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• Introduction *
• The Restoration of King, Church, and Parliament
• Sovereignty In the Crown
• Parliament and the Succession to the Throne
• James Ii and the Ancient Constitution
• Revolution
• Chronology
• The Struggle For Sovereignty, Volume Ii
• Of Parliament
• Henry Vane, the Tryal of Sir Henry Vane
• Earl of Shaftesbury, Two Speeches
• Henry Scobell, Power of the Lords and Commons In Parliament
• Earl of Shaftesbury, Two Seasonable Discourses
• Earl of Shaftesbury, a Letter From a Person of Quality
• Anon, Vox Populi
• Parliament and the Succession
• Elkanah Settle, the Character of a Popish Successour
• William Cavendish, Reasons For His Majesties Passing the Bill of Exclusion
• Benjamin Thorogood, His Opinion of the Point of Succession
• Algernon Sidney, the Very Copy of a Paper Delivered to the Sheriffs
• The King’s Inalienable Prerogative
• John Brydall, the Absurdity of That New Devised State-principle
• Anon, the Arraignment of Co-ordinate-power
• Anon, the King’s Dispensing Power
• Anon, the Clergy’s Late Carriage to the King
• Revolution and Allegiance
• Gilbert Burnet, Measures of Submission to the Supream Authority
• John Wildman, Some Remarks Upon Government
• Samuel Masters, the Case of Allegiance In Our Present Circumstances
• Anon, a Friendly Conference Concerning the New Oath of Allegiance
• In the Wake of Revolution
• Zachary Taylor, Obedience and Submission to the Present Government
• William Sherlock, Their Present Majesties Government Proved to Be Throughly Settled
• Bartholomew Shower, Reasons For a New Bill of Rights

REVOLUTION

William’s arrival in November and James’s dash to France left the realm without king or Parliament. Indeed, in hopes government would be completely stymied James had even torn up writs for his planned Parliament and as he fled had thrown the Great Seal into the Thames. There were no battles. Thousands of Englishmen of all persuasions, unanimous “to a wonder,” flocked to welcome William, while James’s large, leaderless army dissolved.31 The Glorious Revolution was bloodless but not silent. It sparked a torrent of pamphlets, some quite brilliant, more than thirteen hundred titles in 1689 alone.32 Tracts assessed recent grievances and future possibilities and plumbed the most basic issues of government—its origins, its proper form, the ultimate sovereign, issues of conquest and abdication, and the nature of allegiance. Some of this soul-searching and political propaganda rose to the level of brilliant political thought. Thousands of copies of “An Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the supream Authority. . . ,” in which Bishop Gilbert Burnet crisply set out Lockean theories of the rights of man and the origins of society, were printed in Holland and distributed upon William’s arrival in England.33 Burnet’s tract appeared in at least six separate editions as well as in collections of tracts published in 1688 and 1689.

Much literary energy was expended to justify and clarify a political situation that was profoundly ironic. James’s behavior had made a mockery of his divine right pretensions and the divine right theory of monarchy. His flight left his people in a position to reinstate a monarchy if they wished—and on their own terms. Any possibility such a monarch could even pretend to be the exclusive sovereign was ridiculous. James’s former Tory supporters found themselves in the embarrassing position, not unlike that of the seven bishops, of having to abandon their passivist and loyalist principles in fact, if not in theory, and to adopt Whig premises in order to reestablish constitutional government and fill the throne. Further, both Whigs and Tories struggled mightily to distinguish this revolution from that discredited revolution of mid-century, with its regicide and military rule. In the political vacuum many differences dissolved, exposing the shared concepts that undergirded English constitutional thought. That is not to say there were not real conflicts about what course to take as the members of the Convention Parliament, elected to sort out the situation, began their work. There was also the ticklish business of crafting a settlement that would not alienate William. The result of their efforts was the Declaration of Rights of 12 February 1689, which accused James of endeavoring to “Subvert and extirpate the Protestant Religion, and the Lawes and Liberties of this Kingdome,” elevated William and Mary to the throne, and affirmed thirteen of the English people’s “ancient and indubitable” rights, nine of which were actually new.34 The Declaration also contained a specially devised oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Each aspect of the settlement had crucial constitutional ramifications.35

There was an important debate, for example, about whether James should be treated as if he had died or had abdicated. A demise would mean the Crown would immediately devolve upon his heir with no interregnum. Since Protestants claimed James’s baby son was not his child but had been smuggled into the queen’s room in a warming pan, William and Mary could automatically ascend the throne. The problem was that this would omit all reference to James’s misdeeds, to violations of the nation’s laws, liberties, and religion. Many Englishmen and a majority of the members of the Convention agreed with Anthony Cary, Lord Falkland, that a chance to determine “what Power . . . [to] give the King, and what not,” must not be lost, as it had in 1660. They must “not only change hands, but things.”36 Sir Robert Howard made a compelling case that this was no demise but an abdication. By his maladministration and flight, James had “de facto” abdicated. According to the original contract government now “devolved into the people, who are here in civil society and constitution to save . . . [their rights].”37 Howard concluded, “the right is therefore wholly in the people, who are now to new form themselves again, under a governor yet to be chosen.” In a situation akin to Hobbes’s original state of nature, such radical Whig notions terrified Tories who feared if this interpretation were accepted everything might be altered. Indeed, an anonymous author claimed to have stood for election to the Convention Parliament because of that possibility. As he put it, “the thoughts of being one of the Great Planters of a Government which shall last for Ages, and perhaps till time has run out its last Minutes, is no Ordinary thing.”38 During its debates the Convention agreed there had been an original contract, then sidestepped the prickly question of whether they truly represented the English people. They ultimately agreed that James had abdicated leaving the throne vacant.

Other questions emerged. William insisted that Mary’s role as queen be merely ceremonial and that he rule, but on what basis could he claim the throne? Was he a conqueror? Was he to be a king “de jure” or “de facto”? There were frequent comparisons between William’s situation and that of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, two centuries earlier. Both men had wives with a better title; neither was the true heir. According to Mark Goldie, William and his entourage chose to base his claim upon “de facto” kingship, which they saw as a

middle ground to make the revolution acceptable to both Whigs and Tories. But while it may have been acceptable to both parties, in fact it was at odds with the basic political philosophy of each. The Whigs wanted an accountable monarch, not one granted obedience because he had seized the throne.39 The Tories championed strict monarchical succession, which William’s elevation clearly violated. But, as Goldie observed, de facto kingship “bolstered the Court and authoritarian monarchy at the expense of classical Whig principles which tended to undermine kingship and classical Tory principles which tended (in some eyes) to undermine this particular king.”40

The list of thirteen rights affirmed in the Declaration were distilled from a longer list of grievances, many of which required legislative action. The rights proclaimed were those James was charged with threatening or limitations on prerogative powers he was accused of misusing. In the case of the royal prerogative to dispense with a law, the Convention did not remove the power but only took issue with how it “has been assumed and exercised of late.” On the other hand, the king’s ability to suspend a law or the execution of laws without the consent of Parliament was pronounced illegal. The majority of the supposedly ancient rights, however, had been open to dispute in the past or were, in fact, new rights.41 Among the latter was the stipulation that there be no standing army in time of peace without consent of Parliament and that Protestant subjects had a right to keep arms for their defense. These were intended to narrow royal power and give to Parliament and the people control over the sword.

The new oath of allegiance avoided the touchy issue of whether William and Mary were the rightful monarchs and merely asked their subjects to swear to “bee faithfull and beare true Allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary.” Despite its undemanding language, the new oath failed to end the argument over allegiance. A vigorous dispute about whether an honorable man could swear allegiance to the new rulers continued for some years. Many of the arguments echoed those of the allegiance debate of the early 1650s, although this time there was consensus that however one justified the switch of monarchs, the nation meant to have William and Mary as king and queen. The nonjurors, those who refused to take the new oath, were nearly all Anglican clergy who stuck at violating their oath of allegiance to James as long as he lived and claimed the throne. To persuade them to accept the new monarchs the argument that James had abdicated was bolstered by reference to William as the instrument of God’s will, a will that the faithful had to obey. Appeals were made to their civic-mindedness. Surely, it was better to obey the ruler, especially such a selfless ruler as William, than to risk civil war? A “de facto” king had a claim on the obedience of his subjects, especially if he kept order and behaved in a legal manner. Allegiance was loyalty to the community, not merely to a particular monarch. Nonjurors were reminded of earlier English kings with dubious claims to the throne. Over time obedience itself had bestowed legitimacy. An effort was made to avoid resort to Hobbes’s arguments in favor of absolute obedience to any ruler or conqueror who provided security and order.42 This took some doing because the argument for obedience to a de facto monarch was close to the rationale used by Hobbes. William Sherlock, a nonjuror turned loyalist, accomplished the feat when he pointed out that legitimate authority rested on the consent of the governed, and the Convention Parliament had granted William and Mary that consent.43

The work of the Convention Parliament was imperfect. The articles in the Declaration of Rights now seem vague and hesitant. They had been drafted in haste as it was dangerous to leave the kingdom for long without a king and settled government. Many important reforms awaited resolution. Since innovation was regarded with such suspicion, it was in the interests of the revolutionaries that they characterize their deeds as supremely conservative. For two centuries historians accepted that claim. Indeed, many still do. In a famous passage on the Glorious Revolution written in the nineteenth century, the great Whig historian Thomas Macaulay rejoiced, “not a single flower of the crown was touched. Not a single new right was given to the people. The whole English law, substantive and adjective, was . . . almost exactly the same after the Revolution as before it.”44 He conceded that some “controverted points had been decided according to the sense of the best jurists; and there had been a slight deviation from the ordinary course of succession” and judged, “This was all; and this was enough.” But Macaulay’s ringing phrases have perpetuated a subterfuge. The Glorious Revolution was indeed a revolution; however, it tried to disguise the fact. Parliament had made a king, had defined his powers, and had set the stage for its own supremacy. Parliament was about to win the struggle for sovereignty. But in its great moment of triumph, its work was couched in the time-honored language of the ancient constitution, as indeed it should have been.

Chronology

The Struggle for Sovereignty, Volume II

[31. ]See below [John Wildman], “Some Remarks upon Government, and Particularly upon the Establishment of the English Monarchy Relating to This Present Juncture” (London, 1689), 870.

[32. ]See Mark Goldie, “The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument,” Bulletin of Research in the Humanities (winter 1980), 478.

[33. ]Burnet’s tract was first published in November 1688 while John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was published in 1689 but may have been written some ten years earlier. Both men were at William’s court in Holland before the invasion of England. See Richard Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (London, 1987).

[34. ]See Lois Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, 1981), 100, 283-84; Joyce Lee Malcolm, “The Creation of a ‘True Antient and Indubitable’ Right: The English Bill of Rights and the Right to Be Armed,” Journal of British Studies 32 (July 1993): 226-49.

[35. ]See Howard Nenner, The Right to Be King: The Succession to the Crown of England, 1603-1714 (Basingstoke, 1995), especially chs. 7, 8, and 9.

[36. ]For the best record of the proceedings of the Convention Parliament, see “Grey’s Debates,” in A Parliamentary History of the Glorious Revolution, ed. David Lewis Jones (London, 1988), 125-33.

[37. ]Sir Robert Howard is cited in Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights, 176-77.

[38. ]A. B., N. T. [John Wildman], “Some Remarks upon Government,” reprinted below, 869.

[39. ]Quentin Skinner writes of the Whigs’ acceptance of the de facto theory as the basis for William’s right as monarch: “The irony was complete. Parliamentary right was sustained by an argument which, a generation earlier, might have been used to confute it. The Parliamentarians who had stood for the rights of representative assemblies against absolute power managed to assimilate to themselves the most characteristic argument of the contrary ideology. The Revolutionaries who had denied that the Norman Conquest could ever have interrupted the immemorial rights of Parliament ended up by including a covert attack on the basis of their own claims.” See Skinner, “History and Ideology in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 8, no. 2 (1965), 176.

[40. ]Mark Goldie, “Revolution of 1689,” 519.

[41. ]See Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights; Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms; Jennifer Carter, “The Revolution and the Constitution,” in Britain After the Glorious Revolution, ed. Geoffrey Holmes (London, 1969), 39-58.

[42. ]Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (London, 1651).

[43. ]See [William Sherlock], “Their Present Majesties Government Proved to be Throughly Settled, and That We May Submit to It, without Asserting the Principles of Mr. Hobbs” (London, 1691), reprinted below, 1005-37. Far from being persuaded by these arguments many nonjurors not only refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary or the Abjuration Oath of 1701 but the oath of allegiance to George I in 1714. In fact, the nonjuror movement continued well into the eighteenth century. See J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (Cambridge, 1994), 191.

[44. ]Thomas Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, ed. C. H. Firth (London, 1913-1915), 3:1308-10. A number of fine studies have now been done on the constitutional, philosophical, and political results of the revolution settlement. See, for example, John Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689-1720 (Cambridge, 1977); J. R. Jones, ed., Liberty Secured? Britain Before and After 1688 (Stanford, 1992); and H. T. Dickinson, “The Eighteenth-Century Debate on the Sovereignty of Parliament,” Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vol. 26 (London, 1976). For modern historians who see the Glorious Revolution as conservative, see, for example, John Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1983); and Stuart Prall, The Bloodless Revolution: England 1688 (Madison, Wis., 1985). Howard Nenner emphasizes the timidity of the Convention in “Constitutional Uncertainty and the Declaration of Rights,” in After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter, ed. Barbara Malament (Philadelphia, 1980), 291-308.