7.7: England's Glorious Revolution

In 1660, the son of the executed Charles I, Charles II (r. 1660 – 1685) took the throne. As a cousin of Louis XIV of France, he tried to adopt the trappings of absolutism even though he recognized that he could never achieve a Louis-XIV-like rule (nor did he try to dismiss parliament). Various conspiracy theories surrounded him, especially ones that claimed he was a secret Catholic. As it turns out, he had drawn up a secret agreement with Louis XIV to re-Catholicize England, and he proclaimed his Catholicism on his deathbed. Later in his reign, a parliamentary faction called the Whigs tried to exclude his younger brother, James II, from being eligible for the throne because he was openly Catholic. A rival faction, the Tories, supported the notion of the divine right of kings and of hereditary succession and won the legal contest.

When James II (r. 1685 – 1688) took the throne, he started appointing Catholics to positions of power, even though the law required all lawmakers and officials to be Anglicans. In 1688, James’s wife had a son, which suggested that a Catholic monarchy might remain for the foreseeable future. A group of English lawmakers invited William of Orange, a Dutch military leader and lawmaker in the Dutch Republic, to lead a force against James. William was married to Mary, the Protestant daughter of James II. William arrived and the English army defected to him, forcing James to flee with his family to France. This series of events became known as the Glorious Revolution - "glorious" because it was bloodless and resulted in a political settlement that finally ended the better part of a century of conflict.

William and Mary were appointed as co-rulers by parliament and agreed to abide by a new Bill of Rights. The result was Europe’s first constitutional monarchy: a government led by a king or queen, in which lawmaking was controlled by a parliament, and all citizens were held accountable to the same set of laws. Even as absolutism became the predominant mode of politics on the continent, Britain set forth on a different, and opposing political trajectory.

Consequences of the Glorious Revolution

Through a constitutional monarchy, British elites, through parliament, no longer opposed the royal government but instead became the government. After the Glorious Revolution, lawmakers felt secure enough from royal attempts to unlawfully seize power that increased the size and power of government, and levied new taxes. Thus, the English state grew very quickly.

After 1688, the English state could grow because parliament was willing to make it grow, especially because of war. Before coming to England, William of Orange had already been at war with Louis XIV. In 1690, Britain went to war with France over colonial conflicts and because of Louis’s constant attempts to seize territory in the continent. The result was over twenty years of constant warfare, from 1690 – 1714.

To raise money for those wars, private bankers founded the Bank of England in 1694. Although not created by the British government, the Bank of England soon became the official banking institution of the state. This event allowed the government to manage state debt effectively. The Bank issued bonds that paid a reasonable amount of interest, and the British government stood behind those bonds. Thus, individual investors were guaranteed to make money and the state could finance its wars through carefully regulated sales of bonds. In contrast, Louis XIV financially devastated the French government with his wars, despite the efforts of his Intendants and other royal officials to squeeze every drop of tax revenue out of the huge and prosperous kingdom. Britain, meanwhile, remained financially solvent even as their wars against France grew larger every year. Ultimately, Britain transformed from a secondary political power to France’s single most important rival in the eighteenth century.