The Entire History Of The United Kingdom - A History Thread

I really enjoy writing these, so... here's another one for anyone that wishes to read. I'll be going from 1603, when the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland entered a personal union, forming the basis to uniting the entire island, all the way up to the Brexit vote (nothing controversial, just objectivity in how it relates as a massive part of British history).

So, without further ado, my biggest one yet...

INTRODUCTION
Part I: King James
Part II: King Charles
Part III: The Personal Rule
Part IV: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Part V: The Interregnum
Part VI: The Restoration
Part VII: The Glorious Revolution

Part IX: The Union of the Crowns
Part X: The Georgian Era
Part XI: The Georgian Era - Part II
Part XII: The Victorian Era
Part 13: The Edwardian Era

Part 14: Irish Independence
Part 15: Post-War Britain
Part 16: The Great Depression
Part 17: The Storm

Part 18: Attlee
Part 19: Churchill
Part 20: The Suez Crisis

Part 21: Supermac

FLAGS = BIG

England

Dominant Ethnicity (As Of 1603): English
Dominant Language (As of 1603): English
Other Languages: Cornish, spoken in Cornwall
Official Religion (As of 1603): Anglican Protestant (under the Church of England)
Dominant Religion (As of 1603): Anglican Protestant (under the Church of England)



The Angle, Saxon, and Jute tribes were powerful Germanic tribes that lived in the modern day Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark until the fourth century, when they migrated into Great Britain, bringing Christianity with them. By the fifth century, the Saxons founded the Kingdoms of Wessex (West Saxons), Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons); the Angles founded the Kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia (East Angles), and Mercia; while the Jutes founded just one, called the Kingdom of the Kentish (the modern day area called Kent). The Kingdom of Mercia came to dominate the military and political affairs of Great Britain, and was even referred to by Charlemagne (the first Holy Roman Emperor, who united France and Germany together and is thus regarded as the ‘father of France and Germany’) as impressive. Eventually the Kingdom of East Anglia and Northumbria was invaded by Denmark, who started a colony known as ‘The Danelaw’. To combat this, Wessex lead an alliance of all the other kingdoms to repel further invasions, kick the Danish out, and restore order to Northumbria and East Anglia. The King of Wessex was eventually crowned the King of Angleland in 927. Its capital city was Winchester in Wessex, at the very south of the country.

By 1016, the Kingdom of Angleland had become a part of the North Sea Empire, joining the Kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and parts of modern day Sweden. It collapsed in 1035, and England was ruled over by a chosen successor. Said chosen successor had promised William Normandy, the Duke of Normandy, the crown… as well as Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, and Harold Godwinsson, an Anglo-Saxon duke. Harold claimed it first and repelled a Norwegian invasion, slaying Harald in the fighting. When he went to repel the Norman invasion, he was killed instead and the crown passed to William. King William moved the capital city to London, made the Anglo-Saxon language more French – the Kingdom of Angleland was now called the Kingdom of England, and burned down their villages and replaced their lords with Frenchmen if they spoke out against it. England went on to create the Magna Carta, a fundamental pillar of British democracy, in the 1200s; conquered Wales and eventually Ireland; and tried to unite with the Kingdom of France in a series of wars that lasted over one-hundred years and ended unsuccessfully. French rule was officially ended when Henry Tudor, a Welsh lord, won the crown after a bloody civil war. His descendants abandoned Catholicism, turning England into a Protestant nation and transformed it into an emerging great power – indeed, it successfully took Spain on in a war during the reign of Elizabeth I. The modern day equivalent would be the United Kingdom going to war with the United States and winning. It also developed a parliament, which is sapping power from the monarchy with each passing year. This is how it enters the rule of James I.

Scotland
Dominant Ethnicity (As Of 1603): Scots
Other Ethnicities: Gaelic Scots
Dominant Language (As of 1603): Scots
Other Languages: Gaelic, spoken in Northern Scotland
Official Religion (As of 1603): Scottish Presbyterians (Under the Church of Scotland)
Dominant Religion (As of 1603): Presbyterianism (Under the Church of Scotland)



Scotland, before the Anglo-Saxon invasion, was a land of Celtic Gaels, sharing a close history with Ireland. When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, many of them made their way into South Scotland and interbred with the local Celts, making their own language – Scots, which is mutually intelligible with English, and founded the Kingdom of Scotland in 843. It eventually grew to encompass the northern third of Great Britain and defended itself against English invasion multiple times during the Middle Ages. It lost the Northern Isles to the Kingdom of Norway in 1472 and Berwick to England in 1482, shrinking to its modern day borders. It developed its own parliament, which merely oversaw taxation; as well as Scots Law, which is a bit more devolved than English Law was. It lacked a capital city until the fifteenth century, when the city of Edinburgh was chosen. King James VI became the King of England in 1603, bringing Scotland into an uneasy personal union as the junior partner – the one more likely to get bossed around - with its lifelong rival.

Wales
Dominant Ethnicity (As Of 1603): Welsh
Other Ethnicities: None
Dominant Language (As of 1603): Welsh
Other Languages: None
Official Religion (As of 1603): Anglican Protestant (Under the Church of England)
Dominant Religion (As of 1603): Non-Conformist (Protestants who belong to no church), Catholics



The Welsh are Celtic Britons who came to Great Britain around 2,000 BC, spreading themselves across Wales, England, and Southern Scotland. They lived under the banner of the Roman Empire from 48 AD to 410 AD. They were Christianised by 500 AD, but were attempting to repel the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Eventually, the land that would become England – called ‘Lloegyr’ in Welsh, meaning ‘The Lost Land’ – was… well, lost. They were pushed into Cornwall, owned by England, and the most eastern and mountainous parts of Great Britain, known as Wales – in English, that means ‘Land Of The Foreigners’. They received a new name – ‘the Welsh’ – meaning ‘foreigners’.
During the 1200s, England conquered Wales and turned it into its very first colony. It was legal to murder Welsh people if they crossed the England-Wales border. After Wales rebelled for their independence from 1400 to 1415, England outlawed the Welsh from holding political office, bearing arms, living in fort towns, marrying English people, or having equal human rights (what concept there was of that back then, at least) to the English. House Tudor, a house from the Welsh island of Anglesey, had their home razed to the ground and moved to London. They came into control of England, sparking hope that this was the fabled moment Wales regains control of its island – Henry VIII, a Tudor, absorbed Wales into England, granting it seats in parliament… at the cost of the Welsh legal system. It enters the reign of King James I as a half-noncomformist (it hated the Church of England but couldn’t get its own church, so the people never wanted one), half-Catholic part of England.

Ireland
Dominant Ethnicity (As Of 1603): Irish
Other Ethnicities: English and Scottish settlers in Ulster/Northern Ireland
Dominant Language (As of 1603): Gaelic
Other Languages: None
Official Religion (As of 1603): Anglican Protestant (Under the Church of Ireland)
Dominant Religion (As of 1603): Catholicism



Ireland was a land of Celtic Gaels who lived pretty peacefully on their little green island, not bothering anyone but themselves. They converted to Catholicism in the fifth century. Then they started getting raided by Vikings. The Vikings came and went. They were split up into several small and weak kingdoms. Around the same time as Wales started getting conquered, the English realised there’s more even more land owned by weak and small kingdoms to be conquered. England even got the Pope to ask if it was okay to invade Ireland, and the Pope said yes. They signed the Treaty of Windsor in 1175, which said that everything was fine now and Ireland didn’t have to be attacked any more because England got what land it wanted, and Ireland was okay with being semi-ruled by England as long as it could still have an Irish King and lots of independence. The English carried on attacking them just as soon the treaty was signed, and in 1177 the King of England’s Prince was proclaimed as the Lord of all of Ireland. The Tudors then conquered the rest of it and started sending English settlers into Ulster –the modern day Northern Ireland.

Bravo.
I doubt I would ever have the time to write anything about Canada's history, aha you sure do have a gift of essay writing. Interesting writings indeed, I'm glad I took the time to study a bit on the history of the British Isles through YouTube, other wise I would have been lost.

Canada's history is basically the outcome of wanting to make money, as is of every country on earth.
The French came, Jaques Cartier sailed down the Saint Lawrence, kidnapped a few people, insulted the Haudenosaunee's people, and then claimed it all for France. Long Story short, Champlain founds Port Royal and Quebec and joins in on the fur trade. Settlements are set up by the French, but their colonies are there purely focusing on furs, the courier du Bois sure did a great job in trading. The great lakes become a hub of fur trading and the French develop a special bond with the Wednat who despise the Iroquois which the French promptly assists in destroying.

Since France was awful at growing colonies, New France had basically 24,000 people while the 13 colonies of the British had 1 million. Short story shorter, the British eventually won the 7 years war, kicking the French out. Honestly, if the French had bothered focusing on farming instead of fur trading their colonies would have been much more stable. Luckily for French people, unlucky for English people in Quebec, the Quebec Act passes giving French people freedoms in language and in religion, a showcase to the fact that Quebec still uses Stop signs in the French language.

Then Upper and Lower Canada have this beef, Upper Canada is dominantly British, while Lower Canada is dominantly French, meaning an obvious rich vs poor deal going on. Then Canada unites and our Lord John A. Macdonald founds Mcdonalds and also the Canadian Railway. That's how my home Province came to be if it wasn't for George Vancouver, the Gold Rush, Fraser and good ol' Canadian railways British Columbia would be a fail of a Spanish territorial landmass.

Good thing my dad likes logging these good ol' mountains, the same mountains the settlers forested in the 1800s. Honestly, Gold Rush history in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon is underrated.

Part I: King James

James Stuart, when he inherited England (and Ireland) from Queen Elizabeth I, was a thirty-seven year old man, married to a Danish princess, with his succession secured in the form of three children: Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth. On top of that, he was an experienced king, having ruled the Kingdom of Scotland since he was a one year old baby. He believed in the Divine Right of Kings, the idea that he was God's representative and chosen by him to be King - but also knew he had to tow the line with the law and with parliament. The Kingdom of England looked to be in safe hands.

His first order of business as the King of England was to hold a state funeral for Queen Elizabeth. It was lavish and expensive. He met parliament in 1604, where he laid out his plans to unite England and Scotland into one nation - this was protested against by the English parliament, who refused to unite with the Scottish, due to their belief that they were an inferior race. The country was £420,000 in debt - however, £300,000 was going to be granted by parliament, and £100,000 of the debt was a loan given to some landowners who knew it would never be repaid anyway. Although matters were not as dire as they seemed, taxes were not bringing in enough and the crown estates were not in a boom period. James did not help matters - he threw expensive parties, bought expensive clothes, gave expensive gifts to his friends who he believed would abandon him if he didn't, and he would throw away an entire year of income on... well, crap. He levied a customs duty on trade and tried to pass the 'Great Contract' - a tax on wealthy landowners - through parliament. This would have fixed his income problem, but the MPs in parliament were the wealthy landowners he was trying to tax. Needless to say, they rejected it. On top of that, they also did not want the king to be financially independent - he would have no reason to call parliament if he was. James resorted to creating random titles and selling them to wealthy people, spawning random unlanded lords, and started carving up the crown estates to sell as expensive land. Many of the buyers were Catholics who wished to show their loyalty to England.

Religion and parliament's distrust of him were two massive issues. James held the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, where he met with a group of Protestant extremists called Puritans. They believed the Church of England was 'too Catholic' and wanted to mould it to a Puritan church rather than an Anglican one. James himself was a Scottish Presbyterian with a Catholic wife. He wished to negotiate with the Puritans and meet a middle-ground with them, the Catholics, and the Anglicans. At the conference he agreed to several of the Puritan demands, including the translation of the Latin Bible into English - this was published as the King James Bible. Many of the Puritans were unsatisfied, however, and left England to go to North America aboard a ship called the Mayflower - which was heading to the Thirteen Colonies, a colony that King James had allowed to be founded.

The Catholics were also angered by him agreeing to these demands. A group of several Catholics began plotting to kill him, Prince Henry, and put the nine year old Princess Elizabeth on the throne and command her. During this time, James was working on a plan with the Pope to get rid of the Protestant Puritans and the Catholic Jesuits, and then unite English Protestants and Catholics together and allow them to live in harmony. That all fell apart when the plotters were discovered with barrels of gunpowder beneath parliament on November 4th, 1605. King James, now believing that Catholics were violent and unreasonable, took a hard line against them and continued Queen Elizabeth's work of banishing their religion from England, supported by parliament - which was mostly made up of Puritans.

James's relationship with parliament was tricky. As mentioned previously, they didn't trust James due to his belief in the Divine Right of Kings. They angered him in 1606 by rejecting James's call to unite the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into one country again, but he never pushed for it after this. In 1609, Prince Henry died of typhoid and his shy younger brother, Prince Charles, became the heir - Charles thoroughly believed parliament shouldn't exist at all, further complicating the James-Parliament relationship. When parliament rejected the Great Contract in 1610, James was furious at how they were constantly against him and dissolved parliament.

The next time parliament was called again was in 1614. Four years, when it was supposed to have been called back after just a few months. They were furious and trusted James even less. They refused to grant him the money he had called them back for. Now even more angry, James dissolved parliament again. He called them back in 1619, after Princess Elizabeth's husband, Prince Frederick, had been expelled from the Kingdom of the Palatinate (which is now a state in Germany) in Europe by Catholics. James was determined to get the throne back for him. Parliament did not wish to grant him money until they were assured he understood that they had the right to be in session - he dissolved them again. He resorted to trying to marry Prince Charles to the Spanish princess, hoping that this would get Spain to intervene in the Palatinate and get Austria to give the kingdom back to Prince Frederick. This was met with intense backlash all across England as she was a Catholic - furthermore, Spain refused the offer. By 1624, parliament was called back, and this time they wanted to go to war with Spain. James refused, having worked hard to make peace with Spain since he became king, and prorogued them (didn't dissolve them but stopped them from sitting).

James died a year later in 1625, aged fifty-eight. Parliament sat for just three years of his twenty-two year reign. His parliament-loathing son, King Charles, inherited the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Things were about to get messy.

Part II: King Charles

King Charles I ascended to the throne upon the sudden death of his father in 1625. He was not trained to succeed his father, with his older brother, Henry having been the one to receive that education. On top of that, he was shy and had a stammer. When he came to the throne, he felt lonely, and thus fell prey to the Duke of Buckingham's friendly advances. The Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers, had been a prominent figure in James's government and was not ready for his career to end. They had already adventured to Spain in 1623, hoping to win the Spanish Princess's hand in marriage - they returned with nothing but a close bond with eachother. He became Charles's closest adviser and friend, making up for the personality Charles lacked.

Villiers kicked off Charles's reign by acting like an absolute idiot. In 1624, England, with the support of the United Provinces (modern day Netherlands), had gone to war with Spain despite James's efforts to stop it. Parliament granted Charles three subsidies: £47,126 for the defence of England, £32,295 for the defence of Ireland, £37,530 for the navy, and £100,000 for a contingent of 6,000 troops to be stationed in the United Provinces. At the behest of Villiers, Charles asked parliament to give him £60,000 to reclaim the Palatinate for Prince Frederick and assumed they would agree, because he was king. They asked what exactly his plan was, he answered but left his plans vague, and they refused to give him the £60,000 themselves. At the behest of Villiers, once again, he took the £60,000 out of the already granted subsidies. The soldiers he got with that money arrived at the Dutch port town of Flushing, where they all promptly caught the bubonic plague and died before ever leaving the town. Parliament was not happy at all, as this was a doomed waste of money even without the issue of the plague, that they hadn't even authorised.

In June, Henrietta Maria, a French Princess, arrived in England and met Charles, her new husband. She rejected a Protestant coronation, causing parliament to dislike her immediately, and she openly hated Villiers - however, she was (obviously) a close ally of Charles, complicating things for him immensely. While we're on the issue of religion: Charles liked Catholics and did not wish to persecute them. Parliament disagreed and demanded he resume the laws Queen Elizabeth and his father had upheld. Charles told them to listen to their king, they carried on demanding that the laws be enforced and started verbally attacking an Arminian (Protestants who liked Catholic tradition) royal chaplain. Charles was furious and dissolved parliament in August 1625, two months into their session.

While parliament... didn't really exist until Charles needed them again, Villiers persuaded Charles to send a fleet to Cadiz. The plan was to raid a bunch of Spanish ships arriving from North America loaded with gold and silver, launch a ground invasion of Spain, stressing the Spanish economy and destroying the supply line they had with the Palatinate. When the ships set out, they were met with stormy weather. They ran out of supplies by the time they arrived in Cadiz and had missed the treasure ships. They landed in Cadiz anyway, successful at first, but struggled with the Spanish defences deeper into the city. Then they realised they had no food or water - they were allowed to raid wine vats in local houses. The Spanish defeated the defending ships, landed expecting a battle, and were met with 1,000 drunk English soldiers they didn't even need to fight. They sent them home, where many of them dropped dead in the street after catching diseases on the way home.

Charles was forced to call parliament back in 1626 when he ran out of money. They were bursting at the seams in anger at the events in Cadiz and blamed George Villiers for getting in the King's ear. On top of that, they wanted to stop Charles imprisoning people who didn't like Villiers. The House of Lords wished to impeach Villiers for treason, claiming that he had poisoned King James I. Charles wouldn't have it. Then they tried to impeach him for trying to convert Charles to Catholicism. Charles, irritated, asked them to just give him money, they said "yeah, if you could please just get rid of George from the council and not put him in a military role he isn't suited for."

Charles dissolved them again.

He called them back in 1628, allowing Sir John Coke, his Secretary of State, talk to parliament as Charles's voice. This was an immediate improvement on the previous parliaments, as Coke had the respect of parliament and he respected it back - something Charles couldn't even pretend to do. They still hated Charles: speaking to Coke, they criticised his use of imprisonment of people he thought had disrespected him, claimed he was collecting customs duties illegally, and OH GOD OH JESUS SOMEONE PLEASE GET RID OF GEORGE VI-

George Villiers got stabbed to death by an angry army officer during the summer of that year.

The English public rejoiced in the streets. Charles cried in his bedroom and his wife comforted him, and he fell in love with her.

Charles dissolved parliament again in 1629. He arrested nine MPs for 'conspiring' against him after they said that Arminians were treasonous. Five of them admitted their guilt, one was released after begging Charles for forgiveness, one died in the Tower of London, and the other was released after serving his sentence eleven years later.

Charles was now determined to prove he could rule better without parliament. For the next eleven years, he would rule as an absolute king.

Part III: The Personal Rule

Charles's first order of business was getting rid of the £2 million of debt he had. He made peace with Spain in 1629, eradicating the biggest part of his expenditure, but he was now seen as running away from the Protestant cause. Despite it literally being illegal, he continued to collect customs duties, even raising the duty: by 1639, he was raising £425,000 a year off it. Despite previous opposition to this, he started fining Catholics for being Catholics, as parliament had wanted him to do. He started fining landowners who were not knighted, raising £170,000 off this alone. He started granting monopolies to corporations, which shut down their competitors at the cost of a large portion of their profit being given to the Crown. He raised the cost of wardships, so he essentially started to exploit children. He increased rents on his properties, annoying many lords. And, finally, he raised the ship tax: a tax paid by coastal areas in wartime - he was taxing all across England, not just coastal areas, during peacetime. He raised £200,000 a year off it.

He named William Laud as the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is essentially the monarch's second-in-command in the Church of England. Laud was an Arminian, who were strong believers in the Divine Right of Kings. King Charles adored the Arminians for this reason, and allowed Laud to make drastic changes to the Church of England: make services and churches more catholic, repaired cathedrals, expanded church influence in the government, and completely censored Puritanism.

Charles named Thomas Wentworth as the 'Lord President of the North'. He succeeded in his aim to make the North of England be run as efficiently as the South was. Although he disagreed with Charles on many issues, Charles made him Lord Deputy of Ireland, effectively making him the ruler of Ireland. Ireland was split between the native Irish, who were Catholic; Scottish settlers, who were Presbyterian; Old English settlers, who were Catholic; and New English settlers, who were Protestant. Wentworth, obviously, backed the New English. He settled New English in Northern Ireland, kicking the Irish and Old English from their homes. Connacht and Galway were taken over too. He enforced fines on the Catholics. He is the reason the island of Ireland is split between north and south and was engaged in a civil war until the 1990s. As a person with lots and lots of family in Ireland and being of very recent Irish descent, I can't describe this piece of human filth in terms that are in line with EMC rules.

Charles was proving quite competent. He had lots of revenue coming in, even if he was breaking more than a few laws and making many people's lives a living hell to do so. Of course, being Charles, he had to find a way to mess it all up for himself.

He tried to force the Church of Scotland to become just like the Church of England. The Scottish rose up in rebellion against those attempting to enforce the reforms. Charles couldn't pay for an army without parliament.

They were called back in 1640, eleven years after they were dissolved. They slammed Charles with criticisms of William Laud and thus believed the Scottish were right to be rebelling against the new rules, ship money, customs duties, and... you know, when you don't call a parliament for a decade, they're going to have lots of complaints. Charles offered to end ship money in return for the money for an army, but parliament basically laughed at the offer and pointed out that if it was legal, as Charles said it was, he wasn't allowed to give it up. Charles dissolved parliament after a month. Even Thomas Wentworth, who knew parliament didn't like him at all, told Charles to call it back. Charles realised how severe his position was and called them back.

Parliament immediately passed a law demanding that each parliament had to sit for at least fifty days and the king had to call it back every three years. They also passed a law saying that parliament now had to consent to its dissolution. They impeached the six judges who defended Charles's use of ship money back in 1630. William Laud, now a dying elderly man, was imprisoned by parliament in the Tower of London. They feared that Wentworth planned to use his Irish army to silence them, and knew about his brutality in Northern England and Ireland. They tried him for treason, found him guilty, and executed him. Charles was forced to give up his illegal taxes. To appease parliament, he married his daughter, Mary, to William of Orange, the Protestant son of a Dutch leader.

In 1641, Catholic Irish and Catholic English rose up in rebellion against England, believing that the Puritans in parliament and all across England wanted to kill them all. They marched to Northern Ireland and killed 3,000 Protestants. John Pym, the leader of parliament, used the rebellion to accuse Charles of conspiring with the Pope. Pym created a big document, the 'Grand Remonstrance', claiming that King Charles was unfit to lead an army and could not be trusted to put down the rebellion. Parliament passed the Remonstrance by 159-148 votes. In response, Charles accused Pym and four other MPs of high treason. He marched into parliament with 400 soldiers, smacked his cane on the doors to be let in, and asked the Speaker of the House to identify where the five MPs were. The Speaker refused, citing his impartiality. The MPs knew about the arrest and had fled. Charles left and fled the city of London.

Parliament, now united, now thoroughly believed Charles could not be trusted with an army. They signed a law, without his consent, that stripped him of the right to command an army and gave parliament that right. They then went to Charles and demanded he cave to a series of nineteen demands. He denied them all. Now threatened by Charles transparently raising his own army, and having sent his wife to France to ask her father to back Charles with a French army, parliament started to recruit volunteers. They branded supporters of the king as traitors and Charles did the same with those who supported parliament.

England collapsed into civil war between parliament and the king.

Part IV: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms

North-East England, some of North-West England, South-West England, and all of Wales sided with King Charles. Henrietta Maria returned from France with some extra military supplies and money donated by her father, but no realistic help. His best shot was making peace with Ireland, giving them some concessions, in return for their support of him - however, Scotland had sent an army into Northern Ireland to protect the Protestants, so this would have annoyed them when he needed their support too. On top of that, this did nothing to help the accusations that Charles was trying to convert England to Catholicism.

Parliament controlled South-East England a small portion of North-West England. While they didn't hold as much land as the royalists, the parliamentarians held London. They had a bigger population living under them to use as soldiers, and they also inherited the English navy while the royalists had no ships at all. They lost the first few battles and tried to negotiate with Charles in 1643, but he would not accept their demands. He could have marched into London at this point and ended the war, but he thought this was risky. Over time, it became clear that parliament had a constant supply of resources coming into London, and their army was also very well organised and had soldiers who believed in their cause - the New Model Army, as it was called, was the first modern army to exist. It was created by an MP called Oliver Cromwell.

Scotland itself collapsed into civil war between royalists and 'Covenenters', a group of people who wanted to side with the English parliament. They won in 1645.

John Pym died of cancer in the December of 1643. However, just before he passed away, he negotiated an alliance with the Scottish Covenenters: they would fight on the side of parliament and invade Northern England, in return for the Church of England to convert to Presbyterianism. Scotland accepted. The Battle of Marston Moore took place in July 1644 - Prince Rupert, Charles's nephew (the son of Prince Frederick of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart), attempted to flank attacking parliamentarians. 4,500 of his soldiers died, his horse and dog were killed, and he hid in a bean field. The killing of the dog was a big propaganda tool for the parliamentarians.

Charles surrendered to an army of Scottish soldiers in March 1646.

Parliament's army was growing in radicalism. They believed the King should be killed and were furious at the fact parliament wanted to let him live. They had a growing faction within them called the Levellers, who wished to extend voting rights to everyone within England, and allow every man to follow whatever religion he wanted. Their list of demands that they gave to parliament are practically identical to the United States's constitution. Parliament ordered them to disband and were reluctant to pay the soldiers, so the army refused. They kidnapped Charles and presented him with a list of their demands - Charles refused them, of course. Parliament attempted to negotiate with Charles as well, and he refused them too. On top of that, Scotland knew by now that Pym had lied to them when he said parliament would turn the Church of England into a Presbyterian church, and they were furious.

He knew that if he waited long enough, the army and parliament would fight eachother, and he could swoop in with a legion of French and Scottish soldiers and reclaim his throne. Parliament entered a debate with the Levellers, agreeing to concede to some of their demands (voting rights was a MASSIVE one), when Charles escaped from prison and fled to Scotland. When news of this reached parliament, they shut down the debate with the Levellers. The Levellers were angry and responded violently - Oliver Cromwell killed them all.

Scotland agreed to invade England on behalf of King Charles. He agreed to convert England too, but to a lesser extent than parliament had promised, which they knew was their best shot. Some royalists rose up in rebellion up and down England, but these were quickly put down. The Scottish army was defeated by Cromwell in August of 1648.

As parliament debated what they do with the army and Charles, 1,000 soldiers showed up at parliament and blocked the doors. A man called Colonel Pride led them and gave them a list of MPs to stop from entering parliament, and another list of pro-Charles MPs to arrest. Cromwell did not agree to their demands but did agree to force Charles into some major concessions, giving parliament more power. Charles said no.

Cromwell got parliament to create the High Court and their first ever order of business was to put the king on a public trial. This was the first time in European history that anything like this had ever happened. The High Court ruled that Charles was guilty of contempt of parliament, conspiring with Catholic Irish rebels, and had destroyed large parts of England. Charles responded by claiming that the High Court had no right to convict him of anything and their mere existence was illegal, and said that they, 'pretend judges', represent the people of England just as much as he does. They sentenced him to death by beheading.

Charles was taken to the scaffold on January 30th, 1649. Covered in stuff the public of London had thrown at him, he stood proud and tall.

"Truly, I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody. But I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having of government... a subject and a sovereign are clean, different things. I die a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England."

The executioner threw him to his knees and forced his head onto the chopping block. He grabbed his axe, brought it down onto Charles's neck, and...

Part V: The Interregnum

Eighty Members of Parliament who had been expelled during Pride's Purge was allowed back in. The Council of State was created in February 1649 to replace the Privy Council, although it acted exactly the same. The House of Commons voted to abolish the House of Lords in May 1649. The last of the Levellers were hunted down and killed by Oliver Cromwell the same month, ensuring that a democratic social revolution did not erupt.

Scotland and Ireland were not tamed so easily. Ireland had been in a state of active rebellion for the past decade. Scotland were moving to proclaim King Charles II, King Charles's son, as the 'King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland' - they finally did it in 1650.

But first, Ireland, 1649: parliament placed Cromwell in charge of 30,000 soldiers and landed in Ireland in August 1649. His first move was to attack the stronghold of Drogheda. He invaded it and killed an unknown number of civilians and soldiers alike and ransacked churches. There were a few soldiers who remained in a defensible fort - they surrendered and agreed to be taken as prisoners. Cromwell agreed to their surrender and allowed them to be imprisoned. He then ordered their slaughter an hour later. Letters that he sent to parliament recording the events suggested that he enjoyed killing everyone in the town and he believed he had to avenge the Protestants who were killed in the rebellion. He reclaimed most of Ireland by 1650, gave up his command to a man called Henry Ireton until 1652 (when the rebellion ended), and returned home.

Cromwell did not rest for long. He was dispatched to Northern England almost immediately to fight Scotland. Cromwell defeated the Scottish at Dunbar in September. The Battle of Worcester took place in September 1651. King Charles II fled to his mother's home country of France. Scotland was placed under English martial law and had its parliament completely shut down. Cromwell returned to parliament, just as parliament was infighting and dissolved itself twice.

Cromwell became the Head of State upon the dissolution of the second parliament. He rejected the title of 'King' and called himself 'Lord Protector' instead. The Protector was appointed for life, chosen by the Council of State. The Council of State would consist of the Lord Protector themselves, six army officers, and eight civilians - however, the six army officers and eight civilians were selected by the already sitting council, so they could choose whoever suited their agenda. England and Wales were divided into four-hundred constituencies (and thus had four-hundred MPs) - Scotland and Ireland were divided up into thirty each (and thus had only thirty MPs each). MPs were only to be elected by landed elite, could not be Catholic, and could not have supported the monarchy during the war. Parliament was just as powerful as it had been under the monarchy. People were allowed to have more religious freedoms, and Jews were even welcomed back into the country after being expelled a few centuries beforehand.

Cromwell divided England into twelve regions, each one governed by a 'Major-General'. These Major-Generals commanded militias that arrested royalists, drunkards, blasphemers, and stopped people from celebrating Christmas. These militias were unpopular with parliament and the people.

After causing another Anglo-Spanish War in 1654, wanting to gain one of their colonies in the Caribbean, Cromwell needed funding and called parliament back in 1656. They refused to implement the tax needed to fund the Major-Generals, wanting the wealthy to control local areas rather than have the army control large regions, and so the Major-General system completely collapsed. They were also concerned about who Cromwell's successor would be, especially now that the man was dying of malaria. Parliament requested that he crown himself as King and name his son as his heir. They also requested that... well, they wanted to recreate the House of Lords but give it a different name.

Cromwell rejected it. Parliament basically sighed and removed the part about naming him King and allowed him to keep the Lord Protector title. Cromwell basically said "oh, go on then," and accepted it. Then, on September 3rd, 1658, Oliver Cromwell succumbed to his malaria and died. His son, Richard Cromwell, succeeded the... not the throne, but you know... the throne-but-not-really.

Part VI: The Restoration

The army hated Richard Cromwell. They believed that he lacked adequate military experience and could not command them. The republicans in parliament appealed to the army and said that the republican cause they had fought for was under threat and slated the Protectorate's leadership, and also assembled groups of Puritans and told them England was under threat of sliding back into Catholicism. The army now believed that their deserved influence was under threat and launched a coup against Richard in May. Richard resigned as Lord Protector after just nine months in power and left parliament to rule by itself.

Parliament and the army hated eachother, despite the army installing it. However, they had received word that royalist uprisings were planned all throughout England. In August 1659, a man called George Booth led an uprising and managed to claim the city of Chester. However, his rebellion was put down and he was captured and thrown in the Tower of London. In October, when it was over, the army stopped parliament from sitting again. General Monck, however, led a group of men in Scotland and demanded that parliament be reinstalled. He started marching from Scotland. Violent riots broke out all across the country. The English Navy backed Monck. Parliament was restored by December, but Monck did not stop.

He reached London in February 1660. He allowed all of the MPs who had been banned from parliament during Pride's Purge to enter parliament again. Monck wrote to Charles Stuart and told him to write a declaration to support the royalist cause. Parliament dissolved itself in April and called an election. As well, Charles Stuart issued the declaration of Breda: it offered something to everyone, as long as they supported putting him on the throne, especially prolonged peace and stability. Most of the MPs elected to parliament in the election were royalists, and nobody associated with the Protectorate was re-elected. On May 1st, 1660, parliament declared that the Commonwealths of England, Scotland and Ireland were the King's by right.

Upon landing in England, King Charles II annulled all the laws parliament had passed since the execution of his father, and anything he wanted to keep was rewritten as if King Charles I had been executed and King Charles II had inherited the Kingdom of England. This included the restoration of the House of Lords: his first parliamentary speech was delivered to the restored Upper House, where he promised that he would not take his reign for granted and promised to be a just and lawful king.

King Charles II's reign was peaceful. That is, until 1678...

how do u know all this?

In England we're taught about Roman rule, the Vikings, and the Anglo-Saxon invasion/settlement during Primary School (school you go to from the age of 4 - 11). We get taught about the unification of England, all the way up to the end of the Tudor dynasty's reign, in the first year of Secondary School (school we go to aged 11 - 16). Most people don't remember that stuff buuut I've always had an interest in history because my mum is a massive history nerd and made me one too.

I studied James I's reign (right down to his personal life lol), Charles I's reign, Cromwell's reign, and the Glorious Revolution for two years at college/Sixth Form (the school you go to aged 16 - 18). I have two massive textbooks on this entire thing as well as all the old notes I got during school.

Unrelated but if you're interested that was alongside African-American civil rights, women's rights, trade union rights, the Native American civil rights movement; as well as Weimar Germany, Nazi Germany, West and East Germany, and the reunification of Germany. I've got two giant textbooks on Germany and one on the American civil rights stuff.

My mum and her mum have made sure that I know the history of Wales and at least respect its language, being Welsh themselves. On top of that I'm moving to Wales in a few months and will study its history in university, so I made sure to brush up on that last year. Plus my family have a large presence in the town I'll be living in and I don't want to embarrass myself

My knowledge of Ireland until the 1800s is sketchy. I'm not an expert. My granddad/mum's dad is an Irish Catholic from Northern Ireland and he and my mum made sure I knew why Ireland is divided because British schools sure as hell don't. I've started researching the Troubles a lot more recently because Brexit threatens to restart that civil war, so it's good to know about.

I don't know much about Scotland though. Really sketchy there unfortunately.

sorry how do you remember it ;-;

Natural good memory and I revised this stuff constantly for two years to pass exams. Textbooks are neato to read and copy from because that's where I get all my figures and dates from.

We're all still salty btw

Part VII: The Glorious Revolution

In the summer of 1678, a conspiracy floated by a man named Titus Oates ran the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into a mess of anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates claimed that a conspiring group of Catholics were plotting to murder King Charles II, massacre Protestants, and import their own army from overseas and rule the island of Great Britain. The man behind all of this, so they said, was Charles's brother's, James, secretary. James was the heir to the throne, as King Charles II had only sired illegitimate children. James was a Catholic and his wife was the princess of the Catholic Italian state of Modena.

The accusations were given credence when Charles ordered an investigation into the secretary, Edward Coleman, despite his belief that Oates was lying. Coleman was found to have secretly contacted foreign Catholics and discussed dissolving parliament and allowing James to establish a policy of toleration throughout England. Oates had also sworn the information to a magistrate, Sir Edmund Godfrey - Godfrey was found dead in a ditch a few days later. The English and Scottish believed mainland European Catholics were coming to massacre them. Parliament took this very seriously and put many people on trial, executing sixteen of them due to their belief that they were part of the plot. It wasn't until they put Oates on trial in 1679 and realised he was lying.

Nevertheless, in 1679, parliament presented the Exclusion Bill: they wished to exclude Prince James from the line of succession, preferring to grant the crown to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth. Charles further complicated the matter by suggesting parliament just take some of James's monarch powers but let him be king. Parliament fought over the issue until 1681, divided between the two sides who were calling themselves the 'Whig Party' and the 'Tory Party'. The Whig Party supported the Exclusion Bill, the Tory Party rejected it. The House of Commons passed the bill in 1678, but Charles simply prorogued parliament. They passed it again when they were called back in 1680, but the bill was defeated in the House of Lords. Eventually, the Whig Party gained a majority in the 1681 election. However, Charles was running a financially stable country and did not need to govern with parliament, and the bill would never get passed through parliament. He dissolved them in 1681.

Enter 1683. A man called Josiah Keeling claimed there was ANOTHER plot to kill King Charles. Two of the people he named spoke out and claimed there were two plots, orchestrated by the Whig Party: one to murder Charles and James, and another for an uprising. Tory propaganda had cemented the idea that the Whigs would do such a thing in the public consciousness. Several 'plotters' were tried and executed without being able to give their legal defence. Public support for Charles's continued 'personal rule' gained even more support. He died in 1685, never having called parliament again, in violation of the rules established during the English Civil War.

The throne passed to King James II. He called parliament and the subsequent election returned a Tory Party majority, who gave their support. However, James Scott, Charles's illegitimate son, raised an army and demanded the throne. He declared parliament an enemy of the throne who were seeking to enforce tyranny upon the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. People believed that James Scott was a traitor who was conspiring with the Whig Party, though. William of Orange sent a few Dutch soldiers over to England to fight Scott. Scott's rebellion was crushed. King James II increased the size of his army drastically, claiming that he needed to do so to fight more rebellions should they happen, and put Catholic officers in charge. Parliament basically said "HEY WAIT WAIT A MI-" James prorogued them.

King James started using his royal prerogative powers to use to appoint Catholics into high-ranking positions. This was challenged in the Godden v. Hales case in 1686, but King James won it. He passed the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687, which suspended anti-Catholic laws all across the country. He lost the support of the Tory Party at this point but religious toleration was a key policy of the Whig Party, who now kind of supported him but not really. He ordered that churches read out the Declaration during mass, but several bishops refused - he arrested them and put them on a trial. The courts did not believe they had done anything wrong and released them on a not guilty verdict. He turned the Tory Party and the Whig Party against him, as well as the public.

William of Orange, who ruled the Protestant Netherlands and fended off attacks from the Catholic kingdoms of France and Spain, felt threatened by his key ally having a Catholic ruler who was pushing Catholicism like this. His wife, Mary Stuart, was the daughter of King Charles I and thus a claimant to the English throne, and she was Protestant too. William landed in Torbay on November 5th, 1688 with a Dutch army and established his headquarters in the English city of Exeter. King James sent his wife and son away to France, and in a last ditch attempt to save his skin, abandoned his pro-Catholic policies: it was too late - his entire family and a big portion of the army deserted him. North England and the Midlands declared for William. James attempted to flee England but was caught and sent back to London. William arrived in London to meet with parliament soon afterwards. James escaped and fled to France - William basically said that James had abdicated by running away to a different country and parliament agreed.

On February 13th, 1689, King William and Queen Mary were given the English, Scottish, and Irish crown.

Part IX: The Union of the Crowns

'The Revolutionary Settlement', signed by King William III in 1689, guaranteed the place of parliament in the constitutions of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It also ended the possibility of religious uniformity being implemented in England. Parliament decided that, in order to prevent the Crown from passing to the Orange dynasty, the crown would pass to Princess Anne, James's daughter, upon William's death. This utterly destroyed the concept of the Divine Right of Kings as Parliament had decided who got to be the monarch. As well, Parliament passed the Bill of Rights with royal assent (the King and Queen's consent), which put taxation and legislation control in Parliament's hands; the abuses of power that James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II had committed were now illegal; Roman Catholics were banned from the line of succession; Parliament controlled the army; 'cruel punishments' were banned; and the monarch was now no longer to involve themselves in politics or display ideological alignment. This is the birth of the modern British Parliament and monarchy.

Scotland was slightly different. They set up the 'Edinburgh Convention' to listen to both James's and William's claims to the throne. They decided that James had forfeited the throne by acting like a tyrant and William was the only clear non-tyrannical successor. They passed the 'Claim of Right' which declared William to be the King, that no Catholic could ever sit on the Scottish throne, and declared Scotland to be a 'limited monarchy'. The 'Articles of Grievance' removed many of the Scottish monarch's powers and devolved them to the Scottish parliament.

William was not so readily accepted in Scotland. The Highland tribes, Gaelic Scottish, went into open revolt to place James on the Scottish throne again, and defeated the pro-William forces at the Battle of Killiecrankie. They were defeated when they advanced into the Lowlands and engaged the pro-William forces at the Battle of Dunkeld. It took until 1691 for the resistance to be put down, when King William defeated them at the Battle of the Boyne. However, Alasdair Maclain, the Chief of the MacDonald tribe, missed the deadline to swear allegiance to King William III by a few days. John Dalrymple, a Lowlander who was serving as King William's Secretary of State For Scotland, sent an army force commanded by a commander named Campbell to Glencoe, where the MacDonalds lived, to negotiate with them. The MacDonalds did not attack the army as the Highlanders had an ancient custom to extend hospitality in these situations, and treated Campbell and his army to a feast. At five in the morning, Campbell massacred the MacDonald tribe. The only survivors died in the mountains as they tried to flee the English army in the middle of winter. William was never able to rule Scotland with its full support because of his blatant and savage disregard for native Scottish customs. He also intentionally sabotaged their attempt to start a colony in what would eventually become Panama.

Ireland was a similar story. Catholic Ireland, obviously, supported King James II. The Irish engaged in guerrilla warfare with William's army and on armed Protestants, who retaliated by massacring random Catholic civilians and looting their corpses. The Catholics were forced to surrender at the Siege of Limerick in 1692, when the Jacobite soldiers were sent to France and the 3,000 (of 15,000) who stayed were disarmed.

England, however, readily accepted King William's rule. The Revolutionary Settlement flourished under his regime and was even strengthened during the 1690s. There weren't enough James-supporting Catholics in England to cause much of a problem. As well, King William, in return for money to fight a war with the Kingdom of France, he would concede many of his powers to parliament: a parliament-controlled Commission reviewed the government's activities, which previously had been the King's job; the Triennial Act allowed Parliament to decide when and for how long it should sit. Parliament also revoked the Licensing Act, which allowed newspapers to be set up and become commonplace: in 1695, there was just one newspaper in London - by 1696, there were three. This allowed ordinary people who could read become involved in politics and discuss major political events.

The Bank of England was also established in 1694. The bank encouraged wealthy people to pay it money, which would develop interest from taxation, and be withdrawn at a later date and be worth much more. It gave this money to Parliament, which it used to fund the war with France. This also created a 'national debt' and revolutionised the English financial system.

The Whig Party and The Tory Party had maintained their eminence in English politics as well. The Tory Party believed in a hereditary and strong monarchy and disliked Catholics, whereas The Whig Party believed the monarchy should take on a more ceremonial role and wanted religious toleration.

The Act of Settlement in 1701 ensured that Princess Sophia, the granddaughter of King James I, would become Queen when King William III, Queen Mary, and/or Princess Anne died. She was currently serving as the Elector of Hanover, a German country within the Holy Roman Empire. King William III died in 1702 and the throne passed to Queen Anne.

Scotland became hostile. Their Parliament passed the Bill of Security in 1703, which said that the next ruler of Scotland should not be a holder of the English crown. The Wine Act, passed in 1704, allowed Scotland to import French wine, which England had embargoed. The English Parliament was furious and passed the Alien Act in 1705, declaring all Scottish people living in England by Christmas Day to be illegal immigrants/'aliens' and England would stop trading with Scotland. Scotland, knowing that this would economically cripple them and upset their people, allowed the negotiation of a permanent union to be negotiated.

The English Parliament paid Scottish MPs hefty sums of money, offered concessions on economic and trade issues that the English had created themselves to make it look like Scotland wasn't able to survive on its own, and launched a full on propaganda campaign at Scotland.

The Act of Union was put to the Scottish Parliament. Its terms were as follows:

• The Scottish Parliament would be abolished.
• The English Parliament - now called the Westminster Parliament - would have 45 Scottish Constituencies/MPs in the House of Commons and have 16 members of the House of Lords.
• Scotland would gain access to a free trade area with England and England's colonies. (Important to note that even the modern day UK is a political union with a free trade area and not actually a 'proper' country)
• Scotland and England would share the same taxes and tax rates.
• The Church of Scotland could still accept.

On May 1st, 1707, the United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed.

Part X: The Georgian Era

In 1714, Queen Anne died. King George I, the Elector of Hanover, became the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. The German country of Hanover was brought into personal union with Great Britain. In 1715, the Whig Party won the election and controlled the House of Commons until 1760.

By 1720, the United Kingdom of Great Britain was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Other countries were motivated to expand their borders or protect their ruling dynasty, but Great Britain wished to establish a worldwide trading network. The Royal Navy was invested in heavily, as the British wished to assert their trading hegemony with a powerful navy that ruled the sea. It also operated on a policy of mercantilism: British merchants and businesses were not allowed to co-operate with anybody other than the British Empire. Colonies and conquered countries were markets for the British economy, and were only there to serve the mother country.

In 1721, Robert Walpole, a prominent Whig Party Member of Parliament, was named as the first ever Prime Minister. He simultaneously held the office of Chancellor and controlled the country's finances, and was also named the Leader of the House of Commons. He came to power after the South Sea Company, a trading company based in the South China Sea, collapsed and exposed many Whig Party MPs and King George I for corruption. Prime Minister Walpole brought them back into public favour.

King George I died on June 11th, 1727, and his son, King George II, became King. He kept Walpole on as Prime Minister after his wife convinced him to do so. Walpole subsidised upcoming writers and journalists, revoked the policy of mercantilism on the Thirteen Colonies and thus allowed them to grow a sense of independence, and passed the Licensing Act 1737, which controlled what was being said in theatres about the British government and gave them the powers to censor anything they didn't like. He did not stop Great Britain from entering conflict with other nations because the King forced him into it, so a political faction evolved in Parliament, with the support of Prince Frederick (George II's son), who tried to get rid of him. They accused him of corruption and set up Committees to investigate Walpole. They eventually passed a motion of no confidence in him and his government in 1742, and Walpole resigned, but acted as an adviser to the new Prime Minister and Chancellor until his death in 1745.

King George III, Prince Frederick's son, ascended to the throne in 1760. His early reign was marked by Great Britain's victory in the Seven Year's War, in which Great Britain fought France to protect the Thirteen Colonies. The British-Prussian alliance defeated the Franco-Spanish-Russian alliance and established Great Britain as the most powerful country in the world. However, the war was costly, and so Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, which taxed printed materials in the Thirteen Colonies, which aggravated them. In 1769, New Zealand and Australia were claimed as colonies of Great Britain.

It was around this time that the industrial revolution began with the development of textiles and steam power. In 1750, Great Britain was importing 2.5 million pounds of cotton: by 1787, this demand had increased to 22 million pounds, by 1800 it was 52 million, and by 1850 it was 588 million. In 1773, the Inclosure Act was passed by Parliament, which caused the mass movement of rural poor people into urban areas, greatly exacerbating the process of urbanisation.

In 1776, the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and fought a lengthy war, with the aid of the Kingdoms of France and Spain, that ended in the independence of the United States in 1783. With the loss of their penal and most profitable colony, Great Britain started settling their prisoners in Australia and allowed the expansion of the East India Company to exploit India further and make up for lost revenue. The slavery abolition movement also began in the English city of Liverpool, which was now the biggest port in the world and benefited heavily from the slave trade. It was growing more and more powerful all across the country.

1800 is where the fun begins.

Part XI: The Georgian Era - Part II

Great Britain and Ireland were united into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Previously, the Kingdom of Ireland had maintained its own legislative independence, but political power was concentrated in the minority Protestant community and the Irish Parliament was subservient to the British Parliament. Frustrated, in 1798 the Catholic majority rose up in rebellion against the Kingdom of Great Britain and demanded their complete independence - they were supported by the newly-created Republic of France, who landed an army in Ireland. The rebellion was crushed by the British Army within a year. Fearing that the Catholic Irish would take control of the Irish Parliament and be able to ally itself with France, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union 1800, destroying the Irish Parliament and uniting it with the British one.

The most significant thing this new country did was pass the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. This made it illegal to trade slaves anywhere in the British Empire, and the Royal Navy started patrolling the African coast for slave-trader ships to sink before they managed to kidnap people and take them places where slaves was still legal to sell, like the United States. The Royal Navy, through the costly 'West Africa Squadron', freed over 150,000 Africans meant to be sold as slaves between 1808 and 1860. The actual ownership of slaves was made illegal in 1833.

The United Kingdom defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, ending France's dominance over the European continent and crippling its only realistic hegemony contender for decades to come.

The same year, the Corn Laws were passed through Parliament. These laws were tariffs and restrictions on imported food and wheat, designed to keep grain prices high for domestic producers. This was at the expense of the people: food prices shot up and as a result, the cost of living did too - this hampered the growth of the manufacturing industry, as civilians couldn't spend any money on their goods because they could barely afford food. After the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom entered a period of sharp economic downturn and these laws didn't help at all.

The people, especially in Northern England, were starving. And even worse, they had no say in it - they demanded political representation in Parliament (VOTING RIGHTS AND MORE THAN JUST TWO NORTHERN CONSTITUENCIES). They organised a demonstration in the English city of Manchester, led by a man called Henry Hunt. During the protest, army cavalry charged into the crowd to arrest Hunt. The initial charge badly injured a woman and trampled a child to death. More cavalry arrived to disperse the crowd and charged into it with their swords drawn, killing fifteen people and injuring seven-hundred more. Newspapers all across the country were angry and spread that anger to the people. Parliament passed the 'Six Acts', which made it illegal to advocate for parliamentary reform. It's also interesting to note that one of the present-day UK's biggest newspapers who has conducted multiple investigative pieces that have had long-lasting worldwide effects, The Guardian, was founded because of this event. It became known as the Peterloo Massacre. And that is where the Georgian Era pretty much ends.

TLDR.

All I want to say is that "Pokemon Sword and Shield", set to release in late 2019, are going to be set in a British-inspired region (Galar).

This will be a useful thread to compare and figure out the parallels to the UK, after playing the eighth generation Pokemon games.
-- Because what makes me and others expand our interests is when one medium strongly connects to another!

Part XII: The Victorian Era - Part I

The Victorian Era began with the Tory Party blocking the Third Reform Bill, which sought to broaden the electoral franchise to the middle class (rich but not rich), abolish rotten boroughs (large seats with tiny electorates and rich MPs representing them), and grant Northern England and urbanised cities more Parliamentary constituencies. After many demonstrations throughout the month of May, the Reform Act was passed in 1832.

King William IV died on June 20th, 1837. The woman for whom this era is named succeeded the throne on this day: Victoria Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, otherwise known as Queen Victoria. Her reign began with a bang: China had banned the sale of opium within its borders, but the United Kingdom ignored their ban. When China seized British ships that were carrying the drug, the United Kingdom declared war upon it. At the same time, it went to war with Afghanistan out of fear that the Russian Empire would gain dominance over the influence of the country. Queen Victoria signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, establishing British control over New Zealand; and in 1842 she signed the Treaty of Nanking, which gave the British control over the Chinese island of Hong Kong.

By 1845, trouble was brewing at home, however. All throughout Europe, potatoes were being infected with a disease that killed them and was absolutely destroying potato farmer's crops. Ireland was particularly hard hit. The Corn Laws were still in place, making wheat-based foods horribly expensive. On top of this, the British government refused to put a ban on the right for Irish merchants to export food as they had done in the famine of 1782. The famine lasted until 1849 - one million Irish people fled Ireland, mostly settling in the United States or in the English city of Liverpool; another one million starved to death or succumbed to disease. A quarter of Ireland's population was decimated and it has never recovered.

Sir Robert Peel became the leader of the Tory Party in 1830 and by 1834, he had dissolved them and founded a new party: the Conservative Party. was the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the United Kingdom from 1841 to 1846. During this period he attempted to shift the United Kingdom away from mercantilism and towards a policy of free trade. He cut import tariffs and made up for the lost revenue with income tax. That it is not to say he didn't support market interference: the Mines and Colleries Act, passed in 1842, banned children under the age of ten from working in coal mines; he also created the Factory Acts, a series of bills that regulated the hours of work in factories and made sure women and children were only able to work in certain conditions; his Railway Regulation Act also regulated train fares, making sure they were affordable to poor people so they could travel to work. His Prime Ministership was on shaky ground in 1845 after he incurred the rage of the Conservative Party by giving a cash grant to a Catholic seminary in Ireland. It collapsed when, as a result of the Great Famine, he formed an alliance with the Whig Party and The Radical Party and repealed the Corn Laws so Irish people could buy food, and a remnant of mercantalism could be destroyed. He resigned as Prime Minister afterwards and left the Conservative Party, founding the Peelites.

Public health and safety took a turn for the better after 1845. James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, discovered that a chemical called chloroform could be used as an anaesthetic and by 1847 it was enjoying widespread use - John Snow, England's best physician, used it on Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold, making it the first choice all across the United Kingdom and Germany. Sugar consumption was drastically increasing and dentists also made use of it when giving this entire nation of sugar addicts dentures. Joseph Lister, an English surgeon, also started instructing hospital staff to wear gloves and wash their hands, surgical instruments and things like bandages with carbolic acid. The Public Health Acts of 1848 and 1849 established Local Health Boards that controlled sewers, cleaned the streets, and made sure the public were getting an adequate supply of water.

Britain's so-called 'golden years' began in 1851, with The Great Exhibition - the first World's Fair, which showcased the 'greatest innovations of the century'. The national income of the average person grew by 50% between 1850 and 1870 due to a rapidly-growing industrial economy, now the largest in the entire world, and low taxes. An ever-growing network of railway allowed the British people and goods to move about freely. Steamships allowed the United Kingdom to import such things like American corn and cotton and people were able to hop on board them and go travelling across the globe. Joseph Bazalgette, an English engineer, built a sewer system beneath the city of London and also built the housing for the sewage and water pipes, as well as the London Underground, a metro network. A gas network for lighting and heating was later introduced. Charles Darwin, a Scottish biologist, published 'On The Origin Of Species' in 1859, outlining his theory of evolution.

The British people were relatively happy throughout this time. Despite the United Kingdom housing Karl Marx, a German philosopher who created the foundations of the political ideologies of socialism and communism, the people paid him no mind. The poor were able to afford hotels and go on holiday to seaside towns and resorts across the country rather than live at home all year. Things were not all good, however: contracting firms that the government hired, and landlords who leased buildings out and failed to maintain them, were not able to fulfil the rapidly rising demand for housing. Poor people were forced into slums, with the largest ones being in the East End of London, the city of Liverpool, and the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Diseases like tuberculosis, of which there was no cure, were spread easily in these overcrowded conditions. Despite the improvements in sanitation, clean water was still a luxury afforded only to the rich and the sewage system wasn't perfect. Their children were forced to work long hours as chimney sweepers, coal miners, or textile factory workers - they developed diseases like rickets and suffered from poor lungs that killed them early in life. Their awakening to this fact would dominate politics for the next century.