Dr JOHNSON’S ENGLAND 1740 TO 1780 AD
 
George II 1727 AD to 1760 AD. George III 1760 AD to 1820 AD. Dr Johnson b. 1707 AD d. 1784 AD. Seven Years War 1755 AD to 1761 AD. English Population. English Medicine. English Justice. English Religion. English Education. English Universities. The Industrial Revolution. Improved communication. Overseas Tarde. The City. The Hanoverians.

The first forty years of the 1700s saw the scourge of the Scottish Kings of England, the Stuarts, with all the venom and divisions they caused, being congealed into a Hanoverian regime. The age of Marlborough, Swift, Bolingbroke and Defoe was a transition to a more modern age of science and the beginnings of ‘social ill’. From 1740 AD onwards, English social history takes a more self-poised, self-judged character, set for a future of unparalleled growth, both of English society and English Empire. Set to become the British Empire.

This period was of aristocracy, and individual initiative. People were not so controlled as under the Stuarts. It led to Latitudinarianism and Wesleyanism. The optimists of the time were Burke, Gibbon, and Blackstone. The not so content were Hogarth, Fielding, and Smollett who recorded and saw the evils of sloe gin and squalor.

1730 to 1760 AD. The Rise in the Population of England.

During this period the population of England and Wales began to increase. Higher birth rate and lower death rates contributed. By 1801 AD the population was 9 million.

1740 AD to 1748 AD. Cheap English Gin.

Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ as contrasted to ’Beer Street’ began to highlight the dangers of lowering tax on spirits. Drinking the product of corn grain was seen as good for the landed gentry of Parliament. It was not until 1751 AD that cheap gin was checked in the epoch of ‘The Beggars Opera’. But,between 1740 and 1748 gin accounted for a huge excess of death. Burials exceeded baptisms by two to one. ‘The Act of 1751’ did stop many deaths, but the increase in population was also due to improved agriculture and the abundance of food to market.

1720 AD to 1745 AD. English Medicine and the Age of Hospitals.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague introduced inoculation to smallpox, but the disease killed 1/3 of the population until vaccination was discovered by Jenner at the end of the century.

Hospitals such as Guy’s, Westminster, St George’s, London and Middlesex, were all built. St Barts increased its medical training.

A Foundling Hospital for babies was set up in 1745, with help from Hogarth and Handel. It was an age of Hume, Smollett, Adam Smith and Boswell.

Hanway (1712 – 1786) managed to introduce an Act of Parliament forcing Parishes to no longer keep infants in workhouses where they died in droves, but in country cottages. Hanway also introduced the umbrella to England. The umbrella caused much mirth, but by his death was widely used.

English Prisons.

English prisons remained a national disgrace. Horrors at Fleet and Marshalsea abounded, with debtors being tortured to death by jailors for money they plainly did not have. General Oglethorpe had drawn attention to the plight of prisoners.

‘One drive by strong benevolence of soul shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole’.

Belief in the benevolence of the soul was instrumental in thinking amongst those such as Robert Nelson. Lady Elizabeth Hastings, the Wesleys, Cowper and the great Wilberforce.

English Punishment, Police and Justice, in 18th Century England.

Two hundred offences were punishable by death in England under the ‘bloody code’. This caused a problem with juries, who began to reflect the age of benevolence and began to not convict, and it became clear that without effective Police thieves and others often had complete and uninterrupted careers. This led the Fielding bothers to set up the Bow Street runners in the mid century.

Soldiers were used to quell riots, which in the case of the Gordon Riots I 1780 AD, led to huge loss of property before anything was done about it. Yet as Blackstone was to state, English Justice was probably the best in the world. He wrote ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England’ in 1765, which advocated the supremacy of law, and was widely read in England and America. Judges became independent. His legal and intellectual nemesis was Jeremy Bentham, who wrote ‘Fragment on Government’ in 1776. He argued for commonsense in law making.

English Religion in 18th Century England.

The mass of the English nation in 18th Century England, was overwhelmingly Christian. Scepticism belonged to the likes of Hume and Gibbon. But 1776 produced many changes and Tom Paine’s appeal for Deism as the proper creed of democracy is a turning point. The Charity Schools were beginning to teach the masses to think. Ambition amongst the English was spawned. This produced the likes of William Cobbett.

The two main bodies of religion in 18th Century England were the Methodists and the Latitudinarian. The Latitudinarian stood for Tolerance. Methodists pushed self discipline and religious zeal in an evangelical way. The English Revolution 1688-1689 and thereafter saw the Latitudinarians favoured. And this sat well in the Age of Benevolence. English Methodism came from the Wesley brothers and declared self-discipline and working for others to be a religious aim. Methodism spread to trading and professional classes. It drove England forward with energetic zeal. John Wesley’s abilities as a preacher and organiser created permanent congregations and changed religious loyalties of the working class.

The dominant force in the Anglican church of 18th Century England was Archbishop Tillotson (1630-1694). He followed Latimer, Andrews, Donne, and Taylor, who were mediaeval religious scholars. Tillotson saved the Anglican church from degeneration into pedantry and affection.

The Quakers were another group who grew in England. The Friends as they are known became an acceptable part of English society.

1780 AD. English education and the Charity and Sunday Schools.

The humanitarian spirit of England and the English in 18th Century established new forms of education such as the Charity Schools and latterly the Sunday School movement. But, secondary education suffered overall as Grammar Schools began to decay. Dissenters Academies also grew and challenged the monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge, where a College Don could hold a Fellowship for life and they became as lazy and irrelevant as the monks of 15th Century England.

1790 AD. The English Industrial Revolution

The Industrial (and Agricultural) Revolution, which, sprang up in England is by far the biggest social change in England since Adventus Saxonem and the Saxon conquest.

The English Industrial Revolution began in the latter half of the 18th Century. Likewise so did the English Agricultural  Revolution.

Rapid population growth spurred by the increased health and education standards led to increases I Agricultural and Industrial output, which in turn led to an explosion.

Wealthy English landowners were ironically often the ones who put their money into new industry, taking the cottage based manufacturing trades onto an industrial scale. Manufacturing towns had followed by the mid 1800’s. Rapid enclosure of land once again showed its head in England from 1740 AD onwards and agricultural processes demanded more land. Common land and waste land dwindled.

Coke of Norfolk

English Agricultural Inprovers like Coke of Norfolk were able to introduce new crops into Norfolk, and he was able to increase the rents on his land from £2200 to £20,000 from 1776 AD to 1816 AD. In many cases this money could then be invested in English Industry. The average weight of cattle at Smithfield market doubled from 1710 AD to 1795 AD.

Better Roads

Better roads and improved canals helped transport product to market. Between 1751 Ad and 1790 AD, 1600 Road Acts were passed in Parliament! It became easier to carry wheeled carriages on smoother roads so carriages became lighter and easier to make longer journeys in. The roads were thronged with people.

Canals began to expand rapidly from the 1760’s onwards. Bringing slate for tiling and other ways of improving houses and lives.

Thomas Pennant summed the changes the canals brought:

‘Places which rarely knew the use of coal are plentifully supplied…….’   Due to the canal.

Equally canals brought product to the ports of London, Liverpool, Bristol or Hull more quickly and in better shape form export.

Jewery and the City.

Make no mistake. The City of London owes its growth to a small influx of European Jews. Expelled by Edward I and readmitted by Cromwell, they brought skills and experience in finance to the Square Mile, as the City is known. Quakers too contributed much to the power of the City.

English Art.

Refer to the article on English Art

This was the time of the English Landscape Painters. Of Girtin, Turner, Crome, and Cotman and Constable himself.

Inland Navigation.

Better roads were matched by improved ‘inland navigation’. The first half of the 1700s saw rivers being fitted with locks. The second half saw artificial canals being built. The canal ‘movement’ began in South Lancashire and the West Midlands. The Duke of Bridgewater was known as the ‘father of inland navigation’. A coal industry owner he saw the benefits of efficient inland navigation.

Smuggling

Better roads and new inland canals brought combined with a universal desire for tea, sugar, and tobacco led to smuggling. Much of the South coast of England was riddled with smuggling coves, routes and gangs. Some of these gangs became so lawless they began to create no-go zones that refused any kind of law making. The Hawkhurst and Mayfield smuggling gangs in Sussex were particularly notorious.

And through this illicit trade we see the first overtones of the consumerism of the modern English people.