The Glorious Revolution and parliamentary monarchy
James II and the Crisis of 1688
Charles II (restored 1660) was a pragmatic ruler who avoided a direct collision with Parliament. His brother James II (king 1685–1688) was not. James was openly Catholic and determined to use royal prerogative to promote Catholic interests: he suspended the penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters using his Dispensing Power, placed Catholics in military command posts, and in May 1688 ordered the Church of England to read his Declaration of Indulgence from every pulpit. Seven bishops who refused were arrested and tried for seditious libel — but the jury acquitted them on 30 June 1688.
On the same day as the bishops’ acquittal, seven prominent Englishmen — Whig and Tory, lords and bishops — wrote to William of Orange, the Dutch Protestant stadtholder, inviting him to bring an army to England. Their letter cited James’s violations of English law and the Protestant religion. William landed at Torbay in November 1688. James’s army disintegrated, James fled to France, and Parliament declared that he had “abdicated”.
Three actions by James II triggered the Glorious Revolution: his use of the Dispensing Power to suspend anti-Catholic laws without Parliament; his appointment of Catholics to military commands; and his order that the Church of England read his Declaration of Indulgence from pulpits. The trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops showed that even the judiciary would not support him.
The Bill of Rights 1689
William III and Mary II were crowned jointly in April 1689 after accepting the Declaration of Right, which Parliament turned later that year into the Bill of Rights. This was not a modern-style declaration of individual rights but a constitutional document that listed what the crown could no longer do without parliamentary consent. The Bill of Rights:
- Banned the suspension of laws without parliamentary consent
- Banned the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime without Parliament’s approval
- Required free elections for MPs and free speech inside Parliament
- Required regular Parliaments
Alongside the Bill of Rights came the Toleration Act (1689), which allowed Protestant Dissenters to worship freely. Catholics were specifically excluded from its protections, and the Act of Settlement (1701) barred Catholics from the throne entirely. The Glorious Revolution was, in this sense, a Protestant settlement — its benefits were primarily for Anglican and Dissenting Protestants, not all subjects.
The term “Glorious Revolution” was coined by Protestants who saw 1688 as a bloodless, providential deliverance from Catholic tyranny. This framing needs critical examination. James II’s flight, not a formal battle, explains the lack of English bloodshed — but William’s campaign involved real violence in Ireland (the Williamite Wars of 1689–91) where Catholic support for James was strongest.
From a Catholic or Jacobite perspective, 1688 was not glorious — it was the violent overthrow of the legitimate king by a foreign army funded by Dutch commercial interests. The Jacobite cause (support for James and his heirs) persisted for decades, culminating in the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions. Presenting 1688 in balanced terms means acknowledging these different perspectives.
Parliamentary Monarchy in the 1700s
William III needed Parliament’s money for his wars against Louis XIV of France. He called Parliament every year, and it responded by creating the Bank of England (1694) and developing the National Debt — mechanisms that gave Parliament permanent leverage over royal finances. The Triennial Act of 1694 further regularised Parliament’s role.
Queen Anne had no surviving children, and the succession question shaped the Act of Union with Scotland (1707) and, via the Act of Settlement, the Hanoverian succession: George I arrived in 1714 speaking little English and heavily dependent on his ministers. Under George I and George II, Robert Walpole became effectively the first Prime Minister — holding office by managing Parliament rather than through royal favour alone. By 1750 it was clear that real executive power was shifting from the king to the ministers who commanded a parliamentary majority.
The Bill of Rights (1689) banned the crown from: suspending laws without Parliament; maintaining a standing army in peacetime without Parliament; interfering in elections or debate in Parliament. It also required regular Parliaments. Together these constraints ended the possibility of personal rule on the Stuart model.
Robert Walpole served as First Lord of the Treasury from 1721 to 1742 — the longest continuous tenure of any British Prime Minister. He achieved this not through royal patronage alone but by managing Parliament through a network of patronage, persuasion and political organisation. His success showed that governing Britain required parliamentary skill, not just royal favour.
Walpole’s position was a product of the 1688 settlement: a monarch dependent on parliamentary taxation needed a minister who could manage Parliament. The role of “Prime Minister” was not a formal title — Walpole himself rejected it — but it described the reality that the leader of the government’s parliamentary majority now held the real executive power.