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Volume 3 | Issue 4 - Landmarks
Article by Marie Stirling. Edited by Liz Goodwin.
To say the Stuart Kings did not have the best seventeenth century, would, I think, be a rather large understatement. The first was nearly blown sky high with the rest of his parliament, the second was embroiled in two civil wars with his own people and lost his head in the process, the third witnessed exile, plots, plague and fire and as for the fourth, well, he was Catholic.
Anti-Catholicism, fuelled by events such as the Fire of London and the Gunpowder plot and propaganda such as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was dominant at that time. It is not clear when James actually converted but this fact was made public in 1673. This caused a great deal of tension in English politics; indeed he nearly lost his right to the throne in the Exclusion Crisis at the end of that decade. Having succeeded his brother James’ attempts to relieve Catholics won little friends and he was forced to crush an uprising by Charles’ illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. In 1687 he issued a grant of general toleration for both Catholics and Dissenters. This was done in the attempt to forge an alliance with Dissenters, having conveniently forgotten they only accounted for fifteen percent of the population and held little power. However this attempt was unsuccessful. The Church of England had reached the end of endurance and the ministry refused to read out his Declaration of tolerance while the bishops called for a new Parliament to secure the Church of England. It was in this context that several members of the elite invited Mary, the Protestant daughter of James and her husband William to return to England.
We remember the Glorious Revolution as an invitation rather than an invasion and one where success was secure. It was, however, not quite so simple. William’s invasion was nearly unsuccessful as a storm threatened to disperse his navy and the English in fact expected him to loose. James was an experienced naval commander, having been Lord High Admiral under his brother Charles and many of his subjects expected him to easily counter William. However, William’s surprise landing in Devon away from his supporters in the North, and indeed James’ defending navy, gave him a small advantage. The landing on the 5th November was clearly un-coincidental to the image of the defending Protestant hero that William and his English allies wished for him. This can be seen in the declarations made by William himself against ‘popish slavery’ and in the banners carried by his army proclaiming, ‘For the defence of the Protestant Religion’, in the attempt to foster support.
Despite his successful landing, it was still not plain sailing for William as his arrival drew little immediate support, indeed Eveline Cruickshanks has noted that no person of social standing joined him before mid-November, making a nervous Prince to consider thoughts of retreat. Further, Tim Harris has shown there was notable support for James among the London crowds. It should also be noted that though some disapproved of James and his religious policies, supporting the King’s overthrow so soon after the terrors and endured during the 1640s was enough to make many reluctant to support William.
Yet, as we all know, James would not succeed. Following the loss of support from the army and navy James fled to France on the 23rd of the December. His navy had surrendered on the 13th December, the so called ‘naval conspiracy’, possibly brought on by an influx of Catholics at the hand of James into the navy and the possibility of war, so therefore more positions and bounty to be gained, with France under William. William arrived in London and called a Parliament in January, anxious to legitimise his rule. In February 1689 Parliament announced James’ flight as equivalent to abdication and William and Mary were crowned joint monarchs, so allowing for the Stuart rule to continue. James however was not one to throw in the towel just yet , having raised an army in France. He attempted first to take Ireland, a Catholic stronghold and loyal to James. This attempt failed, mainly due the loss in the Battle of the Boyne in June 1690, a victory still celebrated annually by Orangemen in Northern Ireland.
Though victory was now assured, the calm that followed held little peace. Followers of James and his male descendants, commonly called Jacobites continued to campaign for their return. These reached their peaks first in 1715 and 1745 at the battle of Culloden. There are numerous prosecutions against followers and those discontented by James’ daughters and after them the German King’s who replaced the childless Anne on the throne.
So a landmark event? In the space of two years the King was disposed, his forces crushed and hope of Catholic toleration along with it. The 5th of November became a day of joint celebration in the eighteenth century for divine deliverance from two Catholic threats. We can also thank it for bringing in constitutional limits on the crown by upholding ancient rights and liberties, such as Habeas Corpus and a frequently held Parliament. Yet it also brought much opposition, not only from the English but from the other nations in Great Britain. So a landmark event certainly but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it was glorious.
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