Documents for "British and Irish History":

• Angles see Anglo-Saxons.

• Anglo-Saxons name given to the Germanic-speaking peoples who settled in England after the decline of Roman rule there. They were first invited by the Celtic King Vortigern , who needed help fighting the Picts and Scots. The Angles (Lat. Angli ), who are mentioned in Tacitus' Germania, seem to have come from what is now Schleswig in the later decades of the 5th cent. Their settlements in the eastern, central, and northern portions of the country were the foundations for the later...

• Anti-Corn-Law League organization formed in 1839 to work for the repeal of the English corn laws. It was an affiliation of groups in various cities and districts with headquarters at Manchester and was an outgrowth of...

• Antoninus, Wall of ancient Roman wall extending across N Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde. It was built by the Roman governor Lollius Urbicus in the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius—probably in AD...

• Arran, earls of Use Hamilton, James, or Stuart, James.

• Ashingdon, battle of see Assandun, battle of.

• Asquith, Herbert Henry see Oxford and Asquith, Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st earl of.

• Assandun, battle of a victory by the Danes under Canute over the English led by Edmund Ironside. The battle was fought Oct. 18, 1016, at what is now Ashingdon, in SE Essex.

• Atholl successively an earldom, a marquisate, and a dukedom of Scotland. For Scottish nobles so entitled, use Stuart, John, and Murray, John.

• Barons' War in English history, war of 1263-67 between King Henry III and his barons. In 1261, Henry III renounced the Provisions of Oxford (1258) and the Provisions of Westminster (1259), which had vested considerable power in a council of barons, and reasserted his right to appoint councilors. The barons led by Simon de Montfort , earl of Leicester, finally resorted to arms in 1263 and forced the king to reaffirm his adherence to the Provisions. In 1264 a decision in favor of the crown by Louis IX of France as arbitrator...

• Beefeaters popular name for the Yeomen of the Guard and for the warders of the Tower of London. Both wear colorful uniforms modeled after those of the Elizabethan period.

• Bernicia Old English kingdom. Established in 547, it later extended from the Tees River to the Forth. In the late 6th cent. it was united with Deira to form Northumbria.

• Bill of Rights 1689, in British history, one of the fundamental instruments of constitutional law. It registered in statutory form the outcome of the long 17th-century struggle between the Stuart kings and the...

• Bishops' Wars two brief campaigns (1639 and 1640) of the Scots against Charles I of England. When Charles attempted to strengthen episcopacy in Scotland by imposing (1637) the English Book of Common Prayer, the...

• Black Watch or Royal Highland Regiment, Scottish infantry regiment. The first companies were raised in 1725 to watch the rebellious Scottish highlands and keep the peace, and the regiment was formed 1739-40. It became known as the Black...

• Bloody Assizes see Jeffreys of Wem, George Jeffreys, 1st Baron.

• borough-English a custom of inheritance in parts of England whereby land passed typically to the youngest son in preference to his older brothers. Of Anglo-Saxon origin, the custom was abolished by law in 1925...

• Bounty British naval vessel, a 220-ton (200-metric-ton), 85-ft (26-m) cutter, commanded by William Bligh. She set sail for the Pacific in Dec., 1787, to transport breadfruit trees from the Society Islands to the West Indies. On Apr. 28, 1789, the ship's mate, Fletcher Christian, led a successful...

• Breda, Declaration of 1660: see Restoration , in English history.

• British East India Company see East India Company, British.

• British Empire overseas territories linked to Great Britain in a variety of constitutional relationships, established over a period of three centuries. The establishment of the empire resulted primarily from...

• Brunanburh, battle of AD 937, a victory won by Athelstan , king of the English, over a coalition of Irish, Scots, and Britons (or Welsh) of Strathclyde. The site of the battle is not known. The battle is celebrated in a...

• Brut   Brute , or Brutus , a Trojan, legendary founder of the British race, descendant of Aeneas. His story appears in Nennius and in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and his name gives the titles to long poems...

• Cabal inner group of advisers to Charles II of England. Their initials form the word (which is, however, of older origin)—Clifford of Chudleigh, Ashley (Lord Shaftesbury), Buckingham (George Villiers),...

• Cambria [Latinized form of Welsh Cymry =Welshmen], ancient name of Wales.

• Casket Letters see Mary Queen of Scots.

• Catholic Emancipation term applied to the process by which Roman Catholics in the British Isles were relieved in the late 18th and early 19th cent. of civil disabilities. They had been under oppressive regulations...

• Cato Street Conspiracy see Thistlewood, Arthur.

• cavalier in general, an armed horseman. In the English civil war the supporters of Charles I were called Cavaliers in contradistinction to the Roundheads , the followers of Parliament. The royalists used the...

• Chartism workingmen's political reform movement in Great Britain, 1838-48. It derived its name from the People's Charter, a document published in May, 1838, that called for voting by ballot, universal male...

• civil war, English see English civil war.

• Clarendon Code 1661-65, group of English statutes passed after the Restoration of Charles II to strengthen the position of the Church of England. The Corporation Act (1661) required all officers of incorporated...

• Clarendon, Constitutions of 1164, articles issued by King Henry II of England at the Council of Clarendon defining the customs governing relations between church and state. In the anarchic conditions of the previous reign, the church had extended its jurisdiction...

• Conservative party British political party, formally the Conservative and Unionist party and a continuation of the historic Tory party.

• consols contraction of consol idated annuitie s, a bond issue designed to consolidate two or more outstanding issues, used in reference to British government stock. Public borrowing began in England with the establishment of the Bank of England...

• corn laws regulations restricting the export and import of grain, particularly in England. As early as 1361 export was forbidden in order to keep English grain cheap. Subsequent laws, numerous and complex,...

• coronet head attire of a noble of high rank, worn on state occasions. It is inferior to the crown. British peers wear their coronets at the coronation of their sovereign. Although dukes wore coronets to...

• Cumming, John For persons thus named, use Comyn, John.

• Curia Regis see Parliament.

• Cymru and Cymry: see Wales.

• Danegeld medieval land tax originally raised to buy off raiding Danes and later used for military expenditures. In England the tribute was first levied in 868, then in 871 by Alfred , and occasionally thereafter....

• Danelaw originally the body of law that prevailed in the part of England occupied by the Danes after the treaty of King Alfred with Guthrum in 886. It soon came to mean also the area in which Danish law obtained; according to the treaty, the boundary between England and Danelaw ran "up the Thames, and then up the Lea … to its source, then straight to Bedford and then up the Ouse to Watling Street." The Danelaw comprised four main regions: Northumbria; the areas around and including the boroughs of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and Stamford; East Anglia; and the SE Midlands. Though...

• Darién Scheme Scottish project to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama (Darién). In 1695, the Scottish Parliament passed an act that chartered a company for trading with Africa and the Indies. William Paterson directed the first efforts of the company to found a colony on the Isthmus of Panama to compete with the Dutch and Spanish for trade. Stock was subscribed in England and Scotland, but opposition by...

• Declaration of Rights in British history: see Bill of Rights.

• Deira old English kingdom between the Humber and the Tyne rivers. In the late 6th cent. it was united with Bernicia, to the north, to form Northumbria.

• Domesday Book record of a general census of England made (1085-86) by order of William I (William the Conqueror). The survey ascertained the economic resources of most of the country for purposes of more accurate taxation. Royal agents took the evidence of local men in each hundred...

• Doomsday Book see Domesday Book.

• East Anglia kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, comprising the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. It was settled in the late 5th cent. by so-called Angles from northern Germany and Scandinavia. Little is...

• East India Company, British 1600-1874, company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I for trade with Asia. The original object of the group of merchants involved was to break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade with the East...

• Easter Rebellion see Ireland.

• Eikon Basilike [Gr.,=royal image], subtitled "the Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings," a work published soon after the execution of Charles I of England in 1649. It purports to be the king's spiritual autobiography. Written in simple, direct, and moving language, it ran into many...

• enclosure of land see inclosure.

• English civil war 1642-48, the conflict between King Charles I of England and a large body of his subjects, generally called the "parliamentarians," that culminated in the defeat and execution of the king and the...

• Ermine Street Saxon name for the Roman road in Britain that ran from London to Lincoln and York. It was one of the four main highways of Saxon England. The name is derived from the Earningas, a group of people...

• Essex one of the early kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. It was settled probably in the early 6th cent. by Saxons who traced their royal line back to a continental Saxon god instead of to Woden, as did...

• Ethel- For Anglo-Saxon names beginning thus, use Æthel-; e.g., for Ethelbald, see Æthelbald.

• Fabian Society British socialist society. An outgrowth of the Fellowship of the New Life (founded 1883 under the influence of Thomas Davidson), the society was developed the following year by Frank Podmore and...

• Fenian movement or Fenians, secret revolutionary society organized c.1858 in Ireland and the United States to achieve Irish independence from England by force. It was known variously as the Fenian Brotherhood, Fenian Society,...

• Fianna Fáil Irish political party, organized in 1926 by opponents of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 establishing the Irish Free State and setting up Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. Led by Eamon De Valera , the party gained control of the government in 1932 and pursued a policy of complete political separation from Great Britain. Except for the years 1948-51 and 1954-57, it held power continuously...

• Fine Gael Irish political party. Formed in 1933, it was the successor of the party founded by William Cosgrave that held power from the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 until ousted by the republican Fianna Fáil in 1932. The Fine Gael party accepted the British plan that partitioned Ireland, and has generally been less anti-British than its major opposition. Under John A. Costello, Fine Gael formed...

• Fleet Prison former jail in London, England. Rebuilt after it was destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, again after the great fire of 1666, and once more after the Gordon riots of 1780, it was finally...

• Fosse Way Roman road in England. It apparently ran from Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) NE past Bath (Aquae Sulis), Cirencester (Corinium Dobunnorum), and Leicester (Ratae Coritanorum) to Lincoln (Lindum). It...

• Glendower see Owen Glendower.

• Glorious Revolution in English history, the events of 1688-89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of William III and Mary II to the English throne. It is also called the Bloodless Revolution. The restoration of Charles II in 1660 was met with misgivings by many Englishmen who suspected the Stuarts of Roman Catholic and...

• Gordon riots see Gordon, Lord George.

• guild socialism form of socialism developed in Great Britain that advocated a system of industrial self-government through national worker-controlled guilds. The theory, as originated by Arthur J. Penty in his Restoration of the Gild System (1906), stressed the spirit of the medieval craft guilds. In later elaborations by A. R. Orage, S. G. Hobson, and G. D. H. Cole, aspects of Marxism and syndicalism were adopted. Guild socialists held that workers should work for control of industry rather than for political reform. The function of the state in a guild-organized society was to be that of an...

• Gunpowder Plot conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament and King James I on Nov. 5, 1605, the day set for the king to open Parliament. It was intended to be the beginning of a great uprising of English...

• Hadrian's Wall ancient Roman wall, 73.5 mi (118.3 km) long, across the narrow part of the island of Great Britain from Wallsend on the Tyne River to Bowness at the head of Solway Firth. It was mainly built from...

• Hansard name given to the official record of the proceedings of the British Parliament, named after the Hansard family of printers. Luke Hansard (1752-1828) was printer to the House of Commons and...

• heptarchy [Gr.,=seven-kingdom], name traditionally applied to the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England in the period prior to the Danish conquests of the 9th cent. The term was probably first used by 16th-century...

• Home Rule in Irish and English history, political slogan adopted by Irish nationalists in the 19th cent. to describe their objective of self-government for Ireland.

• hundred in English history, a subdivision of a shire, first mentioned in the 10th cent. and surviving as a unit of local government into the 19th cent. It is thought that in origin the hundred comprised...

• Icknield Street name for a prehistoric road in England, extending SW from the Wash, along the line of the Chiltern Hills and Berkshire Downs, to Salisbury Plain.

• Icon Basilike see Eikon Basilike.

• Ikon Basilike see Eikon Basilike.

• Imperial Conference assembly of representatives of the self-governing members of the British Empire, held about every four years until World War II. The meetings prior to 1911—in 1887, 1897, 1902, and 1907—were known...

• inclosure or enclosure, in British history, the process of inclosing (with fences, ditches, hedges, or other barriers) land formerly subject to common rights. Such land included fields cultivated by the open-field or...

• Industrial Revolution term usually applied to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society relying on complex machinery rather...

• Irish Free State see Ireland ; Ireland, Republic of.

• Irish Land Question name given in the 19th cent. to the problem of land ownership and agrarian distress in Ireland under British rule. The long-term result of conquest, confiscation, and colonization was the creation...

• Irish Republican Army (IRA), nationalist organization devoted to the integration of Ireland as a complete and independent unit. Organized by Michael Collins from remnants of rebel units dispersed after the Easter Rebellion in 1916 (see Ireland ), it was composed of the more militant members of the Irish Volunteers, and it became the military wing of the Sinn Féin party. With the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the IRA became the stronghold of intransigent opposition to Ireland's dominion status and to the separation of Northern Ireland...

• Jacobites adherents of the exiled branch of the house of Stuart who sought to restore James II and his descendants to the English and Scottish thrones after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They take their name from the Latin form ( Jacobus ) of the name James. Theoretical justification for the Stuart claim was found in the writings of the nonjurors , who maintained the principles of hereditary succession and the divine right of kings. But the Stuarts' continued adherence to Roman Catholicism, the rash and incompetent leadership of their...

• Jutes see Anglo-Saxons.

• Kent, kingdom of one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. It was settled in the mid-5th cent. by aggressive bands of people called Jutes (see Anglo-Saxons ). Historians are in dispute over the authenticity of the traditional belief that Hengist and Horsa landed in 449 to defend the Britons against the Picts and whether Hengist and his son Aesc subsequently turned against their employer, Vortigern. The Jutes, at any rate, soon overcame the British inhabitants and established a kingdom that comprised essentially the same area as the modern county of Kent. Æthelbert of Kent established his hegemony over England S of the Humber River, received St. Augustine of Canterbury's first mission to England in 597, and became a Christian. During the following century,...

• Kit-Cat Club London political and literary club, active c.1700-1720. The membership of some four dozen included leading Whig politicians and London's best young writers. Among them were Charles Seymour, 6th...

• Labour party British political party, one of the two dominant parties in Great Britain since World War I.

• Land League see Irish Land Question.

• Liberal Democrats British political party created in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal party with the Social Democratic party ; the party was initially called the Social and Liberal Democratic party. The Social Democratic party, which was formed in 1981 by politically centrist members of the Labour party , joined with the Liberals in 1981 in an electoral alliance, and in 1983 they won 23 seats in the House of Commons. In 1987 the alliance won 22 seats, and the next year the parties merged. In the...

• Liberal party former British political party, the dominant political party in Great Britain for much of the period from the mid-1800s to World War I.

• livery companies London trade guilds incorporated by royal charter, deriving their name from the assumption of distinctive dress (livery) by their members. Edward III granted the first charters in the 14th cent., and most of the...

• Long Parliament see English civil war.

• Luddites name given to bands of workingmen in the industrial centers of England who rioted between 1811 and 1816. The uprisings began in Nottinghamshire, where groups of textile workers, in the name of a...

• Magna Carta or Magna Charta [Lat., = great charter], the most famous document of British constitutional history, issued by King John at Runnymede under compulsion from the barons and the church...

• Merchant Adventurers name given originally to all merchants in England who engaged in export trade, but later applied to loosely organized groups of merchants in the major ports concerned with exporting cloth to the...

• Merchants of the Staple or Merchant Staplers, English trading company that controlled the export of English raw wool. The first wool staple (i.e., a place designated by royal ordinance as a special center of commerce) was established in 1294,...

• Mercia one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, consisting generally of the region of the Midlands. It was settled by Angles c.500, probably first along the Trent valley. Its history emerges from...

• Model Parliament see Parliament.

• Mortimer's Cross battlefield, Herefordshire, W England, near Leominster. It was the scene of a battle (Feb. 2, 1461) in the Wars of the Roses (see Roses, Wars of the ), which ended with a decisive victory for the Yorkist...

• Muscovy Company or Russia Company, first major English joint-stock trading company. It began in 1553 as a group supporting exploration of a possible northeast passage to Asia. An expedition under Richard Chancellor reached the White Sea, and Chancellor himself continued overland to Moscow. The company was chartered in 1555, with a monopoly on the newly opened Russian trade, and between 1562 and 1579 it...

• Navigation Acts in English history, name given to certain parliamentary legislation, more properly called the British Acts of Trade. The acts were an outgrowth of mercantilism , and followed principles laid down by Tudor and early Stuart trade regulations. They had as their purpose the expansion of the English carrying trade, the provision from the colonies of materials...

• nonjurors [Lat.,=not swearing], those English and Scottish clergymen who refused to break their oath of allegiance to James II and take the oath to William III after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They upheld the principles of hereditary succession and the divine right of kings, and their refusal to recognize William as king led to their removal from office. In England, the original...

• Norman Conquest period in English history following the defeat (1066) of King Harold of England by William, duke of Normandy, who became William I of England. The conquest was formerly thought to have brought about broad changes in all phases of English life. More recently historians have stressed the continuity of English law, institutions,...

• Orangemen members of the Loyal Orange Institution, familiarly called the Orange Order, a Protestant Irish society founded and flourishing mainly in Ulster. It was established (1795) to maintain the...

• Ossory ancient kingdom of Ireland, the borders of which are now largely traced by those of the Roman Catholic episcopal see of Ossory, including Kilkenny and parts of Co. Offaly and Co. Laoighis. An...

• Oxford, Provisions of see Provisions of Oxford.

• Pale in Irish history, that district of indefinite and varying limits around Dublin, in which English law prevailed. The term was first used in the 14th cent. to designate what had previously been...

• Pearse, Patrick Henry 1879-1916, Irish educator and patriot. He was educated for the law but early in his career made himself part of the Gaelic movement in Ireland. Pearse was active in the work of the Gaelic League...

• Peasants' Revolt see Tyler, Wat.

• Penal Laws in English and Irish history, term generally applied to the body of discriminatory and oppressive legislation directed chiefly against Roman Catholics but also against Protestant nonconformists. ...

• People's Charter see Chartism.

• Peterloo massacre public disturbance in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England, Aug. 16, 1819, also called the Manchester massacre. A crowd of some 60,000 men, women, and children were peaceably gathered under the...

• Petition of Right 1628, a statement of civil liberties sent by the English Parliament to Charles I. Refusal by Parliament to finance the king's unpopular foreign policy had caused his government to exact forced loans and to quarter troops in subjects' houses as an economy measure. Arbitrary...

• Phoenix Park murders name given to the assassination on May 6, 1882, of Lord Frederick Cavendish, British secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, his undersecretary, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. They were stabbed to...

• Picts ancient inhabitants of central and N Scotland, of uncertain origin. First mentioned (AD 297) by the Roman writer Eumenius as northern invaders of Roman Britain, they were probably descendants of...

• Pilgrimage of Grace 1536, rising of Roman Catholics in N England. It was a protest against the government's abolition of papal supremacy (1534) and confiscation (1536) of the smaller monastic properties, intensified...

• Pilgrims' Way ancient English road that ran from Hampshire to Kent, over the Sussex Downs. It is so called because it may have been used during the Middle Ages by pilgrims who came to Canterbury to the shrine of...

• Pinkie battlefield, E of Edinburgh, Scotland. There the English under Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, defeated a larger Scottish force on Sept. 10, 1547. Somerset's invasion of Scotland, to enforce a...

• pipe rolls ancient records of the crown revenue and expenditures of England, so called, probably, because of the pipelike form of the rolled parchments on which these records were kept. The oldest extant pipe...

• Popish Plot see Oates, Titus.

• Prime Ministers of Great Britain Prime Ministers of Great Britain Prime Minister Party Dates in Office  The modern party system did not evolve until the end of the 18th cent. Sir Robert Walpole   1721-42 Earl of Wilmington...

• Protectorate in English history, name given to the English government from 1653 to 1659. Following the English civil war and the execution of Charles I, England was declared (1649) a commonwealth under the rule of the Rump Parliament. In 1653, however, Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump, replacing it with the Nominated, or Barebone's, Parliament (see Barebone, Praise-God ), and when the latter proved ineffectual, he accepted (Dec., 1653) the constitutional document entitled the Instrument of Government, which had been drawn up by a group of army officers. By its...

• Provisions of Oxford 1258, a scheme of governmental reform forced upon Henry III of England by his barons. In 1258 a group of barons, angered by the king's Sicilian adventure and the expenditures it entailed, compelled Henry to accept the appointment of a committee of 24...

• Puritan Revolution see English civil war.

• Reform Acts or Reform Bills, in British history, name given to three major measures that liberalized representation in Parliament in the 19th cent. Representation of the counties and boroughs in the House of Commons had not, except for the effects of parliamentary union with Scotland (1707) and Ireland (1800), been materially...

• Regency in British history, the period of the last nine years (1811-20) of the reign of George III, when the king's insanity had rendered him unfit to rule and the government was vested in the prince of...

• regicides [Lat., =king-killers], in English history, name given to those judges and court officers responsible for the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649. After the Restoration (1660) of the monarchy...

• Representation of the People Acts statutes enacted by the British Parliament to continue the extension of the franchise begun by the Reform Bills (see under Reform Acts ). As a result of the government's dependence on the unified efforts of the whole people in World War I the Representation of the People Act of 1918 qualified as voters (with a few exceptions) women over 30 years of age and all men of 21 years or over who could establish short residence. The basis of representation in the House of Commons was...

• Restoration in English history, the reestablishment of the monarchy on the accession (1660) of Charles II after the collapse of the Commonwealth (see under commonwealth ) and the Protectorate. The term is often...

• Right, Petition of see Petition of Right.

• Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers one of the first consumers' cooperatives, founded in 1844 in Rochdale, England, by 28 Lancashire weavers. Influenced by the theories of Robert Owen , they opened a grocery store that was so successful...

• Roses, Wars of the traditional name given to the intermittent struggle (1455-85) for the throne of England between the noble houses of York (whose badge was a white rose) and Lancaster (later associated with the red...

• Roundheads derisive name for the supporters of Parliament during the English civil war. The name, which originated c.1641, referred to the short haircuts worn by some of the Puritans in contrast to the fashionable long-haired wigs worn by many of the supporters of King Charles I, who...

• Royal George British naval vessel that sank on Aug. 29, 1782, while undergoing repairs at Spithead. Its commander, Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, and about 800 sailors and visitors were drowned. The incident is...

• Royal Highlanders see Black Watch.

• Rulers of England and Great Britain Rulers of England and Great Britain ( including dates of reign )

• Rump Parliament see English civil war.

• Russia Company see Muscovy Company.

• Rye House Plot 1683, conspiracy to assassinate Charles II of England and his brother James, duke of York (later James II), as they passed by Rumbold's Rye House in Hertfordshire on the road from Newmarket to...

• Savoy Conference see Savoy, the.

• Settlement, Act of 1701, passed by the English Parliament, to provide that if William III and Princess Anne (later Queen Anne) should die without heirs, the succession to the throne should pass to Sophia , electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I, and to her heirs, if they were Protestants. The house of Hanover , which ruled Great Britain from 1714, owed its claim to this act. Among additional provisions, similar to those in the Bill of Rights , were requirements that the king must join in communion with the Church of England, that he might not leave England without parliamentary consent, and that English armies might not be used in...

• Sheriffmuir battlefield in Stirling, central Scotland, near Dunblane. It was the scene, Nov. 13, 1715, of an indecisive battle between the Jacobites under John Erskine, 6th earl of Mar, and George I's forces...

• Short Parliament see English civil war.

• Sinn Féin [Irish,=we, ourselves], Irish nationalist movement. It had its roots in the Irish cultural revival at the end of the 19th cent. and the growing nationalist disenchantment with the constitutional Home Rule movement. The founder (1900) was Arthur Griffith , who in 1899 established the first of the patriotic journals, The United Irishman, in which he advocated complete national self-reliance. The movement was not, at first, an overtly political one, nor did it advocate violence. Its method was, rather, one of passive resistance to...

• Social Democratic party (SDP), former British political party founded in 1981 to offer a centrist alternative to the more extreme positions of the then ruling Conservative party on the right and the opposition Labour party...

• South Sea Bubble popular name in England for the speculation in the South Sea Company, which failed disastrously in 1720. The company was formed in 1711 by Robert Harley , who needed allies to carry through the peace negotiations to end the War of the Spanish Succession. Holders of £9 million worth of government bonds were allowed to exchange their bonds for stock (with 6% interest) in the new company, which was given a monopoly of British trade with the islands of the South Seas and...

• Staple, Merchants of the see Merchants of the Staple.

• Star Chamber ancient meeting place of the king of England's councilors in the palace of Westminster in London, so called because of stars painted on the ceiling. The court of the Star Chamber developed from the...

• Sussex, kingdom of one of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy (seven kingdoms) in England, located S of the Weald. It was settled in the late 5th cent. (according to tradition in 477) by Saxons under Ælle, who defeated the...

• Test Act 1673, English statute that excluded from public office (both military and civil) all those who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, who refused to receive the communion according...

• Tintern Abbey ruins of an abbey, Monmouthshire, W. England, near Chepstow. It was founded for Cistercians in 1131 by Walter de Clare and now consists mainly of 13th- and 14-century English work. It is the...

• Tolpuddle Martyrs name given to six English agricultural laborers who in 1834 were prosecuted for trade union activities and sentenced to transportation. In 1833 these laborers, led by George and James Loveless (or...

• Tory English political party. The term was originally applied to outlaws in Ireland and was adopted as a derogatory name for supporters of the duke of York (later James II) at the time (c.1679-1680)...

• Union, Act of For the union of England and Scotland (1707), see Great Britain ; for the union of Ireland (1800) with Great Britain, see Ireland.

• United Irishmen or United Irish Society, Irish political organization. It was founded at Belfast in 1791 by Theobald Wolfe Tone. Disgruntled by the use of English patronage to control Irish politics, the organization aimed at legislative reform "founded on the principles of civil, political, and religious liberty." Yet there was, from the outset, an undercurrent of revolutionary striving toward independence that was encouraged by the progress of the French Revolution. Tone, with James Napper Tandy , started a branch at Dublin; this became the center of the movement, which spread rapidly throughout Ireland. The society was suppressed in 1794 and became a secret revolutionary organization. Tone...

• wapentake see hundred.

• Wessex one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England. It may have been settled as early as 495 by Saxons under Cerdic , who is reputed to have landed in Hampshire. Cerdic's grandson, Ceawlin (560-93), annexed scattered Saxon settlements in the Chiltern Hills and drove the Celts from the region between the upper...

• Westminster, Provisions of see Provisions of Oxford.

• Westminster, Statute of 1931, in British imperial history, an act of the British Parliament that gave formal recognition to the autonomy of the dominions of the British Empire and was in effect the founding charter of the...

• Westminster, Statutes of in medieval English history, legislative promulgations made by Edward I in Parliament at Westminster. Westminster I (1275) practically constitutes a code of law; it covers a wide range, incorporating much unwritten law into the written code, and is a sweeping ordinance...

• Whig English political party. The name, originally a term of abuse first used for Scottish Presbyterians in the 17th cent., seems to have been a shortened form of whiggamor [cattle driver]. It was applied (c.1679) to the English opponents of the succession of the Roman Catholic duke of York (later James II), a group led by the 1st earl of Shaftesbury. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the Whigs were joined by many Tories (see Tory ), assured a Protestant succession and the constitutional supremacy of Parliament over the king. Political parties during the 18th cent. were essentially groups of factions allied on specific...

• Whiteboys members of small illegal, largely Roman Catholic, peasant bands in 18th-century Ireland. First organized (c.1759) in protest against the large-scale enclosure of common lands and other causes of...

• witenagemot [Old Eng.,=meeting of counselors], a session of the counselors (the witan) of a king in Anglo-Saxon England. Such a body existed in each of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Composed of the higher...

• yeoman class in English society. The term has always been ill-defined, but generally it means a freeholder of a lower status than gentleman who cultivates his own land. With the breakdown of medieval...

• Yeomen of the Guard bodyguard, now ceremonial in function, of the sovereign of England. When the guard was originated by Henry VII in 1485, its members had numerous duties as defenders of the king's person and...