Long accustomed to a considerable degree of self-government and freed, after 1763, from the French danger, American colonists resented any attempts to make them pay a share of the cost of imperial defence in the form of assorted taxes and duties. They also resented British attempts to treat colonial legislatures as secondary to the government […]

In 1760, the aged George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III. Unlike his predecessors, George III was more interested in English than German af­fairs. George tried to enter politics as an independent force. He did not attempt to free himself from the control of Parliament, as the time when that was pos­sible had […]

Most workers lived in desperate poverty, just bare­ly surviving on the wages they earned. In cities, they paid high prices for both food and housing.

If Britain’s economy was to continue to expand, the country would have to seek the markets abroad, while holding down living standards at home in order to keep production costs low. The duty of the poor was clear: it was not their business to spend more. They were just more. A detailed and properly documented […]

With the industrialization, the British middle class grew larger and more influential as the number of financiers, factory owners and capitalist farmers in­creased. The upper class still possessed the land and titles, but the industrial middle class had the money. During the whole of the 18th century, the landed aris­tocracy, which largely controlled Parliament, firm­ly […]

During the first half of the 18th century, the pop­ulation of Great Britain increased by less than 15 per­cent. Between 1751 and 1801, the year of the first of­ficial census, the number rose by two-thirds to 10.7 million. During the next fifty years, the population of the country doubled. The reasons include a decline of […]

William III had to do much to secure his hold, not only upon England but upon Scotland and Ireland. In 1689 James II landed in Ireland, where he had an army ready to hand, and was easily able to stir up a national rising of the native Catholics against the Protestant “garrison”. In July 1690 […]

The enclosures of earlier times had been made to turn arable lands into sheep pastures. The enclosures of the 18th century were different. They transformed the communally cultivated open fields into large farms on which the new and more scientific mixed farming could be profitably carried out. In addition, much com­mon land on which the […]

In early 1700′s, British farmers developed ways to improve crop yields. The invention of the seed-drill by Jethro Tull in 1701 became one of the earliest steps in making agriculture more productive. TuU’s device placed seeds in the soil in rows at even intervals, thereby using far less seed and leaving fewer bare spots than […]

In 1700 there was only a scatter of industries. Woolen manufacture, the most important, was depen­dent on the rural population spinning and weaving in their own homes. The word spinster is still used for an unmarried woman. Cloth was greatly valued.