Glorious Revolution

Factsheet G4 General Series August 2010 domiciliate of jet learning emplace ment The fantabulous rotation Contents Introduction 2 Events of 1685 1689 2 1685 succession of pack II 2 1686 bring up of the try Acts 2 1687 Declaration of Indulgence 3 1688 the resplendent mutation 3 1689 Bill of RIghts 4 historical Interpretations 4 Appendix A 6 The Declaration of Rights February 13 1689 6 Further enjoining 8 hitting information 8 Feedback form 9 The term Glorious Revolution refers to the series of so farts in 1688-89 which culminated in the exile of nance James II and the accession to the throne of William and Mary.It has also been seen as a watershed in the develop manpowert of the constitution and especially of the role of fantan. This Factsheet is an attempt to explain why. This Factsheet is unattached on the internet through http//www. fan tan. uk/about/how/guides/ particulars heets1/ August 2010 FS No. G4 Ed 3. 2 ISSN 0144-4689 fantanary Copyright ( family line of cat valium) 2002 May be reproduced for purposes of private canvas or research without permission. Reproduction for sale or different commercialized purposes not permitted. 2 The Glorious Revolution Ho utilize of jet Information Office Factsheet G4Introduction The Glorious Revolution is a term used to call the peaceful dash in which sevens asserted its rights over the monarchy in 1688. This Factsheet begins with a chronology of the events that took place betwixt 1685 and 1689 starting with the death of Charles II and culminating in the Bill of Rights in 1689. The Factsheet then looks at some historical interpretations of these events. Events of 1685 1689 1685 succession of James II On 6 February Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother, the Catholic James II.In spite of widespread fears of Catholicism, and the previous attempts which had been made to exclude James II from the throne, the succession occurred without incident. In fact on 19 May, when Jamess fantan met, it was overwhelmingly loyalist in composition. The theatre of operations voted James for life the resembling revenues his brother had enjoyed. Indeed after the suppressed invasions by the Dukes of Argyle and Monmouth1, the common land voted additional harmonizes, accompanied by fervent protestations of loyalty.However, this fervour did not last. When the House was recalled after the summer, James asked the Commons for much money for the maintenance of his stand up armament. He further antagonised them by asking for the repeal of the render Acts. These were the 1673 Acts that call for office holders to prove that they were not Catholics by making a announcement against transubstantiation2. Between 12 and 19 November parliament declined to repeal the Acts and refused the extra money.In their resolve to the Kings speech parliament made it clear that the Kings employment of Catholic officers was of the superior concern to the rights of all your Majestys dutiful and loy al subjects and begged him to allay their apprehensions and jealousies. On 20 November, James prorogued parliament, realising that they would not agree to repeal the penal laws against Catholics. 1686 repeal of the Test Acts In April, in a collusive law case, Godden v Hales, the judge ruled that James II could dispense with the Test Acts without the con displace of Parliament in individual cases.The King began to introduce roman type Catholics and some dissenters into the army, universities, and even posts within the Anglican Church. On 15 July an Ecclesiastical Commission was organise up, to which the Kings powers as Governor of the Church of England were delegated. This Commission could deprive the clergy of their functions, and one of its first base acts was to suspend atomic number 1 Compton, Bishop of London, be example he had refused to suspend a London clergyman who had preached against Roman Catholicism. A papal envoy was even received with keep an eye on in Whitehall .In Scotland, the Marquis of Queensberry was dismissed as Royal Commissioner when the Scottish Parliament also failed to repeal the Test Acts He was replaced by a mostly Roman Catholic administration. In these circumstances, it was not surprising that throughout 1686 a growing fear manifested itself among the Kings subjects that James was plotting to impose his own religious checks on the country. The author John Evelyn wrote in his diary, The Lord Jesus defend his small flock and preserve this threatened Church and nation. Meanwhile, to secure a House of Commons that would support his policies, James began a campaign to appoint gentle electors. Deputy Lieutenants, Justices of the Peace and members of municipal corporations (who had the right to vote) were asked whether they would support candidates departing to repeal the penal laws and 1 2 the Duke of Monmouth was the illegitimate son of Charles II The Roman Catholic belief that bread and wine ar changed into the body and k in of Jesus Christ 3 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4Test Acts. On the basis of their answers, mevery were turned out, to be replaced with Roman Catholics and dissenters. 1687 Declaration of Indulgence On April 5 the King create a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended all the religious penal laws We cannot entirely heartily wish, as it will easily be believed, that all the slew of our Dominions were members of the Catholic Church, yet we humbly thank Almighty God that it is our touch sensation that conscience ought not to be constrained nor good deal forced in matters of mere faith. These were brave words, but Jamess heavy-handed insensitivity to the fears of the majority of his subjects, and his use of the Royal Prerogative without Parliamentary approval were causing deep unease.In July the King received Ferdinando dAdda as official Papal Nuncio to the Court of St James. end-to-end the rest of the year, the Lord Lieutenants were instructed to call together prominent local people and ask them, if they were to be chosen as Members, whether they would approve the repeal of the penal laws, and other questions esigned to the state(prenominal) end. Most of the existing Lord Lieutenants refused to put these questions, and in August, nine were dismissed by the King. In any case, the surviving answers to the Kings questions present an almost unanimous opposition among the prominent and influential local men who had been canvassed. 1688 the Glorious Revolution The Declaration of Indulgence was reissued by James on April 27 1688, and in an act of gross miscalculation he lucid Anglican clergy to read it from the pulpit to their congregations on two consecutive Sundays.On 18 May the Archbishop of Canterbury and six other bishops refused to read it and petitioned against the point, thus entering Whig autobiography as the Seven Bishops. The petition requested the King to withdraw the order on the grounds that the f ree-baseation of his proclamation of indulgence was illegal, beingness base on his suspending power, actions that had often been condemned by Parliament. On June 8 the Seven Bishops were arrested and sent to the Tower to await trial two days after this, with rattling poor timing, the Queen gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales, who was baptised concord to the Roman Catholic rite.The prospect of an unending Catholic dynasty ruling without Parliament gave rise to ugly rumours that the baby was no true prince but a substitute smuggled into the Queens bed in a warming pan. When, a few days afterwards, on 30 June the Seven Bishops were acquitted by jury, huge crowds celebrated in the streets, burning effigies of the Pope, and attacking Catholic establishments. The kindred day, a letter of invitation was signed by seven prominent politicians (Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, the Bishop of London, Henry Sidney and Edward Russell).This invited William of Ora nge, Protestant son-in-law to James, to intervene to save both Church and State. In fact William had already made his decision to intervene, and on October 1 issued his manifesto from the Hague, lean at length the allegedly illegal actions of the last three historic period Therefore it is that we involve thought fit to go over to England, and to bleed with us a force sufficient, by the blessing of God, to defend us from the violence of those vile councillors and we, being desirous that our intention in this way may be rightly understood, turn over prep bed this Declaration William get at Torbay in Devon with about 15,000 (mostly Dutch) troops on November 5 the precisely successful large-scale landing in England since 1485. James still had his stand up army, but the enthusiasm with which William was welcomed and the defections from Jamess 4 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4 army strengthened Williams hand. He entered London on Decembe r 19, and a few days of youngr James II was allowed to escape for France. 1689 Bill of Rights On 22 January a new Parliament first met.This was known as the Convention Parliament although as it was summoned by William of Orange and not the King, was not strictly speaking a Parliament at all. On February 12, the Convention Parliament issued a Declaration of Rights (see Appendix) which acutely condemned the actions of James II and asserted what it described as certain past rights and liberties. The same day, Princess Mary, Williams wife and Jamess elder daughter, arrived in London. Lord Halifax, the leader of the Lords, read the Declaration to both William and Mary on the next day, and then offered them the crown.The declaration was later embodied in the Bill of Rights passed by Parliament in December 1689 this further stipulated that the throne be occupied by a Protestant only and that the succession was to rest with (1) the heirs of Mary (2) the heirs of her sister Anne. Histori cal Interpretations The traditional Whig view of the Glorious Revolution is embodied in doubting Thomas Babington Macaulays The History of England from the accession of James the second, 1849-61. For Macaulay the rotation was a vindication of our antediluvian rights in which it was finally decided hether 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. Macaulays 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 present-day(a) philosopher John Locke had written, James II was guilty of breaking the original narrow down 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 triump h for the integrity 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(p) unchallenged. To some twentieth century historians it has appeared as a respectable revolution, (e. g. Lucile Pinkham, William and the upright Revolution, 1954), involving just the ruling classes and leaving the monarchy in most respects unaltered, just a proper revolution at all.For example, the constitutional historian hybridisation Thompson wrote that apart from determining the succession, the Bill of Rights (which contained the clauses submitted for leaseance 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 licitly possessed. 4 Others have been even more dismissive the Russian historian, Viktor F Semenov, regarded it as a mere coup detat in its conservatism, its bloodlessness and its legalism5.This red ink 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 3 4 5 in Two Treatises of Government 1688-89 Constitutional History of England, London, 1938 Perevorot 1688 The putsch of 1688 in The English Bourgeois Revolution of the 17th century, Moscow, 1954 5 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4 imitations which (it is possible to argue) differed in no major or significant way from the traditional ones. It is rather tempting to see the events of 1688 as a mere codicil to the interregnum6, of no major importance in themselves. However, this is misleading. The civil wars cannot be regarded as finally subsidence Englands political future as a parliamentary monarchy. Neither, of cours e, can the Glorious Revolution of 1688. However, forwards 1688 it is possible to see England as beginning to imprint towards despotism 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 coalesce a wide variety of interests in opposition to his clumsy policies. However, it moldiness 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 Kings 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 regen eration by William III of Englands place in Europe and the wars that this involved, which led to a crucial loss of royal power and establishment of parliamentary supremacy.For character the Triennial Act of 1694 required Parliaments to be summoned every three historic period , and thus prevented future monarchs from ruling without a parliament, a favourite apply of the Stuarts but this is a development seen with hindsight. Constitutional government has endured because it became a garment in the eighteenth century, not because it was established by revolution (great or small) in the seventeenth. 7 6 7 A period between monarchs, i. e. Charles II and William III J Western, Monarch and Revolution, 1972 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4 Appendix A The Declaration of Rights February 13 1689 Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges, and ministers busy by him, did endeavour to subvert and extir pate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the estate. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws, and the execution of laws, without the take to of parliament.By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused concurring to the verbalise mistaken power. By issuing and causing to be executed a commission under the Great Seal for erecting a court called the Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes. By levying money for and to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, for other time and in other manner than the same was granted by parliament.By peak and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without the consent of parliament and quartering soldiers contrary to the law. By causing several good subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to the law. By violating t he freedom of election by members to serve in parliament. By prosecutions in the Court of Kings Bench for matters and causes cognizable only in parliament and by divers other arbitrary and illegal courses.And whereas of late years, partial, corrupt, and unqualified persons have been returned and served on juries in trials, and particularly divers jurors in trials for high treason, which were not freeholders. Excessive bail hath been required of persons committed in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of laws made for the liberty of the subjects. And inordinate fines have been imposed and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted. And several grants and promises made of fines and forfeitures, before any conviction or judgment against the persons, upon whom the same were to be levied. 0. 11. 12. All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes and freedom of this realm. And whereas the state late King James the Second having abdicated the government and the t hrone being thereby vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange (whom it hath pleased Almighty God to make the excellent instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the lords spiritual and worldly, and divers rincipal persons of the Commons) cause earn to be written to the lords spiritual and temporal, being Protestants and other letters to the several counties, cities, universities, boroughs, and Cinque Ports, for the choosing of such(prenominal) persons to represent them, as were of right to be sent to parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon January 22, 1689 . ..And thereupon the verbalize lords spiritual and temporal and Commons . . . do in the first place (as their ancestors in worry case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties, declare 1. . That the fake power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal. That the assumed power of dispensing with laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal. 7 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. That the commission for erecting the late Courts of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes and courts of like nature are illegal and pernicious.That levying money for or to the use of the Crown, by pretence 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 defence 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 jurors ought to be duly impannelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders.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 frequently held. And they do claim, demand, and insist upon all and singular the premises, as their undoubted rights and liberties and that no declaration, judgments, doings or proceedings, to the prejudice of the people in any of the said premises, ought in any wise to be drawn hereafter into sequent of example.To which demands of their rights they are particularly encouraged by the declaration of His Highness the Prince of Orange, as being the only means for obtaining a full redress and alleviate therein. Having therefore an entire confidence that his said Highness the prince of Orange will perfect the deliverance so far advanced by him, and will still preserve them from the violation of their rights, which they have here asserted, and from all other attempts upon their religion, rights and liberties.The said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, assembled at Westminster do resolve that William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange be, and be declared, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the Crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them the said Prince and Princess during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them and that the sole and full exercise of regal power be onl y in, and executed by the said Prince of Orange, in the names of the said Prince and Princess, during their joint lives and after their deceases, the said Crown and royal dignity of the said Kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said Princess and for default of such issue to the Princess of Anne of Denmark and the heirs of her body and for default of such issue to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange. And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons do pray the said Prince and Princess to accept the same accordingly.