Birth of a Nation

Birth

of a

Nation

J H Ellison

Copyright © 2016 J H Ellison

All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 AMERICAN ROOTS

CHAPTER 2 COLONIAL HISTORY OVERVIEW

CHAPTER 3 HISTORICAL EVENTS

CHAPTER 4 COLONIAL COLONIES

CHAPTER 5 AMERICA’S BIRTH

CHAPTER 6 COLONY/STATES

CHAPTER 7 18TH CENTURY AMERICA

CHAPTER 8 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

CHAPTER 9 BRITISH VICTORY

CHAPTER 10 PATH TO INDEPENDENCE 1736 -1776

CHAPTER 11 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

CHAPTER 12 REVOLUTIONARY WAR

CHAPTER 13 UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

CHAPTER 14 BILL OF RIGHTS

SOURCES

CHAPTER 1

AMERICAN ROOTS

The one word that describes America aka United States of America best is Freedom. Freedom to pursue what they could only dream about in their native country. Freedom to use their creative talents to better their life, freedom to worship their religion of choice, freedom of speech and a Bill of Rights that protects individual’s freedoms, and laws that protect these rights. All that America asks in return is national loyalty. Become a true American.

In Europe Kings were doing what kings had been doing for ages: pursing wealth, territorial expansion and control over people. Under English Feudalism all lands belonged to the King. He would give out large land holdings to his nobles as an exchange for their military service.

The feudal system is like a pyramid. Fiefdoms were promised to powerful lords to serve the king for life. At the top of the pyramid was the Pope or Church, next came the Monarch [King/Queen], next were the Nobles. Nobles were served by Knights and Vassals [men at arms] in the next level, who had pledged their allegiance to serve a noble. The next level below Knights and Vassals are Merchants, Farmers and Craftsmen. The bottom of the pyramid is made up of Peasants and Serfs.

Peasants made up about 90% of the population. Only about 10% of the total population had money. The feudal system was introduced during the middle ages after the Roman Empire fell. It was first introduced by King Charlemagne in 8th century France, due to his need to control the land and people. Later after the battle of the Hastings and William the Conqueror’s [French] defeat of Harold, the English Saxon, William introduced the feudal system into England, due to a lack of a central government.

Under the feudal system Kings, Dukes and Nobles all had to raise an army, which the feudal system assisted. It was a basis by which the upper nobility class maintained control over the lower classes.

Peasants had to give 10% of the food they raised to the church, 80% of the food to the Lord of the land and kept 10% for themselves. Peasants did a lot of work. They made the clothes, food, tools and weapons. Kings and Nobles didn’t know how to make their clothes. This was done by peasants and merchants, to make these things and sell or give to the landlord.

When the Romans conquered the British Isles and much of Western Europe, they also brought Catholic faith. Christianity arrived in the British Isles around 596 AD with the arrival of St. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope Gregory the Great. The British Isles had mostly been taken over by Anglo-Saxons [Germanic pagans] along the eastern and southern parts of Britain. The Celts were in the western portion.

Due to St. Augustine’s mission, Christianity in England came under the authority of the Pope. The Church of England was thus under the control of the Pope and Vatican. The Bible, written in Latin, was used to instruct the people. Then instructions of what is in the Bible was read [preached] to the people, since most were illiterate. Books were rare and expensive. Each book had to be copied by hand. Only royalty and nobles could afford them.

In 1408 in Britain, John Wycliffe, The Morning Star of the Reformation, is the first person to translate the Bible into the Middle English language. It would be nearly a century before Johannes Gutenberg would invent the printing press, making the Bible and books more obtainable to a larger audience.

Followers of John Wycliffe, sometimes referred to as Lollards, was a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the distinctive teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. They hold that the Bible is the only rule of faith, and appealed to the Catholic clergy to return to the simple life of the early Church.

They oppose war, the doctrine of transubstantiation [that wine and bread actually becomes Jesus’ blood and body], confession and images in worship. In 1415, John Hus, dean of philosophy at the University of Prague and a follower of Wycliffe, traveled to the Council of Constance to propose his reforms for the Church. He is tried for heresy and burned at the stake. In 1428, Pope Martin V orders John Wycliffe’s bones be exhumed and burned.

England and much of Western Europe was involved in wars and various conflicts during the 15th century. Basically they were about the right to become King or Queen. In England it became bitter rivalries among families. History of the Plantagenet family dates back to 870 AD. Bacon describes the Plantagenet family as a race much dipped in their own blood, finally destroyed themselves in the bloody dynamic struggle known as the War of the Roses.

Though the sons of King Edward III, the Plantagenet family became divided between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. King Richard III [Richard the Lion-Heart] was the last of the House of York. He was killed at the Battle of Bosworth

Field. He was displaced by the Tudors, it was the end of an era. The male line of the Plantagenet became extinct with the execution in 1499 of Edward, Earl of Warwick. When King Richard died in 1485, Edward, Earl of Warwick was 10 years old. As a potential rival to the throne, he was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London by Henry VII. He remained a prisoner until November 21, 1499. After a trial at Westminster he was executed [beheaded] on Tower Hill. Edward was 24 and the last of the Plantagenet male line. In 1485, Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York, ending the War of the Roses.

It was thought at the time that the Earl of Warwick was executed in response to pressure from Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose daughter Catherine of Aragon was to marry Henry’s heir, Arthur.

King Henry VIII was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his father King Henry VII. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII, over not granting him an annulment from his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, led to a split with Rome. The Pope’s denial might have been pressure brought by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Catherine’s nephew.

In 1535, King Henry VIII breaks from Catholicism and declared himself the head of the Church of England, and that the Church of England would no longer report to the Pope in Rome. His Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, issued the annulment from Catherine of Aragon that Henry VIII wanted.

The Church of England became the established church [state] by an Act of Parliament in the Act of Supremacy, beginning a series of events known as the English Reformation.

King Henry VIII dies January 28, 1547 his son by Jane Seymour, Edward VI, becomes King. Edward died young, possibly due to tuberculosis and Lady Jane Grey is proclaimed Queen. Edward tried to remove both Mary and Elizabeth from the line of succession because of religious differences. Henry’s daughter by Catherine, Mary I, assembled a force and deposed Jane, becoming Queen Mary I of England.

Mary I, a devout Catholic, restores Roman Catholicism and ends the short-lived Protestant reign of her half-brother Edward VI. She had Lady Jane Grey beheaded. Queen Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain caused dissension among Protestants and Puritans in England.

Mary, aged before her time due to stress, loved the handsome younger Philip II. To him the marriage to Mary was one of political convenience. He was King of the Spaniards, King of Portugal, and was a champion of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. Philip II was also of the House of Habsburg, one of the most influential royal houses in Europe.

Philip II’s marriage to Queen Mary of England would also add the titles of King of England and Ireland. Philip was aware of the mistrust of England to a foreigner. He suggested to Mary to re-install the Catholic faith in England gradually. He knew that the English people was hoping Mary would marry an Englishman.

Queen Mary I severely punished religious dissenters. Queen Mary I had burned at the stake 283 Protestants over her five year reign. She became known as bloody Mary.

Mary disliked and distrusted her half-sister Elizabeth I. Mary knew that according to King Henry VIII’s will, Elizabeth was next in line to become Queen. Mary hoped that her marriage to Philip II would produce an heir who would succeed her. At the time of her marriage she was 37.

Even though Elizabeth paid homage to Mary, Mary disliked her. Mary’s marriage to Philip, a Catholic, caused some Protestants to seek her removal from power. Their being Protestants and knowing Elizabeth was Protestant, Mary was suspicious of Elizabeth, sending some of her court to question Elizabeth. Elizabeth was innocent and proclaimed so. She was intelligent and saw through the sham.

Several of Mary’s advisers tried to get her to convict Elizabeth on false charges and have her executed. At one time Mary had a frightened Elizabeth put under guard in the Tower of London. All during the reign of Mary, Elizabeth was careful to not say anything negative about Mary to anyone. When Queen Mary I died November 17, 1558, Elizabeth I became Queen.

Queen Elizabeth I brought back Protestantism. She viewed the 1559 Religious Settlement as an Act of State. It was to establish a proper relationship between the Crown and the Church. Much damage, in the name of religion, had been caused in her kingdom in the previous decades, under the reign of Mary I.

Once the Religious Settlement was in place, Elizabeth was content to all freedom of religious conscious, as long as it did not challenge all that she had put in place.

Elizabeth stated, I never had any meaning or intent that my subjects should be troubled or molested by examination or inquisition in any matter either of their faith or for that matters of ceremonies, as long as they shall in their outward conversation show themselves quiet and not manifestly repugnant to the laws of the realm.

Elizabeth was tolerant as long as those involved played by the rule, which she had set. However it became apparent to her that she was faced with challenges on two fronts. The first was from devout die-hard Catholics who wanted Elizabeth to carry on the work of Mary I. The second were those who wanted a more radical Church of England. The Catholic group were more secretive in their activities; the opposite was true of the Protestants, many who had returned to England upon learning of Mary I’s death.

In 1563, a set of radical articles was introduced into Convocation that pushed for the removal of all superstition in the Church. There were four principal demands:

[1] That the minister in a parish church faced the congregation when he read the Common Prayer and gave divine service.

[2] That during baptism, a minister should dispense with the making of the cross on a child’s forehead as this was mere superstition.

[3] That those who were unable to kneel during communion should not have to do so if they were aged or sick.

[4] No minister should wear anything other than a plain surplice during service [no vestments].

Where the 15th century is riddled with the wars and conflicts among royalty, the 16th century is the period of religious upheaval. Catholicism is practiced widely in England and Western Europe. The Church of England becomes more of a blend between Catholicism and Protestantism. In 1509, a Dutch humanist named Desiderius Erasmus, a devout Catholic favors translating the Bible from Latin to local languages.

Much turmoil in the 16th century Europe was about religion. The Roman Catholic Church, in the beginning, severely punished those that were for translating the Bible from Latin into English. Catholics accused Protestants of heresy and many were burned at the stake.

When Queen Mary I died, her husband and co-monarch of England, Philip II of Spain, plotted to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. He considered Elizabeth a heretic and illegitimate ruler of England. He is alleged to have supported previous plots to have her overthrown in favor of her Catholic cousin and heir presumptive, Mary, Queen of Scots [aka Mary Stuart].

Mary Queen of Scots was the only surviving child of James V of Scotland. Mary had first married Francis of France in 1558. He later became King Francis II in 1559. When he died in 1560, Mary married her first cousin Henry Stuart in 1565. It was an unhappy union. In 1567, his residence was destroyed by an explosion and he was found murdered in the garden.

Mary Queen of Scots believed she was the rightful heir to the English throne. With the rumored plots by Philip II, Queen Elizabeth I had Mary Queen of Scots imprisoned and finally executed in 1587.

In August 1588, Philip II decided to invade England and depose Queen Elizabeth. He sent an armada of 130 ships and all total 55,000 men. Prior to the undertaking, Pope Sixtus V allowed Philip II of Spain to collect crusade taxes and granted his men indulgences. Due to storms and smaller fast sailing English ships, Spain’s armada was defeated.

Queen Elizabeth I never married and was the last of the Tudor line of royalty. When she died March 24, 1603, her 3rd cousin King James VI of Scotland becomes King James I of England. The union of the English and Scottish Crowns, the Stuarts.

The Stuarts, coming from Scotland where royal power had not been curbed by Parliament, they had no understanding of the more democratic ways that had developed in England. In 1597-98, James wrote The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon [Royal Gift]. He sets out the divine right of kings, explaining that for Biblical reasons kings are higher beings than other men.

The document proposes an absolutist theory of monarchy, by which a king may impose new laws by royal prerogative but must also pay heed to tradition and to God. As King of both Scotland and England he tried to combine the two Parliaments into one. This happened in 1707 under the reign of Queen Anne.

Several attempts to complete the Bible in England was met with resistance. The Tyndale Bible [1526], first English version to be translated direct from Greek and Hebrew, was condemned by the Catholic Church. Tyndale had only finished the New Testament and half of the Old Testament before he was captured and executed.

Next was the Matthew Bible [1537], written by John Rogers. He was also captured and executed before the Bible was complete.

Next is the Great Bible [1539]. It is the first authorized Bible in English, authorized by King Henry VIII. It was to be read aloud at church services in the Church of England. It included much of the Tyndale Bible. Coverdale translated the remaining books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha from the Latin Vulgate and German translations.

Geneva Bible [1560]. The Geneva Bible followed the Great Bible and is the first authorized Bible in English, which was authorized by the Church of England. It was the primary Bible of 16th century Protestantism.

It was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Knox and was one of the bibles on the Mayflower that arrived in America. It was also the first mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible. The Geneva Bible was used by many English Dissenters, and was respected by Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers at the time of the English Civil War. It was widely used by Puritans.

Next was Bishops’ Bible [1568]. It succeed the Great Bible and the Geneva bible.

King James I of England commissioned 47 scholars, members of the Church of England to translate the Christian Bible into English. His instructions were intended to guarantee that this new version conformed to ecclesiology and reflect the Episcopal structure of the Church of England, and its belief in an ordained ministry. This version was in response to perceived problems detected by the Puritans.

The first Bible to be printed on a printing press was the Geneva Bible in 1560. It proceeds the King James Bible by almost 51 years. The annotations which are an important part of the Geneva Bible that were Calvinist and Puritan in character. John Knox met John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland and was impressed by his teachings. It was Protestant Presbyterian.

John Knox returned to Scotland, ushering in the Presbyterian faith. It was disliked by the ruling pro-government Anglicans of the Church of England and King James. King James commissioned the King James Version to replace the Geneva Bible.

Cromwell was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses. He believed that God was guiding him. He was elected to Parliament in 1628. He became a Puritan, after undergoing a conversion, in 1630s. He took a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period.

He was nicknamed Old Ironsides and quickly promoted first to leading a cavalry troop to principal commander in the New Model Army. He entered the English Civil War on the side of the Roundheads or Parliamentarians.

After Charles I was crowned king in 1626, he quarreled with the English Parliament which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Charles believed in the divine right of kings. He thought he could govern according to his own conscience. This angered his subjects, especially the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent. They considered his actions as that of a tyrannical monarch [dictator].

His marriage to Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic, caused mistrust among his subjects who were Puritans and Calvinist who thought his views too Catholic due to his support for high church ecclesiastics.

From 1642-1645, King Charles I fought the combined armies of Scotland and English Parliaments. It was called the English Civil War [two other civil wars occurred]. Charles was defeated in 1645. He refused to accept his captor’s demands for a constitutional monarchy. He was convicted for high treason and was executed January 30, 1649. One of the signatories for his execution was Oliver Cromwell.

The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared. Cromwell was invited to rule as Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. This lasted from 1653 to 1658. As a ruler, Cromwell was aggressive and effective in foreign policy.

Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in British history. He was considered by some a regicidal dictator [killer of kings]. When he died of natural causes on September 3, 1658, he was buried at Westminster Abbey. When Royalists returned to power in 1660 they had Cromwell’s corpse dug up, hung in chains and beheaded.

With the death of Cromwell in 1658, a political crisis followed. Charles II was invited to return to Britain. On May 29, 1660, his 30th birthday, he was received in London to public acclaim. After 1660, all documents were dated as if he had succeeded his father in 1649.

King James II, the second surviving son of Charles I, had ascended the throne upon the death of his brother, Charles II. Britain’s Protestant political elite suspected him of being pro-French and pro-Catholic with designs on becoming an absolute monarch. Leading English nobles called upon his Protestant son-in-law and nephew William of Orange to land an invasion army from the Netherlands.

On November 5, 1688, William of Orange landed his army in England. It is referred to as the glorious Revolution. He caused King James II, son of King Charles II to flee England on December 23, 1688. James II was recorded as abdication of his throne and William was crowned King William III married to Mary II, becoming King and Queen of England.

In the 17th century, England’s Parliament enacted several Acts and Rights, several acted as a basis for the colonies. One of the oldest document, written June 15, 1215, was the Magna Carta. It was a document that protected individual English freedoms. It influenced early American colonists and the formation of the American Constitution in 1787.

On June 7, 1628, the Petition of Right is a major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. It contained restrictions on non-Parliamentary taxation, forced billeting of soldiers, imprisonment without cause and the use of martial law.

On May 27, 1679, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, a legal device to force the courts to examine the lawfulness of a prisoner’s detention in order to safeguard individual liberty and thus prevent unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment.

On December 16, 1689, a Bill of Rights is passed by Parliament. It dealt with constitutional matters and sets out certain basic civil rights. The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament: free elections and freedom of speech in Parliament.

It also sets out certain individual rights and included the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and reestablished the liberty of Protestants to have