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LANDMARKS OF CHRONOLOGY.

761

A.D.

1763. Resignation of Lord Bute, who
is succeeded by George Gren-
ville as Prime Minister.
Arrest of John Wilkes on a ge-
neral warrant.

1764. Byron's discoveries in the South
Seas. Parliamentary grant of
10,000l. to Mr. Harrison for
discovering the longitude.

1765. The Regency Bill passed in
England. American Stamp
Act passed.

Resignation of Grenville, who is
succeeded in the government
by the Marquis of Rockingham.

1766. The American Stamp Act re-
pealed.

Death of the Pretender.

Pitt created Earl of Chatham,
and appointed to the Ministry.

A.D.

1782. The Irish Parliament declared to be independent.

1783.

1787.

Lord Shelburne becomes Prime Minister on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham. Coalition ministry formed on the resignation of Lord Shelburne. William Pitt made Prime Minister.

Impeachment of Warren Hastings for high misdemeanours in the government of India. 1788. Death of Prince Charles Edward, the Pretender.

1789-90. Commencement of the French Revolution. Opening of the States-General. The Bastille taken. France divided into eighty-three departments. Titles of nobility abolished.

Duke of Grafton the head of 1791. The Tuileries forced by an

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American colonies in 1767, 1793. Trial and execution of Louis

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Battles of Alexandria and of
Copenhagen.

Addington made Prime Minister on the resignation of Mr. Pitt. 1802. Peace with France signed at Amiens. 1803. Renewal

of the war with France. Scindia defeated by General Wellesley. The British troops enter Delhi.

1804. Pitt appointed Prime Minister. Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor. Francis II. relinquishes the title of Emperor of Germany.

1805. Spain declares war against England. Battle of Trafalgar, and death of Nelson.

1806. Cape of Good Hope taken possession of by Sir D. Baird. Death of Pitt, who is succeeded by Lord Grenville as Prime Minister. Death of Fox.

1807. Copenhagen bombarded, and the Danish fleet surrendered to the British.

1808. Bonaparte prohibits all commerce with Great Britain. Convention of Cintra. Insurrection of the Spaniards. Battle of Vimiera, and occupation of Lisbon by the British.

1809. Battle of Corunna. The French

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Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Battle of Salamanca. Madrid taken by the British. War with America. The French invasion of Russia. Capture of Seville by the British. 1813. European confederacy against France. Battle of Vittoria, and capture of St. Sebastian. Wellington defeats Marshal Soult, and enters France. Napoleon driven out of Germany. 1814. The Allied sovereigns enter Paris. Abdication of Bonaparte, who is sent to Elba. A general peace concluded with France and America. Islands of St. Lucia, Tobago, Malta, the Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope ceded to Britain.

1815. Bonaparte escapes from Elba, and arrives at Paris. His defeat at the battle of Waterloo, and his second abdication, when he is exiled to St. Helena. Treaties of general peace signed at Paris.

1816. Princess Charlotte married to Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg Saalfield.

Bombardment of Algiers.

1817. Death of the Princess Charlotte. 1818. Death of Queen Charlotte. 1819. Numerous meetings on parliamentary reform. Manchester

massacre.

1820. Death of George III.

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*** The leading administrations of this reign are noticed under the "Landmarks of Chronology," p. 776.

§ 1. Accession of George IV. Public discontent; incompetency of the Government to deal with the altered state of society. § 2. The Thistlewood plot to murder the Ministers. The spy system. Threatened insurrection of the Scottish artisans.-§ 3. Bill for disfranchising Grampound rejected.-§ 4. Proceedings against Queen Caroline. Bill of Pains and Penalties abandoned. Her conduct at the Coronation of George IV. Her death and funeral.-§ 5. National discontent. Disgraceful state of our laws. Our criminal code the opprobrium of Europe. Difficulties attending every attempt at reform.-§ 6. Lord Eldon and Mr. Peel. George Canning appointed Secretary for Foreign Affairs.-§ 7. Congress of Verona, and the Holy Alliance. England refuses all connexion with the Continental alliance. Canning's declaration against the French invasion of Spain. He acknowledges the independence of the Spanish American Colonies.$8. War of public opinion at home and abroad. Tory fanaticism of Lord Eldon. Mr. Huskisson. -§ 9. Free-trade measures, and their prosperous results.- 10. The Catholic claims. Death of the Duke of York and the Earl of Liverpool. Administration of George Canning. Resignation of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Eldon. -§ 11. Death of Canning. His genius and talents.-§ 12. Destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and emancipation of Greece.

§ 13. Public agitation on the Catholic question. Return of Daniel O'Connell for the county of Clare.-§ 14. Passing of the Catholic Relief Bill, under the administration of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. O'Connell and Irish agitation. - § 15. Domestic life of George IV. His profligate character and vicious habits. His death.

§ 1. THE new king was already fallen into the sere and yellow leaf when he began to reign, with few of the blessings which should accompany old age. The country was professedly at peace; but there was great uneasiness in many of the seats of industry, and our politicians had been slow in adapting themselves to the altered position of affairs. The glory of the Peninsular war still dazzled their eyes, and they did not see that the labouring population had many just grounds of complaint. Harsh laws were harshly administered; the energies of the nation were repressed by injudicious legislation, and a bitter spirit had grown up between town and country, consumer and producer, which threatened at no distant time to end in civil war. Religious dissensions raged at the same time. Ireland was divided into two hostile camps-overbearing Orangemen and revengeful Catholics; and the wiser men of the Liberal party already perceived that the existence of the nation was imperilled without a repeal of the Catholic disabilities and a reform in Parliament. These were the two public cries which agitated this reign; and at the time when confidence in the crown and respect for its wearer might have soothed the contending factions, the conduct of George IV. embittered the feelings on both sides, and endangered the stability of the monarchy.

§ 2. A mad and cruel plot to murder the ministers was the first open proof of the wide-spread discontent. A man of the name of Thistlewood was the leader in this meditated crime, and was arrested with his associates in a stable near the Edgeware Road, where they had met to arrange the method of putting the members of the Cabinet to death while they were at dinner with the Premier. There was little open

A.D. 1820.] THE CATO-STREET CONSPIRACY.

765

sympathy with the designers of so wholesale a murder when they were executed after a patient trial; but a darker stain rested on the ministry, who had been threatened, than even on the planners of this atrocious conspiracy. The horrible system of spies had been re-introduced; information was given of the progress of the design by persons in Government pay who pretended to be zealous in the murderers' cause; and compared with the mean poltroonery and blood-seeking duplicity of the agents in this discovery, Edwards and Oliver the informers, the bold audacity of Thistlewood and his bravos was looked on with a kind of respect.

The fatal act, long planned, had been delayed by the accession of the new king; but the country was still farther alarmed when the disaffection of a great portion of the Scottish artisans took the form of actual resistance to authority, and after keeping Glasgow and Paisley almost in their own possession for some time, they confronted the dragoons at Bonnymure, and called for a general rising and an overthrow of the constitution. Parliament assembled at the beginning of the new reign; but before it met vengeance had overtaken the ringleaders of this strange attempt.

§ 3. The public mind, however, continued greatly agitated, and Lord John Russell began his long and busy career as a legislator and statesman, by introducing a bill for the transfer of the franchise of Grampound, a borough which all parties acknowledged to be incurably corrupt, to the rich and populous town of Leeds. But alteration, in many minds at that time, was equivalent to revolution, and not a few of the more consistent of the Tories looked on Lord John as only a little removed from the Thistlewoods and Paisley weavers, from whom they had so recently escaped. The Bill was lost, and Grampound pocketed its bribes for a short time longer.

§ 4. It was at this inauspicious moment that George called the public attention to his domestic affairs by the bold and ill-advised measure of a Bill of Divorce against the Queen.

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