The Glorious Revolution 0333713567, 0333693310, 0312230087, 0312230095

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BRITISH HISTORY IN PERSPECTIVE

Eveline Cruickshanks

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

British History in Perspective General Editor: Jeremy Black

PUBLISHED TITLES Rodney Barker

Politics,

Peoples

and Government

C.J. Bartlett British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century Eugenio Biagini Gladstone Jeremy Black Robert Walpole and the Nature of Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain

D. G. Boyce The Irish Question and British

Keith M.

Brown Kingdom

Politics,

1868-1996 (2nd edn) and the Regal

or Province? Scotland

Union,

1603-1715

A. D. Carr Medieval Wales

Eveline Cruickshanks

The Glorious Revolution

Anne Curry The Hundred

Years War John W. Deny British Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt and Liverpool Susan Doran England and Europe in the Sixteenth Century

Sean Duffy Ireland in the Middle Ages William Gibson Church, State and Society, 1760-1850 David Gladstone The Twentieth-Century Welfare State Brian Golding Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1 100 Sean Greenwood

Gunn

Britain

and

the

Cold War, 1945-1991

1485-1558 Gwynfor Jones Early Modern Wales, c. 1525-1640 Richard Harding The Evolution of the Sailing Navy, 1509-1815 David Harkness Ireland in the Twentieth Century: Divided Island Ann Hughes The Causes of the English Civil War (2nd edn) Ronald Hutton The British Republic, 1649-1660 Kevin Jefferys The Labour Party since 1945 T. A. Jenkins Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism S.J.

Early Tudor Government,

J.

T. A. Jenkins Sir Robert Peel H. S.Jones Victorian Political Thought D. M. Loades The Mid-Tudor Crisis, 1545-1565 Diai maid MacCulloch The Later Reformation in England,! 547-1603 A. P. Martinich Thomas Hobbes John E McCaffrey Scotland in the Nineteenth Century W. David Mclntyre British Decolonization, 1946-1997: When, Why and How did the British Empire Fall? W. M. Ormrod Political Life in Medieval England, 1 300-1450 Richie Ovendale Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century

Ian Packer Lloyd George Keith Berry British Politics and the American Revolution

Murray G. H. Pittock Jacobitism A.J. Pollard The Wars of the Roses David Powell

and the Labour Question, 1868-1990 David Powell The Edwardian Crisis

British Politics

Titles

(out in ued overleaf

List

continued from previous page

Richard Rex Henry

/// and the English Reformation The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886-1 929 Paul Seaward The Restoration, 1660-1668 Sm. in Nluu The Political History of Eighteenth-Century Scot/and

G. K

I

Searle

John

W. M. Spellman John Locke William Stafford John Stuart Mill

Robert Stewart Party and Politics, 1830-1852 Bruce Webster Medieval Scot/and

\nn

illiams Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England John W. Young Britain and European Unity, 1945-92 Michael B. Young Charles I

\\

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The Glorious Revolution

Eveline Cruickshanks

fifi

iisi

l

as

published

in

Great Britain 2000 by

MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world catalogue record for tins book

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cruickshanks, Eveline.

The glorious revolution

—

cm.

p.

/

Eveline Cruickshanks.

(British history in perspective)

Includes bibliographical references

ISBN 0-312-23008-7 1.

Great Britain

-

(cloth)

(p.

)

and index.

ISBN 0-312-23009-5

— History — Revolution of

1688.

I.

(pbk.)

Title.

II.

Series.

DA452.C87 2000 941.067-dc21 99-048546 I

Eveline Cruickshanks 2000

All rights reserved.

No

reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication

may be made

without written permission.

No

paragraph of

this publication

may be reproduced, copied

or transmitted save with

written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing

Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London

An\ person who does any unauthorised

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The author has asserted her

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with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Printed in

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21 5

Contents

Introduction

1

The Restoration:

1

in the

Religious

Reign of Charles

and

Political Conflicts

4

II

3

The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, 1678-1681 The Tory Reaction, 1 683-1 686

4

James

2

II's

8 1

Reign, Monmouth's Rebellion,

Toleration for All, and the Anglican Backlash 5

The

6

The 1 689 Convention,

International Coalition against France

1

and

the Dutch Invasion

and the 7

Bill

23 the Settlement of the

35

of Rights

Scotland and the Revolution

8

Ireland and the Revolution

9

The War with

1

1

1

1

14

Crown 47 54

France, Jacobite Opposition, Parliament

and the Financial Settlement The Anger of Parliament, the Country Party, Courtly Reformation and the Reform of Manners The Whig Junto, the Foundation of the Bank of England and the Financial Revolution The Fenwick Plot and the Assassination Plot of 1 696, the Peace of Ryswick, Moves to Restore the Stuarts The Spanish Succession and the Act of Settlement

6

70 75

79 85

The War of the Spanish Succession, the Death of Queen Anne and the Hanoverian Succession

90 96

Conclusion

103

Notes Select Bibliography of Printed

Index

Works

1

6

119

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/gloriousrevolutiOOcrui

Introduction

The Whig interpretation of the Glorious Revolution, enshrined as part of the unwritten constitution by T. B. Macaulay in his History of England from the Accession ofJames II in

by C. H. Firth, 6 his

vols,

the mid-nineteenth century (standard edition

1913-15) and

nephew G. M.Trevelyan, in down that it was responsstability, economic progress and

his great

The English Revolution, 1688-89 (1938), laid

ible for political liberty, constitutional

For Macaulay, James II was the villain and William of Orange was the hero. Macaulay was not original in this view - he adopted religious freedom.

uncritically the interpretation of

Whig

ideology current in the eight-

which led Charles James Fox, the most eminent parliamentarian in opposition to George Ill's government, to see the French Revolution of 1 789 as a re-enactment of the Glorious Revolution. Others took a different view. Dr Johnson, the celebrated eighteenthcentury Tory thinker and writer, deplored the fact that the English, in order to maintain their religion in 1 688, had to submit to 'one of the most worthless scoundrels that ever existed' and one who was 'not the lawful sovereign'. Tom Paine, an ardent supporter of the American and French Revolutions and the author of The Rights of Man, for his part, and other radicals, thought William Ill's invasion had enslaved the people no less than William the Conqueror's in 1066. Similarly, Richard Carlisle, a eenth century.

It

was

this

'

Deist (one

wrote

at

who believed

the

began the

in the existence

of God but rejected Revelation),

end of the eighteenth century

rot, that

rightful king.

William

Christopher

palace revolution or a coup

1 1

1

1

that the Glorious Revolution

was an usurper, and

[ill,

thai

a Marxist historian,

d'etat,

loin Benn

at

James

has seen

iu

1

BBC 1

1

was the

as a

one end of the

sped rum and Jonathan (Mark at the other (in a debate on held on 20 July 1988), (ami- to much the same conclusion. the Civil Wars have assumed th.u the religious and political studied closel)

it

Radio

t

listorians of

conflicts the)

the earlier years of the seventeenth centur)

1

mere

political

were

2

l

he

rlorious Revolution

(

somehow solved evet after. \bh

\n

after 1689 and that, as in novels, they all lived happily American historian, Alice Pinkham, in William III and the

Revolution (1954), Brsl questioned Macaulay's interpretation

and was much derided as a result. It was not until the 1970s that Macaula) and rrevelyan were more widely challenged. Diplomatic historians began to see the Revolution as par! ofa vast diplomatic campaign on the pat to! \\ illi.nn of ( Grange to secure the power of the British army and ii. i\ in the Dutch struggle against Louis XIV, the more urgent in view of \

I

i

an< e having reached naval parity with the Dutch. \\ .in

the Revolution a selfless

a
ates for perjury, also in 1685.

London and caused much

It

presided over the

was the most fashionable

mirth. Collective amnesia

had

struck those w ho had supported Oates's testimony during the Exclusion

Onl\ the ail of Huntingdon, a Whig peer who later became a was truthful enough to declare he had believed Titus Oates

risis.

(

I

Jacobite,

now thought he was a great liar. Oates was sentenced to be flogged Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn, but he was tough and he survived. Charles II had stopped the pension awarded to him during Exclusion and he became a Baptist preacher/ he elections to the 1685 Parliament were a triumph for the Court; even London returned four Tories. Most probably because of the Monmouth rebellion, James had begun to increase the strength of his army and this led to differences with even some of the most loyal Royalists. Nevertheless, James was accepted as the legitimate king by the Tory majority in the nation, as well as Dissenters and Roman Catholics. James received a Vicar-Apostolic for England, four Catholic bishops were appointed and he received a Papal Nuncio in 1687, but he was careful never to grant any former monastic land to Roman Catholics. For the first time since the reign of Mary Tudor, mass was said publicly in the Chapel Royal at St James's designed by Wren, and attended by some Anglican courtiers and political Catholic converts, such as the 2nd Earl of but he h

om

the Aldgate to

1

Sunderland. Many more, however, attended Princess Anne's Anglican Chapel in Whitehall. 4 James II, like his co-religionists, subsequently became the universal scapegoat, and the majority of historians cannot mention his name without

condemning him

first.

He ended

the

monopoly of office of the Church of

England, the staunchest supporters of the Crown, which was unwise. But can

we condemn him

Roman

for giving toleration

and

politically

civil

rights to

and Jews? The Anglicans, who had been looking forward to consolidating their hegemony in Church and State, were in for a rude shock in the years 1687-88. James alienated Protestant Dissenters,

Catholics

James

I

I's

Reign

17

Tory natural supporters. The First Declaration of Indulgence in April 1687 deprived the Church of England of its established status, while the Second Declaration in 1688 gave only limited safeguards to the Church of England. Dissenters and Roman Catholics were admitted to commissions of the peace, the militia, commissions in the army and navy and places in the universities. Many historians have assumed that granting toleration to Protestant Dissenters was a mere ploy to admit fellow Roman Catholics 5 to office. It is true to say that James had not previously advocated toleration. He had been brought up as a High Anglican and supported Clarendon, the father of his first wife Anne Hyde (who became a Catholic herself). He imposed Episcopalian uniformity in Scotland in the 1680s and crushed the Cameronians, who rebelled there, which no doubt encouraged Tories to think he would continue Anglican hegemony. He favoured the Tory reaction of the 1680s in England, too. His later conversion to the Tightness of toleration and his conviction that none should his

be persecuted for their religious beliefs was genuine, however. accession he released large

On

his

numbers of Quakers from prison and he

formed a close friendship with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who believed freedom of worship was a basic right and who was consulted on religious policies. In 1686 Penn was sent to ask Mary, James's daughter and heir, and her husband, William of Orange, to consent to the repeal of the Test Acts and Penal Laws. They agreed to the non-enforcement of the Penal Laws but not to the repeal of the Tests. Penn, knowing that James's belief in toleration was genuine, remained a Jacobite for many years after the Revolution of 1689, was arrested eight times on charges of high treason, and quakers visited James in exile in France. While he was in exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, James had a Baptist called Roberts as his secretary and Dennis Granville (the former Dean of Durham and Lord Bath's brother) as his Anglican chaplain. The exiled King practised toleration within the constraints imposed by his host, Louis XIV, which shows he believed in the lightness of toleration in itself. The vast majority of the aristocracy and gentry, when consulted on the repeal of the Test Acts and Penal Laws, refused to agree. It was a consultative exercise and it most probably represented the majority view. James's alliance with Nonconformists was as objectionable to lories as his help to Roman ( iatholics. [istorians have, therefore, assumed that James's polu ies were unworkable. Vet they wen de\ ised In James's duel minister. the 2nd Karl ol Sunderland, a former Whig and the most astute politician '

I

l

the day.

senters

J.

R. Jones fust noticed that the policy

and former Whigs

to obtain a pliant

of looking

Parliament was

to the Disa realistic

1

S

I

option, rhe

unreformed

I

Ik-

Glorious Revolution

louse of Commons was elected on a system of

As Sir William Petyt calculated, in only 91 MPs, while in the returned freeholders 160000 the counties boroughs about 10 000 electors returned 418 MPs. 9 The work of the Histoid of Parliament lias shown that, apart from London, most Protestant inverse proportional representation.

Nonconformists siasticall)

with

at

the lower social levels especially, co-operated enthu-

James

The

II.

exceptions were the great Presbyterian

families, su< h as the \\ bartons, the

eys

Foi instance, at

Lyme

a Dissenter

|ohn Bui -ridge,

Hampdens,

the Harleys and the Fol-

Regis, a stronghold of Monmouth's in 1685,

who became a Whig

MP in

1689, carried the

low n in voting for an address in favour of the 1687 Declaration of Indul-

gent e and pledged support in (boosing 'right men' forjames's proposed

new Parliament

in

1688.

A

Lancashire Dissenter wrote that he and his

and open exercise of their religion' but 10 In his hurry to 'much affronted the bishops and the clergy'. change the political scene, James and his agents acted not only tactlessly but inellK ientl) in Devon and Cornwall especially, where the majority of rotten boroughs (corrupt boroughs with a small electorate) were. His agents removed Anglicans and packed corporations (using the powers granted him by the remodelled charters of 1683-85) and local commissions with Dissenters and Roman Catholics with such speed it was difficult to know at times who was in or out. James believed that toleration of Dissenters was right in itself and that, as they numbered so many merchants and small traders, it would be good for commerce as it had been in the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic). James's object at this time was to try and ensure that religious toleration continued in the elcomed

co-religionists i* that

'the free

it

.

l

'

reign of a Protestant successor.

Historians have questioned the legality of the dispensing

pend the operation of the Test Acts and Penal Laws, after 1689, yet the majority of the judges declared

so

it

power to sus-

much condemned

legal

and the judges

decided what was law. James has been represented as seeking to establish absolutism (unrestricted government) as well as Roman Catholicism as the state religion.

Some commentators,

importance of religion

not understanding the

in the seventeenth century,

James's toleration in purely

political

terms as a means of subjecting Par-

liament and creating an absolute monarchy.

1

The Church of England,

the religion of the vast majority of people in England, kept

churches and cathedrals, but

it

vital

have seen, wrongly,

its

patronage,

ceased to be the only recognised church.

in the late seventeenth century what was done at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a revolutionary king faced with a

James was doing

James

II's

Reign

19

James did not aim at the forcible conversion of What he wanted was to put his Roman Catholic co-religionists on an equal footing with Anglicans, to enable them to worship in public, to send their sons to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and to hold employment under the state and in the armed forces. He did not, as the Bill of Rights stated, seek to subvert and conservationist reaction.

England

Roman

to

Catholicism.

13

The speed with which his policies were forced through was probably dictated by a wish to give protection to Catholics and toleration to all before his daughter Mary succeeded to the throne. The Anglican clergy had preached divine hereditary right and non-resistance, but, to the concern of James, would not practise it. James placed the Anglicans in a terrible quandary. The Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, saw it as a violation of their privileges and their property rights when in 1687 the King called upon them to elect Anthony Farmer, a recent convert to Catholicism, as their president, and proceeded to choose John Hough, an Anglican, instead. After several months, this election was declared void by the Ecclesiastical Commission. Samuel Parker, Catholic Bishop of Oxford, was installed as president and the Fellows of Magdalen were 'deprived and expelled'. 14 They regarded themselves as Christian martyrs. The Anglican case was 'to disobey unrighteous sovereigns but never to rebel', and preferred to call this 'non-assistance' rather than extirpate the Protestant religion.

resistance.

15

December 1687 James's

In

firmed as pregnant and, in the past)

if

and was male,

wife,

Mary

Beatrice of

Modena, was con-

her baby survived (she had had miscarriages it

would ensure the Catholic succession. Not

waiting until the birth, Mary's husband, William of Orange, and the 15 unbeUnited Provinces began preparations for invading England, knownst to James or the English in general. The birth of the Prince of

Wales on 10 June 1688 was seen by James and Mary Beatrice as heavensent It was witnessed by the Court, as was the custom, by Lord and Lady Sunderland and others, 17 and was greeted by loyal addresses from most parts of the country. The Prince of Wales was baptised as a Roman Catholic. The Prince of ( )i ange sent congratulations at first, but soon changed ta< k.

The warming-pan

child,

smuggled

ginated

in

of Wales was a suppositions Queen's bed in a warming-pan, seems have oriwas meant to strike a blow at the Legitimacy of the story, that the Prince

into the

Holland.

It

and to enable William to press the claim to the Crown ofhis wile nothing new had happened. More cruel than Mar) and Ins own as lerod, Dean ( rranville of Durham argued, the Prince of( )range sought to brand 'a hopeful young prince' his nephew as illegitimate and to disinherit royal line

il

1

20

rhe Glorious Revolution

him.

was

18 I

he story, however absurd, was believed

to believe

it,

!>\

those whose interest

including Princess Anne,James's second daughter,

purposel) did not attend the birth.

John Ashton,

it

who

clerk of the closet to

Nonjuror (one who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary), collected the evidence of 60 Protestant eye-witnesses of the birth (Roman Catholics were deemed not to be reliable w itnesses) to present at the enquiry the Prince of Orange had promised into the birth, which was never held. Ashton was executed as a Mai

\

Beatrice, an Anglican

|acobite I

in

1

and

I.

iter a

690, presumably to silence him.

19

he other great case of resistance to James's authority was that of the

Seven Bishops.

In M.i\

1688 Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and six

bishops petitioned the King, begging to be excused from reading the

Second Declaration of Indulgence in their churches as the dispensing powei had been dec hired illegal by Parliament. The petition was widely public ised and the result was that the King's order to read the Declaration in .ill li ii it lies was widely ignored, 95 per cent of the clergy refusing i was said, was because 'all religion would be let ead it. Their refusal, in. be the) what the) will, Ranter, Quaker, and the like, nay, even the Roman ( at Ik die religion (as they call it)'. 20 James saw this as 'a standard of rebellion'. Sunderland did all he could, but failed to dissuade James from 21 prosecuting the Seven Bishops. The King did not take the case to the c

it

i

I

cc

LesiasUcal

which made

Commission but it

a

common-law

to the King's case.

principle cuius regio eius religio ('the ol

22

Bench

as a seditious libel,

was a complete reversal of the religion of the ruler determines that It

the kingdom'), which prevailed over

Europe

since the sixteenth cen-

Defending the bishops was John Somers, a talented Whig lawyer, who argued that there was nothing seditious in the petition because 'the intent was innocent'. Thejudges were divided and referred the matter to a jury who, on 30 June, returned a verdict of not guilty, amidst scenes of 23 great popular rejoicing. These events have been regarded by some histury.

torians as leading inexorably to the Glorious Revolution, but the Seven

Bishops did not want to bring in William of Orange. Five out of the seven would not recognise William as king in 1689 and most of them plotted to bring back James thereafter. 24 Tory crowds celebrated the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, whom they saw as trying to protect them against Non-

Roman Catholicism. They vented their anger against the house of the Earl of Salisbury, a prominent Roman 23 Catholic convert. The High Anglicans, apart from Danby's friend, Compton, Bishop of London, sought to persuade James to change tack

conformity, as well as against

and revert

to

support for Anglican hegemony, but did not seek

to

1

James

II's

Reign

2

dethrone him. Nevertheless, had it not been for foreign intervention, people would have lived with James's measures, which were moderate, though tactlessly and sometimes brutally imposed. It

has been thought that James's religious policies were modelled on

Louis XIV's. This was not the case. James's policies differed radically

from those of Louis XIV, who persecuted the Huguenots and

tried to

convert them to Catholicism by force. James had disapproved of the

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which ended the toleration and special privileges tury).

Henry IV had granted the Huguenots

James

said the Revocation

the Spanish and Dutch envoys.

and given them

their first

in the sixteenth cen-

was neither Christian nor wise,

as

he told

He had, in fact, welcomed the Huguenots

church

in

Soho

Fields.

26

After the Revolution

they, like other Protestant Dissenters, with the exception of the Quakers,

proved James's and Louis's

bitterest enemies.

James did not seek and

could not have obtained absolute power. Nor did James plan to rule without Parliament, for his policies were to remodel corporations and local

Parliament that would repeal the Test Act

commissions so as

to secure a

and Penal Laws.

was condemned

It

as illegal after the Revolution.

Was

it

and patronage, relying on those same boroughs, which produced the solid phalanx of placemen and pensioners doing the Court's bidding in Parliament and which ensured that eighteenth-century governments did not lose a general election, even if the majority of votes cast had been for the opposition? One aspect ofJames's reign has usually been glossed over: sound management of the country's finances. He practised retrenchment by cutting the size of his Household but paying its members regularly. The Earl of Rochester, his Lord Treasurer, was one of the very few holders of the less

so than the vast system of corruption

who did not enrich himself at public expense. The army, the navy and government officials were paid regularly and, unlike Charles II and William III, James left virtually no debts. The High Tories, who had supervised financial reforms earlier in the reign, headed by Rochester and Clarendon, together with Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Turner, kept up pressure on James to reverse his policy of religious toleration. With the looming threat of a Dutch invasion, they succeeded. Sunderland was dismissed and High Anglicans, such as Lord Preston and Lord Middleton, who had managed the 1085 Parliament tor James, were back in office as Secretaries of State. Samuel Johnson, a Williamite Whig clergyman, was so infuriated by this High orv success that he complained they 'intended to Forestal [sic] our expected deliverance*. James's Declaration of September 1688 had returned all corporations to office

I

The Glorious

22

Revolution

their pre-1679 state, thus undoing his brother's remodelling of charters and his own packing of corporations since 1687. These measures excluded Rom. in Catholics once more, but had the result of leaving Dissenters in control of as main corporations as they had at the time of the Exclusion crisis. Whether James intended this, or whether it was generally regarded .is eturn to past practice, is not clear. It is a crucial document, however, .1

Ik

i

1

ause

.1^

party disputes after 1689

poration Act,

it

made

rem. lined the settlement

it

impossible to pass

in force.

anew Cor-

5 The International Coalition against France and the Dutch Invasion

On 30 June

1688, 20 days after the birth of the Prince of Wales, a group of

known to history as 'the Immortal Seven' - Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby and Lumley, Bishop Compton, Edward Russell and Henry Sydney, all Whigs except Danby and his friend Compton - sent the Prince an Invitation to come to England, with the signatures in code

peers

only because of fears of disclosure.

It

could be interpreted as inviting

come over to restrain James but not necessarily to displace the King. They were a small group and a not particularly representative one,

William to but

it

gave William the pretext he needed. In

fact

the preparations for

had begun in April 1688, before the birth of the Prince of Wales. A small group of army officers led by John, Lord Churchill, the Duke of Grafton, Percy Kirke and Charles Trelawny, some of whom belonged to the Anglo-Dutch regiments or to the Tangiers garrison, took part in what is known as the Army Plot and began to act in collusion with William before the invasion. They were at first little more than an intelligence-gathering organisation and a debating club, and did William's expedition 1

not act in earnest until the successful Dutch invasion. In the

summer

of

1688 Englishmen had no love for the Dutch and there was no general

movement

to oust

Prince of Orange. 1

(

k ester,

James or

When

arrived at the

a

the

Hague

groundswell of opinion

Whig Henry in July

in

favour of the

Sidney, son of the Earl of

1688 he

said:

he could not believe what the) suggested concerning the king's army being disposed to come over to him, nor did he reckon, as much as the) 23

2

The

1

Glorious Revolution

on the people of the country coining in to him; he said he could le could not undertake so great a design, the hum .n iage ol w huh would he the ruin of England and Holland, without such a Force as he had reason to helieve would be superior to the king's ow n. though his whole army should stick to him. did,

trust to neither ol these.

1

i

fames had but vague and uncritical reports from the Marquis d'Albeville, envo) at the- Hague, and he could not bring himself to believe that 2 Ins 'nephew and son-in-law could be capable of so ill an undertaking'. his

|.

moreover, misunderstood the nature of the international crisis in 1688. Prance posed no real threat to England or any part the British Isles. James was neither the ally nor a client of Louis XIV

lines,

developing of

.nid Ins polic)

had been

holder, William had

regarded

as the

little

head

to

keep Britain and Europe

power

of the

in the

at peace. As StadDutch Netherlands, where he was

anti-democratic party, in

Amsterdam

espe-

was good for trade and allowed Roman Catholics to worship privately, though not to hold office. Ik- Prince, lowever, was also, significantly, Captain-General of the United ially.

(

Amsterdam believed

1

religious toleration

1

capitalised on fears there of the power of France. Jonathan Israel has revealed the extent to which the invasion was planned

Provinces,

and he

and paid for by the Dutch States General, Amsterdam, the Regents, and a group of urban patricians who ran the Dutch States. They and William had been building up a vast coalition against France in which they enlisted Catholic powers, the Emperor Leopold I especially, and had support from the King of Spain and diplomatic support from the Pope, Innocent XI, all of whom had scores to settle with Louis XIV. Louis was presented as seeking universal monarchy, but in reality his conquests in terms of territory and population were trivial compared to those of Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor 1657-1705), Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor 171 1-40), or Peter the Great of Russia (Tsar 1689-1725).

3

The

Prince of

Orange gave the Rulers in the Coalition assurances

that

the lawful succession in England, protect Catholics

and get the Test Acts

he would respect

repealed. William's failure to keep any of these promises was to lead to allies. It was Louis XIV's past aggressions, and war of the Reunions, by which he had forcibly annexed Strasbourg and other towns in 1683-84, that had built up the coalition against him. The irony of it is that he was not preparing for a major war in 1 688. His military strategy, then, was essentially defensive: building fortresses to protect the more easily defended French frontiers he had acquired in the North and East. There was no increase in the size of his peacetime

recriminations from his recently the

The Dutch

25

Invasion

4 army. In September 1688 he was besieging Philippsburg, a fortress on

The French fleet had been sent Mediterranean and could not have blocked the Dutch invasion

the Rhine crucial to the defence of Alsace. to the

even

if

Orange

asked to do so by James. All these events enabled William of to seize the English throne.

The Revolution of 1688-89 should be seen history, rather

was able

Roman

than as a purely British

in the context of European

affair.

Yet the Prince of Orange

defender of Protestantism against the Catholic powers, who were often perceived as having relegated to project himself as the

the Protestant states to the periphery of Europe.

Then and

aim being

later

William

England should always make itself the head and protection of the whole Protestant interest. ... By making all true Protestants, i.e. all true Christians, her friends, she enabled England to make good her oldest maxim of state which was to keep the balance of power of Europe equal and steady.' William, however, failed to get Denmark and Sweden, leading Protestant 6 states, as his allies. The preparations on land and sea were massive and James's ambassador at The Hague reported that the Dutch intended an 7 'absolute conquest of England'. James was not the ally of Louis XIV and, having rejected Louis's earlier offers of help, the French armies were tied up in the Rhineland at the time of the Dutch invasion. The Revolution has been looked at in the past mainly in English terms. The Dutch States and their European allies and supporters wished to bring English naval and military power to bear in a war against France, not to defend the rights of Parliament or of the Church of England. The Prince of Orange sought the Crown from the first as he had to be in control of the armed forces to achieve his purpose. Amphibious operations are notoriously difficult and William and his forces were dispersed by storms on 27 October 1688. Undeterred, another expedition was mounted. In the words of a leading naval historian: 'James's loss of his throne in 1688 was not due to the discontent of some clergymen with troubled consciences, nor to the plots of provincial noblemen, nor even to the schemes of certain ambitious army officers. James fell because William was able to land.' James's fleet was commanded by George Legge, Earl of Dartmouth. le had been at odds with Arthur Herbert, who had delected to the Dutch, and he detested John Churchill, James's favourite army officer and the claimed to lead a Protestant crusade,

his

'that

1

future

Duke of Marlborough. Many

naval officers resented the introduc-

Dartmouth was a Roger Strickland, a Roman Catholic corneal and a high-ranking officer in the navy. Dartmouth refused James's request to

tion

of a lew

Roman

close friend of Sir

Catholic officers in the navy, but

The

26

(Morions Revolution

can*) the Prince of Wales over to

France for

safety,

but his loyalty to the

King was never in doubt and he died Later in the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned as a Jacobite. The practice at that time was often for officers to hold commissions in the navy as well as in the army. 1

he Duke of( irafton.one such,

who was

active in the

Army

Plot,

brought

about eighl naval officers, including Captain Matthew Aylmer and Lieutenanl ex er,

George Byng,

into the Orangisl conspiracy.

could not take their ships to

tlie

Naval

other side as easily as

officers,

army

how-

officers

would have needed all the other naval officers, as as c-w the.to well agree to do so. This was as much an obstacle in 1688 as was m the< ase ofjacobite naval officers subsequently. Dartmouth knew thai \\ illiam's fleet was superior to his own. He had poor intelligence and be thought that the Dutch would land in Yorkshire or Suffolk. The very

could then

ii

c

oops, as

it

i

ii

winds which carried William's fleet to the south-west trapped Dartmouth's fleet behind a sandbank, so that he could not intercept the

east

Dutch. .iikI

Bi

Thus it was that the Dutch invasion successfully landed at Torbay in Devon during the night and the morning of 4-5 Novem-

ixham

s\ mbolically enough, as the 5th was the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot and the birthday of the Prince of Orange. The Dutch had 463 vessels and 40 000 troops, more than the Spanish Armada of 1588 and miu more than the token army of 10 000-15 000 depicted by Macaulay and other historians. It was in fact twice the size of James's army, which 9 w. is dispersed all over the British Isles. Subsequently, myth replaced realon he circumstances in which the Prince of Orange set foot on English soil. The statue of William of Orange erected at Torbay in 1888 depicts a local fisherman carrying the Prince ashore, but since there seems no contemporary record of his existence nor of his being rewarded for his feat

ber 1688,

Ii

it \

t

afterwards, the story seems to be a nineteenth-century invention.

We can

merely guess the feelings of various sections of the population

as this vast

army marched

to Exeter:

Dutch,

many

mercenaries, Branden-

burgers, Greeks, Swiss, Poles, Swedes, Hessians, Finlanders in bearskins

and black

from the Dutch plantations. According to Robert Ferguwere more Roman Catholics in William's army than in James's, though others thought the numbers were equal. Heneage Finch, a leading Tory MP, pointed out: 'we have had free quarters constrained almost in all places where the Dutch army have marched. We have in great part a Popish army too, though that was one of the most crying offences we objected to the king.' 10 James told his Dutch gaoler at Rochester that, in his whole army of eighteen thousand men, he believed he had not a thousand Roman Catholics, whereas your slaves

son, William's Presbyterian chaplain, there

'

The Dutch

army

.

.

.

27

Invasion

hath two thirds of my religion so cried out against'.

1

]

Thev

car-

ried banners with the motto: 'For the defence of the Protestant religion

and the Liberty and Property of the subjects of England'. The Prince's First Declaration, which had been drawn up by Gaspar Fagel, a leading figure in the States of Holland, was translated into English by Gilbert 12 Burnet. It was printed in the Netherlands and thousands of copies were dispersed in England shortly before the invasion. It was a skilful piece of propaganda, depicting the Prince as a selfless deliverer bent only on rescuing the nation's religion, laws and liberties from a tyrant -James II - guided by the Jesuits and Louis XIV. Similar broadsides were sent to 13 the officers of the English army and navy. William's Declarations, which were read aloud as they went, crucially denied any design on the Crown and asserted that his expedition was 'intended for no other design, but to have a free and lawful parliament assembled as soon as possible' and to refer to,

among other

Prince of Wales

.

.

.

matters, 'the inquiry into the birth of the pretended

and

to the right

relating to Liberty,

14

James's Declaration

some false pretences Property, and Religion contrived and worded with

of 28 September 1688 countered

art

of succession'.

and subtlety, may be given out

this:

... it is

'although

manifest, however, (considering

no less matter than by this proposed than an absolute conquest of these our kingdoms'. Not everyone was taken in by the Prince of Orange's assurances. William had tried to build up support in the West Country as early as January 1 688 when Sir William Waller wrote from Holland to his brotherin-law, Sir William Courtenay of Powderham, who had been an Exclusionist, with assurances that the Prince's only concerns were 'the Protestant interest and the welfare of poor England', and a claim that James was trying to get Mary his daughter divorced from William to get her to 'marry elsewhere'. Courtenay did not reply. Though Dutch propaganda sources depict him as assisting the invasion in November, he ordered his tenants lb not to join the invaders. All the aldermen of Exeter but one stood In James, though they were unable to withstand William's army. The money collected for the Excise in Exeter and Devon was seized in William's name and continued to be seized in other parts of the countr) as the advance proceeded. This was all the more remarkable as James, having the great preparations that are making) that

invasion

is

collected the Excise before being granted

it

In the

1685 Parliament, was

one of the grievances in the Dec nation of Rights. Far from welcoming the Prince of Orange, the Bishop and the Dean of Exeter had left before Ik- arrived, as had the gentry and substantial citizens. When Dr Burnet, the Prince's chaplain, held a sen ice in the cathedral, none of the canons I.

28

rhe Glorious Revolution

were

in

their stalls and,

when he

tried to read the Prince's Declaration,

The preaching of Divine Hereditary

Right and had done their work too well. Man) of the common people attending an annual fair, how e\ er, welcomed the Prince and came to look at him and his army as a peep-show. William suspended the lory alderman and began steps to remodel the -\eter (hatter. In ten days no one of any standing had joined William and, according to some contemporaries, William even thought of going back, though this is unlikely. In mid-November things began to change: leading Whigs such as homas Wharton, ( iolonel Colchester and Colonel Godfrey joined and then Sn Edward Seymour, Tory and the greatest electoral magnate in the West, followed by many local gentlemen. At Seymour's suggestion the) entered into an Association to protect the Prince and to protect his is nol to say that they wanted to make William king, for themselves. .is s mom said: all the West went into the Prince of Orange upon his (U laration, thinking in a free Parliament to redress all that was amiss', l)iit Liter suspected 'that the Prince aimed at something else'. William's Declaration that he had no designs on the Grown allayed Tory fears at first, particularly Seymour's, who thought England could not have a Dutch king as England and Holland: 'followed the same mistress, trade'. Worse still from James's point of view was the defection of John Gran\ ille. Karl of Bath, from a family whose name was synonymous with royalism, who handed over Plymouth to William. In the North, Danby, who had been the most active on Walliam's behalf, drawing up lists of supporters or opponents of James and trying to get William to land in Yorkshire, which the Prince had no intention of doing, nor of being so far indebted to one of his subjects. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord-Lieutenant of the three Ridings of Yorkshire, remained faithful to James, but he was tormented by gout and proved indecisive. At a meeting of the Yorkshire militia on 14 November at York, the deputv lieutenants drew up a loyal address and refused to petition for a free Parliament while Dutch troops were on English soil. On the 22nd, at a prearranged signal, an associate of Danby's burst into the hall crying out that 'the Papists had risen and fired at the militia troops', which ended the meeting in disarray. Danby's associates, led by his son Lord Dunblane and Lord Lumley (one of the Seven), rode at the head of about 00 horsemen to the cry of 'a Free Parliament, the Protestant Religion, and no Popery', which brought the city of York over. Danby appealed to the Earl of Ghesterfield, a great magnate in the Midlands, misleadinglv described the choristers walked out.

non-resistance b)

I

or) Anglican clerics, Burnet thought,

I

1

.1

I

c

\

(

1

The Dutch in a

Dutch printed

to join

list

29

Invasion

of William's supporters as in arms for the Prince,

them. Chesterfield replied that though he had small obligations

Court, he had 'a natural aversion to the taking of arms against my which the law justly terms designing the death of the King'. This was prophetic, for Danby and Dunblane were to assert again and again that had they known that the Prince of Orange, whom they had so often heard say had no designs on the throne, would insist on taking the Crown, they would have had nothing to do with his enterprise. Danby was not to be treated as powerbroker and on 1 1 December, the day after James's First Flight, he was ordered by William to disband his forces. In Cheshire Lord Delamer, a conspirator in Monmouth's rising and a bankrupt nobleman on the make, raised the standard for the Prince of Orange and began to collect the excise on his behalf. The efforts of some local Cheshire Tories on James's behalf were negated by the inactivity of Lord to the

king,

who sat on the fence. Chester was crucial movements of troops and ships to and from Ireland. Peter Shakerley, Governor of Chester and Thomas Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, co-operated with Catholic forces, and tried to hold Chester, a strategically important place, for James. They were hampered by wild rumours in mid-December, deliberately circulated, that Irish troops (in fact disbanded by Lord Feversham with the rest of James's army) had burnt down Birmingham and Wolverhampton and were preparing Derby, the Lord-Lieutenant,

since

to

it

controlled

burn down

Sheffield, having killed

all

Protestants. Sir Christopher

Musgrave, on the other hand, secured Carlisle for James, after disarming the

Roman

down arms on Lord FeverThe role of Lords Delamer,

Catholics in the garrison, but laid

sham's orders after James's First Flight.

Devonshire and Stamford

in taking

has been well documented,

1

'

Derby and Nottingham

for William

but nine out often aristocrats did not

finger to help William or defend James.

lift

a

18

The Revolution was

not bloodless, even in England, for there were Wincanton and Reading. As James prepared to leave for Salisbury on 1 7 November, he sent his Queen and the Prince of Wales to Portsmouth to seek safety in France. Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, presented a petition to him for a bee Parliament to settle grievances and prevent bloodshed. James objected to the word 'free' bin promised to call regular Parliaments as soon as he had defeated Ins " The enemies, and he asked lor prayers lor Ins safet) and success. crunch, came, would have come on Salisbury Plain. Lords Feversham .ind AilcshuiA begged fames on their knees to order tin- arrest of the Pi ince of Denmark (Princess Anne's husband), the 2nd Duke of Ormonde,

bloody skirmishes

at

1

if

it

;>0

I

he

(

rlorious Revolution

Duke of Grafton, Lord Churchill, Kirke, Trelawny and others, but he would not do so. [ames had been suffering from nosebleeds and was deeprj hurl In the desertion of his daughters Mary and Anne. At first he was esoh ch! to give battle, but there were good military reasons why he did not. le had 000 troops on die ground as against William's forces oi over 2 000, and some of his commanders, John Churchill especially, w host- lorn me he had made, were about to desert him, and James's council ol w ar w as unanimous in recommending they should not engage the Dutch. James suspected Churchill of wanting to kidnap him and hand him over to William. Lord CornbUry, the dissolute and transvestite son .11 of tluof Clarendon, was the first to try to take his forces to the Prince, hut most of the men and officers would not follow when they 21 found out where the) were being taken. This attitude continued, for the

i

1

1

1

1

when 1

1

1

1

part ol the

army mutinied

at

Ipswich in 1689, the soldiers cried:

no king hut King James', which led to the passing of an annual n\ hill."' Lord Churchill, Lord Berkeley, the Duke of Grafton,

'there in

1

i^

and Prince George of Denmark went over to the army officers, because ol the horrors of the Cavil Wars, there seemed a resolve on all sides in England not to shed further human blood, and James may have (

iharles

I

Is natural son,

Prince of Orange. Apart from the treachery of leading

sensed that. (

)u

27 November, at a meeting

Rochester advised the

pardon

in

Whitehall attended by

summoning of a

many

peers,

free Parliament, the granting of

arms against the King, and the appointment of and to leave the rest to the discretion of Parliament. Halifax, Godolphin and Nottingham were appointed to treat with the Prince at Hungerford, asking him not to advance to within 40 miles of London, having had an agreement from James to withdraw his forces from London so that Parliament might meet freely. William pursued delaying tactics, not meeting the commissioners until 8 December and refusing to come to terms. He cleverly prevented any private meeting between the wily Halifax and the indiscreet Burnet in case his real intentions were revealed. Burnet was heard to exclaim: How can there be a treaty? The sword is drawn, there is a suppositious 26 child, which must be inquired into.' On 10 December, before he knew of James's departure, William sent orders to Admiral Arthur Herbert, who held a commission in the Dutch, not the English navy, to fly the English flag in attacks on French ships, in order to provoke a war with France. 'A spurious Third Declaration from the Prince, apparently writa tree (

to those in

ommissioners

ten by

Hugh

to

go

to the Prince of Orange

Speke, a

Whig

fanatic,

was widely circulated

at this time.

The Dutch

3

Invasion

claiming that 'armed Papists' were about to attack Protestants in

1

London

and Westminster 'by fire, a sudden massacre or both'. There were rumours that Irish troops were coming to London to cut Protestants' throats. Though some suspected it was a forgery at the time, it provoked panic. James was convinced the Prince of Orange would kill his son,

whom he sent with the Queen to France for safety. mind (though Mary was

Probably with the

fate

have secured a promise from the Prince that her father would not be harmed), he decided to join them in France. Before his First Flight on 10 December he cancelled the of his father in

said to

1 5 January though some had been sent out and threw the Great Seal of England into the Thames as he left, to prevent William usurping his royal prerogative. He would expose himself no longer to 'what I might expect from the ambitious Prince of Orange and the associated rebellious lords' and could not imagine that 'all this undertaking was out of pangs of conscience for the religion and liberties of the people'. 28 He sent orders to Lord Feversham, the commander of his army, not to expose himself and others by 'resisting a foreign army and a poisoned nation', which Feversham interpreted as disbanding his army. As these instructions were read out, eye-witnesses reported: 'many of the soldiers [were] weeping and others trembling with anger whilst they heard the order read'. 29 In the King's absence, law and order broke down, and on 1 1 December the London sky glowed red from the fires of Roman Catholic chapels and houses being burnt,

writs calling a Parliament for

,

already,

including that of William's

ally,

the Spanish ambassador.

of the crowd carried sticks with oranges stuck at the their

Some members

end of them

to

show

support for the Prince. Criminals, thieves and looters infiltrated the

mob as rich furniture,

plate and money worth £20 000 were carried away from the Spanish ambassador's house off Great Queen Street, where many Catholics had been in the habit of going to hear mass, and the altar

Chapel was stolen. The embassies of Venice, Tuscany, Cologne and the Palatinate were similarly attacked. Roman Catholics were 'running into all the holes to hide themselves, weeping and crying for fear of their lives', as most of their Protestant neighbours were too apprehensive to give them shelter. Some disbanded soldiers w ere said to plate of the King's

have joined

in

the looting.

and the disorders in London. Rochester meeting of peers temporal and spiritual w ho \\ ere in Lonmeet in the Guildhall. Most were Loyalists, Imt the) were opposed

In response to James's flight

summoned don

to

l>\

iolent

\

a

Whigs or

se
lorious Revolution

urope, which was what the Allies were supposed to be doing.

It

was

Marlborough and Godolphin, supported almost exclusively In the \\ bigs, seemed unable or unwilling to make peace. This is probabl) because George of Brunswick, Electress Sophia's eldest son, was implacabl) opposed to peace with France. Queen Anne, for her part, had grow n tired of the Duchess of Marlborough's ceaseless requests for her famil) and irascible temperament and this weakened the Duke of Marlborough's influence in Fug land. rhe trial of Dr Henr) Sacheverell, a High lory clergyman, in 1710 fol a sermon entitled In peril ofFalse Brethren', denouncing the Protestant Dissenters and reviving the doctrines of hereditary right and nonresistance, caused a political crisis for the Marlborough—Godolphin stalemate.

administi anon. Sa< heverell was invited to preach in St Paul's Cathedral

day for Whig celebrations of the discovand the landing of William of Orange). Before a packed congregation, com. lining many Jacobites and Nonjurors, he ame, in the words of Geoffrey Holmes, not to praise the Revolution but to bur) it. The chief danger to the Church of England, Sacheverell do hired was imi from its acknowledged enemies but from its pretended friends, the >< asional ( Conformists, who profaned her altars in order into office. The Church of England, he went on, would lose all distinctive character and would be transformed into a 'heterogeneous

on

ember

5 \\

er} ol the

(the traditional

Gunpowder

Plot

i

.

(


.

15,46,61,62,71,76,88 2-3

\\

bartons

99

66,90-1

warming-pan story 19,81.87 Weymouth, Lord 62 Wharton, Goodwin 71 Wharton, Thomas 28,38,

Talbot, Richard, Earl of

Tenison, Thomas 72 Tercentenar) anniversary

72

71

15. IS

I

l.

Index

126

Whig

junto

24-34 invasion 56-7 Ireland and

76-7

White, Archbishop of Peterborough 32

Wild Geese

WUdman.John Wilkes,John

navy under

58-9 15,

'seven

ill

66-7 50

years'

as William of Orange

97

7

William the Conqueror William III 1.7,21,50,56,89 1

689 Convention 55-41 .u in\ under 65-6 crowning of 42-3 death 89

Yarmouth, Lord

and international coalition against France 23-5

Zuylestein

.uhI

1,2,6,7,

15,19-20 Williamson, Sir Joseph Wiltshire, Lord 32 Windsor, Lord 86 13,

1

Worden, Blair 2 Wren, Sir Christopher

43

32,62

17

BRITISH HISTORY IN PERSPECTIVE

General Editor: Jeremy Black

The Glorious Revolution

is

the most radical reassessment to date of

the origins, circumstances and impact of the Revolution of 1688-89. Eveline Cruickshanks argues that

who

James

II

was

a revolutionary king

granted complete religious toleration because he believed

it

was

morally right. This led to strong Tory opposition and induced William of Orange, husband of Mary, James's eldest daughter, to intervene. The religious and political conflicts of James IPs reign gave William of Orange and the Dutch States an opportunity to mount an international coalition, and to invade England in November 1688 with an army twice the size of James IPs and a navy more powerful than the Spanish Armada in 1588. Deceit about William's designs on the

Crown and treachery on the part of prominent noblemen and army officers

This

is

made

the attempt succeed.

the only single work to cover Scotland and Ireland - where the

impact of the Revolution was great, and led to the Union with Scotland in

1707 and the

Irish

Wars, leaving problems that are

today. The Revolution

left

still

unresolved

the royal prerogative virtually intact and

did not bring about constitutional monarchy.

of Parliament, which benefited

many

It

secured annual sessions

sections of the community, but

gave no individual rights to the people. Financing the enormous cost

war against France produced the Financial Revolution, and the foundation of the Bank of England, which eventually enabled of 20 years of

Britain to

become

a world power.

Eveline Cruickshanks

is

a Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research

and has written many books on

She was the founding and is a major contributor the seventeenth and

political history.

editor of the journal Parliamentary History to the History of Parliament

volumes

for

eighteenth centuries. Illustration:

The Dutch land

William of Orange

and the Dutch

at

TorbaV 5th No

(forefr. nt in the

fleet in th

•

bay.

known). Reproduced wit

A

•

ntr'e^

ows

nbe 168b.

against the backg

detail from a

le

Dutch 17th Cent',

[^mission of the Royal

the Queen.

olut: ^098' Printed

in

Hong Kong

;.-n.ist

not

Collection, copyriKlf|jfi|k' Majesty