Get to Know BP Year Three: Early Modern
Click the tabs below to learn more about BP Year Three.


The Church History side of Year Three covers a lot of ground. The trouble between Protestants and Catholics was never worse than it was in the early 1600s, when it touched off the awful Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire. The same trouble led to the Gunpowder Plot, which came close to killing King James VI & I and his whole Parliament.
Year Three also tells how disagreements in the Church of England sent countless Englishmen running to the colonies looking for freedom of religion. Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were just the start. We also learn how Maryland started as a haven for English Catholics, and how Georgia started as a second chance for English debtors. We go on to meet the great preachers of the First Great Awakening, plus some stranger preachers of the Second Great Awakening.

U.S. & World History topics covered in Year Three include:
- Cortes versus the Aztecs and Pizarro versus the Incas
- The beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots
- The Duke of Alba and the Dutch Revolt
- The Gunpowder Plot against King James
- Stories from Jamestown, Plymouth and every other English colony
- Slavery and indentured servitude in the colonies
- Stories from New France, New Netherland and New Sweden
- The Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire
- The English Civil War and the beheading of King Charles I
- The Puritan Migration
- Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia and King Philip’s War in New England
- The Restoration of the Monarchy under King Charles II
- The Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London
- Governor Edmund Andros and the Charter Oak of Connecticut
- The Glorious Revolution of William and Mary
- Stories from China, Japan, India, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and Prussia
- The Golden Age of Piracy
- The Salem Witch Trials
- The French and Indian War and the British conquest of Canada
- King Frederick the Great of Prussia and the Seven Years’ War
- The rise of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia
- The Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
- British penal colonies in Australia
- King Louis XVI, Robespierre and the French Revolution
- The rise of Napoleon and the French Empire
- The fall of Napoleon and the Hundred Days
- President George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion
- President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts
- President Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase
- President Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act
- The abolitionist movement in America
- Nat Turner’s Rebellion
- William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in Britain
- President James Polk and the Mexican-American War
- The Oregon Trail
- John Sutter, Sam Brannan and the California Gold Rush
- and many more!
Year Three is another important one for understanding Church History. It starts with major troubles between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. A look back at Mary, Queen of Scots shows how bad the trouble was during the Elizabethan era. For Mary was a devout Catholic, while Elizabeth leaned Protestant. The Catholic side was so desperate to put Mary on the throne of England that Elizabeth had to lock her up for years, and finally behead her, to keep herself safe.
The desperation continued when the Protestant King James took Elizabeth’s place. Guy Fawkes would have blown both king and Parliament sky-high if James hadn’t uncovered the Gunpowder Plot at the last minute. But the worst trouble between Catholics and Protestants was the Thirty Years’ War, which started with the Defenestration of Prague in 1618. The Catholic side might have killed every Protestant in the Holy Roman Empire if Protestants hadn’t found help from outside.

Back in England, all those church conflicts nearly tore the country apart. The English Civil War wrought havoc for nearly twenty years, until the Restoration of the Monarchy set King Charles II back on the throne in 1660. But the trouble wasn’t over; for when Charles II died, a rumor spread that he had turned Catholic near the end. If Charles II wasn’t Catholic, then his successor James II certainly was. It took an invasion from James’ Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, to make England Protestant again. After the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary, the English Bill of Rights declared that England could never again have a Catholic monarch.
Church History topics covered in Year Three include:
- John Knox and the Scottish Reformation
- The Duke of Alba and the Dutch Revolt
- The Authorized Version of the Bible, a.k.a. the King James Version
- The Massacre of the Huguenots at Matanzas Inlet, Florida
- William Brewster and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony
- John Winthrop and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony
- The Pulpit War and the banishment of Anne Hutchinson
- Thomas Hooker and the founding of Connecticut
- Roger Williams and the founding of Rhode Island
- George Calvert and the founding of Maryland
- John Milton and “Paradise Lost”
- John Bunyan and “Pilgrim’s Progress”
- John Eliot and the Praying Indians of Massachusetts
- George Fox and the Quaker movement
- The hanging of Mary Dyer in Boston
- Margaret Wilson and the Scottish Covenanters
- The Twenty-six Martyrs under Hideyoshi of Japan
- The Salem Witch Trials
- Great Awakening preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and John Wesley
- The Moravian Pentecost
- Brave missionaries like John Williams in the South Pacific, William Carey in India and Adoniram Judson in Burma
- William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in Britain
- Stories from the Second Great Awakening
- and many more!
Geography topics covered in Year Three include:
- The James River and the Chesapeake Bay
- The Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Gulf of St. Lawrence
- The Hudson River and Manhattan Island
- The Delaware River
- The Point of Fork and the Ohio River
- The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers
- The Louisiana Purchase
- Major features of India, China and Japan
- and many more!

BP Year Three is divided into six units:
- Unit 1: The New World (6 weeks)
- Unit 2: Western Europe (6 weeks)
- Unit 3: Asia and Eastern Europe (6 weeks)
- Unit 4: The American Revolution (5 weeks)
- Unit 5: The Age of Napoleon (5 weeks)
- Unit 6: Rebellion and Repression (6 weeks)
Total: 34 weeks
