Hanoverians

The first Hanoverians

When Queen Anne died in 1714, was succeeded by her nearest relative, George of Hanover. His kingdom was populated by 5.5 millions of people, concentrated in South East of U.K. the only large town was London. Parliament had become more powerful but less representative than the Crown because its members, not chosen by people, were nominated in the pay of great noble families. Moreover, elections were controlled by landowners. In 1715 in Scotland broke out a Jacobite rebellion (the jacobites were the supporters of James II the catholic), but it was cut by an English army. This weakened the idea of restoring the Stuart of the Tory party. The future belonged to the Whigs, according with them the ministers can meet without the king. Their meeting developed in government of Cabinet, in which all ministers are equal and in this period was created a Head of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister. The first prime minister was R. Walpole. In period of his power he kept England out of foreign conflicts so trade could flourish well. In order to facility that Walpole removed customs duties on exports and imports of raw material. George II gave Walpole the house of Westminster, so it became forever the residence of Prime Minister.
Walpole much favoured English economy for the advent of the Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions.He made England the main State of cloth-making, coal was mined and an iron-melting process was invented. PITT wanted England to become the economically strongest State and to enlarge his trade dominion in world. His policy led the establishment of wealth favouring the middle class and the bourgeois, with introducing of new values. In 1756 The Seven Years’ War broke out. England became loyal with Prussia against France, Russia, Austria and Spain. The aim of this war was the supremacy between England and France in control of trade in America and in the South-East of Asia. Finally England kept a big part of India and Quebec and all the trade of fish. In Africa, Dakar was taken together the monopoly of gum and slaves trade.
The division of categories in England is in this method: in the top there was the old aristocracy, Then there was a rich social class that comprehends the gentry and the wealthy, composed by little country aristocracy which lived in high conditions. They form the Bath Society. Down there was the middle-class and the bourgeois. Artisans and merchants were contaminated by puritan influence and they filled the gap between the upper class and poor. They worked as apprentices and receive a low wage. Below them, in deepest of society there is the mass of urban proletariat that lived in terrible conditions with illnesses such as smallpox and typhus. Life in countryside was affected by the enclosures of common lands by the gentry's landowners. So the poor peasants, denied by the lands, went in big number in towns and this mass forms the urban proletariat. In London born the coffee houses, which are place full of news and gossip and provided entertainment between people.