Chapter VIII (9)
The Succession Crisis and the Glorious Revolution
The coming succession crisis exposed the unresolved religious and constitutional tensions that had haunted the Stuart monarchy since its restoration in 1660. The accession of the Duke of York, as James II, an openly Catholic king, would revive deep-seated fears of absolutism, popery, and the subversion of Protestantism, fears sharpened by memories of Jesuit plots, King Charles I's religious impositions and the ensuing civil wars. The resulting crisis did not simply provoke a change of monarch but precipitated a fundamental redefinition of kingship itself.
The Glorious Revolution was thus less a sudden rupture than the culmination of long-standing conflicts over religion, authority, and the limits of royal power, replacing the doctrine of divine right with a conditional, Protestant monarchy grounded in parliamentary consent. The invitation to William of Orange and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, marked a decisive shift in political thinking: monarchy would no longer rest solely on hereditary right but on the defence of Protestantism and the rule of law, a redefinition of Kingship. This settlement was ultimately secured by the Act of Settlement (1701), which entrenched a Protestant succession and ensured that the crown would henceforth be conditional upon parliamentary consent, completing the transformation of England into a constitutional monarchy.
This was a huge step to take and proved to be the roots of today at Windsor, through the foreign importation of Georgians onto the throne of the United Kingdom. A Protestant branch of Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630–1714), was the first cousin of King Charles II of England, and, for her son, King George I, was eventually crowned King of the United Kingdom.
Unpacking this period will be a long, daunting, but very interesting task. I hope my readers stay with me till the end of this journey to its final chapter. It is a complicated and convoluted state of affairs, but I will attempt to simplify it as much as possible. No need to include Charles’s many Protestant and Catholic mistresses, his insatiable sexual appetites and any political interference by one or two of his many illegitimate offspring. Nor, for that matter, would I go through accounts of International rivalries between Catholic France and Spain to force the hand of Charles to convert and establish a front against the Protestant Dutch. I will concentrate on activities in England; otherwise, to include Scottish influences, this chapter would become a book-length chapter. It would involve not only Catholics and Protestants but also Calvinists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and others. All vying as god's chosen.
Important to note here: the Test Acts. These were a series of penal laws passed by Parliament to ensure that only members of the Church of England held public office. They required office holders to take the Anglican communion, swear oaths of allegiance, and reject the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, effectively banning Catholics and nonconformist Protestants from civil or military positions. Much to the surprise of many in government, the Duke of York declined to put his signature to it.
Duke of York
Allegations were uncovered in late 1678 of a Popish Plot to assassinate the King and install his Catholic brother and heir, James, Duke of York, on the throne. The fallout was the succession crisis, formalised by initiating a bill in Parliament to remove the Duke of York from the royal line of succession. In the course of debates, historical memories flooded in of Catholic conspiracies, Poisonings by Catholics, attempts to blow up Parliament, and memories flooded in of killing Queen Elizabeth in an effort to install her cousin, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, to the throne of England. Before the final reading of the Bill, Charles dissolved Parliament and left it in abeyance. This was the time when Parliament was split, creating Tory (Conservative Party) loyalists and Whig (Liberal Party) opposition to James. This crisis acted as a crucible, dividing the English political class along lines of hereditary succession, Parliament's power, and fear of Catholic influence.
Duke of York, James II
Just as well, though, on November 1677, the Calvinist William of Orange, nephew of King Charles, had married his fifteen-year-old Protestant cousin, Princess Mary, with hopes of future Protestant succession. Shortly after the wedding, a show of entrenched and pervasive anti-Catholicism, a crowd in London made an effigy of the Pope with a rosary made out of oranges around his neck. The marriage served multiple purposes. It was also a marriage of convenience, as William envisaged combining the English military resources to fight France.
Charles contracted a malaria-type fever in August 1679, though he would soon be at death’s door, he made a quick recovery. Nevertheless, that sounded a dynastic alarm had he died, with his brother, the Catholic, Duke of York, standing to inherit the crown. But waiting in the wings, the Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s alternative and popular protestant but illegitimate son, would have made trouble. To dampen any hopes, Charles ordered his son to leave England for Holland.
On numerous occasions, parliament tried to reopen the debate on York’s exclusion. Still, a series of prorogations by Charles prevented it from taking place, and the debates never reached their intended conclusion. Instead, partisan politics took to the streets, an anti-Catholic demonstration in London by up to 200,000 people, burning effigies of the Pope at Aldwych in the Strand. Memories of cutting throats of Protestants by Irish Catholics and talk of other bloody atrocities once more became mainstream. In 1680, mainly to assuage public opinion, Charles eventually opened parliament. He promised to protect Protestantism and did not intend to divert the line of hereditary succession, and “I have done all possible for me to do... and leave you so when I die”.
Duke of Monmouth, King Charles ' illegitimate son
At this time, stepping back a little, Whig members of Parliament were advancing an argument in favour of the King’s natural son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, and irresponsible initiatives aimed at public opinion. The king angrily dismissed them, calling them a cause of chaos, fearing that such ideas might return England to Civil War. Moreover, the King quashed further ideas, circulating at the time, that he had married Monmouth’s mother, which was gaining ground, in an effort to block his brother, James. The argument ran that, though Monmouth was illegitimate, Queen Elizabeth I was also illegitimate, since her Father, Henry VIII, never divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his subsequent marriage to Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, was therefore unlawful. Hence, the non-recognition of Monmouth, as defined by Catholic theologians, should be ignored. On his part, Monmouth took an extensive public relations tour through the Western Counties of England. He was well received and proved very popular with the crowd.
Recognised as a true Protestant Englishman. Apparently, while on tour, he ‘touched for the king’s evil’, presenting his capacity to heal sufferers of glandular conditions, a means for further promoting his royal lineage.
But with the Duke of York, whose hereditary position was still intact, the motion in Parliament discussed the possibility of curtailing the power of the crown. William of Orange, in efforts to increase his visibility, and who, in his own rights as well as his wife’s right in line to the English Crown, objected to such schemes. With that in mind, William visited London to have it out with his uncle Charles. The meeting went nowhere, and William returned to the Hague without gaining support. But in the meantime, a plot to kill the King was underway, organised by some Whig members of Parliament led by the Duke of Monmouth. The ‘Rye House Plot’ was hatched to ambush the King and his brother on their return from a horse race meeting at Newmarket. To Charles, the Whigs were now considered Republican rebels, and he arrested and executed a number of them. Monmouth escaped to live another day, but his days were numbered.
In February 1685, Charles suddenly became ill and died peacefully, suffering from a stroke from the effects of chronic kidney disease. It was rumoured he died a Catholic, having secretly received into the Catholic Church and been buried in Westminster Abbey. James, his Catholic brother, became the first openly Catholic monarch of England since Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. On the day of Charles' death, James II, Catholic King of England, confirmed his intention to preserve his government in both Church and State and to uphold the Anglican Establishment. Yet at the same time, while attending Mass two days later, he left the chapel doors open, endorsing his duty to God, not concealing his religion in favour of his Protestant subjects.
King James II of England and VII of Scotland
Aged fifty-one, James II and VII of Scotland, known for his outstanding military service. Although his conversion to Catholicism was regrettable, his legitimacy was unquestioned. English Parliament, though disgruntled, was happy with the thought, his two Protestant daughters ready to succeed him and anticipating that his reign would be relatively short. A magnificent feast followed the coronation service, made up of 1,445 separate dishes and an impressive fireworks display on the River Thames. Addressing his new Parliament, he confirmed his commitment to preserving the Church of England. That, however, did not stop some Whig Republican hopefuls, committed to toppling the new King. An army led by the Duke of Monmouth, with a contingent of Scottish Presbyterians, led an attack on his Catholic uncle. The Monmouth army was easily defeated by government forces at the Battle of Sedgemoor, marking the last pitched battle to take place on English soil. Monmouth was executed by decapitation on Tower Hill on July 15, 1685.
Having inherited an army of 9,000 early in his reign, James steadily built an army of 20,000 paid soldiers stationed at Hounslow Heath, insisting “a good force of well-disciplined troops in constant pay, that can defend us from either home or abroad”. There was concern at the sizeable number of Catholic officers within the army ranks in breach of the Test Acts (see above). James was beginning not only to exert his authority but also to contrive a gradual increase in the percentage of Catholics serving the crown. Those dissenters were dismissed, including army officers and judges. He felt it was time to do away with the Test Acts. James, like his father before him, began to interfere with religion by issuing instructions on how all sermons should be delivered. It did not take long before many in Parliament realised that his directions were beginning to echo those of his father’s interferences. This time, even worse, because all signs of the Catholic Counter-Reformation were beginning to take place, down to prosecuting those preaching anti-catholic sermons.
Behind a thin veil of articulating a clear wish to enforce liberty of conscience, he also sought the removal of the Penal Laws (religious monopoly of the Church of England) and the revocation of all requirements for religious qualification for office-holding, as stated in the Test Acts. At that time, there were great upheavals in Catholic France, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had given the people of France freedom of conscience and protected the civil rights of French Protestants. The suspicions were that the French King acted in this way with the approval of the English King. As a consequence, following an incident in May 1686, around 2,000 protestants were massacred, and many of those surviving Huguenots escaped to the safety of Protestant Switzerland, Holland and England.
It did not take very long to realise that James's policies appeared to align with the demands of his French cousin, Louis. Disgruntled calls were heard that the King ought to work productively with his parliaments and ally with the Dutch rather than France. It was perceived that James' primary concern was to please the Jesuits, actions that could kindle the fire in his own kingdom. His reliance on Jesuitical counsel also undermined international cooperation when he declared exaggerated religious festivities following the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I's recapture of the Hungarian capital, Buda, from the Ottomans, and the preservation of Vienna. For political reasons, such celebrations did not go down well with Louis XIV, who was by now called the ‘Christian Turk’. But that notwithstanding, James confirmed his keenness to reintegrate England with the Continental Catholics. One such mission was to fail with the Pope on account that the Vatican will not accept an ambassador of a sovereign who remained the head of a heretical church.
The Catholic question
By all observations, James was intent on converting England to Catholicism. He was in a hurry, as age was creeping up on him, and must safeguard the interests of his co-religionists before the crown passed to his Protestant daughter, Mary. By sovereign authority, he imposed toleration in Scotland, removing all constraints on freedom to worship. That did not go down well, since this was translated by the Scots Whigs, who said either obey or be burned as heretics. While at it, he suspended all penal laws in England, facilitating freedom of religious worship and enabling individuals to hold civil and military office without submitting to the Test Acts.
In August 1687, King James visited St. Winefride’s chapel in Flintshire, reputedly the oldest visited site of pilgrimage in England. He sought the Saint’s intercession on behalf of his wife in producing a son and heir. Exactly to the day, just nine months after his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, James, on 10 June 1688. Naturally, James's new hereditary rights trumped his Protestant daughters' rights. Catholic Europe rejoiced at the news of the birth, but it was unclear how the people of England received it. All hopes that Catholicism was short-lived and that James’s Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, would recede in line have been dashed, as Mary’s husband, William of Orange, is now fourth in line of succession.
While Mary of Modena was pregnant, her belly looked a bit suspicious, and there may have been foul play. A week after the Prince’s birth, Mary wrote to her sister Anne that she could never be certain whether the child was true or false. As rumours spread that the baby prince might be a commoner’s child, it was perceived as an international Popish plot to put the Protestant Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, out of joint.
Not wasting much time after the birth, a formal and explicit invitation was sent to William to intervene in England, endorsed by several prominent members of the inner council and several parliamentarians. It was a letter assuring the Prince of Orange that 90% of the English desired a change. They assured him that not ‘not one in a thousand here believes the child to be the queen’s. Given the political and strategic incentives, William's consideration of invading England in response to the invitation is vital. No doubt, James can build a consortium of Catholic countries to declare war on the Dutch. Alternatively, William can engage with the English Army against expansionist France and the Catholic Irish. A decision that had all the hallmarks of political and hereditary motives behind it.
William of Orange
It was winter time, not exactly a good time of year to cross the Channel, at the best of times, a dangerous crossing. The thoughts of the Spanish Armada of 1688, when the Spanish attempted to invade Elizabethan England, resulted in catastrophe with massive loss of Spanish lives and an embarrassing turnaround for the Spanish fleet. William believed he had been called to the throne of England by God, and he had no time to waste.
William of Orange, King of England
William amassed an invasion force of around 400 ships, 15,000 soldiers and 4,000 horses. He anchored at Torbay in Devon on the 5th of November 1688. This was also the start of the Gin Craze in England, introduced by William's gin-drinking soldiers. The date of his landing was to coincide with Guy Faulk's attempt to blow up Parliament. Also marked the first foreign invasion of England since the Norman Conquest in 1066 by another William. William entered Exeter on 9th November. To confront the invading army, James left Windsor and arrived at Salisbury on 19th November with around 30,000 soldiers. Nothing much came of the possible confrontation, since James suffered from a series of nosebleeds. At the same time, morale was sapped by serial desertions and major pro-Orangist risings in many parts of the country, as far north as Cheshire. The King ordered a retreat to London, summoning parliament. He appointed three emissaries to meet William, who by then had reached Hungerford in Berkshire, issuing several anti-Catholic declarations on the way, increasingly looking like a revolution. The Glorious Revolution.
After arranging passage to France for the queen and Prince of Wales on 9 December, James secretly fled Whitehall two nights later. On the back of the flight, a frenzy of rioting erupted across London. Chapels were destroyed, Carmelite convents ransacked, and Catholic ambassadors of Spain and France were attacked. Books, jewels and valuables were either destroyed or looted from the houses of prominent Catholics. James hadn’t gone very far, though with a dishevelled beard, he was recognised in the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Then a military escort returned him from Faversham, Kent, back to London. But William’s instructions were no longer requests but commands. James, who realised no longer had authority, travelled back to Kent, reached Rochester on 19 December and four days later, sailed for France, arriving at Louis XIV’s court on Christmas Eve 1688.
With no King in sight, there can not be a parliament. A convention was opened instead, where the Prince of Orange laid the foundation for a full house of parliamentary members, for firm security of the Protestant religion, and for England’s laws and its liberties—also agreed that the King’s withdrawal to France meant an effective abdication. William also insisted that taking the crown of England was by his rights in the line of heredity, not by conquest. He rejected the idea of a possible regency solely in his wife Mary, James’s daughter, and is not prepared to hold the Kingdom of England by apron strings. His wife also made it clear she will not accept the crown in her sole capacity.
Finally, ‘The Declaration of Rights’ articulated the framework of the joint King and Queen of England and Ireland. William and Mary were crowned on 14 February 1689; a few days later, they addressed the House of Lords and gave royal assent to legislation that converted the Convention into a Parliament. Having learned that William was taking action to protect Scots' safety by sending troops to northern England and dispatching warships to protect the coast, and having claimed that James was a professed Papist, the Convention members offered the Scottish crown jointly to William and Mary on 11 April.
Trouble, however, was not far behind. France has now declared war on the Dutch provinces, raising the risk that Ireland will join France to attack England. In May, English MPs supported William’s declaration of war against France, joining the Grand Alliance of the United Provinces and the Holy Roman Empire. A new front opened in Ireland, where James, supported by French troops, armour, and ships, was by now proclaimed King of Ireland. To counter such irritation and distraction, William set out to meet him, landing at Carrickfergus on the Antrim coast, accompanied by a fleet of about 300 ships and 36,000 troops. Victory was achieved against the Jacobites (Jacobus, Latin for James), at the Battle of Boyne on 1 July 1690. James retreated and left Dublin for France on 2 July. William, having returned to London, received news that the French had defeated the Anglo-Dutch opponents, raising alarm that the French fleet was preparing an invasion of England. But finally, when the entire of Ireland was eventually subdued, William ensured a final victory by the Grand Alliance, but that was still a long way off.
Back in England, holding the crown of England was not smooth sailing for William and Mary. It was a joint monarchy, although more weight was given to asserting Mary Stuart’s hereditary right to succeed her father, which was central to defending the Revolution. But the refusal of James VII and II and his descendants to renounce their hereditary rights was proving a problem. Charges being made, the Monarchy is a Dutch conquest by an illegal invasion. So the foundation of the new regime remained fragile, but to secure his coup d’etat, he proposed the Oath of Allegiance, accompanied by the Bill of Rights in 1689. They were meant to finally seal the abolition of the Pope's spiritual authority and to secure the Protestant succession. Despite such a minimal scope, there were many non-jurors (not willing to abide by the Oath), many of whom were bishops and church of England clergy, all of whom lost their positions.
William was no Charles I
William had to hold on to Parliament. He warned that, since he has been called to hold the throne of England, he must maintain the authority placed in him. He made it clear that he is not to be treated like his great-uncle Charles I, not by the English Parliament nor by the Scottish covenanters. This meant a sizeable financial commitment for England in the Nine Years’ War against France. An annual deployment of 115,000 soldiers in continental campaigns meant a massive military expenditure. New fiscal measures were created to address that, including the establishment of the Bank of England and measures to address the financial burden. Clearly, parliamentary dysfunctionality has come to an end.
After less than five years as joint monarchs, Mary died of smallpox at the age of 32 in December 1694. News of the Queen's demise was received in England and in Europe with great sadness and grief. Church bells rang across the continent, and tributes poured in from France, Germany, Holland and elsewhere. An elaborate procession was arranged for her at Westminster Abbey, and uniquely in British history, members of both Houses of Parliament attended the royal funeral.
With the passing away of Mary, with her natural hereditary right gone, the focus was on William’s right to rule. As I said earlier, it was a joint monarchy, a first and unprecedented situation in England’s history. It provided the provisions for Mary to exercise executive power while William was fighting in Ireland without impairing his authority. Without Mary, with only Anne, her sister, the last remaining in direct line of the Stuarts, the constitutional rights are now on shaky ground. Rumours abounded; perhaps it needs reconfiguring. The English were untamed horses, who have thrown their unskilled riders many times in the last fifty years. But as many have realised, William was a skilful rider and would allow no illusions to his monarchical authority. He was the first monarch in English history to summon parliament every year of his reign. In April 1696, he introduced a new Oath of Association requiring swearers to “heartily, sincerely and solemnly profess, testify and declare that his present Majesty King William is rightful and lawful king of these realms”.
William was adamant that England was to become a key player in a multi-confessional grand alliance, with all the country’s resources mobilised to operate in the European theatre of war. On coming to the throne in 1689, his obsession to see Louis XIV of France defeated, curtailing his insatiable appetite for power, territory and glory. But in equal measure, William was accused of “sacrificing the lives of more men to his insatiable ambition than all your Mariuses and Sullas, Caesars and Pompeys put together”. In 1697, however, the ‘Peace of Ryswick’ ended the Grand Alliance’s nine-year war with France and included a commitment by Louis XIV to recognise William as the rightful king of England, Scotland and Ireland; not to support or assist William’s Jacobite adversaries and to withdraw troops from William’s ancestral enclave of Orange in Provence. Soon after, in 1700, the childless Spanish King, Carlos II, died, leaving the future control of an enormous global empire uncertain. The War of the Spanish Succession started once more, our one and only Louis XIV of France. For my purposes, I am not going there in this story.
To ensure further guarantees in the English line of succession, securing the crown to remain in Protestant hands and to extinguish hopes of all Pretenders. The Act of Settlement was introduced in 1701, legally and definitively vesting the English and Irish lines of succession in the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her descendants, and further stipulating that no future monarch could be Catholic, male, or married to a Catholic.
In March 1702, William died after suffering from a riding accident. William’s sister-in-law, childless Queen Anne, was crowned as the new queen of England. But, the Scots, holding their ground, were unhappy with Princess Sophia’s line of succession and demanded an alternative successor to the Scottish crown, unless Anglo-Scottish trade inequalities were not redressed. The English warned that unless the Scots confirmed the Hanoverian succession, they would be declared aliens in England. The Scots, bowed to pressure, invited Queen Anne to nominate commissioners to enter renewed negotiations for a closer Anglo-Scottish union. By 1706, bilateral commissions agreed on a Treaty of Union that created a single Kingdom of Great Britain, vested the succession to the British crown in the Hanoverian line, and established a single Parliament in Westminster.
Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714, at the age of forty-nine. The English thereby acquired yet another foreign king in Sophia’s oldest son, and Queen Anne’s second cousin, who became George I.
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