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Late Stuart England and the Glorious Revolution

Late Stuart England and the Glorious Revolution. Charles II. Secretly Catholic Charles allied with Louis XIV to battle Calvinist Netherlands; promised to embrace Catholicism openly Charles issued and rescinded Declaration of Indulgence: Catholics and Protestants to worship

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Late Stuart England and the Glorious Revolution

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  1. Late Stuart England and the Glorious Revolution

  2. Charles II • Secretly Catholic Charles allied with Louis XIV to battle Calvinist Netherlands; promised to embrace Catholicism openly • Charles issued and rescinded Declaration of Indulgence: Catholics and Protestants to worship • Test Act required civil servants to disavow transubstantiation • Great Fire of London (1666): Charles and brother James fought the fire side by side with Londoners • “Popish Plot” of 1678 • Claim: Charles’s Portuguese wife plotted to kill him so that Catholic James could become king • Anti-Catholic executions and increasing anti-Catholicism in Parliament • Charles II less trustful of Parliament, so influenced elections to create royalist Parliament (“The Merry Monarch” fathered 14 illegitimate children!) Charles II converted the Norman medieval castle of Windsor into a comfortable palace

  3. James II: 1685-1688 • Charles’s brother, but openly Catholic • Dissolved Parliament as it refused to repeal Test Act; issued Declaration of Indulgence • Appointed Catholics to high positions, and forcibly removed Parliament candidates who opposed him • Anti-royalist Whigs joined with pro-royalist Tories to oppose him • On birth of James’s son, opponents invited William and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter

  4. Glorious Revolution: 1688-9 • James fled: Parliament declared William and Mary co-monarchs (married cousins) • William and Mary recognized the Declaration of Rights • Indicted James II of transgressions • Limited power of monarchy • Guaranteed civil liberties to privileged classes • Parliament to be called at least every three years • Prohibited Catholics from the throne • Declared William and Mary monarchs • Toleration Act of 1689: religious freedom for Protestants, except Anti-Trinitarians William III and Mary II accepting the Bill of Rights

  5. Landing of William of Orange

  6. English Constitutionalism • Established an unwritten “social contract” between monarch and subjects (Locke) • English unwritten “Constitution” comprises • Laws of Parliament • Legal decisions • Tradition • Glorious Revolution was not a people’s revolution, but of the privileged class • Established checks on power of monarchy, but ensured continuation of the monarchy Delcaration of Rights

  7. Root Causes for Era of Revolution • Rising privileged class: financial power of Parliament over the king • King’s policies • threatened financial well-being of nobility and commercial class • offended sizeable minorities • Parliamentary traditions of bargaining with monarch and preservation of liberties • Populist tendencies of Protestantism, especially Puritanism and Presbyterianism • English Protestant majority’s fear of Catholicism Arrival of William of Orange in England

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