The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

1660 - 1798

The Restoration

• Charles II was invited to return to England and restore the monarchy

• He was welcomed and celebrated

• People were overjoyed to be free from Cromwell and his mandates

The Glorious Revolution

• Charles II’s death meant that his brother James II took the throne

• James was so unpopular that Parliament asked Charles’s daughter Mary and her husband William to replace James

• This happened without violence – called the glorious revolution

• The new king and queen affirmed 1698 Bill of Rights

• England had the most representative government of its time

The End of the Stuart Line

• After William and Mary died, Anne, the younger daughter of James II, took the throne

• She was the last of the Stuarts to rule England• Act of Settlement gave the throne to James I’s

Protestant relations

• 1707 – Scotland and England united to create Great Britain

The House of Hanover

• Queen Anne died without an heir

• The throne passed to George I of Hanover, Germany• Never learned English

• His son, George II, was equally unpopular

• George III, however, was born and educated an Englishman

The Industrial Revolution

• Changes in manufacturing and the economy changed society as a whole

• Factories brought more people to the cities

• New class distinctions emerged• i.e. capitalists

Disasters, Discoveries, and Social Breakthrough

• Disasters• The plague continued to sweep through Europe • Carried by rats

• 70,000 people died in 1665

• The Great Fire – London in 1666

• Discoveries• Sir Isaac Newton – laws of gravity, motion, calculus

• James Watt – steam engine

• Social Breakthrough• Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu helped change view of women

Literary Trends

• Poetry to Prose• Puritan writers ushered in this change in an effort to write in

a straightforward manner

• Age of Reason brought a simpler form of literature

• Wit and Satire

• Wit, or cleverness, was prized in conversation and writing

• Satire

• Horatian – author mildly pokes fun at a subject

• Juvenalism – author mercilessly criticizes certain practices or characters

The Schools of Jonson and Donne

• Ben Jonson strove to write with the perfection and harmony he found in classical works without the ornate style of Elizabethan times• Other poets who were influenced by him are known as

“Sons of Ben”

• John Donne pioneered metaphysical poetry, which is characterized by an unusual degree of intellectualism and the use of surprising, strangely accurate comparisons• George Herbert and Andrew Marvell were followers