Point of divergence: The Union of the Crowns in the early 1600s creates a fully fledged UK-style union between England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. As years go by, with a different king, the butterflies began to take flight...
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1. George Winchester
September 15, 1692 - January 1, 1709
George Winchester was born on May 25, 1641 in the Hampshire village of Temple Valley to a peasant farmer. This tiny village is now the home of the vast Winchester Memorial, dwarfing even the cathedral in the nearby city from whom the father of the republic gained him name. Standing at 6 foot 7 he was the tallest person to ever hold the presidency, with his “spider leg” scar across his cheek a distinguishing feature, as was his elegant dress sense. Some historians, including his official biographer, believe the founder of the nation to have been a homosexual; he never married and when asked by a friend after one Cabinet argument “men don’t delight you, do they?” he is said to have replied “I would say as much of women.”
By pure luck, the uneducated Winchester found himself a commission in the Royal Navy as a recruiting sergeant passed by the village, looking for young men to fight in the War of Holy Liberation against Turkey. Within a few years, having so impressed his superiors, Winchester was given command of his own ship of the line, the HMS Sovereign. The defining moment of his career came when he defied orders and changed course to intercept a group of Ottoman warships moving to mount a raid on Cornwall, his ship sinking all five while the only Ottoman cannonball to deal any damage to his ship severed two fingers on Winchester’s left hand. “A puny scratch!” Winchester is said to have bellowed across the water to the ship responsible. The battle was later immortalised in a 1763 painting by Oliver Bork. Winchester returned to Britain a hero amongst the Admiralty, whose success against the Ottomans was partially credited to the new tactics he had developed which helped inform the new concept of line-of-battle tactics in naval warfare.
Yet, coming as he did from such modest backgrounds, Winchester found himself increasingly disgusted by the high society his position afforded him entrance into. With little love for the men of London, he returned home to teach the illiterate men and women of Temple Valley to read and write while also becoming what we might call a class revolutionary. In countless articles, now lovingly preserved at the British Museum, he advertised his distaste of the entire monarchical system and, amid the dictatorial and brutal regime of Kings Charles II and III, he received a growing base of support. He might have found himself receiving the same end many other agitators did were it not for the position he held in society, but after a fierce argument with Henry Baring, 1st Duke of Berwick and the Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, over the slave woman he kept he found himself receiving a short spell in the Tower of London. This was more intended to scare him and his supporters out of their activities, but instead it only grew them stronger. While in prison, Winchester’s friends in high places began to assemble what they called the Summit, a secret group dedicated to quietly pressing for the erosion of the King’s power from the inside. Winchester was released in 1690 to quickly become the President of the Summit. Two years later he was betrayed when the group’s Vice President, Admiral Thomas Frederick, turned out to be one of the King’s spies and Winchester was again arrested while the rest of the Summit went into hiding. Winchester was sentenced to death for treason, but as he awaited the gallows the Tower of London was stormed by sympathisers and he along with his compatriots escaped.
By this point, full-blown rebellion had begun. King Charles III ordered the Royal Army onto the streets of London and a massacre ensued, with Winchester escaping London to the town of Maidstone in Kent where the local army commander had pledged his loyalty to Winchester’s cause. Yet the Summit remained scattered about the country, with virtually none of them knowing of Winchester’s location. Some in Maidstone suggested stealing ships of the Royal Navy and fleeing to France but Winchester refused, and instead he lead his ragtag militia southeast to Dover where the Royal Navy might serve a different goal. Unexpectedly defeating the royal resistance at the Battle of Little Chart, Dover was captured and twenty ships seized. The King had suppressed the news media to Winchester was not to know that his old ally, Lord John Walbrook, was leading a similar rebellion in the Scottish Highlands where he had fled to. Yet Winchester’s rebellion might have failed quickly had George III not, in panic, dissolved Parliament. In outrage many of its members pledged allegiance instead to Winchester and the overthrow of the King. At this point the whole country was forced to choose sides. Across both Scotland and Ireland, deep seated resentments against the Crown came to the forefront with huge agitation exploding into total civil war. Some hoped for independence, some simply for the end of the terror of Charles III, but all saw Winchester as their best hope for achieving this. Parliament moved to the ancient English capital, ironically called Winchester, and from there on September 7th, 1692 they convened the Great Summit. From this came the Declaration of the Republic, renouncing all loyalties to the King and announcing that it considered all the territories of Britain to be under the ultimate authority of a republic, titled the Commonwealth, led by George Winchester. The declaration remains one of the most studied documents of all time, providing a modern manifesto of human rights whose violation by the King it said justified revolution “in defence of human freedom for all time.” On September 15th, 1692 the Parliament unanimously elected George Winchester as the President of the Commonwealth with the stipulation that he face direct election from the people once the war came to an end, a condition that Winchester wholeheartedly supported.
So it was that for six long years the British Revolutionary War would rage with much of the support for the revolutionaries, under the newly created People’s Army, coming from the south of England as well as Scotland and Ireland. When the spring came after the Great Summit, Winchester led the People’s Army to victory at the Battle of London, forcing the King and his supporters to flee for York. A Highland Army raised by the royalists fought bloody battles throughout Scotland while the Midlands and Northern England saw heavy fighting. The battle of public support was particularly important when it took on a religious tone; the church was very much behind the King, who promised them their continued domination politically, but Winchester from the beginning asserted that the Commonwealth would be secular, allowing total religious freedom which appealed to many of the religious minorities across the country particularly those in Scotland and Wales who felt marginalised by Charles III’s rule. Their support would prove crucial especially as more became distasteful of Charles III’s increased religious extremism, as his court began to be infiltrated by the more hardline members of the church and his own early-onset dementia began to set in. The King’s rule of the sea would come undone once the People’s Navy effectively destroyed much of the strength of the Royal Navy at the crucial Battle of the Hartland on the Devon coast in August 1695, and it all came to a head once Winchester personally led his forces in the storming of York after a five month siege. By December 3rd, 1698 it had fallen. Charles III attempted to escape the city in disguise but was captured and brought to London to face trial.
As Charles III shivered in the Tower of London, George Winchester returned to London a hero. “He has been canonised by the people,” wrote Vice President John Walbrook. At Westminster he delivered a speech before an enormous crowd, including the immortal words of “I am no God,” refuting the ancient divine rights of kings from Britain for all time. On March 7th, 1699 the Parliament convened for the first time since the end of the war to put together the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Its articles would outline the structure of government with the separation of powers between an executive headed by the President, a legislature represented by Parliament, and an independent judiciary headed by the Supreme Court whose role was to enforce the Constitution. Crucially, in setting rules for presidential elections, the Constitution would establish a two-round system with instant runoff voting while banning the involvement of political parties and private spending. All individuals would stand on their own merits, with an Election Convention (effectively a series of marathon questions and answers) ensuring all would receive fair coverage and funding. The ban on private spending was a holdover from the continued desire to prevent the rise of an entrenched upper class such as the war had been fought against. Other articles would entrench individual rights and liberties while limiting the powers of government, with the intention of creating a full, free, and fair democracy. Putting together the Constitution would take more than a year but its ratification on June 3rd, 1700 would forever be remembered as Commonwealth Day.
With its ratification, the first presidential election in British history was also scheduled for, as the Constitution mandated, the first Thursday of November – November 7th, 1700. It immediately put the entire Commonwealth to the test as George Winchester found himself opposed by a royalist, Lincoln Jay, whose sole pledge was to abolish the entire apparatus just established and restore the Kingdom of Great Britain. He seemed to pay little attention to the fact that the Constitution made it impossible to do so. The result was hardly in doubt; Winchester won 88% of the vote, the biggest mandate in British history. Days later, with Charles III’s execution by hanging drawing near, President Winchester signed the first ever presidential pardon for the King. “I wish this young republic to be born in justice, not vengeance,” he wrote. Charles III was free to live as a private citizen, given a country house in Somerset where a close eye would be kept on him.
As 1st President of the Commonwealth, Winchester took office on January 1, 1701 (though he had technically occupied the office for eight years already) with his twenty-minute inauguration speech outlining his “dream of the future” which provided a hugely influential defence of republicanism and national unity. Winchester made an early name for himself by refusing to sign the Treaty of the Grand Alliance with Austria and the Dutch Republic in 1701, instead declaring that Britain’s foreign policy should be guided by avoiding entanglement in continental affairs which had thrust it into so many wars in the past. This especially meant that it should avoid any involvement in “the squabbles of noble families,” meaning he had little time for arguments between monarchies. Louis XIV of France, the most powerful monarch in Europe, saw the founding of the Commonwealth as a direct threat to his own rule and planned to attack, but he was interrupted by the emergence of the War of the Spanish Succession. Britain remained neutral in the conflict, while France ultimately cared far more about territorial expansion in Europe than provoking war with one of the great powers whose involvement Louis XIV was certain would make his own goals far more difficult. As a result it was able to emerge victorious with Philip taking power in Spain, rendering the House of Bourbon practically all-powerful in Europe. A peace conference in 1707 saw France absorb Holy Roman Empire territories such as the enclave of Montbéliard and Duchies of Savoy, Lorraine, Bar, Jülich and others, the South Netherlands (previously controlled by Spain), and the Dutch Republic. This represented a substantial shift in power in Europe towards France. The result would be the eventual collapse of the Holy Roman Empire while in 1710 Louis XIV proclaimed the Kingdom of France and Spain, setting off significant nationalist resentment within once-independent Spain which would have reverberations for decades.
Amid the war, Winchester had signed the Blue Treaty with France, maintaining peace and economic links while resolving outstanding disputes. Winchester later proclaimed that Britain should no longer take sides in the arguments of monarchies, declaring all sides to be wrong according to the principles of democracy. Yet with the creation of the Kingdom of France and Spain might have been prevented, and a dire threat to Britain’s security across the Channel avoided, had he brought the country into war. Many historians fault him with this, but they forget the anti-war mood of the new Parliament; President Winchester had little chance of persuading it to declare war as the Constitution demanded he do. Many were just as concerned by the effective acquisition by France of the Spanish and Dutch colonies in the Americas, including vast territory in North America which directly threatened the slivers of land owned by Britain.
Domestically, much of Winchester’s rule was characterised by the effort to put together the new institutions of government. In early 1702 the Bank of Britain was created, the world’s first central bank (edging out the Swedish National Bank by just six months). The impetus for creating the bank had come from the outbreak of the War of Spanish Succession, as the British government recognised the threat posed by France. With no public funds to build a significant navy, the Bank of Britain was created to help fund the build-up. The result was that the new People’s Navy significantly expanded in size, often finding its ships of the line making aggressive manoeuvres with French warships to protect the Caribbean trading routes while France seized the Dutch colonies. Winchester’s great domestic failure would ultimately be his push to abolish slavery, which Parliament shot down; he would go as far as challenging slavery in the courts but the nine-man Supreme Court would respond on March 7th, 1704 with the Winchester v. Commonwealth decision affirming the legality of slavery within the Constitution. Nonetheless in November of that year Winchester would secure re-election against his pro-war rival James Byron.
As this took place, political parties were taking shape in Britain. The two most dominant were the Republicans, who were anti-war and pro-Constitution, and the Tories who were particularly entrenched in their opposition to religious equality while many were sympathetic about a return to the monarchical system. The general elections which took place every two years saw much mixture and the question of religious freedom became the undisputed major social issue. Winchester was unrepentant, vetoing multiple Tory bills to remove freedom of worship from Nonconformists. The non-Protestant population soon became a bedrock of electoral support for both Winchester and the Republicans. The Anglican Church had already been undermined enough by losing its role as the official state religion and all special treatment which came with it. Regular riots had struck British cities over the issue, but as usual Winchester stuck to his guns and refused to allow the Constitution to be compromised even after an assassination attempt by one particularly fanatical Protestant.
George Winchester would leave office when the country still seemed to be getting used to its new ways. Delivering the first traditional Farewell Address, he reiterated the importance of the Constitution. One particular passage stands out, and now adorns the wall of his memorial; “For men to be free is the noblest goal.”
A second revolution was approaching, though not so much a political one. Ten days before Winchester left office cast iron was successfully produced using coke fuel at a blast furnace in Warwickshire. The ensuing availability of cheap iron would be a major catalyst for the coming Industrial Revolution, setting the scene for the transformation of Britain beyond anything which the Founders envisioned.
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1. George Winchester
September 15, 1692 - January 1, 1709
George Winchester was born on May 25, 1641 in the Hampshire village of Temple Valley to a peasant farmer. This tiny village is now the home of the vast Winchester Memorial, dwarfing even the cathedral in the nearby city from whom the father of the republic gained him name. Standing at 6 foot 7 he was the tallest person to ever hold the presidency, with his “spider leg” scar across his cheek a distinguishing feature, as was his elegant dress sense. Some historians, including his official biographer, believe the founder of the nation to have been a homosexual; he never married and when asked by a friend after one Cabinet argument “men don’t delight you, do they?” he is said to have replied “I would say as much of women.”
By pure luck, the uneducated Winchester found himself a commission in the Royal Navy as a recruiting sergeant passed by the village, looking for young men to fight in the War of Holy Liberation against Turkey. Within a few years, having so impressed his superiors, Winchester was given command of his own ship of the line, the HMS Sovereign. The defining moment of his career came when he defied orders and changed course to intercept a group of Ottoman warships moving to mount a raid on Cornwall, his ship sinking all five while the only Ottoman cannonball to deal any damage to his ship severed two fingers on Winchester’s left hand. “A puny scratch!” Winchester is said to have bellowed across the water to the ship responsible. The battle was later immortalised in a 1763 painting by Oliver Bork. Winchester returned to Britain a hero amongst the Admiralty, whose success against the Ottomans was partially credited to the new tactics he had developed which helped inform the new concept of line-of-battle tactics in naval warfare.
Yet, coming as he did from such modest backgrounds, Winchester found himself increasingly disgusted by the high society his position afforded him entrance into. With little love for the men of London, he returned home to teach the illiterate men and women of Temple Valley to read and write while also becoming what we might call a class revolutionary. In countless articles, now lovingly preserved at the British Museum, he advertised his distaste of the entire monarchical system and, amid the dictatorial and brutal regime of Kings Charles II and III, he received a growing base of support. He might have found himself receiving the same end many other agitators did were it not for the position he held in society, but after a fierce argument with Henry Baring, 1st Duke of Berwick and the Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, over the slave woman he kept he found himself receiving a short spell in the Tower of London. This was more intended to scare him and his supporters out of their activities, but instead it only grew them stronger. While in prison, Winchester’s friends in high places began to assemble what they called the Summit, a secret group dedicated to quietly pressing for the erosion of the King’s power from the inside. Winchester was released in 1690 to quickly become the President of the Summit. Two years later he was betrayed when the group’s Vice President, Admiral Thomas Frederick, turned out to be one of the King’s spies and Winchester was again arrested while the rest of the Summit went into hiding. Winchester was sentenced to death for treason, but as he awaited the gallows the Tower of London was stormed by sympathisers and he along with his compatriots escaped.
By this point, full-blown rebellion had begun. King Charles III ordered the Royal Army onto the streets of London and a massacre ensued, with Winchester escaping London to the town of Maidstone in Kent where the local army commander had pledged his loyalty to Winchester’s cause. Yet the Summit remained scattered about the country, with virtually none of them knowing of Winchester’s location. Some in Maidstone suggested stealing ships of the Royal Navy and fleeing to France but Winchester refused, and instead he lead his ragtag militia southeast to Dover where the Royal Navy might serve a different goal. Unexpectedly defeating the royal resistance at the Battle of Little Chart, Dover was captured and twenty ships seized. The King had suppressed the news media to Winchester was not to know that his old ally, Lord John Walbrook, was leading a similar rebellion in the Scottish Highlands where he had fled to. Yet Winchester’s rebellion might have failed quickly had George III not, in panic, dissolved Parliament. In outrage many of its members pledged allegiance instead to Winchester and the overthrow of the King. At this point the whole country was forced to choose sides. Across both Scotland and Ireland, deep seated resentments against the Crown came to the forefront with huge agitation exploding into total civil war. Some hoped for independence, some simply for the end of the terror of Charles III, but all saw Winchester as their best hope for achieving this. Parliament moved to the ancient English capital, ironically called Winchester, and from there on September 7th, 1692 they convened the Great Summit. From this came the Declaration of the Republic, renouncing all loyalties to the King and announcing that it considered all the territories of Britain to be under the ultimate authority of a republic, titled the Commonwealth, led by George Winchester. The declaration remains one of the most studied documents of all time, providing a modern manifesto of human rights whose violation by the King it said justified revolution “in defence of human freedom for all time.” On September 15th, 1692 the Parliament unanimously elected George Winchester as the President of the Commonwealth with the stipulation that he face direct election from the people once the war came to an end, a condition that Winchester wholeheartedly supported.
So it was that for six long years the British Revolutionary War would rage with much of the support for the revolutionaries, under the newly created People’s Army, coming from the south of England as well as Scotland and Ireland. When the spring came after the Great Summit, Winchester led the People’s Army to victory at the Battle of London, forcing the King and his supporters to flee for York. A Highland Army raised by the royalists fought bloody battles throughout Scotland while the Midlands and Northern England saw heavy fighting. The battle of public support was particularly important when it took on a religious tone; the church was very much behind the King, who promised them their continued domination politically, but Winchester from the beginning asserted that the Commonwealth would be secular, allowing total religious freedom which appealed to many of the religious minorities across the country particularly those in Scotland and Wales who felt marginalised by Charles III’s rule. Their support would prove crucial especially as more became distasteful of Charles III’s increased religious extremism, as his court began to be infiltrated by the more hardline members of the church and his own early-onset dementia began to set in. The King’s rule of the sea would come undone once the People’s Navy effectively destroyed much of the strength of the Royal Navy at the crucial Battle of the Hartland on the Devon coast in August 1695, and it all came to a head once Winchester personally led his forces in the storming of York after a five month siege. By December 3rd, 1698 it had fallen. Charles III attempted to escape the city in disguise but was captured and brought to London to face trial.
As Charles III shivered in the Tower of London, George Winchester returned to London a hero. “He has been canonised by the people,” wrote Vice President John Walbrook. At Westminster he delivered a speech before an enormous crowd, including the immortal words of “I am no God,” refuting the ancient divine rights of kings from Britain for all time. On March 7th, 1699 the Parliament convened for the first time since the end of the war to put together the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Its articles would outline the structure of government with the separation of powers between an executive headed by the President, a legislature represented by Parliament, and an independent judiciary headed by the Supreme Court whose role was to enforce the Constitution. Crucially, in setting rules for presidential elections, the Constitution would establish a two-round system with instant runoff voting while banning the involvement of political parties and private spending. All individuals would stand on their own merits, with an Election Convention (effectively a series of marathon questions and answers) ensuring all would receive fair coverage and funding. The ban on private spending was a holdover from the continued desire to prevent the rise of an entrenched upper class such as the war had been fought against. Other articles would entrench individual rights and liberties while limiting the powers of government, with the intention of creating a full, free, and fair democracy. Putting together the Constitution would take more than a year but its ratification on June 3rd, 1700 would forever be remembered as Commonwealth Day.
With its ratification, the first presidential election in British history was also scheduled for, as the Constitution mandated, the first Thursday of November – November 7th, 1700. It immediately put the entire Commonwealth to the test as George Winchester found himself opposed by a royalist, Lincoln Jay, whose sole pledge was to abolish the entire apparatus just established and restore the Kingdom of Great Britain. He seemed to pay little attention to the fact that the Constitution made it impossible to do so. The result was hardly in doubt; Winchester won 88% of the vote, the biggest mandate in British history. Days later, with Charles III’s execution by hanging drawing near, President Winchester signed the first ever presidential pardon for the King. “I wish this young republic to be born in justice, not vengeance,” he wrote. Charles III was free to live as a private citizen, given a country house in Somerset where a close eye would be kept on him.
As 1st President of the Commonwealth, Winchester took office on January 1, 1701 (though he had technically occupied the office for eight years already) with his twenty-minute inauguration speech outlining his “dream of the future” which provided a hugely influential defence of republicanism and national unity. Winchester made an early name for himself by refusing to sign the Treaty of the Grand Alliance with Austria and the Dutch Republic in 1701, instead declaring that Britain’s foreign policy should be guided by avoiding entanglement in continental affairs which had thrust it into so many wars in the past. This especially meant that it should avoid any involvement in “the squabbles of noble families,” meaning he had little time for arguments between monarchies. Louis XIV of France, the most powerful monarch in Europe, saw the founding of the Commonwealth as a direct threat to his own rule and planned to attack, but he was interrupted by the emergence of the War of the Spanish Succession. Britain remained neutral in the conflict, while France ultimately cared far more about territorial expansion in Europe than provoking war with one of the great powers whose involvement Louis XIV was certain would make his own goals far more difficult. As a result it was able to emerge victorious with Philip taking power in Spain, rendering the House of Bourbon practically all-powerful in Europe. A peace conference in 1707 saw France absorb Holy Roman Empire territories such as the enclave of Montbéliard and Duchies of Savoy, Lorraine, Bar, Jülich and others, the South Netherlands (previously controlled by Spain), and the Dutch Republic. This represented a substantial shift in power in Europe towards France. The result would be the eventual collapse of the Holy Roman Empire while in 1710 Louis XIV proclaimed the Kingdom of France and Spain, setting off significant nationalist resentment within once-independent Spain which would have reverberations for decades.
Amid the war, Winchester had signed the Blue Treaty with France, maintaining peace and economic links while resolving outstanding disputes. Winchester later proclaimed that Britain should no longer take sides in the arguments of monarchies, declaring all sides to be wrong according to the principles of democracy. Yet with the creation of the Kingdom of France and Spain might have been prevented, and a dire threat to Britain’s security across the Channel avoided, had he brought the country into war. Many historians fault him with this, but they forget the anti-war mood of the new Parliament; President Winchester had little chance of persuading it to declare war as the Constitution demanded he do. Many were just as concerned by the effective acquisition by France of the Spanish and Dutch colonies in the Americas, including vast territory in North America which directly threatened the slivers of land owned by Britain.
Domestically, much of Winchester’s rule was characterised by the effort to put together the new institutions of government. In early 1702 the Bank of Britain was created, the world’s first central bank (edging out the Swedish National Bank by just six months). The impetus for creating the bank had come from the outbreak of the War of Spanish Succession, as the British government recognised the threat posed by France. With no public funds to build a significant navy, the Bank of Britain was created to help fund the build-up. The result was that the new People’s Navy significantly expanded in size, often finding its ships of the line making aggressive manoeuvres with French warships to protect the Caribbean trading routes while France seized the Dutch colonies. Winchester’s great domestic failure would ultimately be his push to abolish slavery, which Parliament shot down; he would go as far as challenging slavery in the courts but the nine-man Supreme Court would respond on March 7th, 1704 with the Winchester v. Commonwealth decision affirming the legality of slavery within the Constitution. Nonetheless in November of that year Winchester would secure re-election against his pro-war rival James Byron.
As this took place, political parties were taking shape in Britain. The two most dominant were the Republicans, who were anti-war and pro-Constitution, and the Tories who were particularly entrenched in their opposition to religious equality while many were sympathetic about a return to the monarchical system. The general elections which took place every two years saw much mixture and the question of religious freedom became the undisputed major social issue. Winchester was unrepentant, vetoing multiple Tory bills to remove freedom of worship from Nonconformists. The non-Protestant population soon became a bedrock of electoral support for both Winchester and the Republicans. The Anglican Church had already been undermined enough by losing its role as the official state religion and all special treatment which came with it. Regular riots had struck British cities over the issue, but as usual Winchester stuck to his guns and refused to allow the Constitution to be compromised even after an assassination attempt by one particularly fanatical Protestant.
George Winchester would leave office when the country still seemed to be getting used to its new ways. Delivering the first traditional Farewell Address, he reiterated the importance of the Constitution. One particular passage stands out, and now adorns the wall of his memorial; “For men to be free is the noblest goal.”
A second revolution was approaching, though not so much a political one. Ten days before Winchester left office cast iron was successfully produced using coke fuel at a blast furnace in Warwickshire. The ensuing availability of cheap iron would be a major catalyst for the coming Industrial Revolution, setting the scene for the transformation of Britain beyond anything which the Founders envisioned.
Comments?