Stuart London
In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England (1603-25), thereby uniting the two crowns and marking the beginning of the Stuart dynasty . His intention of exercising religious tolerance was thwarted by the public outrage that followed the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes, in cahoots with a group of Catholic conspirators, was discovered attempting to blow up the king at the state opening of Parliament. Under James's successor, Charles I (1625-49), the animosity between Crown and Parliament culminated in full-blown Civil War . London was the key to victory for both sides, and as a Parliamentarian stronghold it came under attack from Royalist forces almost immediately. However, having defeated the Parliamentary forces to the west of London in 1642, Charles hesitated and withdrew to Reading, thus missing his greatest chance of victory. After a series of defeats in 1645, Charles surrendered to the Scots, who handed him over to Parliament. Eventually, in January 1649, the king was tried and executed in Whitehall, and England became a Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. London found itself in the grip of the Puritans' zealous laws, which closed down all theatres, enforced observance of the Sabbath, and banned the celebration of Christmas, which was considered a papist superstition. In 1660, the city gave an ecstatic reception to Charles II (1660-85) when he arrived in the capital to announce the Restoration of the monarchy, and the "Merry Monarch" immediately caught the mood of the public by opening up the theatres and concert halls. However, the good times that rolled came to an abrupt end with the onset of the Great Plague of 1665, which claimed 100,000 lives. The following year, London had to contend with yet another disaster, the Great Fire . Some eighty percent of the City was razed to the ground; the death toll didn't reach double figures, but more than 100,000 were left homeless. Within five years, 9000 houses had been rebuilt with bricks and mortar (timber was banned), and fifty years later, Christopher Wren had almost single-handedly rebuilt all the City churches and completed the world's first Protestant cathedral, St Paul's . The Great Rebuilding , as it was known, was one of London's remarkable achievements, and extinguished virtually all traces of the medieval city.
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