A Glorious Revolution?

James II

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a watershed moment in the development of Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was the culmination of decades of conflict between monarchical absolutism and the power of Parliament, reaching its bloody nadir during The Wars of The Three Kingdoms. Commonly, though incorrectly, reduced to the misnomer of The English Civil War, this period of brutal conflict included The Irish Confederate War (1641-49) and The Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland (1649-53).

Against this violent backdrop, and following the Restoration of The Stuart Monarchy, the devoutly Catholic James II acceded to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1685 on the death of his brother Charles II. He did so in the face of Parliamentary efforts to exclude him from the line of succession but initially enjoyed the support of a majority of his subjects who preferred the stability and rule of law under a Catholic king over a reprisal of the horrors of civil war. This support did not last long. Politically and diplomatically inept, James blundered his way to a series of challenges to the supremacy of the Church of England and the authority of Parliament. In 1687 and 1688 he issued a number of proclamations known as The Declarations of Indulgence, which provided religious freedoms to Catholics and Dissenters (Indeed to all faiths). He also quickened the expansion of the standing armies in England and Ireland and began to replace Protestant officers with Catholics.

While James was clumsily divesting himself of the support of Parliament and the largely Anglican land-owning classes, his nephew and son-in-law William of Orange was coming to view him less as a family ally and more as a friend of his enemy Louis XIV. William ordered plans to be prepared for a Dutch invasion of England and, as a prelude, met secretly with the leader of the English Whig opposition to request that he be formally invited to, "... rescue the nation and the religion."

On 10 June 1688, James's son and Catholic heir (James Francis Edward), was born, displacing James's Anglican daughter Mary - also William's wife - as first in line to the throne. Three weeks later, the invitation that William had sought was dispatched under the signatures of a cabal of seven members of parliament and William began to assemble a fleet to carry him and his army to England. William would later state in The Declaration of The Hague, that he, "... intended for no other design, but to have, a free and lawful Parliament assembled as soon as is possible". Events were to prove that his claims to have no design upon seizing the Crown for himself were dubious at best. Fighting against early winter storms, William eventually landed with his Army in Devon in November 1688

The defence of James's throne was undermined from the start by defections from his Navy and Army. The most famous of those who quickly defected to William's cause was John Churchill, later the 1st Duke of Marlborough. With the morale of the English Army sapped by defections, James's hold on power quickly collapsed. There were no set-piece battles between the English and Dutch armies, resistance to the invasion being limited to one or two minor skirmishes. Nevertheless, James quickly determined upon escaping with his family to France, pausing to throw his royal seal into the Thames; William was delighted to let him go and swiftly established a Convention which adjudged James's flight as abdication. After no little coercion, on 13 February 1689 the Convention offered the crowns of England and Scotland to William and Mary.

The Convention now declared itself the Settlement Parliament and swiftly passed legislation to secure the rights of citizens, place the Army under parliamentary control and otherwise limit the powers of the monarch. For these important constitutional achievements, and the fact that they were delivered at no great cost in blood, the events of November 1688 are known in England and Scotland as 'The Glorious Revolution'. The results were not extended to Ireland, which would now become the stage for a far bloodier struggle. There the revolution would be neither blood-less nor, for the vast majority of the population, glorious.