4.2 The Glorious Revolution and the English Empire

The Glorious Revolution and Its Impact on England and the American Colonies

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 replaced Catholic King James II with the Protestant monarchs William and Mary. This largely bloodless transfer of power established constitutional monarchy in England, limiting royal authority and affirming Parliament's central role in government.

The revolution's impact reached far beyond England. In the American colonies, it dismantled unpopular centralized rule and restored colonial self-governance. It also spread Enlightenment ideas about natural rights and limited government that would later fuel the American Revolution.

Causes and Outcomes of the Glorious Revolution

Why it happened: Several forces converged to make James II's removal possible.

• Religious tension drove much of the conflict. James II was Catholic, but England was overwhelmingly Protestant. His open promotion of Catholicism alarmed the political establishment.
• Power grabs by the king made things worse. James tried to rule as an absolute monarch, bypassing Parliament and concentrating authority in his own hands.
• The Declaration of Indulgence (1687) suspended laws penalizing Catholics and Protestant dissenters. While this sounds tolerant, many English Protestants saw it as a backdoor to restoring Catholic power.
• The birth of a Catholic heir in June 1688 was the tipping point. A Catholic dynasty now seemed likely, and leading English nobles decided to act.

Seven prominent Parliamentarians invited William of Orange (a Dutch Protestant prince) and his wife Mary Stuart (James II's own Protestant daughter) to take the throne. William landed in England with an army in November 1688, and James fled to France without a major battle.

What changed afterward:

• William and Mary became co-monarchs, but only after agreeing to govern alongside Parliament. This marked England's decisive shift toward constitutional monarchy.
• The English Bill of Rights (1689) formally limited royal power, protected key individual rights (freedom of speech in Parliament, the right to petition), and established Parliamentary supremacy over taxation and legislation.
• The Toleration Act (1689) granted limited religious freedom to Protestant dissenters like Puritans and Quakers. Catholics, however, were explicitly excluded.
• Parliament's authority over the monarchy was now a settled principle, laying the foundation for modern British democratic governance.

Political and Ideological Context

Understanding a few key terms helps make sense of why this revolution mattered so much.

• Divine right of kings was the doctrine James II relied on. It held that monarchs received their authority directly from God and therefore couldn't be legitimately challenged by Parliament or the people. The Glorious Revolution effectively rejected this idea.
• Absolutism was the governing style James attempted to implement, concentrating all meaningful power in the monarch. France under Louis XIV was the model he admired.
• Whigs and Tories were the two emerging political factions in England. Whigs generally supported constitutional monarchy and Parliamentary power, while Tories favored stronger royal authority. Both groups, however, united against James II.
• The Stuart dynasty ruled England from 1603 to 1714. The Glorious Revolution didn't end Stuart rule entirely (Mary was a Stuart, and her sister Anne ruled until 1714), but it permanently changed the terms on which Stuarts could govern.
• The Act of Settlement (1701) locked in the Protestant succession, mandating that only Protestants could inherit the English throne. This prevented any future return to Catholic monarchy.

Impact on the American Colonies

Changes in colonial governance were immediate and dramatic.

The most visible change was the collapse of the Dominion of New England. James II had created this super-colony in 1686 to centralize control over New England, New York, and New Jersey under a single royal governor (Edmund Andros), eliminating colonial assemblies in the process. When news of James's overthrow reached Boston in April 1689, colonists arrested Andros and dissolved the Dominion. Colonial charters and representative assemblies were restored.

This episode reinforced a powerful idea in the colonies: colonists had a right to representative government, and attempts to strip that right could be resisted.

Influence on political thought ran even deeper over the long term.

• John Locke's arguments about natural rights, consent of the governed, and the right to revolt against tyranny circulated widely in the colonies. These ideas gave colonists a philosophical framework for questioning British authority decades later.
• The principle of limited government, now embedded in English constitutional practice, became something colonists expected to apply to them as well. When Britain later tried to tax and regulate the colonies without colonial consent, colonists saw it as a violation of the very principles the Glorious Revolution had established.

Economic effects also reshaped colonial life.

• The founding of the Bank of England (1694) stabilized English finances, which in turn made credit and investment more available for colonial trade.
• Trade relationships between England and the colonies expanded, driving economic growth.
• The Navigation Acts, which required colonies to trade primarily with England, were enforced more consistently after the revolution. This benefited English merchants but increasingly frustrated colonists who wanted freer trade.

Key Documents of the Glorious Revolution

The English Bill of Rights (1689) is the revolution's most lasting legal achievement.

• It established Parliamentary supremacy over taxation and lawmaking, meaning the monarch could not raise taxes or suspend laws without Parliament's consent.
• It guaranteed specific rights: the right to petition the monarch, freedom of speech within Parliament, and the right of Protestants to bear arms.
• It prohibited excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments, setting precedents for due process.
• Many of these provisions directly influenced the American Bill of Rights (1791). The Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, for example, uses nearly identical language.

John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) provided the philosophical justification for the revolution and became one of the most influential political texts in the English-speaking world.

• Locke argued that people possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that these rights exist before any government.
• His social contract theory held that government derives its legitimate power from the consent of the governed. If a government violates the people's rights, the people have a right to replace it.
• These ideas show up directly in the Declaration of Independence (the language about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" echoes Locke) and shaped the Constitutional Convention's thinking about separation of powers and checks and balances.