5 November 1688 A.D.
(Dutch Calvinistic) King
William III Lands at Torbay, Devon—“Glorious Revolution” in England
Vallance, Edward.
“The Glorious Revolution.” BBC History.
17 Feb 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/glorious_revolution_01.shtml. Accessed 3 Sept
2014.
Fear of Catholic
tyranny
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.
England would become merely a satellite state, under
the control of an all-powerful Catholic monarch.
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.
Public concern about the succession reached fever
pitch in the years 1678-1681. The so-called ‘exclusion crisis’ was provoked by
allegations made by Titus Oates, a former Jesuit novice, of a popish plot to
assassinate Charles II and place his brother on the throne. The fantastical
plot was given credibility by the mysterious death of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey,
the magistrate who first investigated Oates’ claims.
Whig politicians within parliament, led by the earl of
Shaftesbury, promoted exclusion bills which would have prevented James from
succeeding to the throne.
But the radical tactics deployed by the king’s
opponents, including mass petitions and demonstrations, gradually alienated
some initial supporters of exclusion.
Charles’s hand was strengthened further by an
agreement with France reached in March 1681, by which the king received
£385,000 over three years.
With this financial support, and with public opinion
turning against his critics, Charles was able to dissolve parliament on 28
March 1681.
Rebellion and revolt
James II
James II’s authority appeared to be secure when he
succeeded to the throne in February 1685.
The king’s initial promises to defend the existing
government in church and state reassured many of those worried by his personal
faith.
James was well-off financially, with a tax revenue
over £1,200,000. The manipulation of borough charters in the last years of
Charles II’s reign ensured that James’ first parliament was dominated by loyal
Tories.
Parliament also voted James considerable emergency
sums to suppress the rebellion raised by Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son,
the duke of Monmouth in June 1685. James’ army of professional soldiers easily
crushed the 3,000 to 4,000 rebels who joined Monmouth’s cause.
Initial support for the king ebbed away as it became
clear that he wished to secure not only freedom of worship for Catholics, but
also the removal of the Test and Corporation Acts so that they could occupy
public office.
Unease at the king’s appointment of Catholic officers
to the army forced him to prorogue parliament on 20 November 1685.
In April 1687, James issued a declaration of
indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics.
James then attempted to secure his religious
objectives through the use of his prerogative powers. The test case of Godden
vs Hales (1686) established James’ right to suspend the provisions of the Test
Acts, thereby allowing the king to appoint a number of Catholic peers to his
Privy Council.
In April 1687, James issued a declaration of
indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics and granting toleration to
some Protestant dissenters.
In the summer of 1687, James formally dissolved his
parliament and began canvassing officials across the country regarding their
support for the formal repeal of the Test Acts. The information was used to
begin a purge of corporations, aimed at producing a pliable parliament which
would agree to the king’s wishes.
These measures met with increasing opposition from the
Anglican-Tory establishment.
In July, members of Magdalen College, Oxford were
stripped of their fellowships for refusing to appoint the king’s choice, Samuel
Parker, a bishop who supported the repeal of the Test Acts, as their college
president.
In May of 1688, seven leading bishops, including
William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to follow the order to read
the king’s second declaration of indulgence from their pulpits. James responded
by having them arrested for seditious libel and taken to the Tower of London.
Their acquittal at trial was met with widespread public rejoicing.
Dutch invasion
The Anglican campaign against James II’s religious
policies went no further than passive resistance. But a number of English peers
including the earls of Danby and Halifax, and Henry Compton, Bishop of London,
went further, making contact with the Dutch leader, William of Orange.
Two factors moved James II’s opponents to urge William
to intervene militarily. Firstly, after years of trying, James’ Catholic second
wife finally fell pregnant. The birth of a healthy male heir, James Edward
Stuart, on 10 June 1688, dashed hopes that the crown would soon pass to James’s
protestant daughter Mary.
Secondly, William’s co-conspirators believed that the
parliament James planned to summon in the autumn would repeal the Test Acts.
William’s main reason for interfering in English
affairs was pragmatic – to bring England into his war against France.
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.
Revolution
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.
News of the prince’s arrival had sparked off waves of
anti-Catholic rioting in towns and cities across England. The civil unrest
convinced James to leave London and bring out his forces to meet the invading
army in a pitched battle.
James made his first attempt to escape, but was
captured by Kent fishermen near Sheerness.
But the Orangist conspiracy against James had been
maturing for years and had infiltrated James’ own army, with the king’s nephew,
Lord Cornbury, one of the first to defect to William. At this point, James’
health also deserted him. He was frequently debilitated by heavy nosebleeds.
Having reached Salisbury on 19 November with the
intention of resisting William’s advance, James had by the 23 November resolved
to retreat back to London.
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.
On 11 December, in the wake of renewed anti-Catholic
rioting in London, James made his first attempt to escape, but was captured by
Kent fishermen near Sheerness.
The king’s capture was an inconvenience for William,
who was now looked upon as the only individual capable of restoring order to
the country, and on 23 December, with the prince’s connivance, James
successfully fled the country.
The ‘convention parliament’, made up of members from
Charles II’s last parliament, convened on 22 January 1689.
After considerable pressure from William himself,
parliament agreed that he would rule as joint monarch with Mary, rather than
act merely as her consort, and on 13 February William and Mary formally
accepted the throne.
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.
In reality, the Bill of Rights placed few real
restrictions on the crown. It was not until 1694 that the call for regular
parliaments was backed up by the Triennial Act.
Pressure from William also ensured the passage in May
1689 of the Toleration Act, granting many Protestant groups, but not Catholics,
freedom of worship. This toleration was, however, considerably more limited
than that envisaged by James II.
Consequences
If we take the revolution to encompass the whole of
William III’s reign, it certainly imposed limitations on royal authority.
Parliament gained powers over taxation, over the royal
succession, over appointments and over the right of the crown to wage war
independently, concessions that William thought were a price worth paying in
return for parliament’s financial support for his war against France.
William’s wars profoundly changed the British state.
Their massive cost led not only to growth of modern financial institutions –
most notably the Bank of England founded in 1694 – but also to greater scrutiny
of crown expenditure through parliamentary committees of accounts. The
bureaucracy required to harvest all this money grew exponentially too.
In Ireland and Scotland, the settlements were
extremely politically and religiously divisive.
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.
Books
William III by T Claydon
(Longman, 2002)
Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy by T Harris
(Allen Lane, 2006)
The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious
Revolution and its World Impact by J Israel ed. (Cambridge
University Press, 2003)
The Glorious Revolution by J Miller
(Longman, 2nd edn., 1999)
The Glorious Revolution: A Brief History with
Documents by SC A Pincus (St. Martin’s Press, 2005)
England in the 1690s by C Rose
(Blackwell, 1999)
James II by WA Speck (Longman, 2002)
The Glorious Revolution: 1688 and Britain’s Fight for
Liberty by E Vallance (Little, Brown and Co, 2006)
Dr Edward Vallance is Lecturer in Early Modern British
History at the University of Liverpool. He works on seventeenth-century British
political and religious history and is the author of Revolutionary England
and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation,
1553-1682 (Boydell, 2005) and The Glorious Revolution: 1688 and
Britain's Fight for Liberty (Little, Brown and Co, 2006). He is currently
writing a history of English radicalism from Magna Carta to the present day.
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