The Restoration

The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution was the overthrow of James II of England. He was overthrown by a union of Parliamentarians and by a man named William the III of Orange-Nassau. The deposition of the Roman Catholic James II ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England, which also lead to toleration for nonconformist Protestants.

The Glorious Revolution was important because it was known as the last successful invasion of England. This event began the Modern English Parliamentary Democracy. This event also made the Bill of Rights one of the most important documents in the political history of Britain.

"What is Satire?" Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm and ridicule against a person. It’s when you use words to tell a meaning that is opposite of what you really meant. Ex: "I got fired today" "Well isn’t that nice" that’s satire. Examples of satire today include; the television show the Simpson’s, the Jay Leno show, Saturday Night Live, and David Letterman are all examples to me of satire today on television.

At the beginning of the Modest Proposal Jonathan Swift was telling about how he felt sorry for all the beggars. Then he went on to talk about how every time you saw a woman beggar she always had at least six children trailing behind her. Jonathan goes on to say that people could sell their children but that would not work because the children aren’t old enough (until they are 13) and that by the time they are old enough their to small to work because they have not been feed enough. The last message is saying that the women should become breeders and they should have lots and lots of children so that they can sell them to hungry people so they can eat them. He also said that there should be 1 man to every 4 females. This is an example of satire because he really didn’t mean he was going to sell the children for food for real, he was being sarcastic I hope.

"A Journal of the Plague Year" The plague cam as a surprise to every body some people had the disease but didn’t know so while they were living their regular life they were really passing the plague along to other people. The plague was supposed to have come from rats. They believe that the plague was passed to humans from fleas. Because the fleas used to bite the rats which were infected and the flea would after go bite a human. "For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never perceived that they were infected till they found, to their unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out apon them;

I also read that after the tokens showed up the person infected rarely lived six hours. The disease spread fast mainly because no body knew they had it until at least two days after they had caught it. So by then you know that they probably had already spread it to thousands of people in their village. Soon people started to kill themselves because they caught the plague. Some hung themselves others shot themselves, although some of them did not have the plague but they were probably scared of catching it or maybe they had lost everything because of it. People started to become very delusional they would strip naked and run out of their houses and down the street. Others would throw themselves into the burial pits with all of the people who had been plagued and did not make it. The plague had gotten so bad that there was a law against leaving your quarantine if your house was infected with the disease. "Inside London, if any member of a family came down with the plague, the whole family was confined by law to its dwelling."

I think that staying alive was the most important aspect to people in these times of plague. People who weren’t infected stayed away from people who were unless they were family members and they needed their help. Some still abandoned their family after they found out the plague had hit their own home. I also feel that not spreading the plague was very important to the people of this time too because 1: the plague was very contagious and 2: because they made a law for you not to leave your house if someone inside it was infected. "The alarm was great in the house, as anyone may suppose, they having been free from the distemper till that disaster, which, bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round about it." So as you can see not getting infected was very important to people of this time.