8.4  The Glorious Revolution

King James II, 1685 - 1688

James II

            In 1685, on the death of King Charles II, his younger brother James, Duke of York, ascended the throne.  The English political nation braced itself for a difficult time, knowing with relief that their 52-year-old Catholic monarch would not live forever and would be succeeded by one of his Protestant daughters.  As a personality James II was hard-working, conscientious, absolutist, humorless, and politically arrogant and insensitive.  It was clear that he had learned nothing from his father's experience and his brother's good example.  His bitter years of exile during the Commonwealth had apparently hardened his resolve to rule as king outright regardless of Parliament and other constitutional limitations on royal authority.

             James' reign began on a troubling note.  The illegitimate son of Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, appealing to Whig and Protestant sentiment, led an abortive rebellion to win the throne for himself.  James' army quickly crushed Monmouth's poorly organized supporters, but the King then authorized a campaign of reprisal that shocked the country.  Royal officers with the support of the army arrested thousands of suspected traitors.  Following questionable trials (known as the "bloody assizes") before royal judges, some 400 were executed and another 1200 were exiled to penal settlements in the Caribbean.  Many saw James' revenge as motivated by religion and the persecutions as reminiscent of the Catholic reaction during the reign of Mary Tudor.  James refused to disband the army, which was ordered to encamp just outside London, a center of strong Whig sentiment.  At a time when Catholicism was on the offensive in Europe (Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes also in 1685), James' policies seemed a very real threat to English Protestantism.

             James' actions would quickly antagonize the political nation and drive his Tory supporters into disillusioned alienation.  Instead of working with the Tory-dominated Commons, James prorogued (temporarily adjourned) and later dissolved the Parliament with the intent of ruling on his own.  He suspended (refused to enforce) the Test Act and appointed Catholics to government offices and military commands, claiming as his prerogative the right to enforce law as he pleased.

             In an effort to win popular support for his crown, James, in 1687 and again in 1688, issued Declarations of Indulgence granting religious freedom to all Englishmen - Catholics and dissenters - thus ending the spiritual monopoly of the Anglican Church.  The king ordered that the Declaration be read by the English bishops (all Anglican, of course) from their pulpits.  When seven bishops refused the king's order and petitioned the crown to revoke the Declaration on the grounds that it was illegal, James ordered them arrested and imprisoned on the charge of seditious libel.  In June 1688, all seven were acquitted following a celebrated trial before a jury of the Court of the King's Bench. 

The Glorious Revolution, 1688 - 1689

             In June 1688, James' wife, Queen Mary, gave birth to a son, James Edward Stuart, popularly known at first as "Baby Jamie" and later as the "Old Pretender".  (When James heard London's church bells chiming across the city, he thought the cacophony was in honor of the the birth of his son. The bells, in reality, were in celebration of the release of the seven bishops.) Born of Catholic parents, the new direct heir to the throne was baptized a Roman Catholic.  The birth of Baby Jamie was the catalyst that set off the Glorious Revolution.  Angered by James' absolutist policies but committed to the tradition of legitimate hereditary succession, the Tories had been willing to support the king as long as his heirs were Protestant.  The birth of a son immediately removed James' Protestant daughters Mary and Anne as his immediate successors.  The prospect of a continuing Catholic Stuart monarchy was unacceptable to the Tory leadership.  “Baby Jamie” was born on the same day that the bishops were acquitted.  Later that day the leaders of the Tories joined with the Whigs and secretly agreed to invite the Dutch Stadholder William of Orange to uphold his wife's (James' daughter Mary's) right to the throne and save English liberties from absolutism and "popery." In effect, the leaders of the English political nation were asking the Dutch prince to invade their country and make his wife their monarch.  William agreed to accept the offer only on the condition that he be named King of England as well.  (William was an indirect heir to the throne in his own right through his mother, who was King James' sister.)  The events that followed are known in English history as the "Glorious Revolution."

             In early November 1688, William, with a small army, set sail for England.  An English fleet sent to intercept the Dutch was scattered by a storm, and the invaders arrived unopposed.  (William's Whig partisans rejoiced that a "Protestant Wind" had again "saved" England.) James, angered and distraught by the treason around him, including that of his daughter and son-in-law, ordered General John Churchill, the commander of the royal army, to repulse the invader.  Unbeknownst to James was that Churchill had been one of the Whig conspirators party to the plot to invite William to invade England!  Churchill dutifully marched his forces to meet the enemy and then joined his army with that of William.  James was left virtually defenseless.

             In December James and the royal family fled England to France.  The king's enemies decided it would be better to let James escape, thus giving the appearance of his having voluntarily abandoned the throne, rather than to capture him.  In the bizarre circumstances whereby the royal family escaped by small boat down the Thames to a waiting ship, James, anxious to avoid its capture, threw the royal seal into the river.  The royal seal was used to authenticate all official documents. Without it, James, unknowingly, was symbolically abdicating his power.  James took refuge in France where Louis XIV continued to recognize him as the legitimate king of England and allowed him residence as if a visiting head of state at the Palace of St. Germain-en-Laye near Paris.  Back in England, the Whig conspirators proclaimed the English throne vacant.

            In January 1689 a special "Convention Parliament," called at William's request, met at Coventry.  Overwhelmingly Whig in its make-up, the new Parliament formally invited William to rule as King in joint monarchy with his wife Mary.  Under the terms of the earlier agreement, William III and Mary II would share fully the powers of the crown according to the legal traditions of English constitutional law.

The Revolutionary Settlement, 1689 - 1701

            To confirm its new relationship with the crown, Parliament, in January 1689, issued the Bill of Rights, in effect, the contract through which William and Mary - and all future English monarchs - would hold the crown and exercise royal power.  The most significant statement of the English constitution since the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights stated the powers of the crown and the specific rights of the English political nation of property holders.  The Bill of Rights was very much a statement of limitations upon the power of the crown making the crown subject to law.  The crown, for example, could not dispense with or suspend law without the consent of Parliament.  It could not collect taxes nor maintain a standing army in peacetime without the consent of Parliament.  It could not arrest or punish those who petitioned the crown nor interfere with the election of members of the House of Commons.  It must allow freedom of speech and debate in Parliament.  It could not impose cruel or unusual punishments.  It called for frequent meetings of Parliament for "the redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws."  No longer would the crown be able to act in an arbitrary fashion seeking to build royal absolutism.  The Bill of Rights made the crown the executive branch of government working in constitutional partnership with Parliament in the exercise of sovereignty over England.

            Because the new King was a Dutch Calvinist, Parliament had to accommodate his government with English law.  After all, the new monarchs were the heads of the Anglican Church - the established Church of England.  In recognition of William's religion and to win further support for the new monarchy, an Act of Toleration was passed in 1689.  This new law granted religious freedom to all English Protestants.  The Anglican Church remained the national church but no longer the only legal church.  In spite of the fact that Calvinists now had religious freedom, the Test Act remained in effect, however, and Catholicism remained outlawed.  Religious toleration did not mean religious equality.

                 The third piece of Whig legislation making up the Revolutionary Settlement was the 1701 Act of Settlement.  By 1700 it was clear that the future of Protestant royal succession was in jeopardy.  William and Mary had no children.  Following Mary's death in 1694, her sister Anne became William's heir.  While Anne had many children, none had survived to succeed William.  Her only surviving child died at age ten in 1700.  Were William to die, the closest direct heir to the throne after Anne was the Stuart Prince, James (Baby Jamie).  Parliament, alarmed that the Catholic Stuarts might regain the throne, passed the Act of Settlement guaranteeing a Protestant line of royal succession.  According to this law, the crown would pass from William to Anne and then to her closest Protestant relative, her cousin Sophia of the north German state of Hanover.  Should Sophia die before Anne, the crown would pass to Sophia's heirs.  The Act of Settlement, therefore, excluded the Stuarts from royal succession.

The Reign of William III (1689 - 1702) and Mary II (1689 - 1694)

            The new monarchs of England did not impress their personalities upon their subjects.  Mary was quite content to allow her husband to rule on his own despite her sharing joint power with him.  She virtually disappeared from English public life once she became queen.  She died in 1694, and England was William's alone.  William was first and foremost a Dutchman and disliked things English.  His Calvinist upbringing caused him to be suspicious of the laxness of English upper class morals.  A popular satirical rhyme referred to him as the curfew-imposing "Wee Willie Winkie."  Speaking English with difficulty, he was awkward in the company of his new countrymen.  Uninterested in domestic affairs, he allowed the officers of his government relatively free reign to make policy.  William did recognize that royal administration was more effective if the king's officials came from the party with the majority in the House of Commons.  By appointing Whigs as his officers, William unknowingly contributed to the continued development of Cabinet government.

            Although King of England, William III directed his attention primarily to the international situation on the Continent.  The balance of power had again been upset by Louis XIV's unrelenting ambition to extend France to the Rhine.  Committed to the defense of his beloved Netherlands, William had already engineered the anti-French alliance known as the League of Augsburg which was then at war with France.  England, thus, entered the war against France, which would last until 1697.

            The new monarchy faced problems closer to home - rebellions in both Scotland and Ireland.  In Scotland, highland Catholic clans proclaimed their loyalty to the exiled Stuarts and rose in rebellion.  Protestant lowland clans loyal to William and Mary efficiently crushed the Catholic rebellion in 1690.  Although the Stuart cause was defeated, sentiment for their exiled royal family would continue to run strong throughout the Scottish highlands.

            The situation in Ireland was much more serious.  Immediately upon the expulsion of James II from England, the Irish Catholic population rose in widespread rebellion against English rule and the English presence in Ireland.  The Irish rebels proclaimed their loyalty to the Stuart crown and invited James II to lead them.  James, seeing an opportunity to regain his throne, accepted.  Louis XIV promised French support.  Receiving a triumphant welcome in Dublin, James was proclaimed the rightful king.  Granting religious freedom to Irish Catholics and ordering the return of all lands confiscated since 1641, James put himself at the head of an enthusiastic Irish rebel army and prepared to meet the inevitable English opposition.

            William, like Cromwell over a half century earlier, personally led English forces in suppressing the Irish rebellion.  Once again, fate sided with William.  His small fleet of warships that protected the ships ferrying the English army to Ireland would have been easy prey for French naval forces operating off the Irish coasts.  The French, however, missed the opportunity to destroy William, and the English army landed safely in Ireland.  The Protestant Scotch-Irish of Ulster (Northern Ireland) rallied to "King Billy" and joined him against James.  The two armies met in the decisive battle of the rebellion along the Boyne River on July 12, 1690.  There, James' combined Irish and French forces were soundly defeated and the rebellion was broken.  In Protestant Northern Ireland today, July 12 is still celebrated as "Orangeman's Day," in recognition of the Protestant victory in the Battle of the Boyne.  Defeated, James again fled to France.  William's forces efficiently mopped up remaining Catholic opposition.

            In response to the Catholic rebellion, the English Parliament created a new Irish Parliament made up entirely of Anglicans, many from England.  In 1691 the new Irish Parliament imposed the hated Penal Code.  The Penal Code was a series of severely repressive measures intended to subjugate Catholic Ireland to English political, economic, and social domination.  The Catholic Church was again outlawed and the freedoms and rights of Irish Catholics were severely limited.  Catholic schools and universities were outlawed.  Catholics were forbidden to own property and enter the professions (law, medicine, etc.).  Voting was restricted to the Irish Protestant minority.  Other conditions of the Code restricted Irish manufacturing and commerce in order to eliminate Irish business competition with England.  The limits were so severe as virtually to destroy the once profitable Irish woolen and glassware export trade.  The Penal Code, in effect, attempted to destroy the traditional Catholic identity of Ireland and reduce Ireland to total economic dependence upon England.  It is no wonder that the Irish hate William III as much as Oliver Cromwell!

            One of the most significant economic developments during William's reign was the formation of the Bank of England in 1694.  The Bank of England was a private corporation virtually created through investment in the English government.  In return for a loan of £1.2 million backed by government bonds (the government's promise to repay at interest), a group of private investors was permitted to found the Bank.  The wealthy Whig merchants and financiers who owned the bank had good reason to support the crown in its war against France and James.  As England's commercial interests were strongly represented in the Parliament and could therefore influence royal policy-making, they were willing to loan large sums of money to the crown.  The Bank became the agent of England's growing national debt.  Very simply, because the bank controlled government debts, people saw the crown as a good investment and were willing to extend it credit.  Thus it was that England would be able to finance effectively the huge costs of the wars of the 18th century without having to impose a severe tax burden on its people.

             William's last year saw him again focused on events developing on the Continent.  In 1700 Spain's King Charles II's will named Louis XIV's grandson, the young Philip of Anjou, as the new King of Spain.  With Bourbon rule in Spain, the prospect of "universal monarchy" seemed more real than ever before.  The security of all European states, especially the Netherlands and England, was threatened as the balance of power appeared tipped in Louis' favor.  Using his considerable diplomatic skills, William again set about the task of alliance building.  The result was the Grand Alliance of 1701, an impressive coalition of states arrayed against Bourbon France and Spain.  All knew that war was inevitable and that it would be a big one.  William never lived to see the fruits of his diplomacy.  He died in 1702 before hostilities broke out.  According to the conditions of the Act of Settlement, William was succeeded by his sister-in-law Anne.

Sources for the Glorious Revolution and Revolutionary Settlement

Blitzer, Charles. Age of Kings. New York: Time-Life Books, 1967.

Churchill, Winston S. Marlborough: His Life and Times. New York: Scribners, 1968.

Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Louis XIV. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution. New York: Norton, 1961.

Knapton, Ernest. Europe 1450 – 1815. New York: Scribners, 1958.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Palmer, Robert R et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.

Smith, Lacey Baldwin. This Realm of England. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1971.

Trevelyan, George Macauley. England Under the Stuarts. London: Putnam, 1916.

Tucker, Albert. A History of English Civilization. New York: Harper, 1972.

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Images are from Wikipedia sources.