Kings and queen during the time the Brontes were living

Patrick Brontë          17 March 1777 – 7 June 1861

Charlotte Brontë          21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855

Patrick Branwell Brontë  26 June 1817 – 24 September 1848

Emily Jane Brontë           30 juli 1818 –  19 december 1848)

Anne Brontë                17 januari 1820 –  28 mei 1849

King George III 1760 - 1820

 

At the age of 22, George succeeded to the throne when his grandfather, George II, died suddenly on 25 October 1760. On 8 September 1761 in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, the King married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he met on their wedding day.^[19]  They had 15 children—nine sons and six daughters.

In 1762, George purchased Buckingham House (on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace) for use as a family retreat.^[20] His other residences were Kew and Windsor Castle. St. James's Palace was retained for official use. He did not travel extensively, and spent his entire life in southern England.

Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India.

However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American Revolutionary War.

Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

King George IV 1820 - 1830

 

George IV led an extravagant lifestyle that contributed to the fashions of the Regency era. He was a patron of new forms of leisure, style and taste.

 

He commissioned John Nash to build the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and remodel Buckingham Palace, and Sir Jeffry Wyattville to rebuild Windsor Castle. He was instrumental in the foundation of the National Gallery and King's College London.

 

He had a poor relationship with both his father and his wife, Caroline of Brunswick

 

Taxpayers were angry at his wasteful spending in time of war.

wiki/George_IV_of_the_United_Kingdom

 

King William IV 1830 - 1837

 

William was the third son of George III and not expected to become king. He was created Duke of Clarence and from 1791 set up home with Dorothea Bland, an Irish actress known as ‘Mrs Jordan’. They lived contentedly together for 20 years, and had 5 sons and 5 daughters given the surname Fitzclarence.

 

William was in debt but, with the death of Princess Charlotte only daughter of his elder brother, he had become heir to the throne. Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen was found for him as a suitable Protestant wife and they married in 1818. The marriage was happy but despite several miscarriages there were no children who survived infancy. His London residence Clarence House was designed for him by John Nash in 1825.

 

In 1834 when fire destroyed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster he offered Buckingham Palace to Parliament. They declined and Westminster was rebuilt by Charles Barry in Gothic style.

 

William was 64 years old and the oldest person to date to succeed to the throne when he became King on the death of his brother George IV in 1830.

 
Queen Victoria 1837 - 1901

 

She was the daughter of Edward, duke of Kent (fourth son of George III) and a niece of George IV and William lV.

Charlotte Bronte, a Tory

Politically a Tory, she preached tolerance rather than revolution. She held high moral principles and, despite her shyness, was prepared to argue for her beliefs.
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The Taylors were an old and respected, but unconventional, Yorkshire textiles family. The six children were encouraged by their father, a fierce radical in religion and politics, to develop independence of thought and action and freedom of expression.

Joshua Taylor was an educated, cultured and strongly cosmopolitan influence upon them. The Taylors exported cloth to Europe and America and had strong European connections. They often travelled in Europe on business and pleasure and had relatives living in Brussels. In the 1830s Charlotte Brontë sometimes stayed at Red House. She greatly enjoyed her visits, writing that:

‘… the society of the Taylors is one of the most rousing

leasures I have ever known.’ (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 15 April 1839)
 

Mary Taylor later wrote about Charlotte’s visits:

‘We used to dispute about politics and religion. She, a Tory and clergyman’s daughter, was always in a minority of one in our house of violent Dissent and Radicalism.’ (Mary Taylor to Mrs Gaskell, 1856) RedHouse-MaryTaylor ----------------------------------

Tory refers to those holding a political philosophy (Toryism) commonly regarded as based on a traditionalist and conservative view which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom. English Tories from the time of the Glorious Revolution up until the Reform Bill of 1832 were characterized by strong monarchist tendencies, support for the Church of England, and hostility to reform, while the Tory Party was an actual organization which held power intermittently throughout the same period.^[11] Since 1832, the term "Tory" is commonly used to refer to the Conservative Party and its members. wiki/Tory  

The Conservative Party traces its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th-century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger (Prime Minister of Great Britain 1783–1801 and 1804–1806). Originally known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt", or "Pittites", after Pitt's death the term "Tory" came into use. This was an allusion to the Tories, a political grouping that had existed from 1678, but which had no organisational continuity with the Pittite party. From about 1812 on the name "Tory" was commonly used for the newer party. wiki/Conservative_Party
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Mr. Bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812, as he was then clergyman at Hartshead, not three miles from Rawfolds; and, as I have mentioned, it was in these perilous times that he began his custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him. For not only his Tory politics, but his love and regard for the authority of the law, made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates, who, in their dread of the Luddites, refused to interfere so as to prevent the destruction of property. The clergy of the district were the bravest men by far. There was a Mr. Roberson, of Heald's Hall, a friend of Mr. Bronte's, who has left a deep impression of himself on the public mind. He lived near Heckmondwike, a large, straggling, dirty village, not two miles from Roe Head. It was principally inhabited by blanket weavers, who worked in their own cottages; and Heald's Hall is the largest house in the village, of which Mr. Roberson was the vicar. At his own cost, he built a handsome church at Liversedge, on a hill opposite the one on which his house stood, which was the first attempt in the West Riding to meet the wants of the overgrown population, and made many personal sacrifices for his opinions, both religious and political, which were of the true old-fashioned Tory stamp. He hated everything which he fancied had a tendency towards anarchy. He was loyal in every fibre to Church and king; and would have proudly laid down his life, any day, for what he believed to be right and true. But he was a man of an imperial will, and by it he bore down opposition, till tradition represents him as having something grimly demoniac about him. egaskell/cbronte
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Disraeli is not the only early Victorian Tory novelist whose brilliance puts today's fictionally challenged Conservative MPs in the shade. This writer was intensely interested in politics from early childhood and was reactionary enough to have opposed the franchise-extending Reform Bill of 1832. Perhaps surprisingly to those who see her as a radical feminist, I'm talking about Charlotte Brontë, who made her contribution to the "condition of England" novel in 1849, a few years after Disraeli completed his trilogy.
Shirley, Charlotte Brontë's second published novel, is a story of industrial unrest and class conflict which confounds some of today's critics with its failure to address Chartism. Yet to appreciate it artistically it's important not to make anachronistic judgments. Indeed, putting it in a Disraelian context might be a new way of making sense of this novel which many readers, fresh from the exhilaration of reading the more instantly appealing Jane Eyre, have found so strange and difficult.
Though she retained her hero-worship of the Duke of Wellington, Brontë had by 1849 modified her politics to the extent that she could no longer be accused of being an intransigent "high Tory". The high Tories in Shirley are shown to be as limited in their way as the Whig manufacturer whose heart has become a machine. Instead, in the character of Shirley Keeldar, Brontë offers something that looks suspiciously like a modified Young England Toryism. As an enlightened aristocrat, Shirley is the fount of regeneration in the district: not only does she relieve the distress of the poor with her paternalistic charity, but the manufacturing interests are dependent on her too if they are to survive (in a more humane form). She is also close to the land, which she worships as mother nature in Romantic vein, and prefers feeling and imagination to reason and commerce.  In her flambuoyant disregard for social convention, Shirley has what could almost be called a female Byronism which recalls the young Disraeli. If, politically, the novel has something in common with Young England, aesthetically it harks back to Disraeli's earlier works. Despite the dazzling figure of Shirley Keeldar, though, the novel is fundamentally anti-idealistic. Its anti-Utopian stance sets it in a line of Tory pessimism going right back to Swift and Dr Johnson. guardianreview

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Besides Mary Taylor's deep friendship with Charlotte Bronte, there are many other motivations to read this fascinating novel. Mary Taylor is wonderful at descriping the working class as complex and interesting characters and her politics are more radical than Charlotte's. Taylor manages to capture the Yorkshire dialect without snobishness. Charlotte was a political Tory/conservative and could often write harsly of the poor working class struggle for equality and respect (see her novel Shirley). And for anyone who has studied Victorian feminism, this novel is a great reflecting point. It's a shame that Mary Taylor did NOT save her letters from Charlotte nor hand them over to biographer and fellow Victorian novelist aElizabeth Gaskell, because the intellectual and literary discussions the two writers would have engaged in would have been fascinating to read -- especially their positions on women's education, marriage, children, and careers. Miss-Miles-Tale-Yorkshire-Years