England in the Years of transition (1702-1837)

England in the 18^th century. At the beginning of the 1700's, England was still mainly a nation of rural villages and country towns. By the middle of the 1700's, the Industrial Revolution was underway. It swept away many aspects of rural life. The modern system of an annual budget for the approval of Parliament was established. So, too, was the habit of the monarch appointing one principal, or “Prime” Minister from the ranks of Parliament to head the government.

Anne’s reign saw the emergence of two new political parties, the Whigs and the Tories. The Whigs, supported the Protestant values of hard work and thrift, and believed in government by monarch and aristocracy together. The other group, the Tories, had a greater respect for the idea of the monarchy and the importance of the Anglican Church.These two groups had first appeared during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1683. The Tories had supported the exclusion of James and were largely a Protestant-based party.

The most important constitutional event of Anne's reign was the Act of Union, passed in 1707. This act made the kingdoms of Scotland and England into the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Scotland sent members to the Parliament at Westminster, but the Church of Scotland and Scottish law system, more similar to continental European system, remained unchanged.

When Anne died in 1714, she was succeeded by Sophia of Hanover's heir George. King George I, a middle-aged German, never mastered the language of his new kingdom. Soon after George's succession, the Whigs returned to power. A Cabinet Council consisting of the most important ministers came into being. But because George did not speak English well, he did not attend ministers' meetings regularly. Therefore, Sir Robert Walpole, the greatest political figure of the time, who was then a senior minister, began to run the Cabinet and to manage Parliament. Walpole's power lasted from 1721 to 1742, and he was regarded as the prime (first) minister. He is considered Britain’s first Prime Minister

George I’s son George II (1727 – 1760) was more English than his father, but still relied on Sir Robert Walpole to run the country. George was the last English king to lead his army into battle at Dettingen in 1743. George III (1760 – 1820) was the first English-born and English-speaking monarch since Queen Anne. His reign was one of elegance and the age of some of the greatest names in English literature - Jane Austen, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth. George IY (1820 – 1830) is known as the 'First Gentleman of Europe. During William IY ’s (1830 – 1837) reign, England abolished slavery in the colonies in 1833.

In 1798, the Irish rebelled but were suppressed. By the Act of Union, William Pitt, Britain's prime minister, abolished the Irish Parliament and established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. The Irish flag of St. Patrick was incorporated in the Union Flag.

During this century the first British Empire had reached its largest extent.

Industrial Revolution. The increased trade, which resulted from the links with the new markets, was one factor which led to the Industrial Revolution. The many technical innovations in the areas of manufacturing and transport during this period were the other important contributing factors.

The vast technological changes that brought the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1700's. Between 1709 and 1750, Abraham Darby and his son successfully smelted iron ore with coke rather than charcoal. After 1750, coke smelting became general. The iron industry grew rapidly. British iron production increased twelvefold in the 1700's and boosted demand for coal.

A steam-engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen in the early 1700's, was improved by James Watt. In 1815, Sir Humphry Davy invented a safety lamp for miners that gave light but would not ignite explosive gases.

The tremendous growth in iron production after 1750 was partly responsible for the production of machines. Machines were first used on a large scale in the cotton industry. In 1733, John Kay had invented the flying shuttle, which enabled weavers to double the speed of hand-weaving and to make wider cloth. In 1764, James Hargraves speeded the spinning of thread by inventing the spinning jenny. Richard Arkwright's water frame of 1769, Samuel Crompton's spinning mule of 1776, and Edmund Cartwright's powerloom of 1785 were driven by water wheels.

When industrialists began to use machinery and steam power, they also started to establish factories.

So in the later 1700s, great economic and technological changes occurred. Historians have called this series of changes the Industrial Revolution. By 1830, Britain was changing from an agricultural to an industrial society. Rapid industrial growth made Britain powerful.

Industrial development led to improved transport. Various important improvements in farming made it possible to clothe and feed Britain's rapidly rising population. But the industrial changes had serious social consequences. For many poor people, housing and working conditions were appalling. The use of machines caused many people to lose their jobs.

The period also saw drastic changes in agriculture. Many wealthy merchants became landowners and wanted to live like country gentlemen and to make their farms successful. The rise in population and the growth of towns increased the demand for food and made farming profitable. The efforts of the landlords to improve their estates led to what historians call the Agrarian Revolution.

In England, the growth of the industrial mode of production, together with advances in agriculture, caused the greatest upheaval in the pattern of everyday life since the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Areas of common land, which had been available for use by everybody in a village for the grazing of animals since that time, disappeared as landowners incorporated them into their increasingly large and more efficient farms. (Some pieces of common land remain in Britain today and are used mainly as public parks. They are often called “the commons”). Hundreds of thousands of people moved from rural areas into new towns and cities. Most of these new towns and cities were in the north of England, where the raw materials for industry were available. They provided the cheap working force that also made possible the Industrial Revolution. In this way, the north, which had previously been economically backward compared to the south, became the industrial heartland of the country.

In the south of England, London came to dominate, not as an industrial but as a business and trading centre. By the end of the century, it had a population close to a million.

Social changes. The Industrial and Agrarian revolutions raised Britain's wealth and living standards considerably. But the rapid changes also created social problems. The use of machines forced people out of work, and in the early 1800's, gangs of Luddites wrecked the machines that they claimed had robbed them of their jobs. Some workers formed trade unions as a means of opposing their masters. However, trade unions were forbidden by Combination Acts that remained in force until 1824.

In many country areas, the decline of the domestic system of industry brought hardship. To deal with rural poverty in Berkshire, the local justices of the peace met in 1795 at Speenhamland (now part of Newbury) and decided that a farmworker whose wages fell below a set level should receive an extra payment from the authorities out of rates. This raised the rates of farmers and landowners, who reacted by paying their workers low wages. The Speenhamland system was imitated throughout Britain, but because of it, many farm labourers became paupers. It was replaced in 1834 by the Poor Law Amendment Act.

In the 1820s, Sir Robert Peel reformed the penal code, and in 1829, he founded the London Metropolitan Police Force.

The rapid social changes of the period, made worse by an economic depression that hit Britain in 1815 after war with France, brought demands for radical social reform. A reform meeting held at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, in 1819 was brutally suppressed by troops. Some people died, and the incident was called Peterloo, after the Battle of Waterloo.

Nevertheless, reforms did come. In 1829, Parliament passed a Catholic Emancipation Act, which freed Roman Catholics from many of the restrictions that they had lived under since the 1600s. In 1830, Earl Grey led a Whig government into office and began pushing through Parliament a measure to modernize the electoral system.

By 1830, the British electoral system was out of date. Few men had the right to vote. Voting took place openly at hustings (public platforms), and bribery or intimidation of voters was easy. Every county and every borough returned two members to Parliament. Some members of Parliament represented rotten boroughs, towns that had become greatly reduced in population. Others represented pocket boroughs, where one landowner controlled the votes. Few of the industrial towns in northern England and the Midlands were boroughs. Manchester, for example, had no member of Parliament, because it was not a borough.

The 1832 Reform Act was passed after a great struggle. Under the Act, most middle-class men received the vote. The Act abolished some small boroughs and reduced the number of members for other boroughs.

The Municipal Corporation Act of 1835 set up town councils elected by ratepayers and presided over by a mayor. It empowered boroughs to provide drainage, markets, street lights, and other facilities.