A History of Britain, Volume 2
Page 59
And that something was Indian; that something was a narcotic. Despite a draconian ban on opium, the Ch’ing empire was incapable of preventing smuggling, and the number of chests of Bengal opium that found their way to China rose from hundreds to many thousands a year. The first famous victim of the opium habit had been Robert Clive. It had eaten into him so badly that it had overpowered even his other mainline addiction – for the rushing high of imperial supremacy. Most of those who came later to British India would resist the first craving. But as for the opiate of global mastery, nineteenth- and even twentieth-century Britain would remain helplessly hooked.
James VI of Scotland, by Adrian Vanson, c. 1585. An early court portrait of the young Scottish king that was probably sent to the Danish court to woo his future wife, Anne of Denmark.
A variety of early designs for a union flag combining the colours of England and Scotland. When the first union flag was finally created in 1606, Scottish shipowners immediately complained that the cross of St George obscured the saltire of St Andrew.
The Benefits of the Reign of James I, with Peace and Abundance embracing at bottom left, one of the ceiling paintings in the Banqueting House, Whitehall Palace, London, by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1635.
Henry, Prince of Wales and Robert Devereux, Third Earl of Essex, in the Hunting Field, by Robert Peake, c. 1605. Popular and gifted, Henry was regarded as the perfect Renaissance prince.
Frances Howard, Countess of Essex and Somerset, by Isaac Oliver, c. 1600. A fashionable beauty, Frances Howard was at the centre of two court scandals, her divorce in 1612–13 and her trial for murder, 1615–16.
Charles I, Prince of Wales (detail), by Daniel Mytens, c. 1621.
James VI of Scotland, I of England, by Daniel Mytens, 1621.
William Laud, by Anthony van Dyck, c. 1635.
Sir William Waller, by Cornelius Jonson, 1643. Popularly known as ‘William the Conqueror’ for his early successes in the civil war, Waller was later defeated by his friend Sir Ralph Hopton at Lansdown in 1643.
Thomas Wentworth [later the Earl of Strafford] and his Secretary, Sir Philip Mainwaring, by Anthony van Dyck, c. 1634.
John Pym, by Samuel Cooper, c. 1630.
Sir Edmund Verney (detail), by Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1640.
Brampton Bryan, home of the Harleys, was besieged by royalists in 1643 and burnt to the ground in 1644.
Charles I at his Trial, by Edward Bower, 1649. Charles, clad in gold and black, wears the ‘uniform of melancholy’.
An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of King Charles I, by Dirk Weesop, c. 1649. An imaginary reconstruction of the execution, highlighting the mixed reactions of the crowd.
Oliver Cromwell, by Robert Walker, c. 1649.
Frontispiece to Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes.
John Lilburne, c. 1640, one of the foremost Levellers, who fought for freedom and reform, loudly championing the rights of the individual.
Henry Ireton, attributed to Robert Walker, c. 1655.
Charles II when Prince of Wales (detail), studio of Adriaen Hanneman, c. 1648–9. A rare portrait of the young prince during his exile in the Low Countries.
Cromwell’s Dissolution of the Rump of the Long Parliament, 1653.
Charles I on Horseback, engraving by Peter Lombart after Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1655.
Oliver Cromwell on Horseback, engraving by Peter Lombart after Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1655.
Cromwell’s death mask, 1658.
James Graham, First Marquis of Montrose, attributed to William Dobson, c. 1640.
The Great Fire of London, Dutch School, c. 1666.
Samuel Pepys, by John Hayls, 1666. Pepys recorded sitting for his portrait in his diary, complaining, ‘I . . . do almost break my neck looking over my shoulders to make the posture for him [Hayls] to work by’.
Sir Christopher Wren, Kt, President of the Royal Society, by an unknown artist, c. 1675, celebrating his completion of St Paul’s.
A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot, the first part . . . (detail), 1682. A burlesque on the Popish Plot illustrating ‘How Sir Godfrey Berry is Kill’d, his Body they hide . . . how Jesuits disguis’d, our Houses do fire; How subtly they Plot, and King’s Death Conspire; Of divers Great Lords drawn in . . . An Army of Irish, and Pilgrims from Spain’.
William III Landing at Torbay, by Jan Wyck, c. 1688. Behind him, on the shores of Torbay, William’s Protestant forces land safely, blown by a fair east wind.
William and Mary Giving the Cap of Liberty to Europe, by James Thornhill, c. 1700–20, detail from the ceiling of the Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital. Flanked by the Virtues in heaven, William and Mary represent Peace and Liberty vanquishing Tyranny, symbolized by Louis XIV’s broken sword.
George I, studio of Godfrey Kneller, c. 1730.
Sir Robert Walpole as Master of the King’s Staghounds in Windsor Forest (detail), by John Wootton, c. 1730.
The Committee of the House of Commons (the Gaols Committee), by William Hogarth, 1729, possibly painted in Fleet Prison, London. The prisoner in full irons might have been the Portuguese, Jacob Medez Solas, one of the first debtors to be gaoled in Fleet Prison.
Captain Thomas Coram, by William Hogarth, 1740, shown with the Foundling Hospital’s Royal Charter in his hand.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, by Antonio David, c. 1732. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, led the highlanders in the Jacobite rising of 1745.
Combat at Culloden, 16 April 1746, by David Morier, c. 1750, commissioned by the Duke of Cumberland.
A drawing of highland warriors, attributed to John Clerk of Penicuik, c. 1746. The ‘Penicuik’ sketchbook is a unique and masterly document of the human face of the Jacobite war, at times mordantly satirical, at other times full of pathos and disgust. At his best the artist rises to the heights of a Scottish Goya.
The south front of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, 1758–65, the grand Georgian house designed by Robert Adam for Sir Nathaniel Curzon.
The Temple of British Worthies by William Kent, c. 1731–35, Stowe Landscape Gardens, Buckinghamshire.
William Pitt the Elder, First Earl of Chatham, by William Hoare, c. 1754.
Portrait of an African, once thought to be Olaudah Equiano, English School, c. 1780.
George III, studio of Allan Ramsay, c. 1767.
Death of the Marquis de Montcalm, engraved by G. Chevillet, c. 1760.
Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West, 1770.
The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston, on March 5th, 1770 by a Party of the 29th Reg, front page of the Boston Gazette, engraved by Paul Revere, March, 1770.
George Washington at Princeton (detail), by Charles Willson Peale, 1779.
A contemporary view of Charlestown Heights, where General Thomas Gage sent an army to break the American position in June 1775.
Shuja-ud-Daulah, Nawab of Awadh, Holding a Bow, by Tilly Kettle, c. 1772.
Lord Clive Meeting Mir Jafar, Nawab of Murshidabad after the Battle of Plassey, 1757, by Francis Hayman, c. 1761–2.
Lord Clive Receiving from the Mogul the Grant of the Duanney (Diwani), by Benjamin West, c. 1774–95.
Wareen Hastings and his Wife, by Johann Zoffany, c. 1783.
Richard Wellesley, First Marquis Wellesley, English School, c. 1785.
Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, Lady Wellesley, by Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, 1790.
A View of Government House, Calcutta, engraved by Robert Havell the Younger, after James Baillie Fraser, 1826.
Storming of Seringapatam, by T. Sutherland after W. Heath, 1815.
Sultan Tipu’s Tiger, c. 1790, a mechanical tiger devouring a British soldier, made for the sultan’s amusement.
PICTURE CREDITS
BBC Books would like to thank the following for providing photographs and for permission to reproduce copyright material. While every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge all copyright holders, we would like to apologize should there have been any errors or omissions.
Section one
1 National Portrait Gallery; 2 The Art Archive/British Library; 3 Bridgeman Art Library; 4 National Portrait Gallery; 5 Sotheby’s Transparency Library; 6 The Art Archive; 7 Fotomas Index; 8 Fotomas Index; 9 Cromwell Museum; Scottish National Portrait Gallery; 11 The Art Archive/Museum of London; 12 National Portrait Gallery; 13 Bridgeman Art Library; 14 Fotomas Index; 15 National Maritime Museum, London
Section two
1 Bridgeman Art Library/Philip Mould Historical Portraits Ltd, London; 2 National Library of Scotland; 3 John Parker; Bridgeman Art Library; 5 Bridgeman Art Library; 6 Royal Collection; 7 National Portrait Gallery; 8 Bridgeman Art Library; 9 National Portrait Gallery; 10 Bridgeman Art Library; 11 Chequers Trust; 12 National Portrait Gallery; 13 John Parker; 14 Royal Collection; 15 Bridgeman Art Library
Section three
1 English Heritage/Crown copyright NMR; 2 Royal Collection; 3 Bridgeman Art Library; 4 National Portrait Gallery; 5 Bridgeman Art Library/Foundling Museum; 6 Bridgeman Art Library/Scottish National Portrait Gallery; 7 Royal Collection; 8 Sir John Clerk of Penicuik; 9 National Trust Photographic Library; 10 National Trust Photographic Library © Jerry Harpur; 11 Bridgeman Art Library Phillips Auctioneers; 12 Bridgeman Art Library /Royal Albert Memorial Museum; 13 Bridgeman Art Library/Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Section four
1 Art Archive; 2 Royal Collection; 3 Art Resource, New York; 4 Bridgeman Art Library/Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; 5 Peter Newark’s American Pictures; 6 Bridgeman Art Library/Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; 7 National Portrait Gallery; 8 British Library; 9 Art Archive/Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta; 10 courtesy of the Director of the National Army Museum; 11 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Mildred Anna Williams Collection; 12 Bridgeman Art Library; 13 Art Archive; 14 Victoria & Albert Museum
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘Epic’ is a word that suffers from over-use these days, but the history of A History of Britain certainly has a long roll-call of heroes – other than its author – without whose unflagging labours neither television programmes nor book could possibly have got made.
At BBC Worldwide Sally Potter and my excellent editor Belinda Wilkinson have remained heroically undaunted by the prospect of what had been commissioned as one short book turning into three. In every important sense this work has been a collaboration between myself and an exceptionally gifted and devoted group of colleagues at BBC Television, in particular Ian Bremner, Martin Davidson, Liz Hartford and Mike Ibeji. Melisa Akdogan, Ben Ledden and Ashley Gethin were exceptionally resourceful both in the libraries and on location. Had I not had the tireless and invariably considerate help of Sara Fletcher, I would have come unglued in locations throughout the British Isles. Tanya Hethorn, Tim Sutton and Mark Walden-Mills have, in crucial ways, helped the presenter present. Susan Harvey in Factual Publicity has been the gentlest and friendliest of promoters. It’s been a source of great happiness to work closely with John Harle on the music for the series. Laurence Rees, Glenwyn Benson and Janice Hadlow have all cast a benevolently critical eye on our work when it most mattered and have been our most generous supporters. Alan Yentob and Greg Dyke have both given us the sense of how much A History of Britain matters to the BBC.
I’m deeply grateful to a number of colleagues who were kind enough to read both scripts and chapters for errors, in particular John Brewer, Ann Hughes, Holger Hoock, Peter Marshall, Steven Pincus and David Haycock. Any that remain are, of course, my own responsibility.
In a much larger and deeper sense, though, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the wisdom and erudition of teachers (including schoolteachers), from whom I first learned the great contentions of British and colonial history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of friends and colleagues, whose scholarship and critical analysis is still a source of exhilarating illumination. Though they may well take exception to some (or many) of the views expressed in this book, I hope that the overdue thanks offered, in particular to David Armitage, Roy Avery, Robert Baynes, Mark Kishlansky, Sir John Plumb, Roy Porter, Kevin Sharpe and Quentin Skinner, will not go amiss.
My agents at PFD – Michael Sissons and Rosemary Scoular – have been, as ever, towers of strength on whom I lean, and occasionally collapse. My thanks, too, to James Gill, Sophie Laurimore and Carol Macarthur. Provost Jonathan Cole at Columbia University has been exceptionally kind in allowing me the necessary leave to work on the series and I’m delighted to have played a part in pioneering the on-line seminar, produced jointly by BBC Education and Columbia in partnership with Fathom. Com, about the eighteenth-century British Empire. Jennifer Scott was an extraordinary colleague in the production of that innovative departure in popular historical education.
Shifting back and forth between book and script-writing is likely to make the head spin, and certain to make the writer-presenter generally impossible to be around. So I’m, as always, more grateful than I can say to my friends for submitting to recitations from the Schama book of lamentations – thank you, again – Clare Beavan, Lily Brett, John Brewer, Tina Brown, Jan Dalley, Alison Dominitz, Harry Evans, Amanda Foreman, Eliot Friedman, Mindy Engel Friedman, Andrew Motion, David Rankin, David Remnick, Anthony Silverstone, Beverly Silverstone, Jill Slotover, Stella Tillyard, Bing Taylor and Leon Wieseltier. To my nearest and dearest – Ginny, Chloe and Gabe – I give my heartfelt thanks for riding the storms of their unreasonably cranky Dad and husband, and for the calm waters and always-open harbour of their love.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations BM Press – British Museum Press; CUP – Cambridge University Press; OUP – Oxford University Press; UCL – University College, London; UP – University Press
PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES
Abbott, W. C. (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols (Clarendon Press 1988)
Bowle, John (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (OUP 1983)
Bray, William (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn from 1641 to 1705–6 (Gibbings 1980)
Camden, William, Remains Concerning Britain (John Russell Smith 1974)
Carlyle, T., The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 3 vols, ed. S. C. Lomas (Methuen 1904)
Defoe, Daniel, A Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain (1742)
Defoe, Daniel, Union and No Union (1713)
Edwards, Paul (ed.), The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African, Written by himself (Longman 1988)
Firth, C. H., The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, Lieutenant-general of the Horse in the Army in the Commonwealth of England, 1625–1672 (Clarendon Press 1894)
Gough, Richard, The History of Myddle, ed. David Hey (Penguin 1981)
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (Everyman’s Library 1914)
Holmes, G., and Speck, W. (eds.), The Divided Society: Party Conflict in England, 1694–1716, Documents of Modern History (Arnold 1967)
Hughes, Anne (ed.), Seventeenth Century England. A Changing Culture: Primary Sources, Vol. 1 (OUP 1980)
Laslett, Peter (ed.), Two Treatises of Government by John Locke (CUP 1967)
Latham, Robert, and Matthews, William (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys. A New and Complete Transcription (Bell & Hyman 1985)
Nichols, John, The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James I (1828)
Petty, William, Political Anatomy of Ireland (Irish UP 1970)
Sommerville, J. P. (ed.), Patriarcha and Other Writings by Sir Robert Filmer (CUP 1991)
Spalding, Ruth (ed.), The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke (OUP 1990, for the British Academy)
Taylor, William Stanthorpe, and Pringle, Captain John Henry (eds.), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 4 vols (John Murray 1838–40)