At one point in time, monarchs were seen as infallible beings appointed by God. For England, a series of disappointing kings and queens proved that the country’s rulers were just as human as the rest of us, and sometimes had to be reigned in or removed altogether. In fact, it was this very issue that set about the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the forced abdication of King James II and the welcoming of King William III and Queen Mary II as joint monarchs. There was also the issue of James’s staunch Catholicism in the face of an overwhelmingly Protestant Parliament and the king’s attempts to ease restrictions on Catholics that put the two at increased odds.
When James inherited the throne from his brother, King Charles II, his Catholicism wasn’t much of a concern. James had no living sons, and his daughters, Mary and Anne, were themselves Protestants, so the concern of a Catholic dynasty in charge of the Church of England was unlikely. However, James began to take increasing steps to assert his Catholicism that caused unease with Parliament. He sought to relax the Penal Laws against Catholics and Dissenters, dismissed judges who were opposed to him, ordered the fellows of Magdalen College at Oxford University to elect a Catholic president, and created a standing army in which he placed many fellow Catholics in positions of power.
The breaking point came when James finally sired a son with his wife, Queen Mary of Modena, meaning that his daughter Mary would no longer inherit the throne. Prior to her father’s actions, Mary had married William, Prince of Orange, who had on occasion assisted England with his own military forces, such as the suppression of the Monmouth Rebellion. Though he was James’s nephew as well as his son-in-law, the king’s increasingly pro-Catholic positions resulted in the deterioration of their relationship. In response to James’s actions, a collection of men asked William to come to England to depose the king and take his place as monarch.
William wrote back, hoping to secure English support for an invasion that he planned for September 1688. He wanted to make sure that he had the support of several important and influential men before he acted, and received it in a written request from the Immortal Seven, a group of six Whig and Tory politicians as well as a bishop. James’s actions of filling the English army with his own supporters had also led many in that body to be willing to support William. William also had an additional problem in that France was supportive of James, so he would need King Louis XIV’s attention elsewhere so that the nation would not intercede on James’s behalf. To that end, William secured the support of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I as well as the City of Amsterdam to check the French forces.
William and his navy then landed at Brixham on November 5 and proceeded to London with little bloodshed, which resulted in the Glorious Revolution also being called the “Bloodless Revolution.” In fact, William’s forces tended to encounter more support from English forces and people as they moved towards the capital, a result of James’s increasing unpopularity. The French attempted to offer James military forces, but he rejected them as he thought the offer would lose him even more support at home. As English support for James crumbled, the Queen and Prince of Wales fled for France, while James ultimately accepted that he could no longer hold onto power and left to join them on December 23.
A provisional government was then established that William took control of on December 28, but Parliament was divided on how to proceed. James still had plenty of supporters, and William threatened to leave if he was made a mere Regent. Ultimately, Parliament elected to make him king on the condition that his wife Mary was appointed joint monarch to satisfy the moderates. The vote was held on February 2, 1689, by the House of Lords that resulted in a 52-47 vote in favor of the joint monarchy. A further measure to shore up support for the new monarchs was the 1689 Bill of Rights that served to institute some of James’s policies while reasserting the power of Parliament and preventing the possibility of a Catholic monarchy. Seen as one of the most important moments in the development of the power relationship between the Crown and Parliament, it established the shared control of the government that exists to this day.
