17th Century in England
17th Century in England
17th Century in England
Historical Overview
The Catholic English soldier Fawkes, arriving in England after returning from a war against reformers in Spain, joined Robert Catesby in a plot to kill the protestant king James I. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.
Restoration
In 1660, in what is known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles II in France and arranged to restore him to power in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious toleration for his former enemies. On May 25, 1660, Charles II landed at Dover and four days later entered London in triumph. It was his 30th birthday, and London rejoiced at his arrival. In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn.
The Great Plague (16651666) was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the United Kingdom. It happened within the centuries-long time period of the Second Pandemic, an extended period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which began in Europe in 1347, the first year of the Black Death and lasted until 1750. The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people, about 20% of London's population. By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself. King Charles II, his family and his court left the city for Oxfordshire. The aldermen and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts. The Lord Mayor of the City, Sir John Lawrence, also decided to stay in the city. Businesses were closed when most wealthy merchants and professionals fled. As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to remain.
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. Only five people were killed, but 13,000 houses, 89 churches and four stone bridges were destroyed. London was rebuilt in brick and stone, rather than wood. The streets were made wider and straighter, and straw was no longer used to cover floors. The result was that the city became much cleaner, and the plague never returned.