its musketeers and pikemen, proved steadfast on the whole against the cavalry attacks. They were also later trained to charge and proved so steady in attack that Rupert called these well-trained forces Ironsides. Led by Oliver Cromwell, the Ironsides defeated Rupert and the Royalist army at Marston Moor in 1644 and won all the north of England. Parliament was so impressed it reorganized its forces into a New Model Army, based on Cromwell's Ironsides. This army grew to 20,000 men and was strictly disciplined, properly equipped, and regularly paid. It was led by General Fairfax with Cromwell as second-in-command. It defeated the king at the battle of Naseby in 1645, the last major battle of the Civil War. Charles escaped to Scotland but was handed over to Parliament by the Scots. Eventually, Parliament came to the conclusion that it could not trust the King and Charles became the only British monarch to be tried for treason and executed.

THE COMMONWEALTH

THE EXECUTION OF Charles I left England firmly in the hands of Parliament and its army. For the next 11 years the country did not have a king. This period was called the Commonwealth against Dutch, French and Spanish support for the young Charles II, as well as Scottish and Irish rebellions. Charles II was proclaimed king in Scotland, and the Irish also rallied to the Royalist cause. Cromwell took an army to Ireland, where he subdued the Royalists with great severity. Charles and an army of Scots marched into England, where they were defeated by Cromwell at Worcester. Charles escaped to France.

CROMWELL AND PARLIAMENT

The country was governed by the so-called Rump Parliament, made up of those Members of the Commons remaining when Cromwell and the army had forced through Charles I's trial and execution. It was this Parliament that had declared the Commonwealth and also abolished the House of Lords. Members of the Rump were mostly Puritans. Oliver Cromwell, however, was the real power in the land. He turned the Rump out, and called a new Parliament, nominated by the Army and the independent Nonconformist Churches. It was nicknamed Barebone's Parliament, after one of its more extreme religious Members, Praise-God Barebone. This Parliament also failed to provide a strong government.

CROMWELL: LORD PROTECTOR

From 1653 Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. He was offered the Crown by Parliament but refused to be King Oliver. As Protector, Cromwell made the country peaceful and also made it stronger abroad. He allowed some religious freedom, except for Catholics in Ireland. He put down the Levellers who believed in the abolition of distinctions of rank. Cromwell still used his army to enforce what he thought was right. To maintain his army he had to increase taxes which made him very unpopular. Cromwell died, probably of cancer, in 1658.

CHARLES II

CROMWELL WAS GIVEN  a king's funeral. At this time no one was sure who should replace him - though most people wanted to return to having a monarchy. Before he died, Oliver Cromwell nominated his son to succeed him. Richard Cromwell was a weak and mild man and the Army, still the main power in the land, turned him out. Amid all the chaos, General George Monk, commander in Scotland, organized new elections, and a fresh Parliament recalled Charles II from exile to be king in 1660. Charles travelled from Holland with 100 ships, and timed his entry into London to coincide with his birthday. He was received with great popular acclaim.

THE CLARENCE CODE

After the upheavals and trauma of the Civil War and Commonwealth, people feared the Puritans both on religious grounds and also as a threat to the monarchy. Parliament therefore passed a group of Acts, which were known as the Clarendon Code, named after the king's chief minister, the Earl of Clarendon. The Code compelled all clergymen and people holding office in local and national government to take Communion in accordance with the rites of the Anglican Church. People who did not attend Church of England services would be punished. Nonconformist prayer-meetings were limited to five people, and their clergy were barred from coming nearer than eight kilometres to a town. Charles II is thought to have had some Catholic sympathies, but he knew that to keep his Crown he had to support the Church of England. So he went along with Parliament's rigid laws against Catholics and Puritans alike. Only on his deathbed did he convert to the Roman Catholic faith.

THE GREAT PLAGUE

The London that Charles II returned to in 1660 was the largest city in Europe with 500,000 inhabitants (Paris had 350,000). However, health and hygiene in the city had not improved since the time of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. The streets were just as dirty and full of disease and rats were everywhere. Many houses were built closely together and streets were very narrow. This meant that any epidemic would spread rapidly.

FOCUS ON THE GREAT PLAGUE

On June 7th, 1665, Samuel Pepys noted in his famous diary that ''this day, much against my will I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors''. This was the tell-tale sign that the occupants had become sick with the plague. The Great Plague, from 1664 to 1665, was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the southeast of England which killed 68,596 people - almost 20 per cent of London's population. There was no cure: bodies would be carried out at night in carts to special mass pits. Drivers rang handbells and called out ''Bring out your dead!'' They were paid well for a dangerous job. Pepys provides a gritty day-to-day account of the plague in his diaries.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

The following year saw another disaster, the Great Fire of London. This began in a baker's house in Pudding Lane and quickly swept through the crowded wooden houses. It raged for several days, until houses were blown up to make gaps which the fire could not cross. King Charles himself directed the firefighters and even worked among them. The fire was not an unmixed disaster; filthy alleys were burned down, the plague was halted, and London was rebuilt with wider streets and improved water supplies. After the fire, many new buildings were erected in stone and brick, instead of wood. Among them were 52 churches designed by the architect. Christopher Wren, including his most well-known building, St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1675-1710.

SAMUEL PEPYS'S DIARIES

We know a lot about both disasters in London thanks to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. He was a civil servant helping to improve the navy. He also had access to Charles II's Court and was a great gossip. He kept a diary for nine years but wrote it in secret and in code. The diaries were then lost, and not rediscovered until 1825. The diary has since became one of the most famous ever written in Britain. Its pages bring alive the London of Charles II with its theatres, coffee houses, horse-racing, gambling and beautiful women.

THE DUTCH WAR

The English and Dutch were rivals in fishing and trade, and when the Dutch started settlements on the Hudson River of North America among the English colonies, the merchants appealed to Parliament and war was declared. It began with an English victory in a naval battle of 300 ships off Lowestoft in 1665. In 1667, when the English fleet was unable to put to see because of lack of supplies, the Dutch sailed up the Medway, raided the naval dockyard at Chatham, and captured the flagship Royal Charles, which they took back to Holland as a war trophy. Other battles were fought during the two years that the war dragged on. One, in June 1666, in the North Sea, lasted for four days. The Dutch were led by their great admiral De Ruyter, and the English fought under George Monk, Duke of Albemarle. Both sides claimed victory.

JAMES II

CHARLES II HAD NO CHILDREN with his wife Catherine of Braganza from Portugal, but he had many mistresses who gave him 14 illegitimate sons and daughters. The most popular of his sons was James, Duke of Monmouth, called the Protestant Duke. Monmouth was a capable soldier, who had commanded English troops during the Dutch War. When Charles II died, his brother James became king in 1685, Monmouth thought he could rally the Protestant cause against the Catholic James and win the throne for himself. But he picked his time badly: James had not been king long enough to make himself unpopular, and the motley army Monmouth was able to raise was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, in Somerset. Monmouth was executed for treason, and so were nearly 300 of his followers. A further 800 were sold as slaves to Barbados.

JAMES II AND CATHOLIC PLOTS

Jame's succession was also threatened by fears of a Catholic plot. The Exclusion movement, led by the Whigs - the first political party in English history - believed the new king would try to restore the Roman Catholic religion. They wanted to exclude him from the throne. From 1688 James tried to introduce pro-Catholic measures including a Declaration of Indulgence which cancelled all laws against Nonconformists (chiefly Catholics). Seven bishops were arrested because they would not read out the Declaration in church, but were found not guilty. The arrests were very unpopular.

WHIG AND TORY

The terms Whig and Tory came into use at this time as terms of abuse for political opponents. Whig was originally a name for Scottish cattle thieves, but it was applied to those people who wanted to exclude James II from the throne because of his Catholic sympathies. James made a promise to uphold the Church of England (despite being a Catholic) to quieten the protesters. Tory was originally the name given to Irishmen whose land had been taken away and who had become outlaws. But the term Tory was given to those people who supported James II and the claims of the Crown. How the terms came to be applied to English political groups is obscure. But the name became thoroughly established in British politics.

WILLIAM AND MARY

JAMES II'S OBVIOUS ATTEMPTS to favour Catholics so angered the Protestants that Parliament invited the Dutch Protestant prince, William of Orange to come and deliver the country from its unpopular ruler. Parliament was prompted to this action by the birth of a son to James by his second wife. This pushed the claim of the Protestant Princess Mary, Jame's daughter and William's wife, into second place. William's invasion consisted of some 250 ships which anchored at Torbay in Devon in November 1688. William with his Protestant army landed to press his wife's claim to the throne. Mary had refused to accept the Crown unless Parliament also offered it to her husband. When William arrived in London James fled to France. As a result Parliament agreed that James had vacated his throne and offered the Crown to William and Mary.

IRISH PROTESTANT RULE

After he was deposed by William of Orange, Irish Catholics sided with James, while the Protestants of Ulster supported William. James went to Ireland where he raised an army. In 1689 he laid siege to Londonderry where thousands of Irish Protestants sought refuge. He failed to take the city and William finally defeated James at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. This battle is still celebrated annually by the Protestant Orangemen of Ulster. James fled back to France, where he died in 1701.

QUEEN ANNE

The Treaty of Ryswick made in 1697 between England, France, Holland and Spain had acknowledged William III as the rightful King of England, and Anne, James II's Protestant daughter, as his successor. She became Queen Anne I in 1702, aged 37, and was the last Stuart monarch. Her life was full of great personal sadness and bad health. She had 17 children but all of them died in infancy or childhood. Her reign was dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession abroad and by rivalry between Whigs and Tories at home. By the terms of the Act of Succession of 1701 the throne was to pass to the nearest Protestant heir, in the House of Hanover. Anne hated her German cousins and refused to allow them to come to England. But as her reign drew to an end she sent an envoy to the future George I, assuring him of her friendship. By so doing she played a vital role in ensuring that there was a peaceful change of dynasty. 

ACT OF UNION

The political union of England and Scotland, which James I had tried to bring about when he became King of England in 1603, was finally accomplished in 1707. The Scots did not accept the English Act of Settlement, which in 1701 had settled the Crown on the descendants of the Protestant Sophia of Hanover (grand-daughter of James I and mother of the future George I). There was an unspoken threat that Scotland might, when Queen Anne died, bring back the Catholic Stuarts by making James II's son, James Francis Edward the Old Pretender, King of Scotland. This threat brought the English Parliament to support the move towards union. The Scots had come to realize that their country could no longer prosper as an independent nation. Under the Act of Union, their Parliament gained free trade with England, and cash to pay off huge debts acquired in a disastrous colonising venture in Darien in Central America. The Scots also kept their own legal system and Presbyterian church.

BIRTH OF GREAT BRITAIN

The resulting kingdom of England and Scotland was called Great Britain. For some years after the union the people of Scotland, felt they were at a disadvantage in an unequal partnership. The English majority in the combined Parliament meant that measures which favoured England at Scotland's expense were passed. One example was a special tax on linen, which was unimportant in the south but a major industry north of the border. However, the union was in Scotland's favour as it was now able to trade with England's various colonies. After decades of conflict the two countries combined in an uneasy but peaceful alliance.

FOCUS ON THE COFFEE HOUSES

During the 1600s coffee was brought to England from the Middle East. In 1652 the first coffee house was opened in London. Coffee houses quickly spread to become popular places where people went to gossip, do business deals and discuss politics. In 1688 Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house in Tower Street, a rendezvous for people who would insure ships and their cargoes, and read a publication called Lloyd's News, which gave important shipping details. From this original 17th-century coffee house sprang the modern Lloyd's, the world's foremost shipping insurers. From about 1704 single news-sheets - the first form of newspapers - could also be bought and read at coffee houses.

British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

James I enforced an old law against Roman Catholics which stated that they had to go to Protestant churches, or be fined. A group of Catholics decided to start a revolution by blowing up the Houses of Parliament at a time when James was to be there. But one of the conspirators warned a relative, who was likely to be endangered by the plot: ''Retire yourself  into the country . . . they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.'' The relative passed the information on to the authorities who searched the cellars of Parliament.

GUY FAWKES

Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, was caught red-handed guarding several barrels of gunpowder. The leader of the conspiracy was not, in fact, Fawkes but Robert Catesby. Fawkes endured hours of torture on the rack, but refused to incriminate anyone else. Fawkes and the other conspirators confessed under torture and were tried for treason and executed.

AUTHORISED BIBLE

When James I came to the throne there were five English translations of the Bible in use. He ordered a new translation. Fifty churchmen and scholars completed the task in seven years. The result was the Authorised Version, or King James Bible - which is still the most popular English version after more than 350 years. The beauty of its language has been a lasting influence on all English-speaking peoples. It also provided a major inspiration for the Puritan movement which later overthrew Charles I.

THE PURITANS

The Reformation of England had brought very few changes to the Church and many Catholic practices continued. The Church of England retained bishops, ceremony and vestments. But many people wanted a simpler, purer form of worship, with no bishops or elaborate religious ritual. They became known as Puritans. Some Puritans left England for America, where they could worship as they chose. But most remained determined to fight oppression rather than evade it. They were the dominant influence in Parliament in its later clash with Charles I.

LADY ARABELLA STUART

Lady Arabella Stuart was Jame's first cousin, and had a claim to the throne on Elizabeth's death. For this reason Elizabeth I and then James, were determined that she should marry only someone they could trust. Arabella fell in love with William Seymour, later Duke of Somerset. He was a great-great-grandson of Henry VII and, in Henry VIII's will, had been made the next heir to the British throne after Elizabeth. James forbade this match, but the couple married secretly in 1610. A conspiracy against James I was hatched, but the couple were found out and imprisoned. Arabella and Seymour planned an escape, Seymour got away, but Arabella was recaptured and confined in the Tower, where she died, insane. Seymour later became a leading Royalist general in the Civil War.

THE FIRST COLONIES

THE BEGINNINGS OF the British empire took place in Elizabethan times with Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuccessful attempt to set up a colony at Roanoke in North America. But James I distrusted Raleigh and finally had him executed. In 1607 three ships sailed into present-day Chesapeke Bay in Maryland where they built a fort at Jamestown (named after James I). Of the 104 colonists, almost half died that summer from malaria, typhoid and shortage of food. It was here that the Algonquin princess Pocahontas befriended Captain John Smith and saved him from being clubbed to death. She later came to London and attended the royal court. She died in 1617 on her way back to Jamestown. The colony itself eventually prospered and plantations of tobacco were established with the help of the local native American tribes. Later the colonists brought in black slaves from West Africa to work the fields.

British History - Tudors & Stuarts 1485 - 1714

ELIZABETH'S COURT

The court around Queen Elizabeth glittered like the queen herself. Here was an age when, it seemed, every gentleman aspired to be a poet or a musician, or both. For example, Sir Philip Sidney, the brave soldier who died fighting the Spanish at Zutphen, in the Netherlands, was a fine poet. Elizabeth's reign saw a flourishing of plays and poetry. The Globe Theatre, since restored in 1996, could hold nearly 3,000 people. The outstanding playwright was William Shakespeare, but at the time he was one of many highly regarded dramatic poets. Others had more than one occupation. Playwright Christopher Marlowe, murdered in a tavern brawl, is thought to have been a secret agent; Edmund Spenser, who wrote The Faerie Queene, helped in the plantation (settlement) of Ireland.
England led the way in the writing of music for keyboard instruments, and much traditional church music was written at this time. Two outstanding musicians were Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd. Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign madrigals (love poems sung by several voices without musical accompaniment) were introduced into England. Thomas Morley edited a collection of madrigals in honour of Elizabeth, called The Triumphs of Oriana, but it was not published until after the Queen's death.

FOCUS ON THE THEATRE

England's first theatre was built at Shoreditch. It was based on the enclosed courtyard of big inns, where actors used to perform. The theatre was built by actor-manager James Burbage. The building was simply called 'The Theatre'. It was open to the sky, like the later Globe Theatre where Shakespeare acted. Other theatres, such as the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, had roofs.

1562-64: Elizabeth I sends forces to France to help the Huguenot (French Protestants) in their revolt against the Catholic government. John Hawkins becomes the first English slave trader.

1565: Mary, Queen of Scots marries her cousin Lord Darnley. Royal Exchange, London, founded. John Hawkins brings back sweet potatoes and tobacco.

1566: Darnley and others murder David Rizzio, Mary's secretary.

1567: Darnley murdered; Mary marries Bothwell. Mary abdicates; succeeded by son James VI, aged one. Earl of Moray becomes Regent: Mary held prisoner.

1568: Mary escapes to England and becomes prisoner of Elizabeth.

1569: Rebellion in the north of England: Durham Cathedral plundered.

1570: Pope Pius V declares Elizabeth a usurper and heretic.

1572: Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Northumberland executed for treason. Francis Drake attacks Spanish harbours in the Americas.

1573: John Hawkins begins to reform the Navy.

1575: MP Peter Wentworth claims freedom from arrest for Members of Parliament for discussing key areas of government.

1576: James Burbage opens first theatre at Shoreditch.

1577-80: Drake's voyage round the world. Drake returns from voyage and is knighted by Elizabeth.

1583: Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for England. Edinburgh University founded.

EXPLORATION


WHEN THE ITALIAN EXPLORER Christopher Columbus approached Henry VII in 1492 for funds to pay for his voyages of discovery, Henry, known for his financial caution, turned him down. Columbus was eventually funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who benefited greatly from his discoveries in America. Five years later Henry VII did finance John Cabot's expedition. Cabot was a sailor from Genoa, Italy, who was based in Bristol. His voyage led eventually to the founding of the first British colony in America, at Newfoundland (in present-day Canada). Later a rich cod-fishing trade developed there. Henry VII was pleased with the results and gave Cabot a pension of £20.

THE RISE OF THE NAVAL POWERS

From the end of the 15th century, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and later England, started on a series of daring expeditions to claim new lands and wealth on the other side of the world. The European powers intended to ship spices, precious metals, cotton and others materials back home. To do this they all needed strong navies. Henry VIII helped to establish a reliable English navy of 50 to 70 ships and about 8,000 sailors, as well as a network of dockyards. One of the new ships he had built was the Mary Rose, named after his favourite sister, but it capsized and sank before his eyes on July 19, 1545.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

Sir Francis Drake was an accomplished explorer and sea captain who served Elizabeth loyally and helped England become a major sea power. Between 1577 to 1580, he and his men on the Golden Hind made an epic voyage around the world, the first crew to do so. Elizabeth and others bought shares in the voyage, the object of which was to plunder the Spanish colonies as well as to explore a way by sea to Asia and its riches. Elizabeth gave Drake a knighthood on his return.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Walter Raleigh was a great soldier, explorer, and writer. The story Raleigh removing his coat and placing it over a large puddle so Elizabeth could avoid getting wet may not be true. But he did become one of the Queen's favourites at Court. Elizabeth wanted colonies for England - chiefly to establish trading posts for merchants and so bring wealth to the country. In 1584, Raleigh sent 100 colonists across the Atlantic to America to find gold and take possession of new lands. Queen Elizabeth was impressed with the venture and so he named the new land Virginia after her, because people called her the ''Virgin Queen''. Raleigh was also the first person to introduce tobacco and potatoes into England from the American colonies.

1584: Sir Walter Raleigh tries to establish a colony near Roanaoke Island, Virginia (now North Carolina).

1586: Drake raids Santo Domingo and Cartagena in West Indies. Francis Walsingham uncovers Babington Plot, involving Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary condemned for treason.

1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, executed. Drake partly destroys Spanish fleet at Cadiz. War with Spain breaks out.

1588: Philip II launches ''Invincible Armada'' against England, but it is destroyed.

1590: First Shakespeare plays performed.

1592: Plague kills 15,000 Londoners.

1593: Poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe murdered.

1595: Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, heads rebellion in Ireland.

1595: Spaniards land in Cornwall, burn Mousehole and Penzance. Raleigh explores Orinoco River in South America.

1597: John Harington describes his new invention, the water-closet.

1598: Battle of the Yellow Ford: Irish defeat the English.

1599: Earl of Essex becomes Lord Deputy of Ireland; he concludes truce with Tyrone, but is arrested at home. Lord Mountjoy succeeds Essex as Lord Deputy of Ireland. East India Company founded.

1601: Essex dabbles in plots, is tried for treason and executed. Spanish army lands in Ireland, but surrenders at Kinsale.

1603: Mountjoy crushes Irish rebellion. Elizabeth I dies; succeeded by James I of England (James VI of Scotland). Amnesty in Ireland. Main and Bye Plots against James I: Raleigh is jailed for involvement.

                                                                         THE STUARTS
                                                                           (1603-1714)

ELIZABETH I'S HEIR WAS JAMES VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. The family of Stuart had ruled Scotland for 232 years before James VI united England and Scotland under a common crown, thought not yet in law. Eventful as those years had been, they were not so dramatic as the following 111 years during which the Stuarts ruled over England, Wales, Scotland and , in name, over Ireland. In that time the combined nation underwent two revolutions: the English Civil War 1642-1645 which ended with the execution of Charles I, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This was a bloodless affair, when the Dutch prince William of Orange was invited to become King of England in place of Catholic James II, and so secure the Protestant succession for the English throne.
At first the Stuart monarchs claimed to rule by divine right; eventually it was made plain that they ruled by the consent and invitation of Parliament. The death of Charles I brought a period known as the Commonwealth when England was ruled by Oliver Cromwell and Parliament. On Cromwell's death, Parliament called Charles II back from exile and in 1660 the monarchy was restored. By the end of the Stuart period England and Scotland were formally united, and Ireland was more controlled by the English than before. Meanwhile, the British were expanding overseas. Many colonies, were set up in the North America. The religious tensions at home drove some people abroad to escape persecution. The most famous group was the Pilgrim Fathers, who founded the Plymouth Colony in America in 1620. Elsewhere, British traders established settlements in southern Africa and India which would eventually develop into an empire.

James I

THE NEW KING James I of England was, as he said himself, an ''old and experienced king''. He had already ruled Scotland for 25 years as James VI. The son of Mary Stuart and Lord Darnley, he believed in the divine, or God-given, right of kings to rule, and had managed the Scottish Parliament more or less as he liked. The English Parliament was far less easy to handle, insisting that the king could rule only by its consent. James supported the Protestant Church and was determined to enforce its practices.