'Glorious Revolution\r'

'Factsheet G4 General Series August 2010 field of operations of Commons discipline authority The historied rotary motion Contents Introduction 2 Events of 1685 †1689 2 1685: sequence of crowd II 2 1686: rear of the Test make a motions 2 1687: resolution of Indulgence 3 1688: the splendid renewing 3 1689: Bill of RIghts 4 Historical Interpretations 4 vermiform appendix A 6 The solvent of Rights: February 13 1689 6 Further demoing 8 tie information 8 Feedback form 9 The term storeyed revolution refers to the serial of chargets in 1688-89 which culminated in the exile of queen crowd unitedly II and the accession to the potty of William and bloody shame.It has as well as been seen as a divide in the originatework forcet of the constitution and peculiarly of the role of fan tan. This Factsheet is an attempt to explain why. This Factsheet is visible(prenominal) on the internet through: http://www. fantan. uk/ roughly/how/guides/facts heets1/ August 2010 F S No. G4 Ed 3. 2 ISSN 0144-4689 © Parliamentary Copy office ( domicile of Commons) 2002 May be reproduced for purposes of private study or enquiry with push through permission. Reproduction for sale or former(a) commercial purposes non permitted. 2 The sublime whirling kin of Commons Information theatrical role Factsheet G4Introduction The lustrous innovation is a term used to describe the serene way in which Parliament assert its rights everyw here the monarchy in 1688. This Factsheet begins with a chronology of the events that took come out of the clo baffle amid 1685 and 1689 starting with the death of Charles II and culminating in the Bill of Rights in 1689. The Factsheet consequently looks at round historical interpretations of these events. Events of 1685 †1689 1685: succession of pack II On 6 February Charles II died and was succeeded by his brother, the Catholic pack II.In spite of massivespread fears of Catholicism, and the previous attempts which had been make to exclude pile II from the throne, the succession occurred without incident. In fact on 19 May, when crowd togethers Parliament met, it was overwhelmingly loyalist in compo gravelion. The residence voted throng for life the analogous revenues his brother had enjoyed. Indeed after the strangled invasions by the Dukes of Argyle and Monmouth1, the Commons voted excess grants, accompanied by fervent protestations of loyalty.However, this fire did non last. When the House was rec completely in everyed after the summer, James take oned the Commons for more specie for the sustainment of his standing ground forces. He further antagonised them by asking for the countermand of the Test Acts. These were the 1673 Acts that need office compassers to prove that they were not Catholics by making a resolving against transubstantiation2. mingled with 12 and 19 November Parliament declined to override the Acts and refused the extra money.In their reply to the big bu sinessmans speech fan tan made it clear that the world indicants employment of Catholic officers was â€Å"of the greatest concern to the rights of resolely your Majestys dutiful and loyal subjects” and begged him to allay their â€Å"apprehensions and jealousies”. On 20 November, James prorogued Parliament, realising that they would not agree to repeal the penal uprightnesss against Catholics. 1686: repeal of the Test Acts In April, in a collusive law shift, Godden v Hales, the judges ruled that James II could dispense with the Test Acts without the admit of Parliament in individual cases.The King began to introduce Roman Catholics and some dissenders into the army, universities, and even posts within the Anglican perform. On 15 July an Ecclesiastical Commission was set up, to which the Kings powers as Governor of the Church of England were delegated. This Commission could rifle the clergy of their functions, and one of its graduation exercise acts was to s uspend henry Compton, Bishop of capital of the United Kingdom, because he had refused to suspend a capital of the United Kingdom clergyman who had preached against Roman Catholicism. A overblown envoy was even received with note 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 largely Roman Catholic administration. In these circumstances, it was not surprising that passim 1686 a growing fear manifested itself among the Kings subjects that James was plotting to impose his own apparitional draws on the country. The author John Evelyn wrote in his diary, â€Å"The captain Jesus defend his little tummy and preserve this threatened Church and nation. Meanwhile, to hard a House of Commons that would persist his policies, James began a campaign to discover sympathetic electors. De deputey Lieutenants, Justices of the Peace and members of municipal corpo rations (who had the right to vote) were asked whether they would support candidates leading to repeal the penal laws and 1 2 the Duke of Monmouth was the motherfucker son of Charles II The Roman Catholic belief that bread and wine argon changed into the body and blood of Jesus rescuer 3 The Glorious Revolution House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G4Test Acts. On the basis of their answers, m whatever were turned out, to be replaced with Roman Catholics and dissenters. 1687: Declaration of Indulgence On April 5 the King published a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended all the religious penal laws: â€Å"We cannot except heartily wish, as it will easily be believed, that all the people of our Dominions were members of the Catholic Church, yet we nastily thank Almighty God that it is … our flavour that conscience ought not to be throttle nor people forced in matters of pure religion. These were brave words, but Jamess heavy-handed insensitivity to the fea rs of the major(ip)ity of his subjects, and his use of the Royal immunity without Parliamentary approval were causing dusky unease.In July the King received Ferdinando dAdda as semiofficial Papal Nuncio to the Court of St James. passim the rest of the year, the nobleman Lieutenants were instructed to call together boastful local people and ask them, if they were to be chosen as Members, whether they would esteem the repeal of the penal laws, and other questions e write to the homogeneous end. Most of the existing Lord Lieutenants refused to put these questions, and in August, nine were dismissed by the King. In every case, the surviving answers to the Kings questions set up 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 ordered Anglican clergy to read it from the snout to their co ngregations on cardinal consecutive Sundays.On 18 May the Archbishop of Canterbury and six other bishops refused to read it and petitioned against the order, thus entering Whig history as the sevensome Bishops. The petition requested the King to withdraw the order on the curtilage that the foundation of his declaration of indulgence was illegal, existence based 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 very brusque timing, the Queen gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales, who was baptised according to the Roman Catholic rite.The prospect of an unending Catholic dynasty view without Parliament gave rise to ugly rumours that the thwart was no true prince but a substitute smuggled into the Queens bed in a warming pan. When, a some days afterwards, on 30 June the Seven Bishops were acquitted by jury, huge crowds celebra ted in the streets, burning effigies of the Pope, and attacking Catholic presidential terms. The identical day, a â€Å"letter of invitation” was signed by seven prominent politicians (Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, the Bishop of London, enthalpy Sidney and Edward Russell).This invited William of orange tree, Protestant son-in-law to James, to intervene to action twain Church and State. In fact William had already made his decision to intervene, and on October 1 issued his manifesto from the Hague, listing at continuance the allegedly illegal actions of the last ternion years: â€Å"… Therefore it is that we have opinion fit to go over to England, and to slobber with us a force sufficient, by the blessing of God, to defend us from the vehemence of those evil councillors ; and we, world desirous that our bearing in this way may be rightly belowstood, have prepared this Declaration… William landed at Torbay in Devon with astir(predicate) 15,00 0 (mostly Dutch) troops on November 5; the totally successful large-scale landing in England since 1485. James relieve had his standing 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 December 19, and a some days deepr James II was allowed to escape for France. 1689: Bill of Rights On 22 January a new Parliament prototypical met.This was known as the convening 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 astutely condemned the actions of James II and asserted what it describe as â€Å"certain superannuated rights and liberties”. The resembling day, Princess Mary, Williams wife and Jamess elder daughter, arrived in London. Lord Hal ifax, 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 modernr embodied in the Bill of Rights passed by Parliament in December 1689: this further stipulated that the throne be occupied by a Protestant just now and that the succession was to rest with (1) the heirs of Mary (2) the heirs of her sister Anne. Historical Interpretations The tralatitious Whig view of the Glorious Revolution is embodied in Thomas Babington Macaulays The History of England from the accession of James the second, 1849-61. For Macaulay the variation was â€Å"a vindication of our ancient rights” in which it was â€Å"finally decided … hether the common 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 be cause England had had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth one C she had been spared a destroying revolution in the nineteenth.As the coeval philosopher John Locke had written, James II was hangdog of breaking the â€Å"original contract” between sovereign and people, and had therefore suffered the just rage of Parliament and people. The Whig view of the Glorious Revolution is therefore solely that it was a victory for the purity 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 unchallenged. To some twentieth century historians it has appeared as a respectable revolution, (e. g. Lucile Pinkham, William and the Respectable Revolution, 1954), involving just the command classes and leaving the monarchy in most consider unaltered, hardly a proper revolution at all.For example, the constitutional historian prey Thompson wrote that apart from determining the succession, the Bill of Rights (which contained the clauses submitted for acceptance by William and Mary) did â€Å"little more than set forth certain points of existing laws and simply secured to Englishmen the rights of which they were already legally 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 bolshie interpretation is given some burden by the fact that (for example) a point-by-point analytic thinking of the Bill of Rights does reveal that in several(prenominal) aspects it is indeed a rather orthodox document. It is a declaratory Act, reasserting ancient rights and restoring the monarchy with 3 4 5 in devil Treatises of Government 1688-89 perfect History of England, London, 1938 Perevorot 1688 [The coup detat 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 quite 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 settling Englands policy-making future as a parliamentary monarchy. Neither, of course, can the Glorious Revolution of 1688. However, before 1688 it is possible to see England as spring to move towards absolutism 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 sole(prenominal) frightened the Anglican Church and laity by his moves towards a restoration of Popery, but managed to unite a wide variety of interests in opposition to his inapt policies. However, it must be remembered that the Prince called in to sav e 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 ontogeny which did result from the Glorious Revolution was the transubstantiation by William III of Englands place in Europe and the wars that this involved, which led to a pivotal loss of royal power and establishment of parliamentary supremacy.For instance the Triennial Act of 1694 needful Parliaments to be summoned every iii years , and thus prevented future monarchs from vox populi without a parliament, a favourite recitation of the Stuarts †but this is a development seen with hindsight. â€Å"Constitutional government has endured because it became a habit in the eighteenth century, not because it was established by revolution (great or small) in the seventeenth. â€Å"7 6 7 A catamenia 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 help of divers(prenominal) evil counsellors, judges, and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the body politic. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. By assuming and physical exercise a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws, and the doing of laws, without the accord of parliament.By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused concurring to the express fictional power. By issuing and causing to be executed a bearing under the Great Seal for erecting a court called the Court of Commissio ners for Ecclesiastical Causes. By levying money for and to the use of the crownwork by make-believe of prerogative, for other judgment of belief and in other manner than the same was tending(p) by parliament.By raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in term of peace without the take on of parliament and quartering soldiers remote to the law. By causing several good subjects, beingness Protestants, to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to the law. By violating the independence 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 impulsive 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 senior high school treason, which were not freeholders. Excessive bail hath been required of persons committed in criminal cases, to frustrate the benefit of laws made for the liberty of the subjects. And immoderate fines have been imposed; and illegal and reprehensible 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 absolutely and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes and freedom of this realm. And whereas the give tongue to late King James the Second having abdicated the government and the throne being thereby vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange (whom it hath bright Almighty God to make the resplendent instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the lords spiritual and temporary, and divers rincipal persons of the Commons) cause letter to be written to the lords spiritual and temporal, being Protestants; and other letters to the sever al counties, cities, universities, boroughs, and fivesome Ports, for the choosing of much(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 state lords spiritual and temporal and Commons . . . do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties, declare: 1. . That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal. That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, as it hath been fictitious 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 much(prenominal) 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 able 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 unmatched punishments inflicted. That jurors ought to be duly impannelled and returned, a nd 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 sort out 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 outrage of the people in any of the said premises, ought in any wise to be drawn hereafter into consequent 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 remedy therein. Having therefore an entire assurance that his said Highness the prince of Orange will perfect the deliverance so farthermost advanced by him, and will stil l 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 phantasmal 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 only 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 de fault of such issue to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange. And the Lords spectral and Temporal and the Commons do require the said Prince and Princess to accept the same accordingly.\r\n'