-
London theaters reopen; actresses appear onstage for the first time
For nearly 20 years, the London theatres were closed to the public, but in 1660, when King Charles II at last returned from exile in Europe, the theatre started up again. -
Charles II is proclaimed king of England (crowned in 1661)
Charles issued the Declaration of Breda, promising a general amnesty and freedom of conscience. Parliament accepted the Declaration and he was proclaimed King on 8 May 1660. Charles landed at Dover on 26 May 1660, and entered London three days later. He was crowned at Westminster on 23 April 1661. -
Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London
The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which one in five residents died. -
Great Fire destroys much of London
The Great Fire of London began on the night of September 2, 1666, as a small fire on Pudding Lane, in the bakeshop of Thomas Farynor, baker to King Charles II. At one o'clock in the morning, a servant woke to find the house aflame, and the baker and his family escaped, but a fear-struck maid perished in the blaze. -
Glorious (Bloodless): Revolution James II is succeeded by Protestant rulers of William and Mary
In 1668-1689, they engineered the memorable Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution. Dethroning the despotic and unpopular Catholic James II, they enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Netherlands. The Dutch-born William III and his English wife, Mary II, daughter of James II. -
Alexander Pope publishes part of The Rape of the Lock
Pope wrote an initial version of the poem in 1712, telling the basic story of Belle and Lord Petre, and then made it twice as long two years later, turning it into a gentle satire on social pretension and vanity. With the expanded version, Pope succeeded in reuniting his friends and in achieving poetic fame: The Rape of the Lock was a smash hit throughout his lifetime and became one of his most famous and best-loved poems. -
Swift publishes A Modest Proposal part of The Rape of the Lock
A Modest Proposal, published in 1729 in response to worsening conditions in Ireland, is perhaps the severest and most scathing of all Swift's pamphlets. The tract did not shock or outrage contemporary readers as Swift must have intended; its economics was taken as a great joke, its more incisive critiques ignored. -
Voltaire publishes Candide
Candide is considered Voltaire’s signature work, and it is here that he levels his sharpest criticism against nobility, philosophy, the church, and cruelty. Though often considered a representative text of the Enlightenment, the novel actually savagely satires a number of Enlightenment philosophies and demonstrates that the Enlightenment was a far from monolithic movement. -
George III is crowned king of England; becomes known as the king who lost the American Colonies
King George III (1738-1820) ascended the British throne in 1760. During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England’s successful resistance to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering intermittent bouts of acute mental illness, he spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness. -
British Parliament passes Stamp Act for taxing American Colonies
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. -
African American poet Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subject, Religoious and Moral is published in London
Poems on Various Subjects revealed that Wheatley's favorite poetic form was the couplet, both iambic pentameter and heroic. More than one-third of her canon is composed of elegies, poems on the deaths of noted persons, friends, or even strangers whose loved ones employed the poet. The poems that best demonstrate her abilities and are most often questioned by detractors are those that employ classical themes as well as techniques. -
Boston Tea Party occurs
The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. -
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the first great feminist treatise. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect will always govern and sought “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous [sic] with epithets of weakness.” -
Napoleon heads revolutionary government in France
On November 9, 1799, as frustration with their leadership reached a fever pitch, Bonaparte staged a coup d’état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France’s “first consul.” The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, in which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.
