This is the fourth and final of the English Civil War series. The politics of English state religion and fears of the "dangers" of dissenters and Catholics led to the establishment of William of Orange and Mary Stuart on the English throne after what turned out to be a token defense to their invasion from the Netherlands. How this fifty year stretch of English history became embedded in the psyche of the North American colonies is a whole different issue, which includes a special role for mass media in the form of pamphleteers.
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In
1688, just three years after Charles II’s death, his brother and heir faced
domestic turmoil and invasion by a foreign army. James II squandered the political and religious settlement
Charles crafted by issuing a second Declaration of Indulgence without the
approval of Parliament, bringing Catholics into government, and interfering
with the Parliamentary elections of 1688.
These acts brought England’s latent fears of popery and arbitrary
government to the surface once more, and paved the way for William III’s
invasion of England. The key
issues of the preceding Stuart monarchy and English Civil Wars dominated
England’s political landscape, with the key difference that James’ predecessors
acted to defend their power, while James acted out of religious motives.
Despite
the apparently secure position of his government, which could operate without
recourse to parliaments due to its financial security, James II managed to turn
the opinions of even loyalists against him by the end of 1688. His first misstep was the second
Declaration of Indulgence, which allowed Catholics and Protestant dissenters
freedom to worship as they chose, and removed oath taking as a requirement for
holding office. James followed the
Declaration by aggressively including Catholics in government and higher
education. The high visibility of
Catholics at court, including the Queen, a papal envoy, and the Jesuit Fr.
Petre inflamed anti-Catholic sentiment.
The
promotion of Catholics at court combined with renewed fears of arbitrary
government. First, James II
prorogued the Parliament of 1685 to quell its dissent over Catholic officers
and cavalry troops in his standing army after the Monmouth Rebellion. Then, he made his 1687 and
1688 Declarations of Indulgence without consultation with Parliament, creating
fears among Protestants that the safeguards of the religious settlement of
Charles II’s restoration were gone.
Finally, James imprisoned the Seven Bishops who petitioned against the
Declaration of Indulgence, and charged them with seditious libel. Despite the juror’s refusal to find the
Bishops guilty, James viewed their disobedience as an act of rebellion.
The
English fear of both Catholics and arbitrary government during the seventeenth
century did not occur in isolation.
The Thirty Years’ War and the Catholic Counter-Reformation in
Continental Europe provided the backdrop to the drama unfolding in
England. By the 1680’s only the
United Provinces and England stood against the continued expansion of Catholic
France. Jonathan Scott argues that
Protestants were defensive and fearful due to the Counter-reformation and
French imperial expansion, and that James’ actions exacerbated the fears of
both English and Dutch Protestants, particularly when he ordered three English
regiments defending the United Provinces from France to return to England. Renewed French
efforts to destroy the United Provinces, and Louis XIV’s revocation of the edict
of Nantes enhanced the climate of fear Protestants lived in.
Unlike
the majority of Englishmen, James believed that the Netherlands were a greater
threat to England than France. Not only were the United Provinces a republic, but they
allowed the most religious freedom of any European state. The Dutch also competed with English
merchants around the globe and possessed military and naval power overshadowing
England’s. James also believed
that the United Provinces financed the Monmouth rebellion, and provided a
refuge to English dissidents, making it a direct threat to the security of his
throne. James’
subjects, however, viewed France as a much more significant threat due to Louis
XIV’s persecution of the Huguenots and his insistence that his power as monarch
had no earthly limits. France had
also erected trade barriers to English finished goods, making France both a
ideological and financial adversary.
The
combination of English and Dutch fear for the future of Protestantism and Dutch
security concerns resulted in the Dutch invasion of England. The goal of the invasion, led by
William, Prince of Orange, was to secure English Protestantism and to ensure
England’s assistance against France. A coalition of Tory and Whig gentry invited William to
liberate England from James’ tyranny, writing that both officers and soldiers
were so opposed to James’ pro-Catholic policies that they would desert the army
to support a Dutch invasion (Pincus, 38).
When William’s force landed in England, some English officers did defect
to him, and other members of the gentry took arms against their monarch.
In
contrast to the Scottish invasion of England at the beginning of the First
Civil War, William occupied London, understanding that it was the key to the
Kingdom. While the
Whigs requested that William take over the government of England after James
fled the country, he called an Assembly of the Commons in order to convene a
parliament and to re-establish a government in England. The Dutch goal in invading England was
not simply to depose James, but to ensure that English Protestants were secure,
and to gain English military support against France. Since the English held such fear of republican government,
the United Provinces were forced to preserve the English monarchy and
Parliaments. This
requirement meant that William needed to restore the anti-French Parliaments of
the 1670’s and 1680’s, even if James remained as King of England.
The
Assembly of the Commons recalled the members of the Oxford Parliament of 1681,
which called for new elections.
The electorate returned relatively even numbers of Tory and Whig
members, with some communities decided to return one member of each party. The Speakers of
both the Commons and Lords were chosen primarily for their acceptability to all
of the members of each House. A
prodigious pamphlet campaign accompanied Parliament’s debates over the monarchy
and its limitations. The pamphlets
advocated solutions covering the political spectrum from declaring William and
Mary King and Queen, to establishing a regency for James, to starting anew. Ultimately, William and Mary were offered their crowns with a
reiteration of the limitations of English monarchs, documented primarily in the
Declaration of Rights.
In addition to the Declaration of Rights, Parliamentarians demanded that
William act to root out popery and to defend England’s interests from France.
The
key provisions of the Declaration of Rights, which became the English Bill of
Rights, included strictures against the practices of all of the Stuart
monarchs, including extra-parliamentary taxation, interference in elections,
maintenance of standing armies, and assignment of excessive bail or fines. The Convention also decreed that
members of the royal family could not marry Catholics, that Catholics could not
succeed the crown, and liberty of conscience for Protestants. As a defensive measure, the
Declaration also decreed that the king could not dissolve Parliaments in the
midst of business.
Historians
continue to debate the events of the Glorious Revolution, the results, and who
the “winners” of the settlement were.
A key question is whether the Glorious Revolution was an actual
revolution, or a restoration of traditional English government. Hoak and Feingold argue that the
financial and military changes such as the development of the Bank of England
and system of public credit were revolutionary changes, while Holmes argues
that the Glorious Revolution was a restoration of political power followed by
adaptations to new economic and military realities. Holmes’ conservative view of the
revolution as a restoration is that Parliament merely reasserted its rights
under the Ancient Constitution.
The
other side of the argument, that the Glorious Revolution was a revolution,
contends that the change in the succession with the crowning of William and
Mary, the Exclusion from Catholics from the succession, radical changes in
foreign policy, and establishment of more limited monarchy were revolutionary
in the modern sense.
Since the Tories and Bishops were opposed to any changes in the
succession, this alone could qualify the settlement as revolutionary in nature. The manner in which
the crown was transferred to William and Mary was a radical change – parliament
determined that James had abdicated, or been deposed, by his flight from
England. The normal succession
would then designate either the Prince of Wales or Mary as the next
monarch. The traditional way to
alter the succession would be for William to take the crown as the spoils of
conquest, as his lawyers suggested. The break in the succession, then, represents a true
revolution in its own right.
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