William Pitt the Elder becomes secretary of state and transforms the British war effort against France in America. English painter Joseph Wright sets up a studio in his home town, Derby. Go to Wright, Joseph 3 Sept. Joshua Reynolds is by now the most fashionable portrait painter in London, copies with as many as sitters in a year. A comet returns exactly at the time predicted by English astronomer Edmond Halley, and is subsequently known by his name. James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life.
Liverpool-born artist George Stubbs sets up in London as a painter, above all, of people and horses. Portrait-painter Thomas Gainsborough moves from Suffolk to set up a studio in fashionable Bath. Voltaire publishes Candide , a satire on optimism prompted by the Lisbon earthquake of The Portuguese expel the Jesuits from Brazil, beginning a widespread reaction against the order in Catholic Europe.
Go to Jesuits in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood sets up a factory of his own in his home town of Burslem. Frederick the Great suffers his first major defeat, by a Russian and Austrian army at Kunersdorf.
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy , beginning with the scene at the hero's conception. Wolfe defeats Montcalm and captures Quebec, but both commanders die in the engagement. A succession of victories cause to be known in Britain as annus mirabilis , the wonderful year. German painter Johann Zoffany moves to England to find work as a painter of conversation pieces and portraits.
Go to Zoffany, Johann 13 Mar. Scottish chemist and physicist Joseph Black observes the latent heat in melting ice. Austrian physician Joseph Leopold Auenbrugger describes his new diagnostic technique — percussion, or listening to a patient's chest and tapping. Go to percussion n. John Harrison's fourth chronometer is only five seconds out at the end of a test journey from England to Jamaica.
Italian anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni publishes De Sedibus , the work that introduces scientific pathology. Go to pathology in Concise Medical Dictionary 8 ed. George Washington, the future president, inherits Mount Vernon from his half-brother Lawrence. The intensely dramatic music of Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice introduces a much needed reform in the conventions of opera. Fingal , supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian, is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson.
In the treaty of Paris France cedes to Britain all its territory north of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi river, except the district of New Orleans. In the treaty of Paris, Spain cedes Florida to Britain, completing British possession of the entire east coast of north America. The Treaty of Hubertusburg, between Prussia and Austria, increases the power of Prussia among the many separate states of Germany.
English journalist John Wilkes is arrested for publishing seditious libel in issue no 45 of his weekly magazine The North Briton. Go to Boswell, James —95 in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, leads an uprising of the Indian tribes in an attempt to drive the British east of the Appalachians. Go to Pontiac c.
American artist Benjamin West settles in London, where he becomes famous for his large-scale history scenes. James Watt ponders on the inefficiency of contemporary steam engines and invents the condenser. Britain passes the Sugar Act, levying duty on sugar, wine and textiles imported into America. Joseph Haydn's first published work is six string quartets, a form which he subsequently makes very much his own. Lancashire spinner James Hargreaves conceives the idea of the spinning jenny, with multiple spindles worked from a single wheel.
Go to Hargreaves, James — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. English author Horace Walpole provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto. Britain passes the Stamp Act, taxing legal documents and newspapers in the American colonies. Britain repeals the Stamp Act, in a major reversal of policy achieved by resistance in the American colonies. English chemist Henry Cavendish isolates hydrogen but believes that it is phlogiston. Irish novelist Oliver Goldsmith publishes The Vicar of Wakefield , with a hero who has much to complain about but keeps calm.
Pierre le Roy's chronometer, as accurate as Harrison's and cheaper to construct, is set to become the standard model. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete a four-year survey to establish the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
The British Chancellor, Charles Townshend, passes a series of acts taxing all glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported into the American colonies. A French artist, Jean Baptiste le Prince, discovers the aquatint technique in printmaking. A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Corsica is sold to France by the republic of Genoa. Go to Corsica in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. A border incident at Balta, in the southern Ukraine, sparks a war between Russia and Turkey that will last six years. Captain Cook observes in Tahiti the transit of Venus, the primary purpose of his voyage to the Pacific. Captain Cook reaches New Zealand and sets off to chart its entire coastline. French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot successfully tests a steam wagon, probably the first working mechanical vehicle.
The triangular trade, controlled from Liverpool, ships millions of Africans across the Atlantic as slaves. British troops fire into an unruly crowd in Boston, Massachusetts, killing five. Go to Chatterton, Thomas —70 in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Captain Cook reaches the mainland of Australia, at a place which he names Botany Bay, and continues up the eastern coast. In response to American protests, the British government removes the Townshend duties on all commodities with the exception of tea.
English entrepreneur Richard Arkwright adds water power to spinning by means of the water frame. Richard Arkwright pioneers the factory environment with his cotton mill at Cromford in Derbyshire.
Russia, Prussia and Austria agree a treaty enabling them to divide the spoils in the first partition of Poland. The first partition of Poland begins the process of Lithuania being progressively absorbed into Russia. English prison reformer John Howard is shocked into action by the conditions he sees in Bedford gaol. The London brokers who meet to do business in Jonathan's coffee house decide to call themselves the Stock Exchange.
Go to stock exchange in A Dictionary of Finance and Banking 4 rev ed. Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele isolates oxygen but does not immediately publish his achievement. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertake a journey together to the western islands of Scotland. Some fifty colonists, disguised as Indians, tip a valuable cargo of tea into Boston harbour as a protest against British tax.
Britain's new Coercive or Intolerable Acts include the requirement that Massachusetts citizens give board and lodging to British troops. Illiterate visionary Ann Lee, leader of an English sect, the 'Shaking Quakers', crosses the Atlantic to spread the word. English chemist Joseph Priestley isolates oxygen, but he believes it to be 'dephlogisticated air'. Delegates from twelve American colonies meet in Philadelphia and agree not to import any goods from Britain. Thomas Gainsborough moves from Bath to set up a studio in London.
Dutch nomads, pressing far north from Cape Town, become known as the Trekboers. Go to Afrikaner in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Pioneer Daniel Boone and other backwoodsmen cut the road west that will bring settlers to Kentucky. Go to Boone, Daniel c. Patrick Henry makes a stirring declaration — 'Give me liberty or give me death' — to the Virginia Assembly. Go to Henry, Patrick —99 in World Encyclopedia 1 ed.
John Singleton Copley, already established as America's greatest portrait painter, moves to London. Go to Copley, John Singleton ? General Gage sends a detachment of British troops to seize weapons held by American Patriots at Concord. Paul Revere is one of the US riders taking an urgent warning to Concord, but he is captured on the journey. The first shot of the American Revolution is fired in a skirmish between redcoats and militiamen at Lexington, on the road to Concord. Delegates from the states reassemble in Philadelphia, with hostilities against the British already under way in Massachusetts.
Delegates in Philadelphia select George Washington as commander-in-chief of the colonial army. At Bunker Hill, overlooking Boston from the north, the American militiamen prove their worth against British professional soldiers. Britain declares the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, and sets up a naval blockade of the American coastline.
Go to American Revolution in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Yankee Doodle is the most popular song with the patriot troops in the American Revolution.
Figaro makes his first appearance on stage in Beaumarchais' The Barber of Seville. Talleyrand begins an extremely varied career by becoming an abbot at the age of twenty-one.
Captain Cook publishes his discovery of a preventive cure against scurvy, in the form of a regular ration of lemon juice. Francisco de Goya begins a series of designs for tapestries to be made in Spain's Royal Tapestry Factory. George Washington raises on Prospect Hill a new American flag, the British red ensign on a ground of thirteen stripes — one for each colony.
In Common Sense , an anonymous pamphlet, English immigrant Thomas Paine is the first to argue that the American colonies should be independent. Two Boulton and Watt engines are installed, the first of many in the mines and mills of England's developing industrial revolution.
The revolutionary convention of Virginia votes for independence from Britain, and instructs its delegates in Philadelphia to propose this motion. Virginia's motion for independence from Britain is passed at the Continental Congress of the colonies with no opposing vote.
Thomas Jefferson's text for the Declaration of Independence is accepted by the Congress in Philadelphia. John Hancock is the first delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence, formally written out on a large sheet of parchment. Scottish economist Adam Smith analyzes the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Go to Smith, Adam —90 in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. George Washington defeats the British at Trenton at a psychologically important moment in the course of the war. Congress adopts a new flag for independent America — the stars and stripes. George Washington, heavily defeated in a battle at Brandywine, is forced to relinquish Philadelphia to the British. The US Congress agrees the final version of the Articles of Confederation, defining the terms on which states join the Union.
Go to Articles of Confederation in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. France, joining the American colonies in their fight against Britain, sends a large fleet across the Atlantic. In Brook Watson and the Shark John Singleton Copley creates the most intensely dramatic of his modern history paintings.
The British rapidly abandon Philadelphia on news of the expected arrival of a French fleet. The British adopt a new policy in the south, landing in Georgia and capturing much of South Carolina. British explorer Captain James Cook is killed in a skirmish with natives in Hawaii over a stolen boat. Joseph Banks tells a committee of the House of Commons that the east coast of Australia is suitable for the transportation of convicted felons.
The world's first iron bridge is assembled in a few months across the Severn at Coalbrookdale. Samuel Crompton perfects the mule, a machine for spinning that combines the merits of Hargreave's jenny and Arkwright's water frame. Go to Crompton, Samuel — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. The year-old Napoleon is admitted as a student in a military college at Brienne, near Troyes. Serapis near England's Flamborough Head. Go to Inca noun in Oxford Dictionary of English 3 ed. Six days of riot in London are triggered by Lord George Gordon leading a march to oppose any degree of Catholic emancipation.
Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro is a master of colour woodcuts, often depicting the courtesan district of Edo. Go to Utamaro, Kitagawa — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Maryland, ratifies the Articles of Confederation the last state to do so , completing 'the Confederation of the United States'. William Herschel discovers Uranus, the first planet to be found by means of a telescope, and names it the Georgian star.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, now 25, leaves Salzburg to settle in Vienna. The Bank of North America is established by the Continental Congress to lend money to the fledgling Revolutionary government.
Go to Kant, Immanuel — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Ann Lee leads her Shaker colleagues in a missionary tour of New England lasting two years. The reforming emperor Joseph II emancipates the serfs in the Habsburg territories. The British general Charles Cornwallis, isolated at Yorktown, is forced to surrender in the final engagement of the Revolutionary War. Italian sculptor Antonio Canova sets up his studio in Rome and begins producing finely modelled nudes in the Greek style.
Go to Canova, Antonio — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Friedrich von Schiller's youthful and anarchic play The Robbers causes a sensation when performed in Mannheim. The English actress Sarah Siddons, already well known in the province, causes a sensation when she appears in London at Drury Lane. Go to Beethoven, Ludwig van — in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. French paper manufacturer Joseph Montgolfier sends a hot-air balloon feet m into the air, in front of a crowd in Annonay.
US lexicographer Noah Webster publishes a Spelling Book for American children that eventually will sell more than 60 million copies. Ten days after the first human ascent in a hot-air balloon the feat is repeated, again in Paris, in a version lifted by hydrogen.
Louis XVI watches through his telescope the first balloon flight with living passengers — a sheep, a cock and a duck. Jacques-Louis David, establishing a reputation with his severe classical paintings, is elected to the French academy.
Go to David, Jacques-Louis 30 Aug. Benjamin Franklin, irritated at needing two pairs of spectacles, commissions from a lens-grinder the first bifocals.
English ironmaster Henry Cort patents a process for puddling iron which produces a pure and malleable metal. The first mail coach leaves Bristol for London, introducing a new era of faster transport. Mozart and his friends perform for Haydn the Mozart quartets inspired by Haydn's 'Russian' quartets op. The French queen Marie Antoinette is wrongly implicated in a scandal involving a diamond necklace. French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb begins publishing his discoveries in the field of electricity and magnetism.
James Hutton describes to the Royal Society of Edinburgh his studies of local rocks , launching the era of scientific geology. William Withering's Account of the Foxglove describes the use of digitalis for dropsy, and its possible application to heart disease.
Napoleon graduates from his military college and is commissioned in an artillery regiment. Go to Houdon, Jean-Antoine 25 Mar. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna and then has a huge success in Prague. US author Philip Freneau publishes his first collection of poems, dating back to Daniel Shays is the most prominent figure in a violent protest movement by farmers against the government of Massachusetts.
French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier publishes a system for classifying and naming chemical substances. The Continental Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, a plan for the establishment of new states north and west of the Ohio river.
The French finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, is dismissed when his proposed reforms meet aristocratic opposition. Go to quakers in A Dictionary of British History 1 rev ed.
The First Fleet eleven ships carrying about convicts leaves Portsmouth for Australia. A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa. Scottish engineer James Watt devises the governor, the first example of industrial automation. Delegates meeting in Philadelphia agree a final draft for a US constitution, to be submitted to the states for ratification. Mozart's opera Don Giovanni has its premiere in Prague.
Arthur Phillip, selecting a suitable coastal site for the first penal colony in Australia, names the place Sydney Cove. The constitution of the United States is ratified by the states, but it is immediately agreed that amendments will be desirable. Tiradentes the 'puller of teeth' leads the first rebellion against Portuguese rule in Brazil.
The ministers of Louis XVI reluctantly announce that the estates general will meet in , for the first time since Spain's affairs are controlled by Manuel de Godoy, lover of the queen, Maria Luisa. Go to pugilist noun in Oxford Dictionary of English 3 ed. Alexander Hamilton becomes secretary of the treasury in the administration of George Washington, whose federalist views he shares. William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence , a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself.
In his Principles Jeremy Bentham defines 'utility' as that which enhances pleasure and reduces pain. A left-wing political club begins to meet in a Jacobin convent in Paris, thus becoming known as the Jacobins. The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a slave captured as a child in Africa, becomes a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Go to Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavas Vassa] ? Go to Mackenzie, Sir Alexander c.
Delegates of the Third Estate swear an oath in a tennis court at Versailles, pledging themselves not to disperse until France has a constitution. The painter Jacques-Louis David sketches the events in the Versailles tennis court. An excited Paris mob liberates the seven prisoners held in the forbidding fortress of the Bastille. Go to Bastille in World Encyclopedia 1 ed.
Go to Dunlap, William 19 Feb. Parisians force their way into the palace at Versailles and insist on Louis XVI and his royal family accompanying them back to Paris. French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposes a decapitation machine as a more humane form of capital punishment. Go to guillotine in A Dictionary of World History 2 ed. Go to Christian, Fletcher c. A second great revivalist movement sweeps northeast America, inspired by the earlier example of Jonathan Edwards. A second fleet arrives in Sydney, bringing more convicts and a regiment, the New South Wales Corps, to keep order.
The Potomac is chosen as the navigable river on which the new US capital city will be sited. Go to Potomac in Oxford Dictionary of English 3 ed.
The USA becomes the first nation to establish a regular census as a systematic check on the size of the population. Go to census in A Dictionary of Public Health 1 ed. Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France , a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel. Go to Burke, Edmund —97 in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. English painter J. Turner is only 15 when a painting of his, a watercolour, is first exhibited at the Royal Academy. Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter , in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches.
French inventor Claude Chappe develops a hilltop signalling system, for which he coins the words telegraph and semaphore. A stranger arrives in Vienna with a mysterious commission for Mozart to write a requiem mass, just months before the composer's death.
Go to requiem in World Encyclopedia 1 ed. Social histories avoid , either by being vague about starting points, or seeing strong underlying continuities that mean there is no great turning point around that year. For opponents of the act at the time, and for Scots nationalists ever since, this date represented, in a sense, the end of history.
Their nation was extinguished. For Scots unionists and their scholarly successors, was just as significant. It represented a new opportunity for Scotland to develop in freedom, security and prosperity within an expanding British empire.
But the problem with this date has been its minor effect on England. The politics, culture and society of the southern, and the politically dominant, half of Britain continued its development largely unaffected by any influence from Scotland. The new Scots members of the united parliament were smoothly integrated into English political structures; and Scotland remained sufficiently autonomous in law, education and religion, that it fed little into English life in these highly significant areas.
Stress has instead been placed on the consequences of the revolution rather than the event itself. In particular, historians have pointed to effects of the war with France, and the opening of the public sphere allowed by the constant sitting of parliament in the s, as the truly transformative processes. Also, a set of historical trends has eroded any sense that turning points occur. In the historical scholarship of recent decades, there has been a marked focus on continuity.
Its features were aristocratic dominance, monarchism, political deference, social continuity, and a confessional state controlled by the Anglican church. In short, Clark denied that a new, liberal, industrial, and pluralistic England had emerged before the Victorian decades.
There was therefore no new era whose start needed to be identified somewhere around This suggests the core mentalities English society were set in the sixteenth century, and changed very little before the nineteenth. Typical of this sort of scholarship has been my own work on the persistence of providence and anti-popery as central concepts in political and cultural discourse. This is the idea, not of a long eighteenth century, but of a long seventeenth century.
To understand this, it is important to realise how great a break in periodisation the English civil war traditionally was. The conflicts of the s were seen as transforming England, and the years before and after them were studied by two completely separate groups of historians.
People who dealt with the causes of the civil war almost never ventured forward to the Restoration; those working on the decades after , almost never ventured back. In recent decades however, some scholars, and particularly Jonathan Scott, have attempted to join the two halves of the seventeenth century together.
Scott argued that the political history of Restoration England was essentially a double repeat of the s and s. These crises were closely comparable to the catastrophe of the early s: the only factors that prevented an absolutely faithful repeat were the memory of the earlier tensions, and Dutch intervention in This idea gels neatly with the last historiographic trend I want to survey.
This is the new stress on the radicalism of the Glorious Revolution. Particularly associated with Steven Pincus, the radical interpretation of the revolution has portrayed it as the birth of modernity.
For Pincus, was a profound victory for progressive forces. English nationalism flexed its muscles for the first time, and there were triumphs for a dynamic economic doctrine, placing value in exchange rather than land; a far more open and flexible view of institutional religion; and the notion that state structures were most effectively upgraded through consent rather than royal will.
Such a cataclysmic event, within 12 years of , would make a fitting start for a new era. Disputes between them may therefore be disputes about what the United Kingdom has been, and is today. Arguing for as the start of the eighteenth century, suggests Britain is an essentially dynastic and monarchical entity.
Stressing reminds us that the United Kingdom is a composite state. Meanwhile the long reformation underlines the role of Protestantism in national character and constitution; whilst the long seventeenth century can stress the revolutionary heritage of Britain. Finally, the more recent suggestion that was a turning point hints at a Britain that was the first modern society. In all of this, there are many different Britains. They are, however, all recognisable from political and cultural debates in the twenty-first century: so we see what might be at stake in deciding when the eighteenth century began.
I am a historian of political and religious discourse, so it is in this area I will outline what I think changed between the two ages. This may mean, of course, that historians of the economy, or law, or wider culture, or society might have different, but perfectly valid answers. However, I suggest that political discourse certainly reflects, and may well shape, perceptions of these other dimensions of human experience —so examining discourse will cast significant light on other areas.
First concerns shifted from popish plot to social corruption. In the earlier Stuart age, it seems to me, an Antichristian conspiracy, aimed at the destruction of godly Protestantism, was seen at the root of everything that went wrong. This is the only way to understand the forces that led to the tensions of the s, the English civil war, the exclusion crisis, and the revolution.
People became convinced that popery had become ensconced near the centre of power, and so were prepared to challenge rulers they would otherwise have though too divine to question.
In the high eighteenth century, by contrast, the characteristic mode of opposition discourse was not accusation of popery, but the argument that rulers were using patronage, credit, luxury and dependence to create a supine populace with neither the courage nor the patriotism to object to corruption.
Reference was overwhelmingly to the ethical collapse of the Roman republic, rather than to a false church; and remedies were sought in the reconstruction of political virtue, rather than godly renewal.
Kings, they feared, might ignore the common law, tax without consent, or attempt to legislate without parliament. They were allowed some breaks for meals, but if they acted out of hand they would be punished with a smack on their bare butt with birch twigs. For the better part of the century, these suffocating devices were thought a necessity for good posture.
There were both arguments for and against these dress contraptions. Nay-sayers complained that they made women struggle to get around and ruined comfort, but those in support insisted it ke. Caps were immensely popular for the majority of women and embraced a lace around the brim.
And not as uncommon as today, fashionable women were many accessories that interchanged between different gloves, watches, masks, and jewelry. Men wore mostly bland haircuts while some wore wigs which at the beginning of the century tended to be long.
Hats varied in width and were comm only worn among these wigs. Three piece suits also ruled the male fashion scene, containing a jacket, vest, and pants as the essentials. With these suits, men wore black leather shoes with stockings underneath. Coats appeared as longer waist coats with the rich showing off many different features while the working class displayed much simpler details.
When outdoors, a gentleman wore cloaks, which later became highly unfashionable. Below all of this, a man wore breaches. Dating and Social Interactions Dating life for women in the 18th century had started to change as they had more of a say in their marriages and weddings.
It was at this time the idea of marrying because of who your parents arranged had died, and the idea of marrying on the basis of personal affection and started taking its place.
The average age women had started to marry was 22 compared to decades before when the age was much younger. The husband also needed to not only pay a dowry to the brides family, but have an allotment of things lined up for the happy couple. Things such as: housing, clothing, prospect of decent income and savings. On average, men tended to marry at 26 during this time, looking for specific attributes in a woman to be considered as his future wife. These qualities included: the typical household wife of maid, mother and caregiver, as well as a youthful looking woman who was wise with a decent holy background.
Entertainment Sports. The English were an outdoors people when it came to sport. Ice skating in winter months was extremely common, and during the summer months, swimming and water sports reigned supreme.
Boating for the purpose of fishing, picnicking, and watching regattas was all very popular. During fall months, hunting took a big role in many lives where the main game was dear and certain birds.
Horse races have been documented since until the Jockey Club was officially founded in Many denounced the racing due to it being a distraction to labor that needed to be done, but the protest had little to no effect. Leaning towards the middle of the century, cricket started gaining increasing popularity due to its viability with both men and women of all classes.
Along with cricket, other organized sports included tennis, golf, and lawn bowling. Plays Almost everyone enjoyed the theater whether it be watching it in the city, travelling companies, or performing in their own home. It was a scathing social satire that included the poor and alienated the rich.
With the increase in theater popularity, many theaters renovated and put on multiple shows. The audiences were various and a lot of the time were rude to the point where they would throw produce at the actors if they were unhappy with what they had seen. Other Entertainment Art shows were another source of pleasure for various people of all ages. Wax figures, sculptures, and paintings were all popular. Public fairs were immensely popular, ranging anywhere from two to six weeks.
Fireworks, music, plays, animal fights, eating competitions, and gambling could all be found at various fairs. Assemblies and balls offered young people an opportunity for courtship. The price of admission sorted out the very poor and distinguished the rest by their respective social class. Women loved the aspect of dancing and gossiping about the men in attendance and the mothers enjoyed the matchmaking idea of it all.
Clubs and societies offered mostly men a place to meet others with common interests. Coffeehouses saw some of the greatest thinkers of the 18th century gather and discuss everything from sports to philosophy. The Freemasons were founded in and included most of the male royals by the end of the century.
Gambling and card games became other large sources of entertainment for the public. It was very common to bet on various sporting events where huge sums of money were sometimes gambled away in one sitting. The government did not want to penalize its own members who gambled so it made life difficult on working class game house owners. Whether or not they were gambled on, games were played by everyone.
The most notable of them being backgammon, chess, checkers, and cribbage. Some of the more violent forms of entertainment came in the form of animal torture and fighting where many gathered around to see the carnage that ensued. Fighting between humans were considered all in good fun including the emergence of boxing and wrestling. Alcohol also became popular during this time with the liquor of choice being gin. It was cheap and easy to make, and you did not need a license to sell it, making it a hot commodity during this time.
The downside to bottom shelf liquor was the affects it had on your health. Many people suffered greatly from the overabundance of gin, but for many poor people it had become almost a comfort to them. People of upper class generally never bothered with things like homemade gin, due to the fact that they could afford better quality liquor. Literary References : No citations in body of page. Victoria and Albert Museum, Olsen, Kirstin. Daily Life in 18th-century England.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, Lambert, Tim. Lehmberg, Stanford E. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. British Library Board, n. Web 02 Dec.
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