The Glorious Revolution and the Constitutional Settlement of 1688–1701
The Overthrow of James II
The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 was the decisive constitutional event in English history, establishing the framework of the modern British state. James II, who succeeded his brother Charles II in 1685, was an openly Catholic monarch in a kingdom whose established church was Protestant. James’s reign rapidly aroused opposition through policies that appeared to threaten both the legal order and the Protestant succession. He employed the dispensing power to exempt Catholics from the Test Acts (which required officeholders to receive Anglican communion), issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) suspending penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters, and appointed Catholics to senior positions in the army, the universities, and the Privy Council. When seven bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, petitioned against the Declaration of Indulgence, James had them prosecuted for seditious libel; their acquittal in June 1688 was greeted with public celebration.
The birth of James’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart, on June 10, 1688, transformed the political crisis into a constitutional emergency. The prospect of a Catholic dynasty extending into the indefinite future drove a cross-party coalition of Whigs and Tories to invite William of Orange, the Protestant husband of James’s eldest daughter Mary, to intervene. William landed at Brixham on November 5, 1688, with an army. James’s forces melted away; the King fled to France in December, dropping the Great Seal into the Thames as he departed.
The Convention Parliament, meeting in January 1689, declared that James had “abdicated the government” and that the throne was vacant. It then offered the crown jointly to William and Mary, who accepted the Declaration of Right—later enacted as the Bill of Rights 1689—as the condition of their accession. The Revolution was “glorious” in that it achieved fundamental constitutional change with minimal bloodshed, but the description obscures a violent reality: the subsequent Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691) and the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 were bloody conflicts in which the constitutional settlement was imposed by force.
The Bill of Rights 1689
The Bill of Rights 1689 is the foundational statute of the British constitution. Its preamble recited a catalogue of James II’s illegal acts: his assumption of the dispensing and suspending power, his establishment of the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission, his levying of money without parliamentary consent, his keeping of a standing army in peacetime, and his interference with the election and proceedings of Parliament. The declaratory clauses established the constitutional rights that James had violated: “that the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by regall authority without consent of Parliament is illegal”; “that levying money for or to the use of the Crowne by pretence of prerogative without grant of Parliament for longer time or in other manner then the same is or shall be granted is illegal”; “that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdome in time of peace unlesse it be with consent of Parliament is against law.”
The Bill of Rights also affirmed fundamental constitutional rights: “that election of members of Parliament ought to be free”; “that the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”; “that excessive baile ought not to be required nor excessive fines imposed nor cruell and unusual punishments inflicted”; “that jurors ought to be duely impannelled and returned.” These provisions established parliamentary privilege, protected freedom of speech within parliamentary proceedings, and prohibited cruel and unusual punishment—language that would be reproduced in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Bill of Rights settled the succession: the crown would pass to William and Mary jointly, then to Mary’s heirs, then to Princess Anne of Denmark and her heirs, then to William’s heirs by a subsequent marriage. No Catholic or person married to a Catholic could inherit the throne. The monarch was forbidden to be a Roman Catholic or to marry a Roman Catholic. The sovereign was required to “joyne in communion with the Church of England as by law established.”
The Toleration Act 1689
The Toleration Act 1689 granted freedom of worship to Protestant Dissenters (those who did not conform to the Church of England) but not to Catholics or Unitarians. Dissenters were permitted to worship in licensed meeting houses, provided they took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and made declarations against transubstantiation. The Act did not repeal the Test Acts or the Corporation Act, which excluded Dissenters from public office, but it marked a significant step toward religious pluralism. The Toleration Act reflected the Revolution’s settlement character: it expanded religious liberty within limits, maintaining the established church while acknowledging that uniform religious observance could no longer be enforced.
The Mutiny Act and the Control of the Standing Army
The Mutiny Act 1689 responded to James II’s use of a standing army to intimidate his subjects. The Act made the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime dependent on annual parliamentary authorisation. The Act’s requirement of annual renewal meant that Parliament must meet every year, establishing the principle of annual sessions that endures today. The linkage between military supply and parliamentary oversight ensured that the Crown could never again govern without Parliament. The Mutiny Act created the system of parliamentary control over the armed forces that remains a constitutional fundamental: the Armed Forces Act must be renewed every five years.
The Act of Settlement 1701
The Act of Settlement 1701 was the final component of the Revolutionary settlement, addressing the succession crisis created by the death of Princess Anne’s last surviving child in 1700. The Act settled the crown on Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I, and “the heirs of her body being Protestants.” It thereby excluded more than fifty Catholic claimants with stronger hereditary claims, establishing the principle that Parliament could determine the succession—a decisive assertion of parliamentary sovereignty over hereditary right.
The Act of Settlement also contained provisions of enduring constitutional importance. It provided that “judges commissions be made quamdiu se bene gesserint [during good behaviour],” and that their salaries be established and secured, but that judges could be removed upon the address of both Houses of Parliament. This provision established judicial independence from the Crown, replacing the previous system under which judges served at royal pleasure. The Act prohibited the monarch from leaving England, Scotland, or Ireland without parliamentary consent (repealed in 1716) and prohibited foreigners from serving in the Privy Council or Parliament. It prohibited the monarch from engaging in war for the defence of foreign dominions without parliamentary consent. It required that the monarch be in communion with the Church of England.
The Constitutional Settlement
The Revolution settlement established the constitutional principles that have governed Britain ever since. Parliamentary sovereignty—the proposition that Parliament can make or unmake any law whatsoever and that no body can override or set aside parliamentary legislation—emerged from the Revolution’s affirmation of legislative supremacy. The Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and the Triennial Act (1694, requiring parliaments to meet every three years) together created a constitutional monarchy in which the Crown exercised its powers under and not above the law.
The settlement was not democratic: the franchise remained restricted, and the House of Commons was dominated by landowners and their nominees. But it established the framework within which democratic reforms would be pursued over the following centuries. The Revolution’s achievement was to resolve, through law, the fundamental questions about the location of sovereign authority that had caused a century of conflict. The Glorious Revolution did not create modern democracy, but it created the constitutional conditions—the rule of law, parliamentary supremacy, an independent judiciary, and limits on executive power—without which modern democracy could not develop.