Young Folks' History of England eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 195 pages of information about Young Folks' History of England.

Young Folks' History of England eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 195 pages of information about Young Folks' History of England.

Anne’s Tory friends did not make her happy; they used to quarrel among themselves and frightened her; and after one of their disputes she had an attack of apoplexy, and soon died of it, in the year 1714.

It was during Anne’s reign that it became the fashion to drink tea and coffee.  One was brought from China, and the other from Arabia, not very long before, and they were very dear indeed.  The ladies used to drink tea out of little cups of egg-shell china, and the clever gentlemen, who were called the wits, used to meet and talk at coffeehouses, and read newspapers, and discuss plays and poems; also, the first magazine was then begun.  It was called “The Spectator,” and was managed by Mr. Addison.  It came out once a week, and laughed at or blamed many of the foolish and mischievous habits of the time.  Indeed it did much to draw people out of the bad ways that had come in with Charles II.

CHAPTER XLI.

George I. A.D. 1714—­1725.

The Electress Sophia, who had always desired to be queen of England, had died a few months before Queen Anne; and her son George, who liked his own German home much better than the trouble of reigning in a strange country, was in no hurry to come, and waited to see whether the English would not prefer the young James Stuart.  But as no James arrived George set off, rather unwillingly, and was received in London in a dull kind of way.  He hardly knew any English, and was obliged sometimes to talk bad Latin and sometimes French, when he consulted with his ministers.  He did not bring a queen with him, for he had quarreled with his wife, and shut her up in a castle in Germany; but he had a son, also named George, who had a very clever, handsome wife —­Caroline of Anspach, a German princess; but the king was jealous of them, and generally made them live abroad.

Just when it was too late, and George I. had thoroughly settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom.  The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier—­the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender.  A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the Whigs still held to the orange lily and orange ribbon, for the sake of William of Orange.

The Jacobite rising did not come to any good.  Two battles were fought between the king’s troops and the Jacobites—­one in England and the other in Scotland—­on the very same day.  The Scottish one was at Sheriff-muir, and was so doubtful, that the old Scottish song about it ran thus—­

Some say that we won,
And some say the they won,
Some say that none won

          At a’, man;

But of one thing I’m sure,
That at Sheriff-muir
A battle there was,

                Which I saw, man.

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Young Folks' History of England from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.