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the Restoration and the monarchy

FEDERICA PENNACCHIONI

Created on March 13, 2026

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Transcript

the Restoration and the monarchy

RESTORATION LIFE

TWO DISASTERS

Charles II's reign

CHARLES'S PATRONAGE

THE RE-BUILDING OF LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

The Glorious Revolution and Queen Anne

CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE

SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Queen Anne and William III

James II placed Catholics in positions of authority in the army and universities. His heirs were his two Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne. James, however, then married the Catholic Mary of Modena and became the father of a Catholic son who took precedence over Mary as James’s successor. Parliament feared another civil war, so it began to negotiate with William of Orange, whose Protestant wife Mary, James II’s daughter, was next in succession to the throne.

In 1665 there was a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague and in 1666 the Great Fire of London raged for five days, destroying nine-tenths of the buildings within the City’s medieval walls.

After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) England got the French possessions in Canada and the monopoly of the slave trade with Spanish America. British traders began to do business with the West Indies, China and the Far East.

Restoration life

  • Theatres, race-courses and taverns re-opened;
  • fashion and gossip replaced religious debate;
  • rejection of strict morality in favour of a more rational interest in the real, present world, rather than a concentration on the life of the soul.

During William and Mary’s reign, acts were passed which set the course of parliamentary rule in Britain:

  • the Toleration Act (1689) introduced more religious tolerance;
  • the Bill of Rights (1689) established that the king could levy taxes, raise an army and suspend laws only with parliamentary consent;
  • a Triennial Act asserted that Parliament should last for three years.

Charles’s patronage

In 1662 Charles II patronised the Royal Society, which was an association of scientists and intellectuals.

The re-building of London

Charles II asked the architect Sir Christopher Wren to re-build the old insanitary City. Wren presented a plan for a new City with wide streets and squares, buildings and churches in the neoclassical style.

St Paul’s Cathedral was his masterpiece.

The Act of Settlement (1701) excluded Catholics from the throne and declared that Anne and her heirs would succeed William.

The religious question

  • The Corporation Act (1661) excluded the dissenters from public offices;
  • the Act of Uniformity (1662) imposed the use of the Book of Common Prayer
  • the Test Act (1673) required all public employees to conform to the Church of England.

The Catholics in Ireland and Scotland supported the exiled James II, who landed in Ireland and tried to seize control over the English Protestants who lived there. William III defeated him in the Battle of the Boyne. During Anne’s reign the Act of Union (1707) established the United Kingdom of Great Britain which united England and Scotland with a single Parliament in Westminster. Ireland remained a separate kingdom with its own Parliament, though subordinate to Westminster.