Change and continuity 1603 to 1715

Overview

Constitutional significance of the union with Scotland and whig interpretation of this period.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What had changed permanently about royal finance by 1715?

   Model answer

   The crown could no longer live of its own or tax by prerogative, and depended on regular parliamentary supply and on a national debt secured by taxation.

2. 2

   Was the monarchy weaker in 1715 than in 1603?

   Model answer

   The monarch had lost prerogative taxation and the prerogative courts and could not manage without Parliament, yet the crown's ministers commanded a far larger, richer and more powerful state.

3. 3

   How had Parliament's position changed by 1715?

   Model answer

   It met every year, sat by right rather than by favour, controlled spending through appropriation, and had become the permanent centre of political life.

4. 4

   Which parts of the mid-century upheaval were reversed at the Restoration?

   Model answer

   The republic, the abolition of the Lords and of the Church, and the religious experiments of the 1650s were all undone.

5. 5

   Which parts of it were never undone?

   Model answer

   The abolition of the prerogative courts and feudal revenues, the impossibility of governing without Parliament, and the existence of Nonconformity.

6. 6

   How did the position of religious dissent change across the period?

   Model answer

   From a handful of Puritans inside the Church in 1603, to power in the 1650s, to persecution after 1662, to legal toleration outside the Church from 1689.

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