Young Folks' History of EnglandYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Young Folks' History of England
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Great Britain -- History -- Juvenile literature
Till her time the Scots--though since James I. they had been under the
same king as England--had had a separate Parliament, Lords and Commons,
who sat at Edinburgh; but in the reign of Queen Anne the Scottish
Parliament was united to the English one, and the members of it had
to come to Westminster. This made many Scotsmen so angry that they
became Jacobites; but as every body knew that the queen was a gentle,
well-meaning old lady, nobody wished to disturb her, and all was
quiet as long as she lived, so that her reign was an unusually tranquil
one at home, though there were such splendid victories abroad. It was
a time, too, when there were almost as many able writers as in Queen
Elizabeth's time. The two books written at that day, which you are
most likely to have heard of, are Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel
Defoe, and Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad.
Anne's Tory friends did not make her happy; they used to quarrel among
themselves and frightened her; and after one of their disputes she had
an attack of apoplexy, and soon died of it, in the year 1714.
It was during Anne's reign that it became the fashion to drink tea
and coffee. One was brought from China, and the other from Arabia,
not very long before, and they were very dear indeed. The ladies
used to drink tea out of little cups of egg-shell china, and the
clever gentlemen, who were called the wits, used to meet and talk
at coffeehouses, and read newspapers, and discuss plays and poems;
also, the first magazine was then begun. It was called "The
Spectator," and was managed by Mr. Addison. It came out once a week,
and laughed at or blamed many of the foolish and mischievous habits
of the time. Indeed it did much to draw people out of the bad ways
that had come in with Charles II.
CHAPTER XLI.
GEORGE I. A.D. 1714--1725.
The Electress Sophia, who had always desired to be queen of England,
had died a few months before Queen Anne; and her son George, who liked
his own German home much better than the trouble of reigning in a
strange country, was in no hurry to come, and waited to see whether
the English would not prefer the young James Stuart. But as no James
arrived George set off, rather unwillingly, and was received in London
in a dull kind of way. He hardly knew any English, and was obliged
sometimes to talk bad Latin and sometimes French, when he consulted
with his ministers. He did not bring a queen with him, for he had
quarreled with his wife, and shut her up in a castle in Germany; but
he had a son, also named George, who had a very clever, handsome wife
--Caroline of Anspach, a German princess; but the king was jealous of
them, and generally made them live abroad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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