1603: After the reign of Elizabeth I, James I came to the throne. James believed to the  divine rights of the king and he wanted an absolute monarch. He wanted to rule without the Parliament.

James became unpopular because of debts and financial crisis he brought to the reign. In 1625 the throne passed into the hands of Charles I. He aroused the hostility of the Parliament, because of his conviction to the divine rights.

During his reign, the war between the monarchy and the Parliament began : Charles I imposed taxes without the Parliament's approval, therefore the Parliament presented the Petition of Rights, in 1628. It said that taxes had to be levied with Parliament's consent and people could not be imprisoned without a valid charge. The king banned it.

In 1642 people divided into two groups the Commons and the mercantile classes sided with the Parliament, while the House of Lords, the Catholics and the aristocracy with the king.

Oliver Cromwell was the leader of the Commons. They defeated the Royalists in 1645. In 1649 the king was executed, and the Royal Family exiled to France. The Commonwealth was founded in England, it was a republic. When Cromwell died, it collapsed: so in 1660 the monarchy was restored and Charles II returned to England. He was a powerless king, but he was able to manipulate policies.

During his reign two groups were born in Parliament: the Tories, who had conservative values and the Whigs, who had liberal values. The Anglican Church was restored and the Puritans were repressed.

Between 1660 and 1700 merchant classes represented a new kind of class, which valued commerce and stability, and did not want to repeat the previous tragic events at all.

In 1685 Charles II died and James II succeeded; he meant to impose the Catholic religion. As a consequence, in 1688 he was deposed with the "Bloodless Revolution", called so because there weren't any murder and after a secret negotiation of the parliament his nephew William of Orange came to the throne

The 17th century was  a period of achievements, most of all in science, art and colonialism. Poetry was both religious and secular. George Herbert's poems expressed the complications of spiritual life right as John Donne's metaphysical poetry. Many poets fought in the civil wars: the cavalier poets sided with the court and celebrated its values and ideals; while, Andrew Marvell and John Milton were on the revolution side, celebrating republicanism.

During the century, the Masque was one of the most important entertainments of the court. It was a form of theatrical representation in which the musical and spectacular effects predominated. The elaborate symbolism, expressed in verse, aimed at glorifying the court. Masques began after dinner and sometimes lasted until dawn. With the Puritans' closure of the theatres in 1642 all performances ended, and when theatres reopened they presented witty and satirical comedies.

Restoration drama was very different from earlier form of drama: its main subject is sex, and the characters are obsessed with money and fashion. Talking about science and philosophy, Francis Bacon's philosophical research was based on experiment and direct observation of nature; Thomas Hobbes argued that sensations are only motions of matter; John Locke was the founder of empiricism and liberalism. Isaac Newton formulated the law of gravity that changed the conception of the world.