Fidelity Fiduciary Bank. For much of his reign, William III was engaged in wars on the Continent. Campaigns like the Nine Years War had pressed the treasury to its limits when in 1694 Parliament a...
Entering the Triangular Trade. Upon his return, Charles and his brother, the Duke of York and future King James II, supported England’s entry into the trans-Atlantic slave trade already profitable...
London in Flames, London in Glory. Unexpected relief from the plague came in the following year when a fire raged in the City of London for four days. Three quarters of the city within the walls w...
Fashionable Inquiry. Another cause which received the king’s occasional attentions, if not his financial support, was the sciences. In 1662, Charles granted a charter to the Royal Society of Londo...
Return Engagement. After several years exiled in France and Holland, Charles brought an appreciation for painting, music, and especially the theater back from his travels. Upon his return, King Cha...
God Save the King. After almost two decades of Puritan austerity, the crowds that welcomed King Charles II back to England looked forward to a change. As the famous diarist Samuel Pepys concludes ...
A Body without a Head. After a protracted civil war, King Charles was captured in Scotland and brought to Westminster for trial in 1649. He frustrated proceedings by refusing to respond to the char...
Curtain Call. Though the Puritans had never been fond of play-acting and its associations with unchecked fantasy and license, what made the theaters the first fatalities of the Civil War was their ...
The Long Parliament. Charles I had come to the throne in 1625 prepared to rule by divine right as God’s anointed on earth. But unlike absolute monarchs like his father, Charles struggled with the g...
During the 1640s, the first English newspapers followed the weekly dispatches of the Civil War between King Charles and Parliament. A growing number of gazettes and newsletters continued to appear ...
Dipity
