Glorious Revolution

Largely non-violent revolution, 1688-1689, in which the Stuart family was removed from the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and replaced by the House of Orange.

In his three-year reign, King [James II]? brought to a boil the political battle in Britain between Catholicism and Protestantism, between Crown and Parliament. A Catholic and an admirer of Louis XIV-style Absolutism?, he set his face against the political trends away from both in British society. While his Stuart predecessor [Charles II]? had done the same, he had not been as overt as James, and James' actions -- edicts of tolerance towards Catholicism, and the raising of a standing army -- caused widespread alarm among his subjects. Matters came to a head in 1688 when James, middle-aged and long childless, fathered a son. The prospect of a Catholic dynasty in Britain loomed. The until-then loyal Tory Party united with the opposition Whigs, and set out to solve the crisis.

A conspiracy was launched to depose James and replace him with his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange -- both Protestants. William was leader of the Dutch, then in the beginning stages of a war with the French: the [War of the Grand Alliance]?. Jumping at the chance to add England to his alliance, William and Mary landed at Torbay, Devonshire? with a Dutch army. James' nerve broke, his army under the future Duke of Marlborough deserted, and he fled to Kent where he was captured. The memory of the execution of Charles I still being strong, he was then allowed to leave for France.

In 1689, the [Convention Parliament]? convened and declared that James' flight amounted to abdication. William and Mary were offered the throne as joint rulers, an arrangement which they accepted. Despite Jacobite rebellions in Scotland, and in Ireland where James used local Catholic feeling to try to regain the throne in 1689-90, the revolution was remarkably bloodless. England stayed calm, Scotland was pacified after the [Battle of Killiecrankie]?, and James was expelled from Ireland following the [Battle of the Boyne]?.

The Glorious Revolution was one of the most important events in the long evolution of powers possessed by Parliament and by the Crown in England. With the passage of the Bill of Rights it stamped out any final possibility of a Catholic monarchy, and ended moves towards monarchical absolutism in the British Isles by circumscribing the monarch's powers.