Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian succession
The Crisis of 1688
By 1688, England was on the brink of a constitutional crisis. James II had ruled since 1685, and his reign had provoked widespread anxiety among Protestant elites. He promoted Catholics to senior positions in the army and government, issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) to suspend laws against Catholics and Dissenters, and had a son born in June 1688 — raising the prospect of a Catholic succession. Seven leading English nobles wrote to William of Orange, Mary’s husband, inviting him to intervene.
William of Orange landed at Brixham, Devon, on 5 November 1688 with an army of around 15,000 men. James II’s support collapsed almost immediately — key officers defected, including John Churchill (later Duke of Marlborough). James fled to France in December 1688.
Historians debate whether the term “Glorious Revolution” is accurate. Whig historians celebrated it as a bloodless assertion of parliamentary liberty. Jacobite and Catholic commentators, however, saw it as a Dutch invasion that displaced a legitimate Catholic king and imposed a Protestant constitutional settlement by force. Irish Catholics paid a particularly heavy price (see Lesson 2). The label “glorious” is a contested historiographic choice, not a neutral description.
William III, Mary II and the Bill of Rights
Parliament offered the throne jointly to William and Mary in February 1689. Before they were crowned, they had to accept the Declaration of Right. Parliament turned that declaration into the Bill of Rights in December 1689. This document was pivotal: it confirmed that the monarch could not suspend laws, levy taxes or maintain a peacetime army without parliamentary consent. Free elections to Parliament were guaranteed, as was free speech within Parliament. The Bill of Rights did not create a democracy — it protected the rights of property-owning Protestant men — but it fundamentally shifted power away from the Crown towards Parliament.
The Bill of Rights banned several specific royal actions: suspending laws without parliamentary consent, establishing church courts without consent, keeping a standing army in peacetime without consent, and imposing taxes without Parliament. It also guaranteed the right to petition the monarch, prohibited excessive bail and cruel punishments, and protected the right of Protestants to bear arms for self-defence. These clauses directly responded to James II’s specific actions.
The Act of Settlement 1701 and the Hanoverian Succession
When it became clear that William III and Anne (Mary’s sister, who succeeded in 1702) would leave no Protestant heirs, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701. This barred Catholics and anyone married to a Catholic from the throne. The Crown was to pass to Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James I, and her Protestant heirs. When Anne died in 1714, the succession passed peacefully to George I, the first Hanoverian king, despite over 50 closer blood relatives who were Catholic and therefore excluded. This was a deliberate constitutional choice: religion, not bloodline, now determined who could rule England.
Key constitutional landmarks: Bill of Rights (1689) — limits on Crown; Toleration Act (1689) — Protestant Dissenters allowed to worship; Act of Settlement (1701) — Protestant-only succession; Act of Union with Scotland (1707); George I crowned (1714).
The Glorious Revolution did not affect only England. In Ireland, it triggered a war (the Williamite War 1689–1691) that ended in Williamite victory at the Boyne and Aughrim, followed by the Penal Laws against Catholics. In Scotland, Jacobites won the Battle of Killiecrankie in July 1689, but their leader Viscount Dundee was killed there and the rising collapsed within a year. The succession settlement of 1701 was one of the pressures that pushed Scotland towards the Act of Union 1707. The Hanoverian succession in 1714 was not universally accepted — the Jacobite rising of 1715 (“the Fifteen”) attempted to restore the Stuart line.
Significance of the Revolution
The constitutional settlement of 1688–1701 had lasting consequences for England’s global power. By tying the Crown to Parliament and to Protestant merchant interests, it created stable conditions for the financial revolution of the 1690s — including the founding of the Bank of England (1694) and the growth of the national debt, which funded the wars of William III against Louis XIV of France. The Bill of Rights and Act of Settlement together made England a constitutional monarchy — not an absolute one like France — and this distinction shaped its economic and imperial trajectory throughout the eighteenth century.