Preview

British History

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
11590 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
British History
HIS236 Lecture Notes
The 17th Century
The century of revolution
And the Glorious Revolution (bloodless, political revolution, the crowning achievement of the British constitution)
Constitutionalism – the law reigns, not the monarch. Law limits the government’s power. The will of the people. Laws are created in the parliamentary fashion
Charles I was trialed before the parliament and was decapitated because he was overtaxing the public.
Absolutism - reigned by the monarch (divine ruler, based on divine right). The king gets power from god, therefore the king is allowed to reign above the law.
This is a period of conflict between constitutionalism (parliamentary classes) and absolutism (the king).
England is a result of protestant reformation (started by Henry the eighth). France and Spain wanted to bring England back to Catholic. Protestanism was associated with liberty/freedom. People had a lot of faith in the ancient parliament and Protestanism (innate part of English identity).
Arbitrary government (tyranny) is a type of legal system that gives all the power to the king. England railed against it.
Popery (and arbitrary government) stands I n opposition to Protestantism.
Popery (satanic darkness, the pope is the overlord over England, popery is the enemy of liberty) is spread by practice, it’s about bribing people’s feeble mind, leading people away from the holy scripture. It had nothing to do with the word of the god, it’s all about a show. It feeds people’s passion rather than reason. It was the pope’s job to lure people into pretty pictures and desires.

James I r. 1603 – 1625
A king of Scotland
He became the King of England after Elizabeth I died. The English people didn’t like the Scottish. He was seen as a coward and he hated the English people.
He spoke with a Scottish accent
He was an intellectual and a brilliant political theorist. He expressed the concept of kingship in his writing.
The True Law of Free Monarchies: OR

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    To make a long story short, Louis XIV tried to have power over everything and everyone possible, including the clergy. Absolutism became a well-known term during this period and basically was a political theory that sought to ? encourage rulers to claim complete sovereignty within their territories.? As an absolute monarch you could ?make laws,…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Absolute Monarchs were eithere kings or queens who controlled the complete way of life in the country they ruled. Absolutism is the rule of one person over any given thing. The two rulers that showed absolutism in the documents are Louis 14th and Peter the Great. They were both absolute monarchs and both ruled over large territories.…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Five colonists were killed by British soldiers during a fight in Boston. The soldiers were there to protect British officials enforcing unpopular rules and laws, and one day the colonists started throwing stones and ice balls at the soldiers that…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the later portion of the 1600’s, the monarchial systems of both England and France were changing. England strayed away from an absolute monarch and ran toward a mightier parliament instead. The opposite was occurring in France as Louis XIV strengthened his own office while weakening the general assembly of France, the Estates General. Absolutism, the political situation in which a monarch controls makes all political, social, economic, and cultural decisions in a government without checks or balances, had been introduced by Charles I and James I. However, it never took hold. In France, Louis XIV took absolutism to extremes, claiming to be a servant of God. A limited monarch, England’s monarchial system, is a government in which a monarch…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Absolutism Dbq Analysis

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages

    One of the more common forms of government was absolutism. Rulers believed they should have complete control over the country. An excerpt in document 1 states that Prince Machiavelli believed the best way to rule was to be aggressive and feared and thought that the only way the citizen would follow his rule was if he emulated his power and social status. He thought that if he showed kindness and generosity that he would be overthrown. Most of the monarchs believed in divine right, this meant that they thought that they were chosen by God to rule. One of rulers that believed in divine right was King James 1st, his ideas were expressed in document 2 one of his quotes: “….God has the power…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Motivated by several crises in the Seventeenth century, rebellions and civil wars for instance The Thirty Years War, the need for states to create larger armies to attain greater monarchial power, to sustain that power and armies they had to find ways to fund their armies and still maintain control over the state (William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel World History, vol. 1, 434). In response to this people searched for order. Many sought stability, but in order to obtain it they had to increase their monarchial power. The end result of this absolute monarchial power became well known as absolutism or absolute monarchy. In Absolutism the king claims to rule by divine right: the idea that Kings received their power to rule directly from…

    • 1352 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    * A great military leader and warrior * King of England * Fought courageously in military battles * A hero to many of his followers * Fought in the Third Crusade to recapture the Holy Land to show he was worthy to take the cross * Defender of the church * Not accepting of any other religion…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were two forms of government. The two forms of government were democracy and absolutism. Both of these forms of government were effective in there own ways. Absolutism though was the most effective during this time. Absolutism is when the ruler has unlimited power. Many rulers had a democracy government but absolutism was more effective because the rulers had all the power and it was hard to take advantage of them rather then a democracy were many rulers can get over thrown by the people of that country.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many monarchs, particularly those of European descent, employed the flourishing absolutist philosophy during their reign in the seventeenth century. Defined as the "absolute or unlimited rule usually by one man," absolutism is virtually equivalent to the philosophy of despotism. A ruler incorporating the absolutist philosophy has complete control of his subjects and the highest authority with which to govern. With origins dating back to the Ancient Greeks, absolutism found root in some of Aristotle's theories: "Aristotle despotic government (nearly convertible with tyrannical) is that of a single ruler that rules, not for the public good but for his own." And from Roman political theory "regarding the power of the monarch, there had survived, particularly, a legacy of ideas associated with the position and prestige of a ruler which greatly strengthened the power of a dynasty.” Based on this Greek foundation in Aristotelian thought and Roman political theory, absolutism rose in other schools of philosophy as it gained prominence in the political world.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Government and Thoreau

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages

    at all or a tyranny but a limited government, where the people have more say.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dbq on Absolutism

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In a rule using suppression, backed up by the claim to divine authority, an absolute monarchy embodies the omnipotent government reign. Such power was given solely to the head of the state without any constituted restraints. During the Reformation up to the seventeenth century, Europe’s social system started to have conflict as to whether absolute power should be appointed to the king. The king’s subjects, mostly nobles, supported their kings right to absolute power because they got the benefit of political leadership roles and were also given royal protection. The common-folk and the servants were against it because absolutism abused the power in ruling over the peasants as the king, which tended to be restricting.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charles personality was also a major factor he was arrogant conceited and believed totally in the Devine right of kings he couldn’t believe that a king could be wrong. He argued continually with parliament over most things but mostly over money and religion he wouldn’t let parliament meet and padlocked the doors of parliament for 11 years he also ruled by using the court of stars chamber so people brought before the court were heavily fined. In a desperate attempt to raise money he brought in the ship money tax which was meant only to be used at times of need, he made everyone in the country pay it not just the people on the shore. This made Charles unpopular with most of England.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jacobean Era

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The most notorious event of James's reign occurred on November 5, 1605. On that date, a group of English Catholics (the most famous, in later generations, being Guy Fawkes) attempted to blow up the King and Parliament in the Palace of Westminster. However, the Gunpowder Plot was exposed and prevented, and the convicted plotters were hanged, drawn, and quartered.…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    British Civilization

    • 7046 Words
    • 29 Pages

    The Roman did NOT colonize the countries they were interested in (yet). It was a tactical approach: economic reasons, mutual profits, … Britain had many advantages, and the Romans were intrigued:…

    • 7046 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    British Civilization

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The word was first coined in the late 1970s, when the Conservatives were still in opposition. After the Party's election victory 1979 it became a regular item in the vocabulary of media comment on British politics. It also spawned a cottage industry of academic analyses. A minimalist definition of Thatcherism would push three themes: it is the most convenient shorthand description of what Conservative governments did between 1979 and 1990; it suggests that what they did had a heavy ideological or doctrinal base; and it implies that all the Conservative administrations in this period were dominated by their leader, Mrs Thatcher.…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays