-
Charles II is proclaimed king of England (crowned in 1661).
Charles's English parliament enacted laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he favoured a policy of religious tolerance. The major foreign policy issue of his early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, he entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. -
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. -
Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London
The largest of these were the Plague of Justinian of 541–542, The Black Death of the 1340s, continuing in the Second plague pandemic to break out at intervals, and the Third plague pandemic beginning in 1855 and considered inactive from 1959. -
Great Fire destroys much of London.
The burnt area is shown in white. 436 acres of London were destroyed, including 13,200 houses and 87 out of 109 churches. Some places still smouldered for months afterwards. Only 51 churches and about 9000 houses were rebuilt. St Paul’s Cathedral was ruined, as was the Guildhall (the offices of the Lord Mayor) and 52 livery company halls -
Glorious (Bloodless): Revolution James II is succeeded by Protestant rulers of William and Mary.
The Glorious Revolution,[b] also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange). William's successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to his ascending of the English throne as William III of England. -
Alexander Pope publishes part of The Rape of the Lock
a narrative poem which aims at mockery and laughter by using almost all the characteristic features of an epic but for a trivial subject. Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” is a famous mock-epic. In it, there is invocation to Muses, proposition of subject, battles, supernatural machinery, journey on water, underworld journey, long speeches, feasts (coffee house), -
Swift publishes A Modest Proposal, protesting English treatment of the Irish poor
The two references aptly describe the difference in the lives of Ireland's Catholics and the Protestant English living in Ireland. Irish Catholics made up the Irish poor who constituted 80 percent of the population and owned less than one-third of the land. As the Protestant English landowners "ascended" to the gentrified class in the 1700s, the Irish Catholics descended deeper into lives of desperation and deprivation. -
Voltaire publishes Candide
Is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide or, All for the Best (1759) Candide or, The Optimist (1762) and Candide or, Optimism (1947). -
George III is crowned king of England; becomes known as the king who lost the American Colonies.
King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke and prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two predecessors he was born in Britain, spoke English. -
British Parliament passes Stamp Act for taxing American Colonies.
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, Religious and Moral is published in London
Although she was an African slave, Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in prenineteenth-century America. Pampered in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic's political leadership and the old empire's aristocracy, Wheatley was the abolitionists' illustrative testimony that blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. Her name was a hous -
Boston Tea Party occurs
The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. The Boston Tea Party happened in 3 British ships in the Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party took place because the colonists did not want to have to pay taxes on the British tea. -
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, basically the first feminist philosophical work, was published in 1792. Yup. That's less than twenty years after the good ol' U.S. of A. was founded. That's back when huge curled wigs were super styling. -
Napoleon heads revolutionary government in France
A period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the French Empire. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas.
