1. In contrast to the busy turmoil of the religious and political strife and the strenuous endeavour that won England a foremost place among the [1]  mercial nations of Europe and set up a widely comspreading system of colonies and dependencies, the steady development of English society during the seventeenth century seems tame and uneventful. There were no longer economic and social revolutions as in the days of the Tudors. The note of the time is gradual progress on the lines laid down in the age of . Neither the religious nor the political revolutions of the century had the least effect in checking the onward march. Even the Great Rebellion did little to hinder it, for the Puritan revolt was a purely religious and political movement, having no social aspect, since the Levellers, the only social reformers, never attained to power and did not even succeed in touching any strong chords of sympathy among the people. The same characteristics marked the social history of , which henceforward followed much the same lines as its southern neighbour. Even in , despite racial and religious hatred and the deep social changes resulting from the great confiscations, there was at least more peace and order and a higher measure of material prosperity in the days of the Restoration, than when the memories of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquests were still fresh.

2. A prominent characteristic of the time is that expansion of foreign trade, which we have already traced. The effects of this on England were numerous and important. It gave increased weight to commercial [2]  questions, enhanced the wealth and Influence of the trading classes, raised the general standard of comfort, and profoundly influenced the

3. Manufactures steadily became more numerous and important, though there were no great revolutions in methods, and, despite all the efforts of the state to stimulate new crafts, England remained, till far [5]  beyond the end of the century, a commercial and agricultural rather than a manufacturing country, and depended on, Holland, and the East for the finer wares that were beyond the limited appliances and skill of English makers. Nevertheless after the Restoration the example

4. The peasantry shared in the increasing prosperity. Wages rose as well as rents and prices, and the attempts, started in Tudor times, to leave the Justices of [9]  the Peace to settle the rate of wages were practically a dead letter, for employers who wanted a man's work were willing to pay him what he asked and what they knew they could afford, even if the magistrates persisted in fixing on a lower rate of remuneration. The increase in the habit of tippling, and the efforts to check it by regulating alehouses, show at least that labourers had money to spend on what was not a matter of necessity, Pauperism, so terrible a trouble under the Tudors, distinctly became less burdensome under the Stewarts. Yet it still remained a real evil, and the unequal distribution of the poor made their relief very burdensome in certain unlucky districts, especially as vagrants gladly settled in places where there were large commons, abundance of wood, and other attractions to them, so that some spots became pauperised because of their wealth. In the hope of remedying this state of things, the Restoration Parliament passed the Act of Settlement of , the chief law of the period affecting the condition of the poor. By it each parish was allowed to remove to the place, where he had previously had a legal settlement, [10] a newcomer within forty days of his arrival, if there were any likelihood of his becoming chargeable to the parish. By thus throwing the obligation of supporting the poor on the parishes in which they were born or had long resided, a great blow was given to vagrancy, but in future times the check in the free movement of labour from place to place tied the artisan, like a slave, to the spot of his birth and prevented him from going to the district where his services were most wanted.

"In luxurious cities, when the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage: and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flushed with insolence and wine."

London extended itself on all sides. The court suburbs steadily grew in the west. In .'s time Inigo Jones laid out Lincoln's Inn Fields, then a very fashionable centre, and built his famous new church of St. Paul's Covent Garden. After the Restoration population flowed farther westwards, where the new parish of St. James' was filled with solid, sumptuous, and handsome houses. Poorer districts arose to the north and east of the city. Moorfields was built over after the Great Fire, and Spitalfields and Whitechapel became manufacturing centres, while Shadwell and Wapping throve by reason of the growth of the shipping trade. After the Great Fire in the City, brick replaced wood as a building material, and the streets were made broader and straighter; but the proposal of for rebuilding the town, on a more magnificent scale and an entirely new plan, was not carried out.

6. With all its drawbacks, life in London had plenty of attractions. Until the playhouses were in full swing, but they were closed by order of Parliament [14]  before the beginning of the Civil War, and were not opened until the Restoration. The Puritans

The playhouses were re-opened, though the fashion for attending the theatre had so far dwindled that two small theatres, the Duke's and the King's, supplied [15]  the wants of those who frequented the drama in the days of the Restoration. Spectacular effects, that had never been employed in earlier times, save in the elaborate Masques that amused the court of . and ., were now introduced into the public theatres. Pepys tells us how the stage was now "a thousand times better and more glorious than heretofore," with fine scenery, brilliant dresses, and a stage blazing with wax candles, "where formerly there were not above three pounds of tallow." Women now for the first time acted in the female parts, and ballet dancing, brought in from, became popular.

Gentlemen exercised themselves at the manage, or riding school, and with fencing, tennis, and a game at ball called [16]  pall-mall, while they amused themselves with the fashionable sports of cock-fighting and horse-racing. When . went for racing to Newmarket, he saw a cock-fight after dinner and a play in the evening, acted in a barn by low-class travelling comedians.

"Here a well-polished mall gives us the joy To see our prince his matchless force employ No sooner has he touched the flying ball, But 'tis already more than half the mall."

"Venus her myrtle, Phoebus has his bays; Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise. The best of queens and best of herbs we owe To that bold nation which the way did show To the fair region where the sun does rise, Whose rich productions we so justly prize."

7. Despite the badness of communications, men flocked to London, and the Londoners began the habit of spending [20]  the summer at inland watering-places such as Bath or Tunbridge Wells, which latter became so much frequented by invalids that, after the Restoration, a church was built for their use, dedicated to Charles the Martyr. The poorer Londoners "took the waters" at Epsom, while Harrogate and Buxton stood in the same place to the northern gentry. Coaches, which under were a rare luxury, became common. Lumbering family carriages, drawn by six horses, slowly dragged the nobles and gentry from place to place over the miry roads, though active people, who wanted to travel fast, still rode on horseback. Carriers' waggons began to replace strings of packhorses for transporting goods, where water carriage was not available and the roads were good enough for wheeled traffic. They also afforded a slow but cheap way of travelling for poorer wayfarers unable to walk or ride. The first toll-bars were set up in on the Great North Road, and the money taken was used to mend the highway. Stage coaches began with the Commonwealth, though they were denounced as fatal to simplicity and the breed of horses. Under . flying coaches, as they were called, managed to travel more than fifty miles a day, getting, for example, from London to Oxford in twelve hours. Hackney coaches, plying for hire, began in London under the Commonwealth, and did something to divert traffic from the Thames. Glass coaches, i.e. coaches with glass windows, were luxuries used by fashionable people for taking the air. The labourers, who mended the roads, expected a gratuity from travellers, and it was quite customary to take a guide even for journeys along the highways. Under the Commonwealth a government postal system was set [21]  up, which the Restoration adopted and improved, twopence being charged for sending a letter eighty miles from London, and threepence for any part of England beyond that distance. The Postmaster-General had a monopoly of post horses, and the mails travelled one

8. Dress underwent a complete revolution during the century. The dignified and appropriate costume for gentlemen, which is remembered from Vandyck's [22]  portraits, became more fantastic and extravagant towards the middle of the century, and afforded reasonable grounds for Puritan attack. A great simplification of costume resulted for a time from Puritan influence, though it is an exaggeration to suppose that the politics of a gentleman during the Civil War could at once be discerned by the cut and colour of his clothes. The ribands, frills, tags and points of the "debauched Cavalier" were avoided by all grave persons, whatever their views, and the Puritan wide-brimmed steeple-crowned hat, long doublet, and heavy boots, were an exaggeration of the dress of a citizen rather than a special device of the precisians. Even the Anabaptist Harrison, who thought that " worldly bravery did not become saints," did not scruple to wear at a public audience "a scarlet coat and cloak, both laden with gold and silver lace, and the coat so covered with foil that one scarcely could discern the ground." The household of Cromwell, which gradually assumed the appearance of a court, was that of a plain but perfectly well-bred gentleman. His entertainments and equipages were sumptuous, and, though he ordinarily wore a simple black coat and cloak, he put on a " musk-colour suit, richly embroidered with gold," when he went to dine with the Lord Mayor. His sons' dress gave great offence to the stricter sort. Swords almost ceased to be carried for a time, but they came back again before the Restoration.

Under . the doublet and long cloak ceased to be worn, and in their place men dressed in the garments which ultimately became the modern coat and waistcoat, and in tight knee-breeches. Low shoes superseded boots, and the lace band was replaced by a lace cravat. Early in the reign wigs came in, and before long the example of Louis XIV. made large dark-coloured wigs the fashion. After the introduction of the periwig, faces began to be clean shaven, though in an earlier generation even bishops like Laud had worn moustaches and pointed beard. Men often carried muffs, fastened round their necks by a ribbon.

Ladies' dress underwent corresponding changes. Despite

9. In fashionable circles education became more and more the learning of good and graceful manners. The [23]  accomplished gallants and the learned ladies of the Elizabethan age both became almost extinct. Gentlemen of fashion were content with a superficial smattering of elegant French culture, and the average lady of quality could neither spell nor express herself correctly. "Let not your girl learne Latin nor shorthand," wrote a Buckinghamshire squire and member of the Long Parliament, " the difficulty of the first may keep her from that vice, for so I must esteem it in a woman, but the easiness of the other may be a prejudice to her, for the pride of taking sermon notes hath made multitudes of women most unfortunate ." During the Commonwealth it became usual to bring up young gentlemen at home, to avoid the Puritanised schools and universities ; but the results were not encouraging. After the Restoration boys were sent to Eton, because the provost "was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very skilled in the art of making others so." A more solid training was given at School during the long headmastership of Dr. Busby. Travel was encouraged to give young men knowledge of the world, while girls learned French, "now almost as fashionable among women of quality as men," at suburban boarding-schools. The universities saw strange vicissitudes during the [24]  century. Whitgift had broken down the extreme Puritanism of Cambridge, and Laud, as chancellor, did the same for Oxford, where he issued a new code of university statutes that perhaps improved discipline, but did harm in the long run, by handing over the government of the university to a close oligarchy of heads of houses. Under the Commonwealth the universities were reformed on Puritan lines, but the ejection of many men of learning brought about evil results, despite the high character of the Puritan scholars who replaced them. Under . Oxford was famous for holding extreme ideas about the Divine right of kings, and both universities strongly supported the king and the Church. Oxford and Cambridge

10. The revolt of the sixteenth century against the Middle Ages had led to an utter contempt for its theories of natural science, though alchemy was still a [25]  favourite art and astrology had many votaries. The Novum Organum () of Francis Bacon, though of little influence on scientific workers, expressed with emphasis and brilliancy the high expectations which gifted minds had formed of the fruitful results to be obtained from the direct interrogation of nature by experimental methods. Two famous scientific discoveries in the earlier part of the century were due to subjects of the Stewart Kings. The Scots laird Napier of Merchiston discovered and elaborated his system of logarithms, and William Harvey, .'s physician, demonstrated the circulation of the blood. About the middle of the century the diffused interest in experimental science led to the periodic meeting together of a few eminent Oxford men engaged in its pursuit. The society, nicknamed at first the Invisible College, sometimes assembled at Oxford and sometimes at London, until after the Restoration, when it settled down finally in London, and included ., who was much interested in natural science, among its members. In incorporated the body under the name of the Royal Society. Among its founders was Robert Boyle, and an [26]  early member was Isaac Newton (), Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, whose famous mathematical and physical discoveries raised him to an unique position among English men of science. It was, however, not only by laying the foundations of modern natural science that the age of the Restoration is memorable. Experimental investigation became popular and fashionable, and produced a questioning habit of mind; equally alien to the sublime self-confidence of the age of and to the extreme Puritan tendency of regarding nature with irdifference as an obstacle to spiritual perfection.

11. The steady progress of science stands in strong contrast to the necessary fluctuations in art. Architecture, as in the Tudor period, continued to be in [27]  a flourishing condition. The great country houses of .'s reign are not readily distinguishable from those of 's: but two new impulses came in

When Inigo Jones died, (), "that miracle of a youth," had won a great reputation at [29]  Oxford for his varied gifts. After the Restoration he was made .'s surveyor-general, and devoted his fine talents to architecture. His first important building was the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. The Great Fire gave him a unique opportunity. Though his brilliant scheme for recasting the whole City was rejected, New St. Paul's and a crowd of noble parish churches has immortalised his name. His eye for graceful proportion made the interior of many of his small City churches beautiful works of art, conspicuous among them being St. Stephen's, Walbrook. The pressure of surrounding buildings made it necessary to leave many exterior walls bare, but the spires of St. Mary le Bow and St. Bride's Fleet Street show what could do in another direction. His best work is all in the style of the Renascence. His failure on the few occasions when he attempted the

12. There was more taste for painting and sculpture in England under the Stewarts than under the Tudors. After , Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, formed the first large collection of works of [30]  art that ever existed in this country, a collection which included the famous Arundel marbles. . was also a patron of art, and, despite his scanty means, made a fine collection of pictures. Unluckily, no Englishman made any great name for himself as a painter or sculptor. A long series of distinguished foreign artists took up their residence in England, and painted there many of their best works. The vigorous and magnificent Flemish colourist, Peter Paul Rubens, was invited to England by ., who dubbed him knight. Rubens's stay here was short, but Charles's patronage attracted to England Rubens's ablest pupil, Antonio Van Dyck, who also was knighted by the king, and appointed "king's painter." He lived in England till his death in , immortalising with his brush his royal patron, and painting with consummate delicacy and strength the fair ladies and stately gentlemen of the time. Puritan intolerance wrought havoc with all forms of art. .'s pictures were sold and dispersed, though the sound taste of Cromwell saved some of the most precious of the king's collection for the country. Through his care Mantegna's Triumphs of Ceasar still decorated the long gallery at Hampton Court, and Raphael's Cartoons were preserved to the nation, while to the scandal of the precisians, the Protector's bed-chamber was hung with tapestry representing the history of Mars and Venus. Peter Lely, a shrewd, workman-like Dutchman, came to England during the Civil War, and for forty years did an excellent business in painting all manner of men and women, from the Lord Protector to the Duchess of Portsmouth and Nell Gwyn. A large number of foreign artists, mainly Dutch and Flemish, flourished at .'s court. Very important was the work of the incomparable Dutch wood-carver, Grinling Gibbons, whose tasteful and delicate work appropriately adorned the interior of many of's churches.

No art received so heavy a blow from Puritan ascendency

13. The revolution in taste and feeling which the Stewart period witnessed is strikingly illustrated in its literature. [32] Under ., who was a much more active friend of the drama than ever had been, we are still in the Elizabethan age. The first eight years of the king's reign witnessed the production of the most sublime of's dramas, including the great tragedies Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Cymbeline, the most pregnant of his comedies, the Tempest, A Winter's Tale, and the most profound of his Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. About sold his shares in his theatres and retired for good to Stratford, where he died in . Seven years after his death, the First Folio, the earliest collected edition of his works, was published by his friends and brother-actors, who were anxious to "keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our" The great poet's place was now in some measure taken by his friend Ben Jonson (), a rough, strong, and learned playwright, and an admirable critic, whose first comedy, Every Man in his Humour, had been acted in . As he grew old, Jonson became the oracle of the chief literary society of the time, maintaining cordial friendships with his fellowdramatists, especially with the scholarly Chapman and the witty Fletcher, and gathering round him men of learning like the lawyer, antiquary and politician, John Selden, and young men like Edward Hyde, who handed on the tradition of his conversational gifts to the age of the Restoration. After him the chief dramatists of James's reign were's admirer Francis Beaumont (d. ), and John Fletcher (d. ), who wrote many plays in partnership, and John Webster, a man of mighty tragic genius. Under . flourished Philip Massinger (d. ), whose consummate

A deeper and more individual note in poetry was struck in the early verse of John Milton (), a London [36]  scrivener's son, who studied deeply at Cambridge, and becoming " church ousted by the prelates," settled down at his father's house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, and produced between , his sweet, musical, and strong early poetry, which in itself would entitle him to a foremost place in our literature. He was called away from poetry by his travels, and, on his return, plunged with acrimony and enthusiasm into the theological and political disputes of the Civil War period, and was rewarded for his services to the Independent cause by his appointment as Latin Secretary to the Council of State, set up after .'s death, an office which he continued to hold until the Restoration sent him into a retirement that was made more irksome by blindness and domestic troubles. For more than twenty years he had written no poetry save a few masterly sonnets. He now attained his loftiest heights in the epics of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and the classic tragedy of Samson Agonistes, which wedded the severest and sternest spirit of Puritanism to the most exquisite and scholarly music. Milton's high-souled but somewhat impracticable character kept him aloof from the temper of the age, even in the days of his pamphlet-writing and political work. He was doubly lonely, when amidst the riot of the Restoration, he indited the highest literary expressions of the Puritan ideal, in an age that was seeking to crush out Puritanism altogether. Yet sound critics like Dryden at once recognised, in almost exaggerated terms, the unique greatness of the Puritan epic, and even to careless foreigners, who loathed his politics and religion, Milton's solitary figure represented all that was most characteristic of English literature

. Milton's profound devotion to classical form, his refined verse, scholarly, severe methods, and Italian culture were [37] peculiar to himself. The new generation of poets, whose work was largely influenced by the dominant classic school of, began with Edmund Waller, who made popular the heroic couplet as the best English equivalent to the French Alexandrine. This school attained its noblest and most sonorous utterances in the didactic, critical, political, and lyric poems of Dryden, who

15. Prose advanced while poetry declined. Early in the century a noble standard of good prose style was set almost unconsciously by the committee of scholars which drew up the Authorised Version of the [41] Bible. Yet for the first half of the period the majestic but involved periods of the great Elizabethans furnished the model of good composition, while the mass of published books and pamphlets were dull, formless and unattractive. The older prose, already admirably set forth by Hooker, Bacon, and Raleigh, now found varied examples in Milton's grand plea for a free, unlicensed press in his Areopagitica, in Clarendon's stately delineation of his great contemporaries in his History of the Rebellion, in the poetic and luscious eloquence of Jeremy Taylor, in the rich meditative soliloquies of Sir Thomas Browne, in

Prose literature now became increasingly plentiful and touched a greater variety of subjects. The theological discussions of the age are reflected in the controversial writings of the Caroline and later Puritan divines. The political interests of the period found expression even in the antiquarian researches of a Prynne or a Dugdale, and still more strongly in the contemporary memoirs, among which (besides Clarendon's Rebellion) we may mention Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs, Ludlow's Memoirs, and May's History of the Long Parliament; while the Diaries of the stately and scholarly John Evelyn, and of the lively and worldly admiralty clerk, Samuel Pepys, and Roger North's Lives of the Norths, throw a flood of light on contemporary manners. There were many translations from the lighter literature of; and most foreign books of importance, on such subjects as theology, politics and history, were promptly put into English. Every school of politicians now had its literary exponents. Thomas Hobbes upheld the absolute power of the State in his famous Leviathan (), which traced the origin of society to a social contract, in which individuals agree with each other to resign their liberty to the sovereign, who is thus able to secure

[1] Progress in the Seventeenth Century.

[2] Effects of the growth of commerce and colonies at home

[3] Banking and finance

[4] The Mercantile system and the Balance of Trade.

[5] Manufactures

[6] Mining

[7] Agriculture

[8] Vermuyden and the drainage of the Fens.

[9] The poor and pauperism.

[10] The Act of Settlement, 1662.

[11] Populatlon.

[12] Growth of Towns

[13] London

[14] Amusements.

[15] The Playhouses

[16] Games and sports.

[17] The Parks and Gardens.

[18] The Coffeehouses.

[19] coffee, Tea, and Chocolate.

[20] Communications.

[21] The Postal System.

[22] Dress.

[23] Education

[24] The Univerities

[25] Natural Science

[26] Foundation of the Royal society, 1662.

[27] Architecture

[28] Inigo Jones

[29] Sir Christopher Wren.

[30] Painting and Sculpture.

[31] Music.

[32] The later Elizabethan Dramatists

[33] The transition to the later drama.

[34] Dryden and the Restoration Dramatists.

[35] Poetry

[36] John Milton.

[37] The poetry of the Restoration.

[38] Dryden and his School.

[39] Butler's Hudibras.

[40] Bunyan.

[41] The old and the New Prose.