Glorious Revolution - Brief History, Legacy

The name given to the events (Dec 1688–Feb 1689) during which William landed at Torbay with an army and advanced on London. James II, deserted by John Churchill, later Duke of Malborough, fled from England, effectively abdicating the throne, and William III and Mary II were established by parliament as joint monarchs. The title, coined by Whigs who in the long term benefited most from it, celebrates the bloodlessness of the event, and the assertion of the constitutional importance of parliament.

The Revolution of 1688, commonly known as the Glorious Revolution was the overthrow of James II of England in 1688 by a union of Parliamentarians and the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange). The deposition of the Catholic James II finally and firmly established Protestantism in England.

Brief History

During his three-year reign, King James II fell victim to the political battles in England between Catholicism and Protestantism on the one hand, and on the other, between the divine right of the Crown and the political rights of Parliament. The low church Whigs had failed in their attempt to exclude James from the throne between 1679 and 1681, and James's supporters were the High Church Anglican Tories. When James inherited the throne in 1685, he had much support in the 'Loyal Parliament', which was composed mostly of Tories. James's attempt to relax the penal laws alienated his natural supporters, however, because the Tories viewed this as tantamount to disestablishment of the Church of England. Abandoning the Tories, James looked to form a 'King's party' as a counterweight to the Anglican Tories, so in 1687 James supported the policy of religious toleration and issued the Declaration of Indulgence. By allying himself with the Catholics, Dissenters and nonconformists, James hoped to build a coalition that would give him Catholic emancipation.

In 1686, James coerced the Court of the King's Bench into deciding that the King could dispense with religious restrictions of the Test Acts. James ordered the removal of Henry Compton, the anti-Catholic Bishop of London, and dismissed the Protestant fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford and replaced them with Catholics.

James also created a large standing army and employed Catholics in positions of power in the army. To his opponents in Parliament this seemed like a prelude to arbitrary rule, so James prorogued Parliament without gaining Parliament's consent. The army in Ireland was purged of Protestants who were replaced with Catholics, and by 1688 James had more than 34,000 men under arms in his three kingdoms.

In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence and ordered all clergymen to read it in their churches. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, and six other bishops (see the Seven Bishops) wrote to James asking him to reconsider his policies, they were arrested on charges of seditious libel, but at trial they were acquitted to the cheers of the London crowd.

Matters came to a head in 1688, when James fathered a son;

Conspiracy and William's Landing

In 1686, a group of conspirators met at Charborough House in Dorset to plan the overthrow of "the tyrant race of Stuarts". In 1688, a further conspiracy was launched at Old Whittington, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (see the Immortal Seven), to depose James and replace him with his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange — both Protestants and both grandchildren of Charles I of England. Before the birth of James's son, Mary was the heir to the throne and William was third in line. Landing with a large army at Brixham, Devon on November 5, 1688, William was greeted with much popular support, and local men joined his army.

William's army was primarily defensive; he wanted to land far away from James's army so his English allies could take the initiative in acting against James while he ensured his own protection against potential attacks. James's forward forces gathered at Salisbury, and James went to join them on November 19. Amid anti-Catholic rioting in London, it rapidly became apparent that the troops were not eager to fight, and the loyalty of many of James's commanders was doubtful. In Salisbury, a worried James was suddenly overcome by a serious nose-bleed that he took as an evil omen indicating that he should order his army to retreat. On November 23, John Baron Churchill, one of James's chief commanders, deserted to William. A few days later, James's own daughter, Princess Anne, did the same. James returned to London on November 26. In reality, by that point James was simply playing for time as he already had decided to flee the country.

December 11 saw James attempt to escape, dropping The Great Seal in the Thames along the way.

Upon returning to London on the 16th, James was welcomed by cheering crowds. James went under Dutch guard to Rochester in Kent on December 18, just as William entered London. James then escaped to France on December 23. The lax guard on James and the decision to allow him so near the coast indicates that William might have hoped that a successful escape would avoid the difficulty of deciding what to do with him, especially with the memory of the execution of Charles I still strong. By fleeing, James helped ensure that William's grip was secure. On the 26th William, on the advice of his Whig allies, summoned an assembly of all the surviving MPs of Charles II's reign, thus bypassing the Tories of the Loyal Parliament of 1685. Although James had fled the country, on the 30th William (in a conversation with the Marquess of Halifax) was threatening not to stay in England "if King James came again" and determined to go back to Holland "if they went about to make him [William] Regent".

William made King

In 1689, the Convention Parliament convened and declared that James's flight amounted to abdication. William and Mary were offered the throne as joint rulers, an arrangement which they accepted (William demanded the title of king and disdained the office of regent). On February 13, 1689, Mary II and William III jointly acceded to the throne of England. Although their succession to the English throne was relatively peaceful, much blood would be shed before William's authority was accepted in Ireland and Scotland.

Jacobite Uprisings

James had cultivated support on the fringes of his Three Kingdoms - in Catholic Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Supporters of James, known as Jacobites there were prepared to resist what they saw as an illegal coup by force of arms. An uprising occurred in support of James in Scotland in 1689, the first Jacobite rebellion, led by John Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount of Dundee, known as "Bonnie Dundee", who raised an army from Highland clans. In Ireland, local Catholics led by Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who had been discriminated against by previous English monarchs, took all the fortified places in the kingdom except Derry to hold the Kingdom for James. James himself landed in Ireland with 6000 French troops to try to regain the throne in the Williamite war in Ireland. James fled Ireland following a humiliating defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, but Jacobite resistance was not ended until after the battle of Aughrim in 1691, when over half of their army was killed or taken prisoner.

Legacy

The Revolution of 1688 is considered by some as being one of the most important events in the long evolution of powers possessed by Parliament and by the Crown in England.