A-Level历史-英国(1815-1841)Britain。

       Revision: Britain (1815-1841)

　　Prime Ministers

　　William Pitt: 1783-1801, 1804-1806

　　Henry Addington: 1801-04

　　Lord Grenville: 1806-1807

　　Duke of Portland: 1807-1809

　　Spencer Perceval: 1809-1812

　　Lord Liverpool: 1812-1827

　　George Canning: 1827

　　Viscount Goderich: 1827-28

　　Duke of Wellington: 1828-1830

　　Earl Grey: 1830-1834

　　Lord Melbourne: 1834, 1835-1841

　　Sir Robert Peel: 1834-1835, 1841-1846

　　Chartists

　　Thomas Attwood

　　William Benbow

　　George Binns

　　John Cleave

　　Thomas Cooper

　　William Cuffay

　　Thomas Duncombe

　　Mary Fildes

　　John Frost

　　R. G. Gammage

　　George Julian Harney

　　Henry Hetherington

　　Thomas Hughes

　　George Holyoake

　　Ernest Jones

　　Anne Knight

　　Charles Kingsley

　　William Lovett

　　Frederick Denison Maurice

　　John Stuart Mill

　　Richard Oastler

　　James Bronterre O'Brien

　　Feargus O'Connor

　　Elizabeth Pease

　　Francis Place

　　Jane Smeal

　　Samuel Smiles

　　Joseph Rayner Stephens

　　Henry Vincent

　　Thomas Wakley

　　1793: Catholic Emancipation

In the 18th century attempts were made to obtain full political and civil liberties to British and Irish Roman Catholics. In Ireland, where the majority of the population were Catholics, the Relief Act of 1793 gave them the right to vote in elections, but not to sit in Parliament.

In England the leading campaigners for Catholic emancipation were the Radical members of the House of Commons, Sir Francis Burdett and Joseph Hume.

By the beginning of the 19th century, William Pitt, the leader of Tories, became converted to the idea of Catholic emancipation. Pitt and his Irish Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, promised the Irish Parliament that Catholics would have equality with Protestants when it agreed to the Act of Union in 1801. When King George III refused to accept the idea of religious equality, Pitt and Castlereagh resigned from office.

In 1823 Daniel O'Connell founded the Catholic Association to campaign for the removal of discrimination against Catholics. In 1828 he was elected as M.P. for County Clare but as a Catholic he was not allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons. To avoid the risk of an uprising in Ireland, the British Parliament passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829, which granted Catholic emancipation and enabled O'Connell to take his seat.

1811-1812: The Luddites

In the early months of 1811 the first threatening letters from General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, were sent to employers in Nottingham. Workers upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred stocking frames were destroyed. In March, 1811, several attacks were taking place every night and the Nottingham authorities had to enroll four hundred special constables to protect the factories. To help catch the culprits, the Prince Regent offered £50 to anyone "giving information on any person or persons wickedly breaking the frames".

Luddism gradually spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. In Yorkshire, croppers, a small and highly skilled group of cloth finishers, turned their anger on the new shearing frame that they feared would put them out of work. In February and March, 1812, factories were attacked by Luddites in Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield and Leeds.

In February 1812 the government of Spencer Perceval proposed that machine-breaking should become a capital offence. Despite a passionate speech by Lord Byron in the House of Lords, Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act that enabled people convicted of machine-breaking to be sentenced to death. As a further precaution,the government ordered 12,000 troops into the areas where the Luddites were active.

On of the most serious Luddite attacks took place at Rawfolds Mill near Brighouse in Yorkshire. William Cartwright, the owner of Rawfolds Mill, had been using cloth-finishing machinery since 1811. Local croppers began losing their jobs and after a meeting at Saint Crispin public house, they decided to try and destroy the cloth-finishing machinery at Rawfolds Mill. Cartwright was suspecting trouble and arranged for the mill to be protected by armed guards.

Led by George Mellor, a young cropper from Huddersfield, the attack on Rawfolds Mill took place on 11th April, 1812. The Luddites failed in gain entry and by the time they left, two of the croppers had been mortally wounded. Seven days later the Luddites killed William Horsfall, another large mill-owner in the area. The authorities rounded up over a hundred suspects. Of these, sixty-four were indicted. Three men were executed for the murder of Horsfall and another fourteen were hung for the attack on Rawfolds Mill.

Throughout 1812 there were attacks on Lancashire cotton mills. Local handloom weavers objected to the introduction of power looms. On 20th March, 1812 the warehouse of William Radcliffe, one of the first manufacturers to use the power-loom, was attacked in Stockport.

Wheat prices soared in 1812. Unable to feed their families, workers became desperate. There were food riots in Manchester, Oldham, Ashton, Rochdale, Stockport and Macclesfield. On 20th April several thousand men attacked Burton's Mill at Middleton near Manchester. Emanuel Burton, who knew that his policy of buying power-looms had upset local handloom weavers, had recruited armed guards and three members of the crowd were killed by musket-fire. The following day the men returned and after failing to break-in to the mill, they burnt down Emanuel Burton's house. The military arrived and another seven men were killed.

Three days later, Wray & Duncroff's Mill at Westhoughton, near Manchester, was set on fire. William Hulton, the High Sheriff of Lancashire, arrested twelve men suspected of taking part in the attack. Four of the accused, Abraham Charlston, Job Fletcher, Thomas Kerfoot, and James Smith, were executed. The Charlston's family claimed Abraham was only twelve years old but he was not reprieved. It was reported that Abraham cried for his mother on the scaffold. A local part-time journalist, John Edward Taylor, investigated the case and claimed that the attack had been the result of action taken by spies employed by Colonel Fletcher, one of Manchester's magistrates.

In June 1812 John Knight organised a meeting for weavers at a public house in Manchester. As the meeting was coming to an end Joseph Nadin, Deputy Constable of Manchester, arrived and arrested Knight and thirty-seven other weavers. Knight was charged with "administering oaths to weavers pledging them to destroy steam looms" and they were accused of attending a seditious meeting. At their subsequent trial all thirty-eight were acquitted.

In the summer of 1812 eight men in Lancashire were sentenced to death and thirteen transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills. Another fifteen were executed at York. This was followed by further sporadic outbreaks of violence but by 1817 the Luddite movement had ceased to be active in Britain.

1815: Napoleonic Wars

In 1815 British forces were victorious at the Battle of Waterloo. The abdication of Napoleon and the successful conclusion of the French Wars improved the public standing of Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool. It was hoped that with the end of the conflict in Europe, Lord Liverpool's government would be able to concentrate on introducing the social reforms that were much needed in Britain.

1814-1815: Congress of Vienna

In 1814 Castlereagh represented Britain at the Congress of Vienna. The agreement reached at Vienna resulted in the reinforcement of hereditary rule and the suppression of liberal and nationalist sentiments in Europe.

The Congress of Vienna was a conference between ambassadors from the major powers in Europe that was chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and held on the way to Vienna, Austria, from late September, 1814, to June 9, 1815. Its purpose was to redraw the continent's political map after the defeat of Napoleonic France the previous spring. The discussions continued despite the ex-Emperor Napoleon I's return from exile and resumption of power in France in March 1815, and the Congress's Final Act was signed nine days before his final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Technically, one might note that the "Congress of Vienna" never actually occurred, as the Congress never met in plenary session, with most of the discussions occurring in informal sessions among the Great Powers.

The Congress was concerned with determining the entire shape of Europe after the Napoleonic wars, with the exception of the terms of peace with France, which had already been decided by the Treaty of Paris, signed a few months earlier, on May 30, 1814.

1815: Corn Laws

A Corn Law was first introduced in Britain in 1804, when the landowners, who dominated Parliament, sought to protect their profits by imposing a duty on imported corn. During the Napoleonic Wars it had not been possible to import corn from Europe. This led to an expansion of British wheat farming and to high bread prices.

Farmers feared that when the war came to an end in 1815, the importation of foreign corn would lower prices. This fear was justified and the price of corn reached fell from 126s. 6d. a quarter in 1812 to 65s. 7d. three years later. British landowners applied pressure on members of the House of Commons to take action to protect the profits of the farmers. Parliament responded by passing a law permitting the import of foreign wheat free of duty only when the domestic price reached 80 shillings per quarter (8 bushels). During the passing of this legislation, the Houses of Parliament had to be defended by armed troops against a large angry crowd.

This legislation was hated by the people living in Britain's fast-growing towns who had to pay these higher bread prices. The industrial classes saw the Corn Laws as an example of how Parliament passed legislation that favored large landowners. The manufacturers in particular were concerned that the Corn Laws would result in a demand for higher wages.

There was a dreadful harvest in 1816. This caused bread prices to increase rapidly. This was followed by industrial unrest as workers demanded higher wages in order to pay for the increased food prices. As well as strikes there were food riots all over Britain.

The Corn Laws had an important political impact on Manchester. It was one of the main reasons why the group of middle-class moderate reformers began meeting at the home of John Potter. It also influenced working class radicals and the Corn Laws were one of the main issues that were to be addressed at the meeting that they had organized at St. Peter's Field on 16th August, 1819.

1817: Habeas Corpus - Gagging Acts

The Habeas Corpus Act passed by Parliament in 1679 guaranteed that a person detained by the authorities would have to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined. In times of social unrest, Parliament had the power to suspend Habeas Corpus. William Pitt did this in May 1793 during the war with France. Parliamentary reformers such as Thomas Hardy and John Thelwall were imprisoned as a result of this action.

Habeas Corpus was also suspended in January 1817 after a missile had been thrown through the glass window of the Prince Regent's coach on the way to the opening of Parliament. Supporters of parliamentary reform were blamed for this act of violence and Lord Liverpool and his government rushed through Parliament the Gagging Acts. These measures banned meetings of over fifty people and instructed magistrates to arrest everyone suspected of spreading seditious libel.

The Gagging Acts severely hampered the campaign for parliamentary reform. However, as soon as Parliament decided to restore Habeas Corpus in March, 1818, there was an immediate revival in the demands for universal suffrage.

1817: Blanketeers March

In March 1817 three working-class Radicals in Manchester, John Johnson, John Bagguley and Samuel Drummond decided to organize a protest march as a method of drawing attention to the problems of unemployed spinners and weavers in Lancashire. The plan was for the men to take a petition to the Prince Regent. On the way to London the men hoped to hold meetings and to gain the support of other textile workers. It was believed that by the time they reached London there would be over 100,000 marchers willing to tell the royal family about the distress being caused by the growth of the factory system.

The leaders of the moderate reformers in Manchester, Archibald Prentice, John Shuttleworth and John Edward Taylor, were opposed to the proposed march. John Knight, Joseph Johnson, John Saxton and other Radical leaders in Manchester had doubts about the wisdom of this planned demonstration and decided not to encourage their supporters to take part in the march.

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