WI An English Revolution

IIRC the English royalty and upper classes were petrified that the goings-on in France during the Revolution would spread across the English Channel. There were a few riots in England, but OTL nothing materialized.

What is needed to have a greater revolutionary fervor in England that could potentially lead to a revolution against the monarchy? How would it progress and how would it affect history?
 
IIRC the English royalty and upper classes were petrified that the goings-on in France during the Revolution would spread across the English Channel. There were a few riots in England, but OTL nothing materialized.

What is needed to have a greater revolutionary fervor in England that could potentially lead to a revolution against the monarchy? How would it progress and how would it affect history?

Hmm...the trouble is that even at their worst, conditions for the rural working class in England were nowhere near as bad as they were in Europe )conditions for the urban working classes were awful though.

Perhaps you need someone to politicise the urban working classes? Most of the radical political strains tended to be directed at the rural areas (the Luddites and such) and the rural workers were much more spread out and any radicalism more easily contained and pinned down. Doing the same in the ratholes of London might be harder for the militia- however the flipside is that I don't think the urban working class is quite big enough at this point to make a difference.
 
Basically post-English Civil War there was enough social mobility that England never ossified the way that France did. Perhaps a different end to the English Civil War?

On the other hand, one could argue that the English Civil War had within it the kernels of a potential Revolution. If the Levellers had managed to convince the Army leadership to make the Agreement of the People the New Model Army's manifesto then the revolutionary ideals of equality before the law, the twelve man jury and extending the franchise to all freemen would be set loose on the world.

Add into England's revolutionary turn the fact the the Dutch were also in a state of near civil war with the Prince of Orange for very similar reasons, and you have the potential that the regicidal revolutionaries of England will inspire others.
 
Eliminate John Wesley and the Methodist Church etc. would certainly move England closer to revolution. Wesley and Whitmore and their efforts did a lot to take the pressure off IIRC.
 
I wonder if you could do something with George III? It seems that prior to the Revolution, he was doing a pretty good job of breaking parliamentary power; given another few years of that, could they have reduced Britain to an "absolute" monarchy?

Add the stresses of the industrial revolution, and, well.
 
I thought it was basically accepted that George III was using his private and public purse to buy parliament?

Heh, there's a Guardian article that discusses it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/mar/06/monarchy.princessmargaret

I am not sure how unusual it was, governments were kept in office through the 18th century by patronage and by the inclination amongst many MPs to be loyal to the choice of the monarch.

Also I see little inclination that his power was significantly increasing and that only the Revolutions (American and French) held this in check.

The Hannoverians strike me as an odd choice for absolutist British monarch - they held the throne through acts of Parliament and were not personally popular.
 
I thought it was basically accepted that George III was using his private and public purse to buy parliament?

Uh, that was pretty common in those days - at least, rewarding a small core of supporters financially. There's no way the King could buy Parliament as a whole, but small-scale bribery would certainly have not been uncommon or particularly frowned upon. Keeping people in Parliament on your rolls was done by every interested party - the government, (as distinct from the King) the larger landowners, etc. Probably upwards of 80% of MPs were ultimately controlled by someone else.

The idea that George was semi-absolutist is mostly just revolutionary agit-prop. He certainly exerted strong influence over the government on the bigger issues and the selection of ministers, but that was standard for the time.
 
I wonder if you could do something with George III? It seems that prior to the Revolution, he was doing a pretty good job of breaking parliamentary power; given another few years of that, could they have reduced Britain to an "absolute" monarchy?

Add the stresses of the industrial revolution, and, well.

Umm, that won't work since it was common at the time (as everyone else has said). Then again (though I don't know if the OP would allow it), George III could be butterflied in many numerous ways:

*Have him die very early on, partly because he was born premature and in those days premature babies were thought to be unlikely to survive (attitudes of the times)
*Have his porphyria worsen or even afflict him early on

Or even not have the Hanoverians not become monarchs.
 
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