A Level History Britain society timeline

Growth of Radicalism
Pre 17th C:
 Congregationalists emerge late 16th C (brownists/barrowists)

Key dates 17th C:
 1600s Baptist movement
 1620s – seekers and quakers emerge
 1640s – emergence of levellers
 1647 – Putney debates
 1649-50 diggers emerge
 1650 – apparently ranters
 1660 – around 400000-600000 quakers in number
 1689 – Toleration Act

Political philosophy
Key dates 17th C:
 1640s – levellers had already established the idea of freeborn rights
 1651 – Hobbes’s Leviathan
 1650s/1660s – Hobbes well-known but earned very little support
 1666 – leviathan blamed for the great fire of London
 1666 – public burning of his books in oxford
 1689 – John Locke, Two Treatises on Government

Comparison dates end 17th C/later:
 Later an inspiration to John Locke/founding fathers of America
 Locke’s writing likely had an impact on the Whigs
 1688 – James II overthrown, Whigs had a hand
 1689-94 around 200 tracts and treatises published on the glorious
revolution but only 3 mention Locke

Scientific progression
Comparison dates (pre-17th C):
 Copernicus/Galileo/Descartes – empiricism

Early 17th C/throughout:
 Many schools recorded to have opened (bad documentation doesn’t mean
this is a drastic increase to the amount of schools opening in comparison
to earlier years)
 growth in consideration of rationalism/empiricism
 1630s/50s growth in literacy rates
 New ideas not being taught in schools – matters more that they are being
taught the skills to access revolutionary ideas in and of themselves
 Post 1650/60s – great impact on fashionable society
 1650s – proliferation of scientific clubs in oxford and cambridge

Key dates 17th C:

,  1614: logarithms created – John Napier, Descriptio, built upon by henry
briggs
 1620s and 1630s – francis bacon synthesises
 1660: royal society awarded a royal charter by Charles II
 1665: Hooke's micrographia
 1666 – French royal society
 1668 – Charles II establishes a chair of mathematics at st Andrews but
other Scottish universities are slow to follow
 1672: Newton's first published hypothesis on the spectrum of light
 1682: Nehemiah Crew publishes his anatomy on plants – Grew's work
helps to establish modern biology
 1685 – despite establishing an observatory at st Andrews, George
Sinclair’s best known work is “Satan’s invisible world discovered” in which
he attempted to prove witchcraft was real
 1687: Principia – in it he formulated the laws of motion and universal
gravitation that dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the
next three centuries

Comparison dates end 17th C/later:
 1700 – 55% of men are signature-literate (more so in Scotland due to the
Calvanist education system + impact of the Quakers and Quaker schools)
 1701 – Prussian academy of sciences berlin
 1703: newton elected the 12th president of the royal society
 1704 – Optiks – Newton's seminal work on the composition of light

Population growth
Comparison dates (pre-17th C):
Early 17th C/throughout:
Key dates 17th C:
 1600s – Newcastle population of 12000
 1601: poor relief act, outlines which of the poor are “deserving”
 1660: Norwich/Bristol population > 10,000
 National:
o 1600-1650 Significant increase, approximately 0.5% growth each
year
 Average age of marriage 24/26 (W/M)
o 1520 - 1650, population doubles from 2.5m to 5m
o 1650s peaks at 5.281m
o 1650-1700: Population stagnates and even decreases
 Marriage age 26/28 (W/M)
 London:
o 1600-1650: Massive growth (200000-400000 - doubles in size)
o 1630s Covent garden developed and East end of london also fast
developing
o 1650-1700: Continues to grow rapidly but at a slightly slower rate,
expanded to the north and south/biggest city in western Europe
(400000-475000)