because it could not deteriorate into tyranny in his books: "First
Defense of the People of England" in 1651, and "Second Defense" in 1654.
He lauded Cromwell as great in war and great in peace, and exemplifying
the principle that "nature appoints that wise men should govern fools".
Thomas Hobbes, the son of a clergyman, and tutor to students, wrote
"Leviathan" in 1651 on his theory of sovereignty. Hobbes thought that
states are formed as the only alternative to anarchy, barbarism, and
war, so that supremacy and unity of a sovereign power is essential to a
civilized life and the protection of the citizenry. A sovereign may be a
man or body of men as long as his or its authority is generally
recognized. There must be a social contract among the citizenry to obey
a certain sovereign. To avoid religious conflict, there must be a
complete subordination of the church to the state and the religion of a
state must be dependent upon its secular sovereign. Hobbes thought that
knowledge of the world came through experience and not reason alone.
Only matter exists, and everything that happens can be predicted in
accordance with exact, scientific laws. He regarded human societies as
purely mechanical systems set in motion by human desires. He saw self
interest as the mainspring of moral law. Conflicting self interests
transformed into a lawful system of agreements. Hobbes opined that all
power really originated in the people and that the end of all power was
for the people's good.
On the other hand, James Harrington, who wrote "The Commonwealth of
Oceana" in 1656, opined that a stable society depended on a direct
relationship between the distribution of property and political power;
no one with property worth more than 2,000 pounds should be allowed to
acquire more and property should be divided among children. A senate of
mature property owners were to make and debate the laws while an
assembly elected by universal suffrage was to vote on them because "a
popular assembly without a senate cannot be wise and a senate without a
popular assembly will not be honest". A third of the Senate would turn
over every year. John Milton defended the execution of the King in "The
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" in which he maintained that the people
may "as often as they shall judge it for the best either to choose him
or reject him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and
right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to the best". He also
wrote in favor of liberty of the press. Ordinary speech found its way
into prose writing.
Lands of more than 700 Royalists, including church lands, were
confiscated and sold or leased by county committees. Many Royalists put
their lands into trusts or turned them over to relatives or sold them
outright to prevent confiscation. It was an upheaval comparable to the
dissolution of the monasteries. Also, specified Papists who had taken up
arms against the realm lost their lands, goods, money, rents, and
two-thirds of their personal estates. But allowance was made for the
maintenance of their wives and children.
The Book of Common Prayer was abolished because of its burdensome
ceremonies. It was replaced by a Directory for Public Worship. According
to this, the Sunday service was to include reading of the Scriptures,
prayer, and a sermon, ordinarily on some text of scripture which would
be explained with reasons therefore and applied to peoples' lives so
they could see if they had sinned or not. The ending of episcopal
patronage gave some parishes the right to elect their own ministers.
All festivals and holy days were abolished, e.g. Christmas, Easter,
Whitsuntide. Instead, scholars, apprentices, and servants were to have
recreation and stores were to be closed every second Tuesday of the
month. The usual merry-making, music, dancing, and sports after the
Sunday service were discontinued.
A day for fasting: the last Wednesday of every month, was declared by
statute. This day was to be "kept with the more solemn humiliation,
because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our
forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ
into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and
sensual delights, being contrary to the life which Christ himself led
here upon earth, ...". This statute lasted for only five years from 1644
because observance of it was not consistent throughout the country.
Educational opportunities such as in grammar schools were more
widespread and stronger than ever before or since until the 1800s. About
78% of men in London were literate, and 30% of men nationwide. About
half the women in London were literate by 1700.
In 1645, the marshalls of the admiralty and five major ports were
ordered to search all ships for stolen children since it had been a
problem in London.
The elderships of the church were given power in 1645 to suspend from
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper all ignorant and scandalous persons.
Ignorance was lack of knowledge that there is a God and this is the one
true God we worship, that this God is one, yet three persons: Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, that God created man in his own image, that all
have sinned and therefore shall die, that there is one mediator between
God and man: Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save men from their
sins, that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the
right hand of God, and intercedes for us, that Christ and his benefits
are applied only by faith, that the souls of the faithful live with
Christ in blessedness, that non-believers and non-repenters shall perish
eternally, that the sacraments are baptism and communion, and that there
is a judgment day on which the righteous will be given life eternal and
the wicked shall receive everlasting punishment. Scandalous persons are
those who blasphemously speak or write anything of God, his holy work or
the sacraments; an incestuous person; an adulterer; a fornicator; a
drunkard; a profane swearer or cursor; a murderer; a worshipper of
images, crosses, crucifixes, relics, saints, or angels; makers of images
of the trinity; one who professes not to be in charity with his
neighbor; any challenging another to fight or accepting such challenge;
on the Lord's day, dancing, dicing, cards, masking, wake, shooting,
bowling, football, wrestling, plays, interludes, fencing, bullbaiting,
bearbaiting, hawking, hunting, coursing [hunting with hounds], fishing,
fowling, selling wares, travel without reasonable cause; a brothel-house
keeper; one who solicits the chastity of another; one who marries a
Papist or consents to the marriage of his child to a Papist; own who
goes for advice to a witch, wizard, or fortune-teller; one who assaults
his parents, or any magistrate, minister, or elder in the execution of
his office; and one attainted of barratry [purchase or sale of office or
preferment], forgery, extortion, or bribery. If such a person persists,
he shall be excommunicated.
Cromwell did not disapprove of activities prohibited because of the
recreation they provided, but thought that they had become too central
to people's lives. He did not close the taverns or ale houses.
In 1653 it was required that public preachers be approved by a
commission nominated by the Lord Protector and Parliament because there
had been too many "weak, scandalous, popish, and ill- affected" ones. In
1654 named persons were ejected as scandalous, ignorant and insufficient
ministers and schoolmasters.
Because the poorer parishes of London were having problems supporting
their poor, a Corporation for the poor of London was established in 1647
with authority to erect workhouses and houses of correction.
Imprisoned debtors who had less than five pounds and less that five
pounds worth of trade tools and clothing and bedding for his family were
ordered released in 1649.
Wardship was abolished. Military tenures were abolished. Feudal tenures
were converted into freehold in 1646.
In 1653 those living in Crown forest land were given free socage in
that land. The game laws were not enforced, so people could eat deer.
Enclosures were increasing and Parliament was disinclined to protect
copyholders against enclosures, favoring those with rights of ownership.
Enclosure was no longer deterred especially after abolition of the Star
Chamber. The legal device of "strict settlement" evolved to prevent
heirs from breaking up estates enabled families to concentrate land and
capital into large units. The oldest son inherited the land and the
younger sons now received money. Clover seed was sold in London by 1650.
It revolutionized the cultivation of barren land. England began to
export instead of import grain. But vagrancy increased from people
dispossessed of land. And the village artisan, when deprived of his
field and of his rights of common, could not continue to work at home,
but had to accept the wages offered to him in an employer's workshop.
Employers and entrepreneurs were now free from control by the Crown.
There were no more attempts to supervise quality of manufactures or to
fix prices or regulate wages. There was greater freedom established in
relations between employers and workers. The government no longer tried
to compel employers to keep employees in times of economic slump. The
requirement of seven year apprenticeships and being the son of a
freeholder to be an apprentice were not enforced.
The economy was still volatile due ostensibly to variable harvests,
amount of gold and money in circulation, and balances of trade, and to
periods of plague. Wages rose steadily. The rise in prices ended about
1650, and prices remained stable until about 1775. There was more
mobility of people. Taxation became regular and it was controlled by
representatives of the taxpayers. Population growth gradually
stabilized.
Capitalism was coming into being. For instance, the clothier was now a
manufacturer. He had become a contractor, taking wool to the specialist
spinner, the yarn to the specialist weaver, the rough cloth to be washed
and stretched, and finally to the dyer. This cloth was sold at retail by
the drapers. Tin on the surface was exhausted, so capital was used to
drive deep shafts in tin mines. No longer did a single man with a single
ship sail around until he found a market, but companies trading overseas
had their ships, wharves, and depots furnished by men's savings put into
a common stock. The first major capitalist industries were coal mining,
iron mining, and foreign trade because they all needed large
investments, and thus joint-stock company organization.
Cromwell reconstituted the East India Company on a wider and more
permanent basis. He gave it a new charter in 1657 which included
authority to make stock permanent, thus ensuring a continuity of
capital. This solved the problem of the competition of overlapping
voyages which still occurred despite their terms of several years. The
company became one of the first permanent joint-stock companies. Now the
stock was never wound up. The Company had permanent capital which could
grow. The absence of competition among voyages made the Company stronger
in the face of a common enemy, such as a rival trading country or Indian
groups. The charter also authorized the company to fortify and colonize
any of its establishments and to transport to them settlers, stores, and
ammunition.
Later in 1657, the Company threw open the freedom of the Company to the
public for a nominal sum of five pounds. Now the Merchant Adventurers
and private traders could participate. It provided that dividends were
to be paid only in cash and not in kind (goods). It also provided for
appraisals of the Company's property to be made every three years, so
any shareholders could redeem their shares proportionately. His shares
would then be resold. People began to buy and sell their shares among
each other. The Company made the minimum subscription 100 pounds. Each
person holding 500 pounds worth of shares had one vote. Holding 1,000
pounds worth of shares qualified one for election to the committee of
twenty-four. The seats of the members of this committee and of the
Governor and Deputy Governor could no longer be permanent, but had
limited and staggered terms. The continuity of capital took the place of
the permanence of the governing body in providing stability. There was a
regular scale of salaries for employees, and rules of conduct such as
the one disallowing any clerk of the India House from going to play
houses, dancing schools, or taverns. The Company established almshouses
for its widows and orphans.
In 1657 the Muscovy Company, renewed its charter for trade in Russia
and established a New General Stock. If a man bought a share, he bought
freedom of the company. An annual dividend was declared from the annual
profits.
Commercial men regularly kept accounts with bankers. Merchants used
division to apportion profits or losses to the parties whose capital was
involved. Simple and compound interest were used. The concept of
contract became a familiar one.
Regular private bankers of London emerged from the Goldsmiths from 1640
to 1675. They issued bank notes and paid checks.
Cromwell increased trade by seizing territories, establishing colonies,
and warring with competitors for master of the seas and trade. In 1649
it was provided that no one who paid his assessment for soldiers' pay
would have to quarter any of them.
Authority was given in 1649 to impress seamen: mariners, sailors,
watermen, surgeons, gunners, ship carpenters, caukers, coopers, whoymen,
and carmen for carriage of victuals.
English ships were embellished with decoration. Their sail area was
increased by triangular fore and aft sails. The Navy increased from 39
to 80 vessels.
After serving in foreign wars, ex-soldiers were allowed in 1654 to
practice any trade without serving a seven year apprenticeship.
Colonies New Hampshire and Maine were established in 1635, Connecticut
in 1636, and Rhode Island in 1638, as offshoots from other colonies.
In 1649 a corporation was established to teach the Gospel of Jesus
Christ in New England to Indians.
About 1650, steel was hardened by repeated quenchings and temperings
when the steel had reached certain colors. Brass was made from copper
and zinc alloyed together.
There were power-driven rolls for the coinage from 1657. Strips of
silver were passed between engraved rolls. Then coins were punched out
and their edges serrated.
In the 1650s, Huygens made the first pendulum that worked practically
in a mechanical clock. This new clock increased the accuracy of
time-keeping tenfold. He also introduced the concept of mathematical
expectation into probability theory.
There was a thermometer which used liquid such as water or alcohol in a
glass tube instead of air.
Dutchman Stevinus showed that the pressure at the bottom of a column of
liquid is proportional to the height of the column, and not to its bulk,
about 1634. He also studied oblique forces, and the balancing of such
that could bring about "stable equilibrium".
Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian student of Galileo, discovered in
1643 that any fluid will be supported at a definite height, according to
its relative weight, as compared with air. He realized that a mercury
column, 30 inches in height, in a long glass tube inverted in a cup of
mercury, was being supported by air pressure exerted on the mercury in
the cup. When he observed that this height changed with the weather, he
had invented the mercury barometer. In his work, he created and used
vacuums.
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious
philosopher, was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he proved Euclid's
32nd theorem that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two
right angles. Before age 16, he wrote a book on conic sections. He is
famous for his theorem that a hexagon inscribed in a conic section has
the property that the three meeting points of the opposed sides are
always in a straight line. He constructed a calculator, which could
handle nine-digit numbers, in 1644 to assist his father, also a gifted
mathematician, in tax computations he did as a local government
official. He had Torricelli's mercury barometer carried up a mountain
and found that the height of the column dropped as altitude increased,
and thus that air pressure decreased with altitude. This showed that the
attribution of these effects to nature's abhorrence of a vacuum were due
instead solely to the weight and pressure of air. He determined that the
height to which the mercury rose was the same regardless of the shape of
the vessel containing it. Around 1646, he did experiments with double
vacuums and on the results formulated his principle that pressure
applied to a confined liquid is transmitted undiminished through the
liquid in all directions regardless of the area to which the pressure is
applied. Around 1653, he laid the foundations for the theory of
probabilities after being asked by a gambling friend why, in playing
dice, some frequencies came up more often than others. He developed a
means of calculating probabilities with his "Pascal's Triangle" of
coefficients of (a+b) raised to the nth power. Each row represents the
coefficients of a power one greater than the power of the previous row.
Each number is the sum of the nearest two numbers in the row above it.
He and lawyer and mathematician Pierre Fermat invented the theory of
probabilities.
Fermat also proved that the law for refraction (bending) of light
results from light's following the path that takes the shortest time. He
founded number theory, the study of properties of whole numbers, in
1640. Fermat formulated the notion of a line tangent to a curve and
started the development of differential calculus, in which a rate of
change is expressed as a function of time in equation form and also as a
tangent to the curve associated with that equation. This work helped lay
the foundation for the mathematics field of analysis. He and German
Gottfried Leibniz formulated the principle that an equation with two
unknown quantities can represent a curve. Leibnitz believed that man's
mind can arrive at truths about entities by pure thought.
Jean Ray from France concluded from his experiments that every piece of
material has a given weight, including air and fire. Otto von Guericke
from Germany discovered that, in a vacuum, sound does not travel, fire
is extinguished, and animals stop breathing.
At a time when mathematics was only a business of traders, merchants,
seamen, carpenters, and surveyors, mathematician John Wallis, the son of
a minister, studied sections of cones [circles, ellipses, parabola, and
hyperbolas] as curves of the second algebraic degree, i.e. with an
exponent of two, i.e. y = (a (x squared)) + b. He also worked with
negative and fractional exponents. Around 1655 he invented the infinite
arithmetic and introduced the symbol for infinity. He determined that
the area under any curve defined by the equation y = (x to the nth
power), was x to the (n+1)th power divided by n+1. He introduced the
concept of the limit of a string of numbers. He wrote a treatise on
algebra which was historical as well as practical. He also decoded enemy
cyphers for the sovereign.
Some English gentlemen interested in the new scientific methods
originated by Galileo had meetings beginning about 1645 to discuss
scientific topics. One group met at Gresham College and was headed by
Wallis. Another group was led by Robert Boyle, a philosopher, physicist,
and chemist. They wrote in English instead of Latin. These meetings
later gave rise to the Royal Society for science.
Since the Puritans forbade music in churches, but enjoyed it in
domestic circumstances, much secular music was composed, published, and
played. There were many musical clubs. The violin became very popular.
Solo songs were much sung. The first English opera: "The Siege of
Rhodes" was written and performed with women on stage. Writers of the
time included John Milton, political philosopher James Harrington, poet
Edmund Waller, Thomas Fuller, poet Abraham Cowley, and biographer Issak
Walton. John Aubrey wrote anecdotes about famous men. Jeremy Taylor,
chaplain to Charles I, wrote on theology. People still read French
romances translated into English. Dancing was still popular. Coffee
houses came into prominence as places of social discourse. The first
coffee house was established in London in 1652; ten years later, there
were 82 coffee houses in the City. There were elegant pleasure gardens,
with a fee for access. They were used for promenades and picnics. Ladies
and their gallants rendezvoused there. Cromwell introduced the habit of
port drinking to England.
In 1657, one general Post Offices was established with one Postmaster
General for all of England. No other person could have the horsing of
the through-posts. It cost 2d. for a letter to or from 80 miles of
London and 3d. for one outside 80 miles of London.
The Society of Friends was founded by the son of a weaver. They greeted
everyone as "friend" and did not bow; remove their hat, as was the
custom when before the king or an earl; or otherwise show any reverence
to anyone. From 1650, they were called Quakers because they trembled
when religiously stirred. They reverted to the ancient "thou" and "thee"
appellations. Their dress was particularly simple, with no buttons,
lace, ruffles, or embroidery. They hated ritual so much that they
rejected baptism and communion. They did not observe the Sabbath as a
special day different from other days. They derided the holiness of
churches. No clergy were admitted into their sect. When they met for
divine worship, each rose to deliver extemporaneous inspirations of the
Holy Ghost. Women were admitted to teach the brethren and were
considered proper vehicles to convey the dictates of the spirit. Quakers
believed that every man, in his own life, could be fully victorious over
sin. They denied any clerical authority and all texts. They believed in
the separation of church and state. They refused to swear to any oath,
e.g. in court, or to participate in war. They refused to take off their
hats to anyone but God. It was their practice to turn the other cheek
when one cheek had been struck. If asked for his cloak, a Quaker would
give it. He never asked more for his wares than the precise sum which he
was determined to accept. The Quakers encouraged widows and widowers to
provide for children from a first spouse when remarrying. They carefully
selected masters and mistresses who wanted to take on child apprentices
for their suitability for such responsibility. The education of Quaker
women did not decline, as it did for other women. From the fervor of
their zeal, the Quakers broke into churches, disturbed public worship,
and harassed the clergyman and audience with railing and reproaches.
When brought before a magistrate, they show no reverence but treated him
as an equal. Sometimes they were thrown into mad house or prisons and
sometimes whipped or pilloried. They endured stoically under this
suffering. Mary Fisher from Yorkshire introduced Quakerism to colonial
New England.
In 1653 there were separation agreements between spouses as to
property, e.g. support and maintenance.