Manor house
A manor house was the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; the term is today loosely applied to various country houses dating from the late medieval era, which housed the gentry. They were sometimes fortified, but this was intended more for show than for defence. Manor houses existed in most European countries where feudalism existed, where they were sometimes known as castles, so on; the lord of the manor may have held several properties within a county or, for example in the case of a feudal baron, spread across a kingdom, which he occupied only on occasional visits. So, the business of the manor required to be directed and controlled by regular manorial courts, which appointed manorial officials such as the bailiff, granted copyhold leases to tenants, resolved disputes between manorial tenants and administered justice in general. A large and suitable building was required within the manor for such purpose in the form of a great hall, a solar might be attached to form accommodation for the lord.
Furthermore, the produce of a small manor might be insufficient to feed a lord and his large family for a full year, thus he would spend only a few months at each manor and move on to another where stores had been laid up. This gave the opportunity for the vacated manor house to be cleaned important in the days of the cess-pit, repaired, thus such non-resident lords needed to appoint a steward or seneschal to act as their deputy in such matters and to preside at the manorial courts of his different manorial properties. The day-to-day administration was carried out by a resident official in authority at each manor, who in England was called a bailiff, or reeve. Although not built with strong fortifications as were castles, many manor-houses were fortified, which required a royal licence to crenellate, they were enclosed within walls or ditches which also included agricultural buildings. Arranged for defence against roaming bands of robbers and thieves, in days long before police, they were surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge, were equipped with gatehouses and watchtowers, but not, as for castles, with a keep, large towers or lofty curtain walls designed to withstand a siege.
The primary feature of the manor house was its great hall, to which subsidiary apartments were added as the lessening of feudal warfare permitted more peaceful domestic life. By the beginning of the 16th century, manor houses as well as small castles began to acquire the character and amenities of the residences of country gentlemen, many defensive elements were dispensed with, for example Sutton Place in Surrey, circa 1521. A late 16th-century transformation produced many of the smaller Renaissance châteaux of France and the numerous country mansions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean styles in England. Before around 1600, larger houses were fortified for true defensive purposes but as the kingdom became internally more peaceable after the Wars of the Roses, as a form of status-symbol, reflecting the position of their owners as having been worthy to receive royal licence to crenellate; the Tudor period of stability in England saw the building of the first of the unfortified great houses, for example Sutton Place in Surrey, circa 1521.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII resulted in many former monastical properties being sold to the King's favourites, who converted them into private country houses, examples being Woburn Abbey, Forde Abbey, Nostell Priory and many other mansions with the suffix Abbey or Priory to their name. During the second half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and under her successor King James I the first mansions designed by architects not by mere masons or builders, began to make their appearance; such houses as Burghley House, Longleat House, Hatfield House are among the best known of this period and seem today to epitomise the English country house. Nearly every large medieval manor house had its own deer-park adjoining, emparked by royal licence, which served as a store of food in the form of venison. Within these licensed parks deer could not be hunted by royalty, nor by neighbouring land-owners nor by any other persons. During the 16th century many lords of manors moved their residences from their ancient manor houses situated next to the parish church and near or in the village and built a new manor house within the walls of their ancient deer-parks adjoining.
This gave them space. The suffixes given to manor houses today have little substantive meaning, many have changed over time, thus a manor house may have been known as "Heanton House" in the 18th century and in the 19th century as "Heanton Court" and as "Heanton Satchville". "Court" was a suffix which came into use in the 16th century, contemporary topographers felt the need to explain the term to their readers. Thus the Devonshire historian Tristram Risdon clarified the term at least three times in his main work, Survey of Devon: "This now lord of these lands Sir Robert Basset hath his dwelling at Heanton-Court, in this parish, an adjunct importing a manor-house in the lord's signiory". "This Nutwell Court, which signifies a mansion-house in a signiory, came to the family of Prideaux". and regarding the manor of Yarnscombe: "Their house is called "Court", which implieth a manor house, or chief dwelling in a lordship". The biographer John Prince, (1643–1723
Heronry
A heronry, sometimes called a heron rookery, is a breeding ground for herons. Although their breeding territories are on more protected small islands in lakes or retention ponds, herons breed in heronries; some of the notable heronries are: Kaggaladu Heronry is in Karnataka state of India. This heronry, in the Tumkur district of Karnataka, was first made known to the outside world in 1999 by members of the Tumkur-based NGO Wildlife Aware Nature Club. Cleeve Heronry, in a woodland near the village of Cleeve in North Somerset, UK. Hilgay Heronry is in Norfolk, it is situated in a small copse on the edge of The Fens in the UK. An average of c. 40 pairs of grey heron nests each year at this site, in ash and European larch trees. The Florida Everglades in south Florida, of the United States. Thousands of birds, including herons, egrets and storks, nest in mangroves. Bird colony
New England
New England is a region composed of six states of the northeastern United States: Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively; the Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, Long Island Sound is to the south. Boston is New England's largest city as well as the capital of Massachusetts; the largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston with nearly a third of the entire region's population, which includes Worcester, Manchester, New Hampshire, Providence, Rhode Island. In 1620, Puritan Separatist Pilgrims from England established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia founded in 1607. Ten years more Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies in America.
In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced the Salem witch trials, one of the most infamous cases of mass hysteria in history. In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British ship, enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which were termed the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists; these confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, was the first region of the U. S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, centered on the Merrimack river valleys. The physical geography of New England is diverse for such a small area.
Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the many rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south; each state is subdivided into small incorporated municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. The only unincorporated areas exist in the sparsely populated northern regions of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont. New England is one of the Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear, consistent boundaries, it maintains a strong sense of cultural identity, although the terms of this identity are contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, isolation with immigration. The earliest known inhabitants of New England were American Indians who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages.
Prominent tribes included the Abenakis, Mi'kmaq, Pequots, Narragansetts and Wampanoag. Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the Western Abenakis inhabited New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine, their principal town was Norridgewock in Maine. The Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in Maine; the Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island. The Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket; the Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in the Connecticut region. The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally and politically; as early as 1600, French and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal and cloth for local beaver pelts. On April 10, 1606, King James I of England issued a charter for the Virginia Company, which comprised the London Company and the Plymouth Company.
These two funded ventures were intended to claim land for England, to conduct trade, to return a profit. In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, beginning the history of permanent European settlement in New England. In 1616, English explorer John Smith named the region "New England"; the name was sanctioned on November 3, 1620 when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint-stock company established to colonize and govern the region. The Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact before leaving the ship, it became their first governing document; the Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629 with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630. Massachusetts Puritans began to settle in Connecticut as early as 1633. Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, founded Providence Plantation in the area that became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636.
At this time, Vermont was yet unsettled, the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were claimed and governed by Massachusetts. Relationships between colonists and local Indian tribes alter
Abney Park Cemetery
Abney Park cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London, England. Abney Park in Stoke Newington, in the London Borough of Hackney, is a historic parkland laid out in the early 18th century by Lady Mary Abney and Dr. Isaac Watts, the neighbouring Hartopp family. In 1840 it became a non-denominational garden cemetery, a semi-public park arboretum, an educational institute, celebrated as an example of its time. A total of 196,843 burials had taken place there up to the year 2000, it is a Local Nature Reserve. The official address of Abney Park is Stoke Newington High Street, N16; the main gate is at the junction of this street and Rectory Road, with a smaller gate on Stoke Newington Church Street. The park lies within the London Borough of Hackney; the cemetery is named after Sir Thomas Abney, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1700–01. The manor of Stoke Newington belonged to him in the early 18th century and his town house, built in 1676, stood on the site of the present cemetery until its demolition in the 1830s.
In 1840, Abney Park opened as a model garden cemetery, a pioneering non-denominational place of rest. Its approach was based on the Congregational church's role in the London Missionary Society, whose fundamental principle was to develop a wholly non-denominational exemplar, it drew on American burial ideas Mount Auburn in Massachusetts. Details of the Abney Park Cemetery Company can be found in the diaries of William Copeland Astbury At first there were many links between Abney Park Cemetery and the LMS but this nonconformist period came to a close in the early 1880s when a commercial general cemetery company was formed and the land at Abney Park was made over to the new enterprise. Though the park had not been formalised in 1840 as a cemetery through Act of Parliament or consecration, Church faculty law never applied, burial ground use, had, by the 1880s come to predominate over the wider landscape and educational objects of its founders; the founders' financial and legal structure, adapted from the model developed for garden cemeteries in the America by City solicitor George Collison, aimed to establish a joint stock corporation managed by trustees.
The trustees would be appointed by the members. Under the trust deed, the founders sought to preserve the park in perpetuity; the weakness of the model lay in the detail however. An eventual successful prosecution by the Crown, ruled that despite their unusual business model and the way in which plots were sold as freehold land, the legal arrangements were inadequate to achieve a different status from any other commercial cemetery, either for the company or the registered keepers of plots. In consequence, company income could not be held in trust for the park, but was to be treated as for any other commercial profit-making company and taxed accordingly. Sold on the open market to a wholly commercially minded general cemetery company in the 1880s, established with a similar name, three new cemeteries were founded in London's suburbs or nearby countryside. From onwards standardised park-like landscaping principles came to be applied at Abney Park, replacing much of the unique arboretum planting.
Air pollution took its toll, affecting the conifer walks. After the First World War, path infill began to be practised. In 1978, apart from one forecourt building, the park passed to the local council as a burial ground and open space subject to the Local Authorities Cemeteries Order of 1977. For the next twenty-one years, there being only a small number of residual burial and monuments rights, the Council worked with local groups and relatives to accommodate these rights, exercise discretion to allow occasional courtesy burials, where families had held deeds from the cemetery company. Abney Park was included on the Heritage at Risk Register in 2009, as one of Britain's historic parks and gardens at risk from neglect and decay. Although the level of malicious damage is kept low by the conspicuous presence of staff and volunteers of the Abney Park Trust when maintaining the park; the roof slates and roof flashings of the Abney Park Chapel have been damaged by unauthorised climbing and theft at times when the park was left unsupervised and unlocked overnight, this has resulted in water seepage into the chapel walls, now causing serious problems to the whole building.
From time to time, some sections of boundary wall become too weak due to people climbing over them, decay has set in. However these matters could be put right and the park is a popular place to visit, with a range of educational and cultural events and an annual summer open day, it is Conservation Area. Apart from the South Lodge extension on the forecourt, Abney Park's freehold is owned by the London Borough of Hackney; the park is situated near Stoke Newington High Street, London N16, it is leased to the Abney Park Trust. It occupies 12.53 hectares, which includes a nature reserve, a classroom, a visitor's centre and a central chapel, disused. The park is opened by the trust for free public access on weekdays and weekends from about 9.30 am to 5
Nature reserve
A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research. Nature reserves may be designated by government institutions in some countries, or by private landowners, such as charities and research institutions, regardless of nationality. Nature reserves fall into different IUCN categories depending on the level of protection afforded by local laws, it is more protected than a nature park. Cultural practices that equate to the establishment and maintenance of reserved areas for animals date back to antiquity, with King Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura establishing one of the world's earliest wildlife sanctuaries in the 3rd century BC. Early reservations had a religious underpinning, such as the'evil forest' areas of West Africa which were forbidden to humans, who were threatened with spiritual attack if they went there. Sacred areas taboo from human entry to fishing and hunting are known by many ancient cultures worldwide.
The world's first modern nature reserve was established in 1821 by the naturalist and explorer Charles Waterton around his estate in Walton Hall, West Yorkshire. He spent £9000 on the construction of a 3 mile long, 9 ft tall wall to enclose his park from poachers, he tried to encourage birdlife by hollowing out trunks for owls to nest in. He invented artificial nest boxes to house starlings and sand martins and unsuccessfully attempted to introduce little owls from Italy. Waterton allowed local people access to his reserve and was described by David Attenborough as “one of the first people anywhere to recognise not only that the natural world was of great importance but that it needed protection as humanity made more and more demands on it”. Drachenfels was protected as the first state-designated nature reserve in modern-day Germany; the first major nature reserve was Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States, followed by the Royal National Park near Sydney and the Barguzin Nature Reserve of Imperial Russia, the first of zapovedniks set up by a federal government for the scientific study of nature.
In Australia, a nature reserve is the title of a type of protected area used in the jurisdictions of the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Western Australia. The term “nature reserve” is defined in the relevant statutes used in those states and territories rather than by a single national statute; as of 2016, 1767 out of a total of 11044 protected areas listed within the Australian National Reserve System used the term “nature reserve" in their names. In Brazil, nature reserves are classified as ecological stations estações ecológicas) or biological reserves by the National System of Conservation Units, their main objectives are preserving fauna and flora and other natural attributes, excluding direct human interference. Visits are allowed only with permission, only for educational or scientific purposes. Changes to the ecosystems in both types of reserve are allowed to restore and preserve the natural balance, biological diversity and natural ecological processes. Ecological stations are allowed to change the environment within defined limits for the purpose of scientific research.
A wildlife reserve in Brazil is protected, hunting is not allowed, but products and by-products from research may be sold. There are 30 nature reserves in Egypt; those nature reserves were built according to the laws no. 102/1983 and 4/1994 for protection of the Egyptian nature reserve. Egypt announced a plan from to build 40 nature reserves from 1997 to 2017, to help protect the natural resources and the culture and history of those areas; the largest nature reserve in Egypt is Gebel Elba in the southeast, on the Red Sea coast. Denmark has three national parks and several nature reserves, some of them inside the national park areas; the largest single reserve is Hanstholm Nature Reserve, which covers 40 km2 and is part of Thy National Park. In Sweden, there are 29 national parks; the first of them was established in 1909. In fact, Sweden was the first European country. There are 4,000 nature reserves in Sweden, they comprise about 85% of the surface, protected by the Swedish Environmental Code. In Estonia, there are 5 national parks, more than 100 nature reserves, around 130 landscape protection areas.
The largest nature reserve in Estonia is Alam-Pedja Nature Reserve, which covers 342 km2. As of 2017, France counts 10 national parks, around 8 marine parks. In 1995 Germany had 5,314 nature reserves covering 6,845 km2, the largest total areas being in Bavaria with 1,416 km2 and Lower Saxony with 1,275 km2. In Hungary, there are 10 National Parks, more than 15 nature reserves and more than 250 protected areas. Hortobágy National Park is the largest continuous natural grassland in Europe and the oldest national park in Hungary, it is situated on the plain of the Alföld. It was established in 1972. There are alkaline grasslands interrupted by marshes, they have a sizable importance. One of the most spectacular sights of the park is the autumn mi
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was an English Christian minister, hymn writer and logician. He is credited with some 750 hymns, he is recognized as the "Godfather of English Hymnody". Watts was born in Southampton, England in 1674 and was brought up in the home of a committed religious nonconformist. Watts had a classical education at King Edward VI School, learning Latin and Hebrew. Watts displayed a propensity for rhyme from an early age, he was once asked why he had his eyes open during prayers, to which he responded: He received corporal punishment for this, to which he cried: Watts could not attend Oxford or Cambridge because he was a nonconformist and these universities were restricted to Anglicans—as were government positions at the time. He went to the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington in 1690. Much of the remainder of his life centered on that village, now part of Inner London. Following his education, Watts was called as pastor of a large independent chapel in London, Mark Lane Congregational Chapel, where he helped train preachers, despite his poor health.
He held religious opinions that were more nondenominational or ecumenical than was common for a nonconformist Congregationalist. He had a greater interest in promoting education and scholarship than preaching for any particular sect. Watts took work as a private tutor and lived with the nonconformist Hartopp family at Fleetwood House on Church Street in Stoke Newington. Through them, he became Lady Mary, he lived for a total of 36 years in the Abney household, most of the time at Abney House, their second residence. On the death of Sir Thomas Abney in 1722, his widow Lady Mary and her unmarried daughter Elizabeth moved all her household to Abney House from Hertfordshire, she invited Watts to continue with them, he enjoyed the grounds at Abney Park, which Lady Mary planted with two elm walks leading down to an island heronry in the Hackney Brook, he sought inspiration there for the many books and hymns that he wrote. Watts lived at Abney Hall in Stoke Newington until his death in 1748, he left an extensive legacy of hymns, educational works, essays.
His work was influential amongst nonconformist independents and religious revivalists of the 18th century, such as Philip Doddridge, who dedicated his best-known work to Watts. Sacred music scholars Stephen Marini, Denny Prutow and Michael LeFebvre describe the ways in which Watts contributed to English hymnody and the previous tradition of the Church. Watts led the change in practice by including new poetry for "original songs of Christian experience" to be used in worship, according to Marini; the older tradition was based on the poetry of the Bible: the Psalms. According to LeFebvre, Psalms had been sung by God's people from the time of King David, who with a large staff over many years assembled the complete book of Psalms in a form appropriate for singing; the practice of singing Psalms in worship was continued by Biblical command in the New Testament Church from its beginnings in Acts through the time of Watts, as documented by Prutow. The teachings of 16th-century Reformation leaders such as John Calvin, who translated the Psalms in the vernacular for congregational singing, followed this historic worship practice.
Watts was not the first Protestant to promote the singing of hymns. Watts introduced a new way of rendering the Psalms in verse for church services, proposing that they be adapted for hymns with a Christian perspective; as Watts put it in the title of his 1719 metrical Psalter, the Psalms should be "imitated in the language of the New Testament." Besides writing hymns, Isaac Watts was a theologian and logician, writing books and essays on these subjects. Watts wrote a textbook on logic, popular; this was first published in 1724, it was printed in twenty editions. Watts wrote this work for beginners of logic, arranged the book methodically, he divided the content of his elementary treatment of logic into four parts: perception, judgement and method, which he treated in this order. Each of these parts is divided into chapters, some of these chapters are divided into sections; the content of the chapters and sections is subdivided by the following devices: divisions, notes, directions, rules and remarks.
Every contentum of the book comes under one or more of these headings, this methodical arrangement serves to make the exposition clear. In Watts' Logic, there are notable departures from other works of the time, some notable innovations; the influence of British empiricism may be seen that of contemporary philosopher and empiricist John Locke. Logic includes several references to Locke and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which he espoused his empiricist views. Watts was careful to distinguish between judgements and propositions, unlike some other logic authors. According to Watts, judgement is "to compare... ideas together, to join
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, its half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of Continental Europe. In terms of moral sensibilities and political reforms, this period began with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodist, the Evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Britain's relations with the other Great Powers were driven by the colonial antagonism of the Great Game with Russia, climaxing during the Crimean War. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion in Asia and Africa, which made the British Empire the largest empire in history. National self-confidence peaked. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period and an increasing turn towards romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, arts.
Domestically, the political agenda was liberal, with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform, industrial reform, the widening of the franchise. There were unprecedented demographic changes: the population of England and Wales doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901, Scotland's population rose from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. However, Ireland's population decreased from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901 due to emigration and the Great Famine. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrated from Great Britain to the United States, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia; the two main political parties during the era remained the Conservatives. These parties were led by such prominent statesmen as Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Lord Salisbury; the unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in the Victorian era in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement in Ireland.
In the strictest sense, the Victorian era covers the duration of Victoria's reign as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from her accession on 20 June 1837—after the death of her uncle, William IV—until her death on 22 January 1901, after which she was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII. Her reign lasted for seven months, a longer period than any of her predecessors; the term'Victorian' was in contemporaneous usage to describe the era. The era has been understood in a more extensive sense as a period that possessed sensibilities and characteristics distinct from the periods adjacent to it, in which case it is sometimes dated to begin before Victoria's accession—typically from the passage of or agitation for the Reform Act 1832, which introduced a wide-ranging change to the electoral system of England and Wales. Definitions that purport a distinct sensibility or politics to the era have created scepticism about the worth of the label "Victorian", though there have been defences of it.
Michael Sadleir was insistent that "in truth the Victorian period is three periods, not one". He distinguished early Victorianism – the and politically unsettled period from 1837 to 1850 – and late Victorianism, with its new waves of aestheticism and imperialism, from the Victorian heyday: mid-Victorianism, 1851 to 1879, he saw the latter period as characterised by a distinctive mixture of prosperity, domestic prudery, complacency – what G. M. Trevelyan called the "mid-Victorian decades of quiet politics and roaring prosperity". In 1832, after much political agitation, the Reform Act was passed on the third attempt; the Act abolished many borough seats and created others in their place, as well as expanding the franchise in England and Wales. Minor reforms followed in 1835 and 1836. On 20 June 1837, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom on the death of her uncle, William IV, her government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne, but within two years he had resigned, the Tory politician Sir Robert Peel attempted to form a new ministry.
In the same year, a seizure of British opium exports to China prompted the First Opium War against the Qing dynasty, British imperial India initiated the First Anglo-Afghan War—one of the first major conflicts of the Great Game between Britain and Russia. In 1840, Queen Victoria married her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield, it proved a happy marriage, whose children were much sought after by royal families across Europe. In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi established British sovereignty over New Zealand; the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 ended the First Opium War and gave Britain control over Hong Kong Island. However, a disastrous retreat from Kabul in the same year led to the annihilation of a British army column in Afghanistan. In 1845, the Great Famine began to cause mass starvation and death in Ireland, sparking large-scale emigration. Peel was replaced by the Whig ministry of Lord John Russell. In 1853, Britain fought alongside France in the Crimean War against Russia.
The goal was to ensure that Russia could not benefit from the declining status
