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What was the Glorious Revolution?

When did the glorious revolution occur, what caused the glorious revolution, why is the glorious revolution significant.

Glorious Revolution

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The Glorious Revolution refers to the events of 1688–89 that saw King James II of England deposed and succeeded by one of his daughters and her husband. James’s overt Roman Catholicism , his suspension of the legal rights of Dissenters, and the birth of a Catholic heir to the throne raised discontent among many, particularly non-Catholics. Opposition leaders invited William of Orange , a Protestant who was married to James’s daughter Mary (also Protestant), to, in effect, invade England. James’s support dwindled, and he fled to France. William and Mary were then crowned joint rulers.

The Glorious Revolution took place during 1688–89. In 1688 King James II of England , a Roman Catholic king who was already at odds with non-Catholics in England, took actions that further alienated that group. The birth of his son in June raised the likelihood of a Catholic heir to the throne and helped bring discontent to a head. Several leading Englishmen invited William of Orange , a Protestant who was married to James’s eldest daughter, Mary (also Protestant), to lead an army to England. He arrived in November, and James fled the next month. In April 1689 William and Mary were crowned joint rulers of the kingdom of England.

The Glorious Revolution (1688–89) in England stemmed from religious and political conflicts. King James II was Catholic . His religion, and his actions rooted in it, put him at odds with the non-Catholic population and others. Many tolerated him, thinking that the throne would eventually pass to his eldest child, Mary , who was Protestant. This view changed with the birth of James’s son in June 1688, as the king now had a Catholic heir. Alarmed, several prominent Englishmen invited Mary’s husband, William of Orange , to invade England. He did so in November. James soon fled England, and William and Mary were crowned joint rulers in April 1689.

The Glorious Revolution (1688–89) permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England —and, later, the United Kingdom —representing a shift from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. When William III and Mary II were crowned, they swore to govern according to the laws of Parliament, not the laws of the monarchy. A Bill of Rights promulgated later that year, based on a Declaration of Rights accepted by William and Mary when they were crowned, prohibited Catholics or those married to Catholics from claiming the throne.  

Glorious Revolution , in English history, the events of 1688–89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of his daughter Mary II and her husband, William III , prince of Orange and stadholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands .

After the accession of James II in 1685, his overt Roman Catholicism alienated the majority of the population. In 1687 he issued a Declaration of Indulgence , suspending the penal laws against Nonconformists and recusants, and in April 1688 ordered that a second Declaration of Indulgence be read from every pulpit on two successive Sundays. William Sancroft , the archbishop of Canterbury , and six other bishops petitioned him against this and were prosecuted for seditious libel. Their acquittal almost coincided with the birth of a son to James’s Roman Catholic queen, Mary of Modena (June). This event promised an indefinite continuance of his policy and brought discontent to a head. Seven eminent Englishmen, including one bishop and six prominent politicians of both Whig and Tory persuasions, wrote to William of Orange, inviting him to come over with an army to redress the nation’s grievances.

William was both James’s nephew and his son-in-law, and, until the birth of James’s son, William’s wife, Mary, was heir apparent . William’s chief concern was to check the overgrowth of French power in Europe. Between 1679 and 1684, England’s impotence and the emperor Leopold I ’s preoccupation with a Turkish advance to Vienna had allowed Louis XIV to seize Luxembourg , Strasbourg , Casale Monferrato , and other places vital to the defense of the Spanish Netherlands , the German Rhineland , and northern Italy. By 1688, however, a great European coalition had begun to form to call for a halt to aggressions. Its prospects depended partly upon England. Thus, having been in close touch with the leading English malcontents for more than a year, William accepted their invitation. Landing at Brixham on Tor Bay (November 5), he advanced slowly on London as support fell away from James II. James’s daughter Anne and his best general, John Churchill , were among the deserters to William’s camp. Thereupon, James fled to France.

William was now asked to carry on the government and summon a Parliament. When this Convention Parliament met (January 22, 1689), it agreed, after some debate, to treat James’s flight as an abdication and to offer the crown, with an accompanying Declaration of Rights , to William and Mary jointly. Both gift and conditions were accepted. Thereupon, the convention turned itself into a proper Parliament and large parts of the Declaration into a Bill of Rights . This bill gave the succession to Mary’s sister, Anne, in default of issue from Mary, barred Roman Catholics from the throne, abolished the crown’s power to suspend laws, condemned the power of dispensing with laws “as it hath been exercised and used of late,” and declared a standing army illegal in time of peace.

The settlement marked a considerable triumph for Whig views. If no Roman Catholic could be king, then no kingship could be unconditional. The adoption of the exclusionist solution lent support to John Locke ’s contention that government was in the nature of a social contract between the king and his people represented in Parliament. The revolution permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England.

The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution (1688–1690) was a sequence of events that culminated in the ascension of William and Mary to the throne of England, contributing to uprisings in the colonies of Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. The English Bill of Rights was also enacted, establishing the power of Parliament in several areas, including taxation.

King William III and Queen Mary II.

Glorious Revolution Summary

The Glorious Revolution was the culmination of decades of unrest in England and led to the abdication of the throne by King James II, who was Catholic. James was replaced on the throne by his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange.

As part of the agreement for William and Mary to become King and Queen, they agreed to the English Bill of Rights . The document eliminated the idea of the Divine Right of Kings and automatic hereditary succession while affirming Parliament’s supremacy over the Crown. The English Bill of Rights also restricted the Crown’s authority regarding law, taxation, and the military. 

The English Colonies in America welcomed news of the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights and there were several uprisings against Catholics and government officials who were associated with King James II.

Ultimately, the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights influenced American arguments for independence, along with the establishment of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights .

Glorious Revolution Facts

• Date — The Glorious Revolution took place in 1688 and 1689.
• Also Known As — The Glorious Revolution is also called the “Bloodless Revolution.”
• Outcome — King William III and Queen Mary II replaced King James II.
• Interesting Fact — King James II was the last Catholic monarch of England.
• Interesting Fact — James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of King James II, became known as the “Old Pretender.” due to rumors he was not truly the son of James.
• Interesting Fact — James Stuart’s son, Charles Edward Stuart, was known as the “Young Pretender” and “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
• Interesting Fact — Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to take the throne in 1745 in the Jacobite Rising of 1745, however, his army was defeated at the Battle of Culloden.
• Interesting Fact — Queen Mary died in 1694, leaving William III to rule England by himself.
• Interesting Fact — William III died in 1702 and was replaced by Mary’s sister, Anne.
• Interesting Fact — The impact of the Glorious Revolution was felt in America through several rebellions, including the overthrow of the Dominion of New England .

Glorious Revolution in England

The Glorious Revolution was the culmination of decades of conflict in England that included the English Civil Wars, the era known as the Interregnum, and the Stuart Restoration.

Death of Charles and the Ascension of James

On February 2, 1685, King Charles II died. Four days later, his brother, James, the Duke of York, was crowned as James II of England and James VI of Scotland. 

Conflict Between Protestants and Catholics

As had been the case since the English Reformation, relations between Protestants and Catholics in England and its territories were tense. Charles II publicly supported the Church of England and religious tolerance. However, James was Catholic, which was revealed to the people of the kingdom and led to the Exclusion Crisis. From 1679 to 1681, England, Scotland, and Ireland tried to enact laws to keep James from succeeding his brother but ultimately failed.

Conflict Between the Crown and Parliament

The Crown and Parliament were also at odds with each other and James made matters worse. He appointed Catholics to key political positions, suspended laws that persecuted Catholics, and pardoned Protestant religious dissenters. Following the Monmouth Rebellion (1685), he retained a standing army, which he believed would help him gain more control over Parliament.

Catholic Threat

The effort James made to promote his faith increased concerns among Protestants who feared there would be a wave of conversions to Catholicism among English subjects. James intended to establish Catholic churches, convert colleges to Catholic seminaries, and exempt Catholics from Anglican churches and courts.

A Catholic Heir to the Throne

Although James was Catholic, the heir, his daughter Mary, was a Protestant. Mary was married to William of Orange, the ruler of most of the Netherlands, who was also a Protestant. This created an issue for James and was an obstacle to gaining the approval of Parliament for his pro-Catholic initiatives.

James was 51 years old at the time and most people believed he was incapable of producing a male heir. However, on June 10, 1688, James and his wife, Mary of Modena, had a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, who was baptized Catholic. 

As a male, James moved in front of Mary as heir to the throne. The idea of a Catholic heir to the throne of England raised concerns about the possibility of a Catholic dynasty and the spread of Catholicism in Europe and North America.

Rumors spread through the country that the Prince was an imposter. The true son of James and Mary was stillborn and replaced by another baby. This led to James Francis Edward Stuart being given the nickname “The Old Pretender.”

Trial of the Seven Bishops

Later in June, a trial was held for seven Anglican bishops who refused to read the Declaration of Indulgence in their churches. The bishops were arrested, charged with seditious libel, and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The arrests were viewed as an attack on the Church of England.

The bishops were acquitted of the charges, leading to anti-Catholic riots in England and Scotland. 

Opponents of James Take Action

Opponents of James responded to the birth of the Prince and the Trial of the Seven Bishops by reaching out to William of Orange and essentially inviting him to invade England and dethrone James.

William’s army landed on Tor Bay on November 5, 1688, and slowly made his way to London. James responded by fleeing the country as his supporters abandoned him.

Convention Parliament of 1689

William took control of the government in December and elections for Parliament were held in January 1689. 

The “Convention Parliament” met on January 22 and eventually determined James had abdicated the throne, which was formally offered to William and Mary, provided they agreed to a Declaration of Rights.

William and Mary agreed to the Bill of Rights, which included the following:

• Identified Mary’s sister Anne as the heir to the throne.
• Barred Catholics from being King or Queen.
• Eliminated the Crown’s ability to suspend laws.
• Declared a standing army during peacetime illegal.

The Bill of Rights firmly entrenched Parliament’s supremacy over the Crown. This would become an important point in the argument Americans would make during the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War. 

When Americans argued against “no taxation without representation,” they insisted on their loyalty to the Crown and were critical of Parliament, which they pointed at as the source of the trouble between Britain and the 13 Original Colonies .

Effects of the Glorious Revolution in Colonial America

During the reign of Charles, several incidents in North America drew the attention of the Crown, including:

• The Dutch recapture of New York in 1673.
• King Philip’s War (1675–1678) .
• Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677) .

Charles responded by strengthening the Crown’s oversight of the colonies. He implemented new Navigation Acts and established the Lords of Trade and Plantations to keep watch over the colonies and ensure the collection of customs duties.

In 1686, James, the Privy Council, and the Lords of Trade decided to merge the colonies in New England together under a single government. Under the new arrangement, the colonies were known as the “Dominion of New England.” The purpose of the Dominion was to streamline English oversight of the colonies and give England more control over trade, land titles, and coordination of colonial defenses.

The first territories that were part of the Dominion were Massachusetts Bay Colony , Plymouth Colony , Province of New Hampshire , and part of Rhode Island . The Dominion was placed under the control of the Council of New England. The first President — or Governor — was Joseph Dudley, a native of Massachusetts.

In June 1688, Dudley was replaced with Sir Edmund Andros, and on September 9, 1686, the Board of Trade added the rest of Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Dominion. Andros proved to be unpopular, especially with the Puritans in Massachusetts. He arrived in Boston on December 20, 1687, and from then on he created controversy over local government, taxes, land titles, and religion. He had been ordered by the King to force the Puritans to allow the Church of England to operate freely, which he did. New York and New Jersey were added to the Dominion in 1688. 

In early 1689, when the news arrived regarding the Glorious Revolution, colonists rebelled against Catholics and other political leaders associated with James.

Boston Revolt and the Collapse of the Dominion of New England

In Massachusetts, 2,000 militiamen captured Governor Sir Edmund Andros, effectively ending the Dominion of New England. Massachusetts leaders established a temporary government based on the 1629 charter. 

William and Mary eventually issued a new charter for Massachusetts in 1691. The new Governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, arrived in Boston on May 24, 1692. In the interim, Massachusetts was caught up in the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials .

Coode’s Rebellion

Maryland had been established by Lord Baltimore as a haven for Catholics, but the colony practiced religious tolerance and there was a significant Protestant population. 

Upon the ascension of William and Mary to the throne, Baltimore issued a proclamation, announcing the new monarchs. However, anti-Catholic factions led by John Coode formed the Protestant Association, took control of St. Mary’s City, and formed a Protestant government.

Leisler’s Rebellion

Following the imprisonment of Sir Edmund Andros, the New York Militia expelled the Lieutenant Governor, Francis Nicholson , who refused to acknowledge William and Mary as monarchs. Nicholson fled from the colony.

Jacob Leisler, a prominent merchant, declared himself Lieutenant Governor in the name of William and Mary. Leisler was quick to abuse his power and in December 1689, William and Mary appointed Henry Sloughter as Governor of New York

However, Leisler tried to maintain control and nearly started a civil war in New York. Leisler was eventually arrested and tried on charges of treason. He was found guilty and executed in 1691.

Glorious Revolution APUSH Review

Use the following links and videos to study the Glorious Revolution, Colonial America, and the Colonial Era for the AP US History Exam. Also, be sure to look at our Guide to the AP US History Exam .

APUSH Definition and Significance

The Glorious Revolution for APUSH is defined as the bloodless revolution that took place in England in 1688–89, resulting in the abdication of King James II and the ascension of King William III and Queen Mary II. The Glorious Revolution also led to the implementation of the English Bill of Rights, which established Parliament’s authority over the Crown. In the American Colonies, the Glorious Revolution led to the overthrow of several governors and the collapse of the Dominion of New England. In many ways, the Glorious Revolution contributed to events that led to the American Revolution, especially by establishing Parliament’s right to levy taxes.

APUSH Video

This video from Heimler’s History discusses the Glorious Revolution and other events, including the English Civil War.

• Written by Randal Rust

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Glorious Revolution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 6, 2019 | Original: February 20, 2018

The Glorious Revolution, also called “The Revolution of 1688” and “The Bloodless Revolution,” took place from 1688 to 1689 in England. It involved the overthrow of the Catholic King James II, who was replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. Motives for the revolution were complex and included both political and religious concerns. The event ultimately changed how England was governed, giving Parliament more power over the monarchy and planting seeds for the beginnings of a political democracy.

King James II

King James II took the throne in England in 1685, during a time when relations between Catholics and Protestants were tense. There was also considerable friction between the monarchy and the British Parliament .

James, who was Catholic, supported the freedom of worship for Catholics and appointed Catholic officers to the army. He also had close ties with France—a relationship that concerned many of the English people.

In 1687, King James II issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended penal laws against Catholics and granted acceptance of some Protestant dissenters. Later that year, the king formally dissolved his Parliament and attempted to create a new Parliament that would support him unconditionally.

James’s daughter Mary, a Protestant, was the rightful heir to the throne until 1688 when James had a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, whom he announced would be raised Catholic.

The birth of James’s son changed the line of succession, and many feared a Catholic dynasty in England was imminent. The Whigs, the main group that opposed Catholic succession, were especially outraged.

The king’s elevation of Catholicism, his close relationship with France, his conflict with Parliament and uncertainty over who would succeed James on the English throne led to whispers of a revolt—and ultimately the fall of James II.

William of Orange

In 1688, seven of King James’s peers wrote to the Dutch leader, William of Orange, pledging their allegiance to the prince if he invaded England.

William was already in the process of taking military action against England, and the letter served as an additional propaganda motive.

William of Orange assembled an impressive armada for the invasion and landed in Torbay, Devon, in November 1688.

King James, however, had prepared for military attacks and left London to bring his forces to meet the invading army. But several of James’s own men, including his family members, deserted him and defected to William’s side. In addition to this setback, James’s health was deteriorating.

James decided to retreat back to London on November 23. He soon announced that he was willing to agree to a “free” Parliament but was making plans to flee the country due to concerns for his own safety.

In December 1688, King James made an attempt to escape but was captured. Later that month, he made another attempt and successfully fled to France, where his Catholic cousin Louis XIV held the throne and where James eventually died in exile in 1701.

Bill of Rights

In January 1689, the now-famous Convention Parliament met. After significant pressure from William, Parliament agreed to a joint monarchy , with William as king and James’s daughter, Mary, as queen.

The two new rulers accepted more restrictions from Parliament than any previous monarchs, causing an unprecedented shift in the distribution of power throughout the British realm.

The king and queen both signed the Declaration of Rights, which became known as the Bill of Rights. This document acknowledged several constitutional principles, including the right for regular Parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech in Parliament. Additionally, it forbade the monarchy from being Catholic.

Many historians believe the Bill of Rights was the first step toward a constitutional monarchy.

Bloodless Revolution

The Glorious Revolution is sometimes dubbed the Bloodless Revolution, although this description isn’t entirely accurate.

While there was little bloodshed and violence in England, the revolution led to significant loss of life in Ireland and Scotland.

Catholic historians typically refer to the Glorious Revolution as the “Revolution of 1688,” while Whig historians prefer the phrase “Bloodless Revolution.” The term “Glorious Revolution” was first coined by John Hampden in 1689.

Legacy of the Glorious Revolution

Many historians believe the Glorious Revolution was one of the most important events leading to Britain’s transformation from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. After this event, the monarchy in England would never hold absolute power again.

With the Bill of Rights, the regent’s power was defined, written down and limited for the first time. Parliament’s function and influence changed dramatically in the years following the revolution.

The event also had an impact on the 13 colonies in North America. The colonists were temporarily freed of strict, anti- Puritan laws after King James was overthrown.

When news of the revolution reached the Americans, several uprisings followed, including the Boston Revolt, Leisler’s Rebellion in New York and the Protestant Revolution in Maryland .

Since the Glorious Revolution, Parliament’s power in Britain has continued to increase, while the monarchy’s influence has waned. There’s no doubt this important event helped set the stage for the United Kingdom’s present-day political system and government.

The Glorious Revolution, BBC . The Glorious Revolution of 1688, Economic History Association . The Glorious Revolution, Parliament.uk . The 1688 Revolution, The History Learning Site . How did the Glorious Revolution in England Affect the Colonies? History of Massachusetts Blog .

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Glorious Revolution

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The Glorious Revolution of November 1688 saw Protestant William of Orange (l. 1650-1702) invade England and take the throne of Catholic James II of England (r. 1685-1688). There were no battles, and William was invited by Parliament to become king and rule jointly with his wife Queen Mary II of England (r. 1689-1694), daughter of James II.

James II's pro-Catholic policies and authoritarian rule had sealed his fate, and he lived thereafter in exile in France. Meanwhile, William and Mary ruled with the powers of the monarchy reduced and those of Parliament increased as part of a new system of government known as a constitutional monarchy, the system which is still seen today in the United Kingdom.

The main causes of the Glorious Revolution may be summarised as:

• King James II was a Catholic in a Protestant state.
• The king was biased toward Catholics in his key appointments.
• The king exceeded his authority in judicial matters.
• The king dismissed Parliament and never recalled it.
• The Declaration of Indulgences was seen as a protection of Catholic rights.
• A Catholic male heir was born superseding his elder Protestant sisters.
• A group of prominent Protestant nobles invited the Protestant William of Orange to become king.
• William of Orange feared a Catholic France and England would join forces against him, and so he wanted to become king.

Protestantism & Authoritarianism

To understand the events of 1688 and their significance, it is necessary to go back several monarchs in the timeline of British history. The thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland were unified when James I of England (r. 1603-1625) succeeded Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603). James was the first of the Stuart monarchs, and he was succeeded by his son Charles I of England (r. 1625-1649). So far so good, and mostly peaceful. Then Charles went and spoilt things with his authoritarian rule and dismissal of Parliament. The English Civil Wars (1642-51) developed, and ultimately, the support for the novel idea of a republic and not simply a limited monarchy began to increase. An unrepentant and uncompromising Charles was executed on 30 January 1649. As it turned out, the 'commonwealth' republic led by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was just as unpopular as Charles had been. The late king's son Charles triumphantly returned to England and the throne with the Restoration of 1660. The monarchy was back. Unfortunately, it had not learnt any lessons from the disastrous events of the previous decades. Charles II of England (r. 1660-1685) died in 1685, but he had no children. As a result, the king's younger brother became King James II of England. The Stuart line was continuing as usual, but all was not what it seemed. Besides Parliament having grown in importance over the last 50 years, the old problem that had plagued the British Isles since the reign of Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547) was back with a bang: Protestantism versus Catholicism.

Charles II had been a Protestant; the problem was that his successor was a Catholic. James II had converted to Catholicism in 1668, and many feared that he wished to return England to being a Catholic state. Historians continue to debate what exactly were the king's intentions. James knew full well the importance of the matter, Parliament had even removed him from the succession for his faith back in 1679 (the Exclusion Crisis), but his brother had him reinstated. The reinstatement included the promise that James raise his two surviving children, Mary (b. 1662) and Anne (b. 1665), as Protestants.

With everyone preferring the peaceful and less wearisome option of continuing the status quo, the 51-year-old James was allowed to take the throne in 1680. The king even eliminated the communion part of his coronation. His supporters were cheered, the neutrals knew not who else to support, and his enemies hoped his reign would be short and his Protestant daughter Mary could then ensure the achievements of the English Reformation remained intact.

James experienced his fair share of trouble with two rebellions early on in his reign. The first was in Scotland in May 1685 when the Presbyterian Earl of Argyll, leader of the Campbells, led an uprising against the king in Scotland. Argyll was captured while marching to Glasgow, and the rebellion fizzled out. It is very likely that this uprising was intended as a parallel action to another, more serious one in the south of England, the Monmouth Rebellion of June-July 1665.

James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (b. 1649), was the illegitimate son of Charles II. He had already been involved in a plan to take the throne, the Rye House Plot of 1663 when a group of veteran Parliamentarians from the Civil War tried to assassinate Charles II and his brother after a race meeting at Newmarket. The plot was poorly planned and failed, Monmouth was exiled to the Netherlands for his involvement. Now Monmouth was back and with him 80-odd other disgruntled exiles. The motley crew landed at Lyme Regis in June and began to recruit men for an armed rebellion. There was sufficient ill-feeling towards James II that Monmouth managed to raise up to 4,000 men for his army, but it was an amateurish and poorly equipped one. A Royalist army easily defeated the rebels at Sedgemoor in Somerset on 6 July. Monmouth was captured and executed, despite his pleas for clemency from his uncle. James was ruthless in hunting down anyone with even the remotest connection to the Monmouth Rebellion. A few hundred were hanged, 850 were deported for hard labour in the Caribbean, and countless more were flogged. The hearings for those accused became known as the 'Bloody Assizes'. Although harshly punishing rebels was not unusual, the bloody vengeance did nothing for the king's popularity.

Indulgences & Appointments

Both the Argyll and Monmouth rebellions had been relatively minor affairs but they should have been warning shots of what might develop. Instead, the king's policies veered even more towards Catholicism. James relentlessly appointed Catholics in key positions in the government, courts, navy, army, and even universities. James also ignored some laws, extended others, and waived sentences when they applied to Catholic individuals he favoured, what became known as his Dispensing and Suspending powers. Parliament protested at these policies, and the king responded by dismissing the House in November 1685; it would not be recalled until there was a new monarch on the throne.

Another controversial decision was the April 1687 Declaration of Indulgence (aka Declaration of the Liberty of Conscience). This declaration actually improved religious toleration for all faiths, but many Protestants saw it only as a means to improve the status of Catholics. The king did not instil much confidence in non-Catholics when he declared in 1687: "we cannot but heartily wish, as it will easily be believed, that all the people of our dominions were members of the Catholic Church" (Miller, 332). To make matters worse, James reissued the Indulgence in 1688 and insisted it be read out in all churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury and six other bishops protested at this, but the king merely locked them up in the Tower of London . They were then put on trial, but this backfired when they were acquitted, and there was much public celebration.

A Catholic Prince

Besides Protestants having to accept a Catholic king, they also had to endure a Catholic queen and then a Catholic heir to the throne. James had married his second wife, Mary of Modena (d. 1718), in 1673; there were even wild rumours that the queen was actually the daughter of a pope. Then perhaps the final blow for the more militant Protestants fell. The king, after enduring the tragedy of many of his offspring dying in childbirth or early childhood, had a son. James Francis Edward was born on 10 June 1688. This meant that neither Mary nor Anne would become the next monarch, and with both parents being Catholic, it seemed a certainty Prince James would be raised in that faith. So convenient was this event for the king, many suspected the child was not his own but had been brought in for the sole purpose of perpetuating Catholicism in England. The fact that Prince James' godfather was Pope Innocent XI was another unnecessary provocation. Those Protestants who had been calling for restraint until the aged king died and Protestant Mary took over now had no argument. Rebel Protestant nobles knew that they must act now or never.

A Protestant Prince

The burning question was not necessarily how to depose the king but who would replace him. Rebel nobles looked abroad. On 30 June, a group of seven, who included the dukes of Devonshire and Shrewsbury and the Bishop of London, got together and contacted Protestant Prince William of Orange via the Dutch ambassador in England, inviting him to become king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. William had several points in his favour besides his religion . He was the grandson of Charles I of England and had married James II's daughter Mary in 1677. William was no doubt delighted at the offer since he was already planning on invading. Having built up a sizeable navy, the prince said that he was merely waiting for a favourable "Protestant wind". His prime motivation was to avoid England becoming Catholic and then joining forces with the French to attack the Netherlands.

William's first attempt to reach England by sea was scuppered by stormy weather, but he persisted and landed with an army of 15-21,000 men in Devon on 5 November 1688. The army was an experienced fighting force and made up of Dutch, English, Scots, Danes, Huguenots, and even a contingent from Suriname. The prince also took a printing press so that he might more easily spread pro-Protestant propaganda. When he landed at Brixham, William reassured the Englishmen he met that "I come to do you goot. I am here for all your goots" (Cavendish, 338).

William marched slowly east towards London through unfavourable weather. Meanwhile, James was left isolated, deserted by former supporters like John Churchill and even his own daughter Anne. The queen left England for the safety of France in December. James suffered more important desertions amongst his top army staff, and there were immediate uprisings in favour of William in Cheshire, Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire. Then after being hit with a bizarre series of nosebleeds, the king decided to abandon the battlefield and follow his wife. The king may have been suffering a mental breakdown at this point as he became utterly convinced he was destined to suffer the same terrible fate as his father. Queen Mary made it across the Channel, but the king did not, despite his disguise as a woman. He was spotted by fishermen and taken captive in Kent. William was by now in London, and he decided the best thing to do with his rival and father-in- law was to allow him to leave for France as he had wished. William had achieved the remarkable feat of heading the first successful invasion of England since his namesake William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087) in 1066.

A Constitutional Monarchy

The official line was that James had abdicated, and Parliament recorded the removal of the monarch as occurring on 23 December 1688, the day James had left English shores. William became William III of England (also William II of Scotland, r. 1689-1702) via a decree by Parliament on 13 February 1689. This change of regime became known as the Glorious Revolution because it had occurred entirely peacefully (or almost, there were some episodes of Catholic houses and chapels being attacked during William's march to London). There had certainly been no battles or country-wide uprisings in support of either side. Whig historians (pro-Protestants) also believed the revolution 'glorious' because it had preserved the existing institutions of power, which was true, but the relationship between these institutions was altered, a change which only grew more significant over time.

There were some limitations to William's golden prize. The first was that William had to rule jointly with his wife, now Mary II of England, although in practice he alone had sovereign power. The 'Tories' in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Parliament) had wanted Mary to rule alone as this preserved the tradition of succession, but William would not settle for anything less than a proper king's role. The second limitation was imposed by Parliament as a new form of government was devised, a constitutional monarchy. Over the next few years, a whole barrage of laws passed by Parliament limited the monarchy's powers. Gone were the days of authoritarian monarchs who could dismiss Parliament on a whim. Now the two institutions ruled in unison, an arrangement established by the Bill of Rights of 16 December 1689.

Parliament had the ultimate authority in the key areas of passing laws and raising taxes. It also became much more involved in accounting how money was spent for state purposes, particularly on the army and navy. The monarchy was now supported not by the taxes they could raise or the land they could sell but by the money from the Civil List issued by Parliament, beginning with the Civil List Act of 1697. William may not have liked this control on his purse strings, but it meant he could not, as so many of his predecessors had done, dismiss Parliament for long periods and only call it back when he ran out of cash. And the king needed lots of cash since he was determined to use his new position to finally face the French on the battlefield and end their domination of Europe ; so began the Nine Years' War (1688–1697).

The list of limitations on William in Britain continued. No monarch could henceforth maintain their own standing army, only Parliament could declare war, and any new monarch had to swear at their coronation to uphold the Protestant Church. No Catholic or individual married to a Catholic could ever become king or queen again. To ensure Parliament did not itself abuse the power bestowed upon it, there were to be free elections every three years and a guarantee of free speech in its two Houses. Finally, the May 1689 Toleration Act, although it did not go as far as Calvinist William had hoped, protected the rights of Protestant dissenters (aka Non-Conformists) who made up around 7% of the population. After a period of persecution under the Stuarts, they could now freely worship as they wished and establish their own schools. The Toleration Act did not apply to Catholics or Jews.

Ireland & Scotland

James II was not dead but in exile, and eventually, encouraged by Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715) he made an attempt to get his throne back. Landing in Ireland in March 1689, James had some early success, but a 105-day siege of Protestant Londonderry (Derry) failed. Then the arrival of the king in person with a large English-Dutch army, which was superior to James' in both weapons and training, brought final victory at the battle of Boyne on 1 July 1690. Ireland was 75% Catholic, and although a guerrilla war rumbled on, the country found itself once again with a Protestant king.

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In Scotland, Jacobite support (for James II, from the Latin Jacobus ) had been particularly strong in the Highlands, but in the cities , there was more support for Protestant William. When the Prince of Orange had first landed in England, there were shortly afterwards sympathetic riots in Edinburgh where Catholics and their property were attacked. A Convention met to decide who to support, and the decision was made on 11 April 1689 to favour William. At the same time, the Claim of Right established the monarchy there on similar terms as declared in the English Bill of Rights. Mary and William ruled jointly in Scotland when they accepted the crown there on 11 May 1689. There was a Jacobite rising led by Viscount Dundee which defeated a pro-William army at Killiecrankie in July 1689. Then there was a reversal in August at Dunkeld where 'Bonnie' Dundee was killed. In the meantime, the government of Scotland was established under the control of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1692, the divisions in Scotland were widened when James' supporters the MacDonald clan had its leaders massacred at Glencoe by the Campbells. James II died in exile in France in 1701, but his son James (the Old Pretender) and grandson Charles (the Young Pretender) both carried on the flame of rebellion in the Highlands. However, two Jacobite risings in 1715 and 1745 failed, and there was no way back for the troubled Royal House of Stuart .

The three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were now tied together more strongly than ever, at least in terms of politics and governance. William, Mary, and Parliament had created a new form of monarchy and government, one which provided a political, religious, and economic stability never before enjoyed. The Glorious Revolution thus ultimately "transformed Britain from a divided, unstable, rebellious and marginal country into the state that would become the most powerful on the planet" (Starkey, 399).

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Bibliography

• Anderson, Angela & Scarboro, Dale. Stuart Britain. Hodder Education, 2015.
• Cannon, John & Hargreaves, Anne. The Kings and Queens of Britain . Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Cavendish, Richard. Kings & Queens. David & Charles, 2007.
• Fellows, Nicholas & Dicken, Mary. Britain 1603-1760. Hodder Education, 2015.
• Jones, Nigel. Tower. St. Martin's Griffin, 2013.
• Lewis, Brenda Ralph. Dark History of the Kings & Queens of England. Sterling Publishing, 2015.
• Miller, John. Early Modern Britain, 1450–1750 . Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Phillips, Charles. The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Kings & Queens of Britain. Southwater, 2016.
• Starkey, David. Crown and Country. HarperPress, 2010.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Glorious Revolution

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Glorious Revolution by Gary S. De Krey LAST REVIEWED: 19 April 2024 LAST MODIFIED: 19 April 2024 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0112

The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 has long been a well-known historical landmark. The Whig interpretation of the revolution, which was epitomized in the work of the great Victorian historian Thomas B. Macaulay, was largely responsible for this familiarity. Macaulay and writers who followed him saw the revolution as a constitutional milestone. They maintained that Whig leaders committed to parliamentary government took the initiative in the Convention of 1689 (an irregular meeting of Parliament) in ousting a despotic and Catholic James II in favor of his Protestant son-in-law and daughter, William III (also stadtholder of the Netherlands) and Mary II. This largely bloodless revolution at Westminster, which promoted Parliament at the expense of the crown, also secured Protestantism by maintaining the privileged position of the established Anglican Church and by extending toleration to Protestant dissenters who preferred to remain outside the religious establishment. Moreover, according to the Whig view, the revolution protected property and personal rights from arbitrary taxation and royal interference. Whig interpreters also utilized the contractual thought of John Locke, whose Two Treatises of Government was published in 1689, to vest the revolution with a liberal ethos. By the third quarter of the twentieth century, however, this comfortable construction of the revolution was disintegrating. Marxists and some historians dismissed 1688–1689 as an inconsequential alteration in the monarchy. Specialists found fault with particular aspects of the Whig interpretation. Some scholars sought to rehabilitate James II, especially in light of his religious toleration. Other historians emphasized the ideological compromises involved in an event that owed as much to royalist Tories as to their Whig partisan opponents. Since its tercentenary in 1988–1989, however, the revolution has again been interpreted as a watershed in all three British kingdoms, and it has also increasingly been understood as an event with both a European and a global importance. William III led his new kingdoms into warfare against the France of Louis XIV, which transformed England into the preeminent imperial and commercial power of the eighteenth century. The English revolution was also accompanied by an easing of press regulations that encouraged both political publications of all kinds and partisanship. The Scottish and the Irish revolutions, neither of which was bloodless, also had momentous consequences, stimulating parliamentary assertiveness in both kingdoms, contributing to the union of Scotland with England in 1707, and marginalizing both Irish Catholics and Scottish Episcopalians. In the North American colonies the revolution helped confirm the position of colonial assemblies and reaffirmed Anglo-American anti-Catholicism. As the Glorious Revolution has acquired new dimensions as a British, European, Atlantic, and global event, some elements of the Whig interpretation have also retained a place in scholarly interpretation, albeit in more nuanced form.

The appearance, in recent decades, of several new general overviews of the Glorious Revolution by professional historians points to the continuing visibility of 1688–1689 in historical discussion. Students and readers new to the topic will probably gain the most by starting with Valance 2006 , a lucid narrative of the revolution that addresses major interpretive issues. Those with some background will want to begin with Harris 2006 or Pincus 2009 , both of which are more heavily researched and argued and which are intended to advance scholarly debate about the revolution. Harris provides the most serious effort at finding a common framework for investigation of the revolution in the three British kingdoms. Pincus places James II in a European context of Catholic modernization and proposes that 1688–1689 was the first modern revolution. Cruickshanks 2000 presents a controversial inversion of the Whig interpretation that rehabilitates James II and skewers William III, and it is best read in conjunction with other accounts. Hoppit 2000 provides a readable and comprehensive survey of the political and commercial development of Britain in the wartime decades that followed the revolution. The older general account Speck 1988 was published to mark the tercentenary of the revolution. Intended for students and general readers, it offers qualified endorsements of some Whig arguments. Herrmann 2015 traces the more recent historiography of the revolution, emphasizing that disagreements about its character have a long history.

Cruickshanks, Eveline. The Glorious Revolution . British History in Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-07303-7

Systematic challenge to Whig interpretation: James was sincere in advocating toleration and civil rights for all religious persuasions. The revolution lacked popular support; it was a military invasion by William, who wanted the English crown with its prerogatives intact and who was focused on European events. Attention to Scotland, Ireland, warfare.

Harris, Tim. Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 . London and New York: Allen Lane, 2006.

Comprehensive examination of the revolution and of James II, whose manner of rule undermined a royalist revival and challenged contemporary understandings of law. Pioneering integration of English, Scottish, and Irish revolutions. A nuanced interpretation of the revolution as a victory for Protestantism and parliamentary government against Catholic absolutism.

Herrmann, Frédéric. “The Glorious Revolution (1688–1701) and the Return of Whig History.” Études Anglaises 68.3 (2015): 331–344.

DOI: 10.3917/etan.683.0331

How “radical and transformative” was the Glorious Revolution? The disagreements among recent historians reflect disagreements among contemporaries. Considers the extent of violence; the process of state formation; popular participation; and the accompanying revolutions in trade, public finance, and warfare.

Hoppit, Julian. A Land of Liberty? England 1689–1727 . The New Oxford History of England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Account of the aftermath of the revolution as an era both of uncertainty and of prospects in the midst of unprecedented warfare and imperial competition. Emphasis on party political divisions, the slow emergence of stability, commercial opportunity, fiscal innovation, and the lives of ordinary people.

Pincus, Steve. 1688: The First Modern Revolution . Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Provocative, massively researched study arguing for the overthrow of James II as the first modern revolution. Rehabilitates James’s political acumen, reconceives his program as one of Catholic (absolutist) modernization, connects the revolution to the emergence of a commercial society, emphasizes popular involvement, and places all in a European perspective.

Speck, William A. Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 . Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Contribution to tercentenary of 1688–1689. Emphasizes James’s Catholicism as prompting a defensive revolution to protect Protestantism and the constitution. Suggests that, although James’s attempt to move toward absolutism was within the law, the Convention of 1689 did—intentionally or not—establish a new framework by subordinating the crown to law and Parliament.

Valance, Edward. The Glorious Revolution: 1688—Britain’s Fight for Liberty . London: Little Brown, 2006.

Readable, colorful account. Emphasizes the importance of anti-Catholicism as a roadblock for James, the involvement of ordinary people in the revolution, the securing of parliamentary government, and the importance of 1688–1689 in Anglo-American history. Incorporates Scotland, Ireland, and the reign of William III.

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Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty” Essay

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The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty by Edward Vallance is a book that presents an elaborate account of the 1688 Britain revolution that was characterized by a lack of violence. In his book, Edward Vallance dealt with different interpretations according to his understanding of the Glorious Revolution. The revolution was actually peaceful but Vallance instead argued that the overthrow of James II was characterized by several instances of conflict and even cases of people losing life especially in Scotland and Ireland. This paper will discuss the interpretation of the historian’s work as compared to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Background of the Glorious Revolution

King James III was involved in several political battles in England during his three years of tenure in office as the king of England. First, he was found involving himself in political battles between the Catholics and the protestants. Additionally, his direct involvement was noted when he participated in political battles that tried to define the divine rights of kings and those of the Parliament of England. The major problem that king James experienced was because his religion of Catholicism had made him isolate himself from the two major parties in England at that time. The low church Whigs attempted to remove King James from the throne. However, its failure to pass the exclusion bill of which would have removed the king from the throne led to fruitless efforts.

The supporters of James since he took over power were Anglican Tories. His Catholicism was an issue that led to concerns being raised by many people even though his daughters were protestants. However, problems arose while James tried to remove the penal laws. The Tories viewed this move as a way of breaking the establishment of the Church of England. As a result, James abandoned Tories, a move that seemed to show that he was trying to form his own party as a way to counter the influence of the Anglican Tories. Therefore, in 1687 James declared his support for a policy that referred to religious toleration. According to valance (2008), “he, therefore, allied himself with dissenters, Catholics, and nonconformists with an aim of advancing catholic emancipation”.

James further continued to make laws in his hands when he sought the common law of dispensing acts of parliament from the English courts 1 . The request was successful since eleven out of the twelve judges of the court made the rule in his favor. James’ political involvement in religion was a common behavior, for instance, he ordered the removal of John Sharp a catholic clergy who delivered a catholic sermon yet that had been banned by James. As noted by Valance (2008) “ James ordered the followers of Magdalene college in oxford to elect Anthony Farmer who was a catholic even though he was not eligible according to the statutes of the college”. The followers declined the order and instead decided to elect John Hough. James did not recognize the presidency of Hough and therefore sent some commissioners to install Farmer as the president and went on to convince the followers that they had made a wrong decision and they were therefore expected to apologize for that. Those followers who failed to apologize were ejected from the college and replaced with Catholics.

In 1687, James made efforts to repeal the penal laws and the Test Act by bringing many of his supporters to the parliament. James believed that the dissenters would give him support and as a result, he decided to ignore the support of the Tories and the Anglicans. James was annoyed since his plans were not successful and he, therefore, decide to instruct all the lord lieutenants in the provinces to issue messages to all peace commissions so that they consent to the Test Act. This was followed by the office of deputy lieutenants and those of the Justice for peace being reshuffled and as a result, those who had opposed James were all dismissed. James created an army that was huge and elevated the Catholics to senior positions in the army. In Ireland, the protestant armies were replaced with Catholics and this led him to have more than 34, 000 army officers in all the three kingdoms he ruled.

Major problems arose in 1688 when James fathered a son. This implied that the newborn son would be his successor. But before then, the reign of England would have been passed to James’ daughter Mary who was a protestant. Mary’s Husband was called William of Orange and they were both grandchildren of Charles one of England. William would therefore be third in the succession line. However, since the two had anti-catholic faith, there was a challenge to the English court that they would be both replaced by a catholic French heir.

According to Vallance (2008) William was also stadtholder of the main provinces of the Dutch Republic, then in the preliminary stages of joining the War of the Grand Alliance against France, in a context of international tensions caused by the revocation by Louis XIV of the Edict of Nantes and the disputed succession of Cologne and the Palatinate. This suited the desires of several English politicians who intended to depose James. 2 William’s intelligence threatened James and as a result, James tried to form a way that they would both work together.

The collapse of the reign of king James started when their relationship with William started not to be beneficial. James tried to win the support of the Tories but this could not be successful since he had failed to endorse the Test Act. On the other hand, anti-Catholics had continually demonstrate in London and it was clear that those troops were not on the streets to fight but instead it was clear that some of his army officer did not have loyalty. He had also been warned in earlier occasions about the conspiracy within his army but he did not take any move to address the issue. The first incidence of blood shed was reported during the skirmishes that occurred in Wincanton when the royalists soldiers retreated after coming into confrontation with scouts. Most of his soldiers deserted thereby leaving him in much fear. At that point, James realized that his army was not reliable and therefore order it to be disbanded and provided an opportunity for fair election. James had to surrender to William after realizing that his own chief commander had deserted to William and even his own daughter, Princess Ann supported William.

Valance interpretation

Valance view of the glorious revolution was considered by many historians as an indication of the true history of what happened in England during the reign of King James II. The revolution has always been termed as peaceful or bloodless. The historian, Edward Vallance presented the revolution as a bloody massacre for the people of specific religions especially the Catholics and the Irishmen. Additionally, Vallance indicated the way the populace in England participated in the affairs of the government since King James provided a favourable environment for the citizens. When William of Orange overthrew James, the kingdom was largely dominated by the catholic religion. James had introduced all his catholic supporters in all the governance organs including the army. James did this by sacking those protestants who did not abide by his orders and thus replaced them with his catholic men.

Vallance work in the Glorious Revolution presented the circumstances of the revolutionary contrary to the history of England. The historian work dealt indicated that the revolution was characterized with blood shed especially by Christians. During the reign of King James who was a catholic, protestants voice was not heard but instead he sacked all those who failed to follow his orders. Vallance presented William and his wife Mary as the hero and heroin respectively who brought the revolution after a period of blood massacre. The historian indicated that William helped to bring revolution in England even though the protestants in Ireland suffered in the course of liberating their lives. Since William and James’ daughter Mary were protestants, this group of worshippers was able to live in freedom, which was not a common characteristic in their lives during the time of James.

• Vallance, Edward. The Glorious Revolution : Britain’s Fight for Liberty. London: Pegasus Books, 2008.
• The French Revolutions: Causes and Impacts
• Field Trip from Dinas Powys Hillfort to Offa’s Dyke
• The Mainland Colonies Life
• ”War and Religion After Westphalia” by David Onnekink
• Chapter 3 of "Liberty, Equality, Power" by Murrin et al.
• Foreigners Within: Foreigners in West Europe
• “Invisible Cities” by Calvino
• Economic Situation of the Later Roman Empire
• Intellectual, Scientific and Cultural Changes in Europe Towards the End of 19th Century
• The History of European Expansion From the 14th Century - During the Age of Discovery
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, December 31). Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”. https://ivypanda.com/essays/vallances-the-glorious-revolution-britains-fight-for-liberty/

"Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”." IvyPanda , 31 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/vallances-the-glorious-revolution-britains-fight-for-liberty/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”'. 31 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”." December 31, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/vallances-the-glorious-revolution-britains-fight-for-liberty/.

1. IvyPanda . "Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”." December 31, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/vallances-the-glorious-revolution-britains-fight-for-liberty/.

IvyPanda . "Vallance’s “The Glorious Revolution: Britain’s Fight for Liberty”." December 31, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/vallances-the-glorious-revolution-britains-fight-for-liberty/.

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The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution

England was perhaps the most outstanding example of a state in which the absolutist form of monarchy resolutely failed during the seventeenth century, and yet the state itself emerged all the stronger. Ironically, the two most powerful states in Europe during the following century were absolutist France and its political opposite, the first major constitutional monarchy in Europe: the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Some of the characteristics that historians often associate with modernity are representative governments, capitalist economies, and (relative, in the case of early-modern states) religious toleration. All of those things first converged in England at the end of the seventeenth and start of the eighteenth centuries. Likewise, England would eventually evolve from an important but secondary state in terms of its power and influence to the most powerful nation in the world in the nineteenth century. For those reasons it is worthwhile to devote considerable attention to the case of English politics during that period.

The irony of the fact that England was the first state to move toward “modern” patterns and political dominance is that, at the start of the seventeenth century, England was a relative backwater. Its population was only a quarter of that of France and its monarchy was comparatively weak; precisely as France was reorganizing along absolutist lines, England’s monarchy was beset by powerful landowners with traditional privileges they were totally unwilling to relinquish. The English monarchy ran a kingdom with various ethnicities and divided religious loyalties, many of whom were hostile to the monarchy itself. It was an unlikely candidate for what would one day be the most powerful “Great Power” in Europe.

The English King Henry VIII had broken the official English church – renamed the Church of England – away from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s. In the process, he had seized an enormous amount of wealth from English Catholic institutions, mostly monasteries, and used it to fund his own military buildup. Subsequently, his daughter Elizabeth I was able to build up an effective navy (based at least initially on converted merchant vessels) that fought off the Spanish Armada in 1588. While Elizabeth’s long reign (r. 1558 – 1603) coincided with a golden age of English culture, most notably with the works of Shakespeare, the money plundered from Catholic coffers had run out by the end of it.

Despite Elizabeth’s relative toleration of religious difference, Great Britain remained profoundly divided. The Church of England was the nominal church of the entire realm, and only Anglicans could hold public office as judges or members of the British parliament, a law-making body dominated by the gentry class of landowners. In turn, the church was itself divided between an “high church” faction that was in favor of all of the trappings of Catholic ritual versus a “Puritan” faction that wanted an austere, moralistic approach to Christianity more similar to Calvinism than to Catholicism. The Puritans were, in fact, Calvinist in their beliefs (concerning the Elect, predestination, and so on), but were still considered to be full members of the church. Meanwhile, Scotland was largely Presbyterian (Scottish Calvinist), and Ireland – which had been colonized by the English starting in the sixteenth century – was overwhelmingly Catholic. Within English society there were numerous Catholics as well, most of whom remained fairly clandestine in their worship out of fear of persecution.

Thus, the monarchy presided over a divided society. It was also relatively poor, with the English crown overseeing a small bureaucracy and no official standing army. The only way to raise revenue from the rest of the country was to raise royal taxes, which were resisted by the very proud and defensive gentry class (the landowners) as well as the titled nobility. The traditional right of parliament was to approve or reject taxes, but an open question as of the early seventeenth century was whether it had the right to set laws as well. The bottom line is that English kings or queens could not force lawmakers to grant them taxes without having to beg, plead, cajole, and bargain. In turn, the stability of government depended on cooperation between the Crown and the House of Commons, the larger of the two legal bodies in the parliament, which was populated by members of the gentry.

The Stuarts and the English Civil War

While her reign was plagued by these issues, Elizabeth I was a savvy monarch who was very skilled at reconciling opposing factions and winning over members of parliament to her perspective. She also benefited from what was left of the money her father had looted from the English monasteries. This delicate balance started to fall apart with Elizabeth’s death in 1603. She died without an heir (she had never married, rightly recognizing that marriage would undermine her own authority), so her successor was from the Scottish royal house of the Stuarts, fellow royals related to the Tudors. The new king was James I (r. 1603 – 1625), the first of the new royal line to rule England. James was already the king of Scotland when he inherited the English crown, so England and Scotland were politically united and the kingdom of “Great Britain” was born (it was later ratified as a permanent legal reality in 1707 with the “Act of Union” passed by parliament).

James, inspired by developments on the continent, tried to insist on the “royal prerogative,” the right of the king to rule through force of will. He set himself up as an absolute monarch and behaved with noticeable contempt towards members of parliament. Still, England was at peace and James avoided making demands that sparked serious resistance. While members of parliament grumbled about his heavy-handed manner of rule, there were no signs of actual rebellion.

His son, Charles I (r. 1625 – 1649), was a much greater threat from the perspective of parliament. He strongly supported the “high church” faction of the Anglican church just as Puritanism among the common people was growing, and he began to openly encroach on parliamentary authority. While styling himself after Louis XIII of France (to whom he was related), he came to be feared and hated by many of his own people. Charles imposed taxes and tariffs that were not approved by parliament, which was technically illegal, and then he forced rich subjects to grant the crown loans at very low interest rates. In 1629, after parliament protested, he dismissed it and tried to rule without summoning it again. He was able to do so until 1636, when he tried to impose a new high church religious liturgy (set of rituals) in Scotland. That prompted the Scots to openly break with the king and raise an army; to get the money to fund an English response, Charles had to summon parliament.

The result was civil war. Not only were the Scots well trained and organized, when parliament met it swiftly turned on Charles, declaring his various laws and acts illegal and dismissing his ministers, an act remembered as “The Grand Remonstrance.” Parliament also refused to leave, staying in session for years (it was called “the long parliament” as a result). Meanwhile, a huge Catholic uprising took place in Ireland and thousands of Protestants there were massacred. Many in parliament thought that Charles was in league with the Irish. War finally broke out in 1642, pitting the anti-royal “round-heads” (named after their bowl cuts) and their Scottish allies against the royalist “cavaliers.” In 1645, a Puritan commander named Oliver Cromwell united various parliamentary forces in the “New Model Army,” a well-disciplined fighting force whose soldiers were regularly paid and which actually paid for its supplies rather than plundering them and living off the land (as did the king’s forces). Thanks to the effectiveness of Cromwell, the New Model Army, and the financial backing of the city of London, the round-heads gained the upper hand in the war. In the end, Charles was captured, tried, and executed by parliament in 1649 as a traitor to his own kingdom.

An engraving celebrating the victory of the parliamentary forces as “England’s Miraculous Preservation,” with the royalist forces drowning in the allegorical flood while the houses of parliament and the Church of England float on the ark.

During the English civil war, England went from one of the least militarized societies in Europe to one of the most militarized; one in eight English men were directly involved in fighting, and few regions in England were spared horribly bloody fighting. Simultaneously, debates arose among the round-heads concerning what kind of government they were fighting for; some, called the Levelers, argued in favor of a people’s government, a true democratic republic. The most radical were called the Diggers, who try to set up what amounts to a proto-communist society in which goods and land were held in common. Those more radical elements were ultimately defeated by the army, but the language they use in discussing justice and good government survived to inspire later debates, ultimately informing the concept of modern democracy itself.

Thanks in large part to the ongoing political debates of the period, the Civil War resulted in an explosion of print in England. Various factions attempted to impose and maintain censorship, but they were largely unsuccessful due to the political fragmentation of the period. Instead, there was an enormous growth of political debate in the form of printed pamphlets; there were over 2,000 political pamphlets published in 1642 alone. Ordinary people had begun in earnest to participate in political dialog, another pattern associated with modern politics.

After the execution of the king in 1649, England became a (technically republican) dictatorship under Cromwell, who assumed the title of Lord Protector in 1649. He ruled England for ten years, carrying out an incredibly bloody invasion of Ireland that is still remembered with bitterness today, and ruling through his control of the army. Following his death in 1658, parliament decided to reinstate the monarchy and the official power of the Church of England (which took until 1660 to happen), essentially because there was a lack of consensus about what could be done otherwise. None of the initial problems that brought about the civil wars in the first place were resolved, and Cromwell himself had ended up being as authoritarian and autocratic as Charles had been.

The Glorious Revolution

Thus, in 1660, Charles II (r. 1660 – 1685), the son of the executed Charles I, took the throne. He was a cousin of Louis XIV of France and, like his father, tried to adopt the trappings of absolutism even though he recognized that he could never achieve a Louis-XIV-like rule (nor did he try to dismiss parliament). Various conspiracy theories surrounded him, especially ones that claimed he was a secret Catholic; as it turns out, he had drawn up a secret agreement with Louis XIV to re-Catholicize England if he could, and he proclaimed his Catholicism on his deathbed. A crisis occurred late in his reign when a parliamentary faction called the Whigs tried to exclude his younger brother, James II, from being eligible for the throne because he was openly Catholic. They were ultimately beaten (legally) by a rival faction, the Tories, that supported the notion of the divine right of kings and of hereditary succession.

When James II (r. 1685 – 1688) took the throne, however, even his former supporters the Tories were alarmed when he started appointing Catholics to positions of power, against the laws in place that required all lawmakers and officials to be Anglicans. In 1688, James’s wife had a son, which thus threatened that a Catholic monarchy might remain for the foreseeable future. A conspiracy of English lawmakers thus invited William of Orange, a Dutch military leader and lawmaker in the Dutch Republic, to lead a force against James. William was married to Mary, the Protestant daughter of James II, and thus parliament hoped that any threat of a Catholic monarchy would be permanently defeated by his intervention. William arrived and the English army defected to him, forcing James to flee with his family to France. This series of events became known as the Glorious Revolution – “glorious” because it was bloodless and resulted in a political settlement that finally ended the better part of a century of conflict.

William and his English wife Mary were appointed as co-rulers by parliament and they agreed to abide by a new Bill of Rights. The result was Europe’s first constitutional monarchy: a government led by a king or queen, but one in which lawmaking was controlled by a parliament and all citizens were held accountable to the same set of laws. Even as absolutism became the predominant mode of politics on the continent, Britain set forth on a different, and opposing, political trajectory.

Great Britain After the Glorious Revolution

One unexpected benefit to constitutional monarchy was that British elites, through parliament, no longer opposed the royal government but instead became the government. After the Glorious Revolution, lawmakers in England felt secure enough from royal attempts to seize power unlawfully that they were willing to increase the size and power of government and to levy new taxes. Thus, the English state grew very quickly, whereas it had been its small size and the intransigence of earlier generations of members of parliament in raising taxes that had been behind the conflicts between king and parliament for most of the seventeenth century.

The English state could grow because parliament was willing to make it grow after 1688. It did grow because of war. William of Orange had already been at war with Louis XIV before he came to England, and once he was king Britain went to war with France in 1690 over colonial conflicts and because of Louis’s constant attempts to seize territory in the continent. The result was over twenty years of constant warfare, from 1690 – 1714.

To raise money for those wars, private bankers founded the Bank of England in 1694. While it was not created by the British government itself, the Bank of England soon became the official banking institution of the state. This was a momentous event because it allowed the government to manage state debt effectively. The Bank issued bonds that paid a reasonable amount of interest, and the British government stood behind those bonds. Thus, individual investors were guaranteed to make money and the state could finance its wars through carefully regulated sales of bonds. In contrast, Louis XIV financially devastated the French government with his wars, despite the efforts of his Intendants and other royal officials to squeeze every drop of tax revenue they could out of the huge and prosperous kingdom. Britain, meanwhile, remained financially solvent even as their wars against France grew larger every year. Ultimately, this would see the transformation of Britain from secondary political power to France’s single most important rival in the eighteenth century.

The Overall Effects of Absolutism

While Britain was thus the outstanding exception to the general pattern of absolutism, the growth in its state was comparable to the growth among its absolutist rivals. As an aggregate, the states of Europe were transformed by absolutist trends. Some of those can be captured in statistics: royal governments grew roughly 400% in size (i.e. in terms of the number of officials they employed and the tax revenues they collected) over the course of the seventeenth century, and standing armies went from around 20,000 men during the sixteenth century to well over 150,000 by the late seventeenth century.

Armies were not just larger – they were better-disciplined, trained, and “standardized.” For the first time, soldiers were issued standard uniforms. Warfare, while still bloody, was nowhere near as savage and chaotic as it had been during the wars of religion, thanks in large part to the fact that it was now waged by professional soldiers answering to noble officers, rather than mercenaries simply unleashed against an enemy and told to live off of the land (i.e. the peasants) while they did so. Officers on opposing sides often considered themselves to be part of a kind of extended family; a captured officer could expect to be treated as a respected peer by his “enemies” until his own side paid his ransom.

What united such disparate examples of absolutism as France and Prussia was a shared concept of royal authority. The theory of absolutism was that the king was above the nobles and not answerable to anyone in his kingdom, but he owed his subjects a kind of benevolent protection and oversight. “Arbitrary” power was not the point: the power exercised by the monarch was supposed to be for the good of the kingdom – this was known as raison d’etat , right or reason of the state. Practically speaking, this meant that the whole range of traditional rights, especially those of the nobles and the cities, had to be respected. Louis XIV famously claimed that “ L’etat, c’est moi ” – I am the state. His point was that there was no distinction between his own identity and the government of France itself, and his actions were by definition for the good of France (which was not always true from an objective standpoint, as was starkly demonstrated in his wars).

Those who lost out in absolutism were the peasants: especially in Central and Eastern Europe, what freedoms peasants had enjoyed before about 1650 increasingly vanished as the newly absolutist monarchs struck deals with their nobility that ratified the latter’s right to completely control the peasantry. Serfdom, already in place in much of the east, was hardened in the seventeenth century, and the free labor, fees, and taxes owed by peasants to their lords grew harsher (e.g., the Austrian labor obligation was known as the robot , and it could consist of up to 100 days of labor a year). The general pattern in the east was that nobles answered to increasingly powerful kings or emperors, but they were themselves “absolute” rulers of their own estates over their serfs.

The irony of the growth of both royal power and royal tax revenue was that it still could not keep up with the cost of war. Military expenditures were enormous; in a state like France the military took up 50% of state revenues during peacetime, and 80% or more during war (which was frequent). Thus, monarchs granted monopolies on products and then taxed them, and they frequently sold noble titles and state offices to the highest bidder (the queen of Sweden doubled the number of noble families in ten years). They relentlessly taxed the peasantry as well: royal taxes doubled in France between 1630 – 1650, and the concomitant peasant uprisings were ruthlessly suppressed.

One aspect of the hardening of social hierarchies, necessitated in part by the great legal benefits enjoyed by members of the nobility in the absolutist system, was that the rights and privileges of nobility were codified into clear laws for the first time. Most absolutist states created “tables of ranks” that specified exactly where nobles stood vis-à-vis one another as well as the monarch and “princes of the blood.” Louis XIV of France had a branch of the royal government devoted entirely to verifying claims of nobility and stripping noble titles from those without adequate proof.

The process by which states went from decentralized and fairly loosely organized to “absolutist” was a long one. Numerous aspects of government even in the late eighteenth century remained strikingly “medieval” in some ways, such as the fact that laws were different from town to town and region to region based on the accumulation of various royal grants and traditional rights over the centuries. That being noted, there is no question that things had changed significantly over the course of the seventeenth century: governments were bigger, better organized, and more explicitly hierarchical in organization.

Image Citations (Wikimedia Commons):

Cardinal Richelieu – Public Domain

Hall of Mirrors – Jorge Láscar

Louis XIV – Public Domain

Prussia – Public Domain

English Civil War Engraving – Public Domain

Western Civilization: A Concise History Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Brooks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Was the Glorious Revolution really “glorious?”

Introduction

Most history textbooks portray the Glorious Revolution as a harmonious event where William of Orange is persuaded to come and rescue Great Britain from reverting back to Catholicism under the absolutist-style regime of King James II. The “glorious aspect” of this so-called revolution is the relatively peaceful transfer of power from the monarch to Parliament that ensues after William and his wife Mary, the eldest daughter of James II, are “invited” to jointly rule England and its empire. However, many scholars share an alternate interpretation of the events of 1688-90 and conversely view the ascension of William of Orange to the British throne as a “Dutch invasion” motivated by realpolitik and a personal lust for power.

Learning Objectives

This lesson could be done several ways depending on how much time you have and your student audience. It is a good way to introduce students to different ways of interpreting an historical event. Many at the time and historians through today have portrayed the Glorious Revolution as a triumph for the English monarchy, constitutional government and Church of England. However, not everyone then or today viewed it this way. William was not English but Dutch and he invaded England in order to take power (a group in Parliament invited him to do so). 

Students could use some or all of the provided video, secondary and primary source resources to analyze different views of The Glorious Revolution. You could have them summarize and explain each one in their own words, working individually or in small groups. You could also have them write an essay using the primary source documents. Another idea would be to split your class into two groups and have a debate on whether or not The Glorious Revolution was a glorious and great series of events, or a Dutch invasion that suppressed Catholics and those opposed to the monarchy.

YouTube Video Resources

• Glorious Revolution or Dutch Invasion? 1688 Revisited by History Hub (5 minutes)
• British History’s Biggest Fibs – Glorious Revolution with Lucy Worsley (47 minutes)

The larger historical context surrounding the Glorious Revolution is complex and resplendent with high drama, wherein war, political rivalry, economic competition, and religion all play a role. William of Orange, known as Prince William in Britain, was the stadholder, or military and political leader of the Dutch Republic, a technically non-hereditary position that had been held by his family members on and off for a century. He came to power in 1672 during the Year of Disaster when the Dutch Republic was embroiled in the third Anglo-Dutch War while simultaneously facing an invasion of the Republic by Louis XIV of France, supported by the principalities of Munster and Cologne. 

While William was immensely popular with half of his constituents, the Orangists, who had violently pressured the States General (the representative oligarch government of the Dutch Republic) to allow William to assume the stadholder position that had been vacant since the death of his father twenty-two years earlier, William struggled to maintain support from conservative forces within the government who resisted his style of leadership that had the appearance of a monarchy within am ostensibly republican form of government. The Treaty of Westminster of 1674 ended the third Anglo-Dutch War, and direct military conflict with the other adversaries of the Dutch Republic who resented the small nation’s economic success and political autonomy subsided, yet economic challenges remained. Louis XIV was determined to destroy the Dutch economy, and another war seemed inevitable. For William and the Republic, it was imperative that England not join ranks with the French. When presented with the gravity of the situation, William’s former detractors, many of whom were members of the States Party faction (the group that had left the stadholder position vacant) and wealthy burghers or nobles from the trade-dependent state of Holland, agreed to support William’s plan for another war with France.

Unfortunately, an English/Dutch alliance against France seemed unlikely from the onset and became impossible after the succession to the English throne changed following the birth of a son to James II and his second wife Mary of Modena. The birth of a male heir not only meant that William’s wife Mary would not now be next in line to the throne, but the new crown prince would be brought up in the household of a Catholic Queen and James II. The latter was sympathetic to Catholic toleration, was much impressed by Louise XIV’s style of absolute monarchy and was willing to work with France to reduce Dutch economic power. 

William saw the English throne as his birthright and was actually in the line of succession for the British throne. His mother was the elder sister of Charles II and James II, and since James’s elder daughters were the product of a marriage to a commoner, William considered himself to be the rightful heir. Nevertheless, to ensure his position, he married the presumed heir to the throne, Mary Stuart, the eldest daughter of James II and his Protestant first wife. William’s ascension to the British throne was jeopardized by the birth of a son to James II. The fact that baby James Francis Edward Stuart was baptized as a Catholic was reason enough for the Protestant powers in Parliament to contemplate another overthrow of the Stuart dynasty. In addition, based on Mary of Modena’s previous history of having babies that did not survive infancy, rumors were circulating that the baby was not actually hers, but rather an imposter who had been smuggled in. Doubters were numerous and even included Princess Anne. Ultimately, King James II issued a public statement affirming his parentage of the newborn. However, at this point the child’s paternity was irrelevant, since plans rooted in larger political issues were in action for a serious regime change.

Secondary Sources:

• British House of Commons excerpts version of The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution is a term used to describe the peaceful way in which Parliament asserted its rights over the monarchy in 1688. 

Historical Interpretations 

The traditional Whig view of the Glorious Revolution is embodied in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s The History of England from the accession of James the second, 1849-61 . For Macaulay the revolution was “a vindication of our ancient rights” in which it was “finally decided … whether the popular element, which had, ever since the age of Fitzwalter and de Montfort, been found in English polity, should be destroyed by the monarchical element, or should be suffered to develop itself freely and to become dominant.” Macaulay’s view was that because England had had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century, she had been spared a destroying revolution in the nineteenth. As the contemporary philosopher John Locke had written, James II was guilty of breaking the “original contract” between sovereign and people, and had therefore suffered the just wrath of Parliament and people. The Whig view of the Glorious Revolution is therefore simply that it was a triumph for the purity of constitutional law over an outrageous attempt at its perversion, a reaffirmation of the liberties of the English people. 

However, this interpretation of the Glorious Revolution has not gone unchallenged. To some twentieth century historians it has appeared as a respectable revolution, (e.g. Lucile Pinkham, William and the Respectable Revolution, 1954), involving just the ruling classes and leaving the monarchy in most respects unaltered, hardly a proper revolution at all. For example, the constitutional historian Mark Thompson wrote that apart from determining the succession, the Bill of Rights (which contained the clauses submitted for acceptance by William and Mary) did “little more than set forth certain points of existing laws and simply secured to Englishmen the rights of which they were already legally possessed”. Others have been even more dismissive: the Russian historian, Viktor F. Semenov, regarded it as a mere coup d’etat in its conservatism, its bloodlessness and its legalism. 

This Marxist interpretation is given some weight by the fact that (for example) a point-by-point analysis of the Bill of Rights does reveal that in several aspects it is indeed a rather conservative document. It is a declaratory Act, reasserting ancient rights and restoring the monarchy with in Two Treatises of Government. 

It is quite tempting to see the events of 1688 as a mere codicil to the interregnum, of no major importance in themselves. However, this is misleading. The civil wars cannot be regarded as finally settling England’s political future as a parliamentary monarchy. Neither, of course, can the Glorious Revolution of 1688. However, before 1688 it is possible to see England as beginning to move towards absolutism on the French model. After 1688 this is stopped. The obvious cause of the Glorious Revolution was the stupidity and impatience of James II, who not only frightened the Anglican Church and laity by his moves towards a restoration of Popery, but managed to unite a wide variety of interests in opposition to his clumsy policies. However, it must be remembered that the Prince called in to save the situation had no desire for a weakened monarchy: the agreements of 1688-89 are not, therefore, obviously radical documents. But the fact they exist at all is of great importance. Any move towards popery or absolutism was stopped. Also the Declaration and Bill of Rights restricted the King’s dispensing powers and his standing army, and insisted on the rights of a free Parliament. 

One development which did result from the Glorious Revolution was the transformation by William III of England’s place in Europe and the wars that this involved, which led to a crucial loss of royal power and establishment of parliamentary supremacy. For instance the Triennial Act of 1694 required Parliaments to be summoned every three years , and thus prevented future monarchs from ruling without a parliament, a favourite practice of the Stuarts – but this is a development seen with hindsight. “Constitutional government has endured because it became a habit in the eighteenth century, not because it was established by revolution (great or small) in the seventeenth.”

• BBC History excerpts version of The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 replaced the reigning  king, James II, with the joint monarchy of his protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. It was the keystone of the Whig (those opposed to a Catholic succession) history of Britain.

According to the Whig account, the events of the revolution were bloodless and the revolution settlement established the supremacy of parliament over the crown, setting Britain on the path towards constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy.

But it ignores the extent to which the events of 1688 constituted a foreign invasion of England by another European power, the Dutch Republic.

Although bloodshed in England was limited, the revolution was only secured in Ireland and Scotland by force and with much loss of life.

Moreover, the British causes of the revolution were as much religious as political. Indeed, the immediate constitutional impact of the revolution settlement was minimal. Nonetheless, over the course of the reign of William III (1689-1702) society underwent significant and long-lasting changes.

To understand why James II’s most powerful subjects eventually rose up in revolt against him we need to understand the deep-seated fear of ‘popery’ in Stuart England.

‘Popery’ meant more than just a fear or hatred of Catholics and the Catholic church. It reflected a widely-held belief in an elaborate conspiracy theory, that Catholics were actively plotting the overthrow of church and state.

In their place would be established a Catholic tyranny, with England becoming merely a satellite state, under the control of an all-powerful Catholic monarch, (in the era of the Glorious Revolution, identified with Louis XIV of France). This conspiracy theory was given credibility by the existence of some genuine catholic subterfuge, most notably the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

A new crisis of ‘popery and arbitrary government’ erupted in the late 1670s.

Public anxieties were raised by the issue of the royal succession. Charles II fathered no legitimate offspring. This meant that the crown would pass to his brother, James, Duke of York, whose conversion to Catholicism had become public knowledge in 1673.

The grave danger posed to the Protestant succession and the Anglican establishment led seven peers to write to William on 30 June 1688, pledging their support to the prince if he brought a force into England against James.

William had already begun making military preparations for an invasion of England before this letter was sent. Indeed, the letter itself mainly served a propaganda purpose, to allow the prince of Orange to present his intervention as a mercy mission.

In fact, William’s main reason for interfering in English affairs was essentially pragmatic – he wished to bring England into his war against Louis XIV’s France and a free parliament was seen as more likely to support this.

The forces that the prince of Orange amassed for his invasion were vast, the flotilla consisting of 43 men-of-war, four light frigates and 10 fireships protecting over 400 flyboats capable of carrying 21,000 soldiers. All in all, it was an armada four times the size of that launched by the Spanish in 1588.

Aided by the so-called ‘Protestant wind’ which prevented James’ navy from intercepting the Dutch fleet, William landed at Torbay, Devon, on 5 November 1688, the exact timing of his landfall neatly fitting with the anniversary of another celebrated moment when the nation was delivered from popery.

James had made military preparations for the defence of England over the summer and autumn of 1688 and his army encamped on Hounslow Heath was, at about 25,000 men, numerically larger than the force brought over by William. For the first time since the 1640s, England was faced with the prospect of civil war.

The desertions continued, with the defection of John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, and James’ son-in-law, the Prince of Denmark on 24 November. The final betrayal came on the king’s return to his capital on the 26 November when he discovered that his daughter, Princess Anne had also absconded to join the Orangist side.

James now announced that he was willing to agree to William’s main demand – to call a ‘free’ parliament. However, the king was now convinced that his own life was in danger and was making preparations to flee the country. Meanwhile, William’s advance upon the capital had met with some resistance – a bloody skirmish at Reading on 7 December with over 50 killed.

Before they were offered the crown, William and Mary were presented with a document called the Declaration of Rights, later enshrined in law as the Bill of Rights, which affirmed a number of constitutional principles, such as the illegality of prerogative suspending and dispensing powers, the prohibition of taxation without parliamentary consent and the need for regular parliaments.

The revolution’s legacy might be seen as negative in other ways. In Ireland and Scotland, the revolution was militarily contested and its settlements extremely politically and religiously divisive. For example, Irish Protestants disregarded the generous peace terms of the Treaty of Limerick (3 October 1691) and established a monopoly over land-ownership and political power.

The revolution also failed to limit the power of parliaments and created no body of protected constitutional law. Therefore the Septennial Act of 1716 was able to effectively undermine the terms of the 1694 Triennial Act, ushering in the lengthy rule of a Whig oligarchy.

The revolution also fostered the growth of slavery by ending the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the trade in 1698. For the non-white inhabitants of the British Atlantic empire, the Glorious Revolution represented not the broadening of freedom but the expansion of servitude.

Primary Sources

Doc. 1 – Selections from the Invitation to Prince William of Orange, June 30, 1688 (excerpts)

The following invitation was sent to the Prince of Orange by:

• Charles Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury 
• William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire 
• Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby
• Richard Lumley, Lord Lumley
• Henry Compton, Bishop of London 
• Edward Russell 
• Henry Sidney 

“We have great satisfaction to find by 35 [i.e. Russell] and since by Monsieur Zuylestein that Your Highness is so ready and willing to give us such assistance as they have related to us. We have great reason to believe we shall be every day in a worse condition than we are, and less able to defend ourselves, and therefore we do earnestly wish we might be so happy as to find a remedy before it be too late for us to contribute to our own deliverance. But although these be our wishes, yet we will by no means put Your Highness into any expectations which might misguide your own councils in this matter; so that the best advice we can give is to inform Your Highness truly both of the state of things here at this time and of the difficulties which appear to us.

As to the first, the people are so generally dissatisfied with the present conduct of the government in relation to their religion, liberties and properties (all which have been greatly invaded), and they are in such expectation of their prospects being daily worse, that Your Highness may be assured there are nineteen parts of twenty of the people throughout the kingdom who are desirous of a change and who, we believe, would willingly contribute to it, if they had such a protection to countenance their rising as would secure them from being destroyed before they could get to be in a posture to defend themselves. It is no less certain that much the greatest part of the nobility and gentry are as much dissatisfied, although it is not safe to speak to many of them beforehand; and there is no doubt but that some of the most considerable of them would venture themselves with Your Highness at your first landing, whose interests would be able to draw great numbers to them whenever they could protect them and the raising and drawing of men together.”

Doc. 2 – Declaration of Prince William of Orange, Oct. 10, 1688 (excerpts)

“The Declaration of His Highness William Henry, by the Grace of God, Prince of Orange, etc., of the reasons inducing him to appear in arms in the Kingdom of England, and for preserving the Protestant religion, and for restoring the laws and liberties of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

It is both certain and evident to all men, that the public peace and happiness of any state or kingdom cannot be preserved where the law, liberties, and customs, established by the lawful authority in it, are openly transgressed and annulled; more especially, where the alteration of religion is endeavoured, and that a religion, which is contrary to law, is endeavoured to be introduced; upon which those who are most immediately concerned in it are indispensably bound to endeavour to preserve and maintain the established laws, liberties, and customs, and above all the religion and worship of God that is established among them, and to take such an effectual care, that the inhabitants of the said state or kingdom may neither be deprived of their religion, nor of their civil rights; which is so much the more necessary, being the greatness and security both of kings, royal families, and of all such as are in authority, as well as the happiness of their subjects and people, depend in a most especial manner upon the exact observations and maintenance of these their laws, liberties, and customs.

It is also manifest and notorious, that as His Majesty was, upon his coming to the Crown, received and acknowledged by all the subjects of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as their King, without the least opposition, though he then made open profession of the popish religion, so he did then promise, and solemnly swear at his coronation, that he would maintain his subjects in the free enjoyment of their laws and liberties, and, in particular, that he would maintain the Church of England as it was established by law.”

Doc. 3 – Address of the Lord Mayor and the City of London to Prince William of Orange, Dec. 11, 1688

“We are taking into consideration Your Highness’s fervent zeal for the Protestant religion, manifested to the world in your many and hazardous enterprises, which it hath pleased Almighty God to bless with miraculous success, we render our deepest thanks to the Divine Majesty for the same; and beg leave to present our most humble thanks to Your Highness, particularly for your appearing in arms in this Kingdom, to carry on and perfect your glorious design to rescue England, Scotland, and Ireland from slavery and popery, and in a free parliament to establish the religion, the laws, and the liberties of these Kingdoms upon a sure and lasting foundation.”

Doc. 4 – The English Bill of Rights, 1689 (excerpts)

“And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare:

• That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;
• That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal;
• That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretense of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
• That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
• That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;
• That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;
• That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;
• That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;
• That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;
• That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;
• And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.
• And that the oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all persons of whom the oaths have allegiance and supremacy might be required by law, instead of them; and that the said oaths of allegiance and supremacy be abrogated.

I, A.B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. So help me God.

Upon which their said Majesties did accept the crown and royal dignity of the kingdoms of England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons contained in the said declaration. And thereupon their Majesties were pleased that the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, being the two Houses of Parliament, should continue to sit, and with their Majesties’ royal concurrence make effectual provision for the settlement of the religion, laws and liberties of this kingdom, so that the same for the future might not be in danger again of being subverted, to which the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons did agree, and proceed to act accordingly.”

Doc. 5 – William of Orange landing at Brixham, Torbay, Nov. 5, 1688

Wyck, Jan; William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688; National Maritime Museum;

Doc. 6 – Song: The Boyne Water

https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/anthology-of-irish-verse/42-the-boyne-water/

About the Author

Thomas “Tom” Quinn Marabello is a former teacher who taught secondary history/social studies for over a decade, including AP European History. He got his BA in History from Marymount University and his MA in Medieval and Early Modern European Studies from Georgetown University. While a teacher, Tom did two National Endowment for the Humanities summer study tours in Europe, was a Fulbright-Hays recipient to Bulgaria, and did graduate course work at the University of Galway in Ireland. He has done curriculum work and curated online resources for the National Council for History Education, Renaissance Society of America and the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. Tom currently works for Maritz Global Events and is a part-time guide at the President Woodrow Wilson House. He is also involved with the Swiss American Historical Society where he serves as Vice President, is on the editorial review board, and regularly writes articles for the SAHS Review. Tom lives in Washington, DC.

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Britain’s Glorious Revolution, 1688-1715

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The Anglo-Dutch Moment Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its World Impact

• Editor: Jonathan I. Israel , Princeton University, New Jersey
• Date Published: October 2003
• availability: Available
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521544061

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Much new research and writing on the Glorious Revolution of 1688–91 in England, Scotland, Ireland and North America, and on the Dutch role in the Revolution, has materialized in the last few years in connection with the tercentenary celebrations of 1988 and 1989 and the various accompanying conferences, symposia, and exhibitions in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. There has also been a spate of associated publications. This is, however, the first large-scale work to emerge from the tercentenary commemoration, and the first to attempt to bring together the main strands of the new research and writing for the general reader and for the student, placing the English Revolution of 1688–89 for the first time in its full British, European and American setting, and showing how fundamentally our picture of the Revolution itself, as well as the Revolutionary process of 1688–91 as a whole, is now being transformed.

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• length: 520 pages
• dimensions: 247 x 189 x 28 mm
• weight: 0.936kg

Table of Contents

List of plates List of illustrations List of abbreviations Editor's preface Foreword by the President of the British Academy General introduction Jonathan I. Israel Part I. The Glorious Revolution: 1. James II's Revolution: royal policies, 1686–92 J. R. Jones 2. The sensible revolution John Morrill 3. The Dutch role in the glorious revolution Jonathan I. Israel 4. Church and state reformed? the revolution of 1688–9 in Scotland Ian B. Cowan 5. The Williamite revolution in Ireland, 1688–91 D. W. Hayton 6. The revolution of 1688–9 in the American colonies Richard R. Johnson 7. The revolution of 1688–9 and the English republican tradition Blair Wordern Part II. Background and World Impact: 8. Freedom in seventeenth-century Dutch thought and practice E. H. Kossman 9. William III, Brandenburg, and the construction of the anti-French coalition, 1672–88 Wouter Troost 10. Of providence and protestant winds: the Spanish Armada of 1588 and the Dutch armada of 1688 Jonathan I. Israel and Geoffrey Parker 11. The Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 and the House of Savoy Robert Oresko 12. Sequel to revolution: the economics of England's emergence as a Great Power, 1688–1712 D. W. Jones 13. The English and Dutch East India Companies and the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 K. N. Chaudhuri and Jonathan I. Israel 14. William III and the Glorious Revolution in the eyes of Amsterdam Sephardi writers: the reactions of Miguel de Barrios, Joseph Penso de la Vega, and Manuel de Leão Harm den Boer and Jonathan I. Israel 15. A fateful alliance? William III and England in Dutch historiography, 1688–9 to 1988–9 P. J. A. N. Rietbergen 16. Epilogue: the glorious revolution Hugh Trevor-Roper Index.

Contributors

Jonathan I. Israel, J. R. Jones, John Morrill, Ian B. Cowan, D. W. Hayton, Richard R. Johnson, Blair Wordern, E. H. Kossman, Wouter Troost, Geoffrey Parker, Robert Oresko, D. W. Jones, K. N. Chaudhuri, Harm den Boer, P. J. A. N. Rietbergen, Hugh Trevor-Roper

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — John Locke — The Impact of John Locke and the Glorious Revolution on Modern Political Thought

The Impact of John Locke and The Glorious Revolution on Modern Political Thought

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1 The Glorious Revolution and its Constitutional Legacy

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• Published: March 2011
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This chapter examines the ways in which the British and Irish viewed the constitution made between 1689 and 1701, not just during those years, but over the course of the following century. Abundant evidence exists that many of the British and the Protestant Irish saw the Glorious Revolution and associated constitutional developments as distinguishing their countries from the rest of Europe. Yet we can also see that many contemporaries were well aware of Britain's connections with continental politics, and that they envisaged Britain's own constitution as part of a European pattern, the origins of which lay in the Gothic past.

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