A Student's History of England Volume II Part 17

1. =The Accession of James II. 1685.=--The character of the new king, James II., resembled that of his father. He had the same unalterable belief that whatever he wished to do was absolutely right; the same incapacity for entering into the feelings or motives of his opponents, and even more than his father's inability to see faults in those who took his side. He was bent on procuring religious liberty for the Catholics, and at first imagined it possible to do this with the help of the clergy and laity of the Church of England. In his first speech to the Privy Council he announced his intention of preserving the established government in Church and State. He had ma.s.s, indeed, celebrated with open doors in his chapel at Whitehall, and he continued to levy taxes which had been granted to his brother for life only; yet, as he issued writs for a Parliament, these things did not count much against him.

Unless, indeed, he was to set the law and const.i.tution at defiance he could do no otherwise than summon Parliament, as out of 1,400,000_l._ which formed the revenue of the Crown, 900,000_l._ lapsed on Charles's death. James, however, secured himself against all eventualities by procuring from Louis a promise of financial aid in case of Parliament's proving restive. Before Parliament met, the king's inclinations were manifested by sentences p.r.o.nounced by judges eager to gain his favour. On the one hand, t.i.tus Oates was subjected to a flogging so severe that it would have killed anyone less hardy than himself. On the other hand, Richard Baxter, the most learned and moderate of Dissenters, was sent to prison after being scolded and insulted by Jeffreys, who, at the end of the late reign, had, through James's influence, been made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

[Ill.u.s.tration: James II.: from the National Portrait Gallery.]

2. =A Tory Parliament. 1685.=--Parliament met on May 19. The House of Commons was Tory by an enormous majority, partly because the remodelled corporations (see p. 625) returned Tory members, but still more because the feeling of the country ran strongly in James's favour. The Commons granted to him the full revenue which had been enjoyed by his brother, and refused to listen to a few of its members who raised objections to some things which had been recently done. The House had not been long in session when it heard of two invasions, the one in Scotland and the other in England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Yeomen of the Guard: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._]

3. =Argyle's Landing. 1685.=--In Scotland the upper cla.s.ses were animated by a savage resolve to keep no terms with the Covenanters, whose fanatical violence alarmed them. The Scottish Parliament, soon after the accession of James, pa.s.sed a law punis.h.i.+ng with death any one attending a conventicle. Argyle, believing, in his exile in Holland, that all honest Scots would be ready to join him against the tyranny of the Government, sailed early in May at the head of a small expedition, and arrived in the Firth of Clyde. He had himself no military skill, and his followers, no less ignorant than himself, overruled everything that he proposed. Soon after landing he was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where, as he was already legally condemned to death (see p. 623), he was executed on June 30 without further trial. On the night before his death a member of the Council came to see him in his cell, where he found him in a placid slumber.

The visitor rushed off in agony to the house of a friend. "I have been," he said, "in Argyle's prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as sweetly as ever man did. But as for me--"

His voice failed him, and he could say no more.

4. =Monmouth's Landing. 1685.=--In the meanwhile Monmouth, the champion of the Dissenters and extreme Protestants, had, on June 11, landed at Lyme. So popular was he in the west of England that the trained bands could not be trusted to oppose him, and he was left una.s.sailed till regiments of the regular army could be brought against him. The peasants and townsmen of the western counties flocked to join Monmouth, and he entered Taunton at the head of 5,000 men; but not a single country gentleman gave him his support.

Parliament pa.s.sed against him an Act of Attainder, condemning him to death without further trial, and the king marched in person against him at the head of a disciplined force. Monmouth declared himself to be the legitimate king, and, his name being James, he was popularly known amongst his followers as King Monmouth, in order to prevent confusion. He advanced as far as Philip's Norton: there, hopeless of gaining support amongst the governing cla.s.ses, he fell back on Bridgwater. The king followed him with 2,500 regular troops, and 1,500 from the Wilts.h.i.+re trained bands. Monmouth was soldier enough to know that, with his raw recruits, his only chance lay in surprising the enemy. The king's army lay on Sedgemoor, and Monmouth, in the early morning of July 6, attempted to fall on the enemy unawares. Broad ditches filled with water checked his course, and the sun was up before he reached his goal. It was inevitable that he should be beaten; the only wonder was that his untrained men fought so long as they did. Monmouth himself fled to the New Forest, where he was captured and brought to London. James admitted him to his presence, but refused to pardon him. On July 15 he was executed as an attainted traitor without further trial.

5. =The b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes. 1685.=--Large numbers of Monmouth's followers were hanged by the pursuing soldiers without form of law.

Many were thrust into prison to await their trial. Jeffreys, the most insolent of the judges, was sent to hold, in the western counties, what will always be known as the b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes. It is true that the law which he had to administer was cruel, but Jeffreys gained peculiar obloquy by delighting in its cruelty, and by sneering at its unhappy victims. At Winchester he condemned to death an old lady, Alice Lisle, who was guilty of hiding in her house two fugitives from vengeance. At Dorchester 74 persons were hanged. In Somersets.h.i.+re no less than 233 were put to death. Jeffreys overwhelmed his victims with scornful mockery. One of them pleaded that he was a good Protestant: "Protestant!" cried Jeffreys, "you mean Presbyterian; I'll hold you a wager of it, I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles." Some one tried to move his compa.s.sion in favour of one of the accused. "My lord," he said, "this poor creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble yourselves," was the only answer given, "I will ease the parish of the burden," and he ordered the man to be hanged at once. The whole number of those who perished in the b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes was 320, whilst 841 were transported to the West Indies to work as slaves under a broiling sun. James welcomed Jeffreys on his return, and made him Lord Chancellor as a reward for his achievements.

6. =The Violation of the Test Act. 1685.=--James's success made him believe that he could overpower any opposition. He had already increased his army and had appointed officers who had refused to take the test. On his return to London he resolved to ask Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and dismissed Halifax for refusing to support his proposal. It would probably have been difficult for him to obtain the repeal even of the Recusancy Laws which punished Catholics for acting on their religious belief. It was not only hopeless, but rightly hopeless, for him to ask for a repeal of the Test Act, which, as long as a Catholic king was on the throne, stood in the way of his filling all posts in the army as well as in the state with men who would be ready to a.s.sist him in designs against the religion and liberties of Englishmen. If anything could increase the dislike of the nation to the repeal of the Test Act it was the fact that, in that very year, Louis had revoked the Edict of Nantes issued by his ancestor, Henry IV., to protect the French Protestants, and had handed them over to a cruel persecution. It might be fairly argued that what Louis had done, James, if he got the power, might be expected to do hereafter.

7. =Breach between Parliament and King. 1685.=--When the Houses, which had adjourned when the king went into the West, met again on November 9, James informed them not only that he had appointed officers disqualified by law, but that he was determined not to part with them. The House of Commons, the most loyal House that had ever been chosen, remonstrated with him, and there were signs that the Lords intended to support the remonstrance. On November 20 James prorogued Parliament.

8. =The Dispensing Power. 1686.=--Like his father, James liked to think that, when he broke the laws, he was acting legally, and he remembered that the Crown had, in former days, exercised a power of dispensing with the execution of the laws (see p. 604). This power had, indeed, been questioned by the Parliament in =1673= (see p.

606), but there was no statute or legal judgment declaring it to be forbidden by law. James now wanted to get a decision from the judges that he possessed the dispensing power, and when he found that four of the judges disagreed with him, he replaced them by four judges who would decide in his favour. Having thus packed the Bench, he procured the bringing of a collusive action against Sir Edward Hales, who, having been appointed an officer in the army, had, as a Catholic, refused to take the test. Hales produced a dispensation from the king, and, on June 21, =1686=, the judges decided that such dispensations freed those who received them from the penalties imposed by any laws whatever.

9. =The Ecclesiastical Commission. 1686=.--James, in virtue of his dispensing power, had already authorised some clergymen of the Church of England, who had turned Roman Catholics, to retain their benefices. Obadiah Walker, the Master of University College, Oxford, became a Roman Catholic, set up a press for the printing of Roman Catholic tracts, and had ma.s.s celebrated openly in the college. Yet he was allowed to retain his post. Then the king appointed Ma.s.sey, an avowed Roman Catholic, to the Deanery of Christchurch, and Parker, a secret Roman Catholic, to the Bishopric of Oxford.

Naturally the clergy who retained the principles of the Church of England preached sermons warning their hearers against the errors of the Church of Rome. James ordered them to be silent, and directed Compton, Bishop of London, to suspend Sharp, the Dean of Norwich, for preaching against the Papal doctrines. As Compton refused to obey, James, on July 11, const.i.tuted an Ecclesiastical Commission Court, at the head of which was Jeffreys. It is true that the Court of High Commission had been abolished by a statute of the Long Parliament, but James argued that his father's court, having power to punish the laity as well as the clergy, could be abolished by Act of Parliament, whereas, a king being supreme governor of the Church, might provide for the punishment of the clergy alone, in any way that he thought fit, without taking account of Acts of Parliament.

The first act of the new court was to suspend Compton for his refusal to suspend Sharp. James therefore had it in his power to stop the mouths of all the religious teachers in the realm.

10. =Scotland and Ireland. 1686-1687.=--In Scotland James insisted on a Parliamentary repeal of all laws imposing penalties on Roman Catholics. The Scottish Parliament, subservient as it had been to Charles II., having refused to comply with this demand, James dispensed with all these laws by his own authority, thereby making Scottish Episcopalians almost as sullen as Scottish Covenanters. In Ireland James had on his side the whole Catholic Celtic population, which complained of wrongs committed against their religion and property by the English colonists. James determined to redress these wrongs. In February, =1687=, he sent over to Ireland as Lord Deputy the Earl of Tyrconnel, whose character was low, and who had been known at Charles's Court as Lying d.i.c.k Talbot. He was, however, a Roman Catholic, and would carry out the king's will in Ireland without remorse.

11. =The Fall of the Hydes. 1686-1687.=--To make way for Tyrconnel, the former lord-lieutenant, Clarendon, the eldest son of the late Chancellor, was recalled from Ireland, his fall being preceded by that of his younger brother Rochester (see p. 627). Rochester was devoted to the maintenance of the Royal power; but James told him that he must change his religion if he wished to keep his office, and on his refusal he was dismissed.

12. =The Declaration of Indulgence. 1687.=--The dismissal of Rochester was the strongest possible evidence that James's own spirit was intolerant. Yet he was driven, by the course which he had taken, into the adoption of the principle of toleration, and no doubt persuaded himself that he accepted toleration on its own merits. At first he had hoped to obtain favours for the Roman Catholics with the goodwill of the Church of England, whilst continuing the persecution of Dissenters. He now knew that this was impossible, and he therefore resolved to make friends of the Dissenters by p.r.o.nouncing for a general toleration. He first had private interviews with the leading men in both Houses, in the hope that they would, if Parliament were re-a.s.sembled, a.s.sist in the repeal of all penal laws bearing on religion. These closetings, as they were called,[34] proving ineffectual, he issued, by his own authority, on April 4, =1687=, a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending all laws against Roman Catholics and Dissenters alike, and giving permission to both to wors.h.i.+p publicly. The result of the Declaration was not all that James desired. Many of the Dissenters, indeed, accepted their freedom joyfully. Most of them, however, dreaded a gift which seemed only intended to elevate the Roman Catholics, and opened their ears to the pleadings of the Churchmen, who now a.s.sured their old enemies that if they would have a little patience they should, in the next Parliament, have a toleration secured by law. This, argued the Churchmen, would be of far more use to them than one granted by the king, which would avail them nothing whenever the king died and was succeeded by his Protestant daughter, the Princess of Orange.

[Footnote 34: Because the interviews took place in the king's closet, or private room.]

13. =The Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 1687.=--Scarcely was the Declaration issued when James showed how little he cared for law or custom. There was a vacancy in the President-s.h.i.+p of Magdalen College, Oxford, and James commanded the Fellows to choose one Farmer, a man of bad character, and a Roman Catholic. On April 15 the Fellows, as they had the undoubted right to do, chose Hough. In June they were summoned before the Ecclesiastical Commission, which declared Hough's election to be void, and ordered them to choose Parker, who, though at heart a Roman Catholic, was nominally the Protestant Bishop of Oxford (see p. 638). They answered simply that, as Hough had been lawfully elected, they had no right to choose another President in his lifetime. Jeffreys bullied them in vain.

James insisted on their accepting Parker, and on acknowledging the legality of the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission. All but two, having refused to submit, were turned out of the College and left to beg their bread. When the Commissioners attempted to install Parker in his office not a blacksmith in Oxford would consent to break open the lock of the President's lodgings. The servants of the Commissioners were at last employed to force the door, and it was in this way that Parker took possession of the residence to which Hough alone had a legal claim. The expelled Fellows were not left to starve, as there was scarcely a gentleman in England who would not have been proud to receive one of them into his house.

14. =An Attempt to pack a Parliament. 1687.=--James was anxious to obtain Parliamentary sanction for his Declaration of Indulgence. He dissolved the existing Parliament, hoping to find a new one more to his taste. As he had packed the Bench of Judges in =1686=, he tried to pack a Parliament in =1687=. A board of regulators was appointed, with Jeffreys at its head, to remodel the corporations once more, appointing Roman Catholics and Dissenters to sit in them. James expected that these new members would elect tolerationists to the next House of Commons. So strong, however, was public opinion against the king that even the new members chosen expressly to vote for the king's nominees could not be relied on. The design of calling a new Parliament was therefore abandoned for the time.

15. =A Second Declaration of Indulgence. 1688.=--On April 22, =1688=, James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence, which he ordered to be read in all the churches. Most of the clergy objecting to read it, seven bishops signed a pet.i.tion asking that the clergy might be excused. Six of these bishops--Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was the seventh, having been forbidden to appear before the king--presented the pet.i.tion to James at Whitehall. James was startled when it was placed in his hands. "This," he said, "is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church, especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion." In vain the bishops protested that they hated the very sound of rebellion. James would not listen to their excuses. "This," he persisted in saying, "is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion.

Did ever a good churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my declaration published." One of the bishops replied that they were bound to fear G.o.d as well as to honour the king. James only grew more angry and told them, as he sent them away, that he would keep their pet.i.tion, with the evident intention of taking legal proceedings against them. "G.o.d," he said, as he dismissed them, "has given me the dispensing power, and I will maintain it. I tell you there are still seven thousand of your Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dress of a bishop in the second half of the seventeenth century: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._]

16. =Resistance of the Clergy. 1688.=--When the day came for the reading of the Declaration scarcely a clergyman obeyed the king's order. In one of the London churches Samuel Wesley, father of the John Wesley who was, by his preaching, to move the hearts of the next generation, preached a sermon on the text, "Be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy G.o.ds, nor wors.h.i.+p the golden image which thou hast set up." In Westminster Abbey, when the officiating minister, Bishop Sprat, a courtly prelate, began to read the Declaration, the whole congregation rose in a body and streamed out of the church.

17. =The Trial of the Seven Bishops. 1688.=--James ordered that the seven bishops should be tried, on the plea that their pet.i.tion was a seditious libel. The trial took place in Westminster Hall on June 29. The first difficulty of the prosecution was to show that the so-called libel had been published--that is to say, had been shown to any one--as no one was present besides the bishops when James received it, and the king could not be put into the witness-box. At last sufficient evidence was tendered by the Earl of Sunderland--a minister who, unlike Rochester, had changed his religion to keep his place--to convince the court that the pet.i.tion had been delivered to James. The lawyers on both sides then addressed the jury on the question whether the pet.i.tion was really a libel. The jury retired to deliberate, and at first nine of them were for the bishops and three for the king. Two of the latter gave way, but the other, a certain Arnold, who was the king's brewer, held out. "Whatever I do," he said, "I am sure to be half ruined. If I say _Not Guilty_ I shall brew no more for the king, and if I say _Guilty_ I shall brew no more for anybody else." He decided that the king's custom was the best worth keeping. To a gentleman named Austen who proposed to argue with him he replied that his mind was already made up. "If you come to that," replied Austen, "look at me. I am the largest and strongest of this twelve; and before I find such a pet.i.tion a libel, here I will stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe." The jury were locked up through the night, and when the morning of the 30th came Arnold had given way. A verdict of _Not Guilty_ was given in.

The crowds in Westminster Hall and in the streets of London burst out into shouts of joy. At Hounslow, where James was reviewing the regiments on which he trusted to break down all popular resistance, the soldiers shouted like the rest. James asked what it all meant.

"Nothing," he was told; "the soldiers are glad that the bishops are acquitted." "Do you call that nothing?" he answered. "So much the worse for them."

18. =Invitation to William of Orange. 1688.=--The acquittal of the Bishops would, but for one circ.u.mstance, have strengthened the nation in its resolution patiently to wait till James's death placed his daughter on the throne. On June 10, however, a son had been born to James, and that fact changed the whole situation. The boy would be educated in his father's religion, and England was threatened with a Roman Catholic dynasty in which each successive ruler would, from his childhood, be brought up in the belief that he might break through all legal restraints whenever he could have the approval of judges appointed by himself and liable to dismissal whenever he pleased. At first the general dislike of this disagreeable fact took the shape of incredulity, and it was almost universally believed, without a shadow of foundation, that the boy was a supposit.i.tious child procured from some poor mother and brought in a warming-pan into the queen's chamber. Whether he were supposit.i.tious or not, there was no doubt that he would be treated as James's heir. Tories were as much concerned as Whigs at the prospect before them. The doctrine of non-resistance was forgotten, and on June 30, the day of the bishops' acquittal, seven important personages, some being Whigs and some Tories, invited the Prince of Orange to land with an armed force to defend the liberties of England.

19. =Landing of William. 1688.=--William would probably not have accepted the invitation if the const.i.tutional rights of Englishmen had alone been at stake; but he had made it the object of his life to struggle against Louis, and he knew that war was on the point of breaking out between Louis and an alliance in which almost every European prince took part excepting James. He accepted the invitation that he might bring England into that alliance; and made preparations, which could not be hidden from James. James made concessions, abolished the Ecclesiastical Commission, gave back the charters of the City of London and the other corporations, and restored the Fellows of Magdalen. Anxious as William was to come, he was delayed for some time. The army of Louis was on the southern frontier of the Spanish Netherlands, and William could not stir as long as an invasion of his Spanish allies was threatened. Louis, however, offered James the a.s.sistance of his fleet to repel the expected Dutch expedition. James replied that he was quite able to take care of himself. Louis lost his temper, withdrew his army from the frontier of the Netherlands, and sent it to begin the war with the allies by burning and ravaging the Palatinate. William put to sea, intending to land in Torbay. On the morning of November 5 it was found that the fleet had pa.s.sed the haven for which it was bound; and as the wind was blowing it strongly on, there seemed no possibility of returning. William believed that nothing but failure was before him. "You may go to prayers, doctor," he said to Burnet, an English clergyman who accompanied him; "all is over." In a moment the wind changed and bore the fleet back into Torbay, and William was enabled to land safely at Brixham. Burnet, a warm-hearted but garrulous and inquisitive man, began asking him questions about his plans. If there was one thing that William disliked more than another, it was the interference of clergymen in military matters.

He therefore looked Burnet in the face, replying only by another question: "Well, doctor, what do you think of predestination now?"

Both he and Burnet were convinced that G.o.d had Himself guided them thus far in safety for the deliverance of His people.

20. =William's March upon London. 1688.=--William marched upon London, and, after a while, the gentry of the counties through which he pa.s.sed poured in to support him. The north and the midlands rose under the Earls of Devons.h.i.+re and Danby and other lords, Whig and Tory. The doctrine of non-resistance was thrown to the winds. James set out with his troops to combat William. He reached Salisbury, but the officers of his own army and his courtiers deserted him. Amongst those who fled to William was Lord Churchill, afterwards known as the Duke of Marlborough and the greatest soldier of the age. He had received many favours from James, which he now repaid by inciting all those whom he could influence to abandon their king. Amongst these was James's younger daughter Anne, over whom Churchill's wife exercised a most powerful influence, and who now, together with her husband, Prince George of Denmark, fled to William. James, left almost alone, made his way back to London, which he reached on November 27. On the 30th he ordered the preparation of writs for the election of a Parliament, and proposed an accommodation with William, who by that time had reached Hungerford. It was agreed that both armies should remain at a distance of forty miles from London in order to enable the new Parliament to meet in safety. James was, in reality, determined not to submit. On December 10 he sent his wife and son to France. On the 11th he attempted to follow them, burning the writs and dropping the great seal into the Thames, in the hope that everything might fall into confusion for want of the symbol of legitimate authority. There were riots in London, and the Roman Catholic chapels were sacked and destroyed. There was a general call to William to hasten his march. On the 12th, however, James was stopped near Sheerness by some fishermen and brought back to London. William had no mind to have a second royal martyr on his hands, and did everything to frighten James into another flight. On December 18 James left London and William arrived at Whitehall. On December 23, with William's connivance, James embarked for France.

21. =A Convention Parliament Summoned. 1688.=--Amongst the crowd which welcomed William was Sergeant Maynard, an old man of ninety.

"You must," said William to him, "have survived all the lawyers of your standing." "Yes, sir," replied Maynard, "and, but for your Highness, I should have survived the laws too." He expressed the general sense of almost every Englishman. How to return to a legal system with the least possible disturbance was the problem to be faced. William consulted the House of Lords and an a.s.sembly composed of all persons who had sat in any of Charles's Parliaments, together with special representatives of the City. Members of James's one Parliament were not summoned, on the plea that the return to it of members chosen by the remodelled corporations made it no true Parliament. The body thus consulted advised William to call a Convention, which would be a Parliament in everything except that there was no king to summon it.

22. =The Throne declared Vacant. 1689.=--On January 22, =1689=, the Convention met. The House of Commons contained a majority of Whigs, whilst the Tories were in a majority in the Lords. On the 28th the Commons resolved that "king James II., having endeavoured to subvert the const.i.tution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and that the throne had thereby become vacant." This lumbering resolution was unanimously adopted. The Whigs were pleased with the clause which made the vacancy of the throne depend on James's misgovernment, and the Tories were pleased with the clause which made it depend on his so-called voluntary abdication. The Tories in the Lords proposed that James should remain nominally king, but that the country should be governed by a regent. Danby, however, and a small knot of Tories supported the Whigs, and the proposal was rejected. Danby had, indeed, a plan of his own. James, he held, had really abdicated, and the crown had therefore pa.s.sed to the next heir. That heir was not, according to him, the supposit.i.tious infant, but the eldest daughter of James, Mary Princess of Orange, who was now in her own right queen of England. It was an ingenious theory, but two circ.u.mstances were against its being carried into practice. In the first place, Mary scolded Danby for daring to set her above her husband. In the second place William made it known that he would neither be regent nor administer the government under his wife. Danby therefore withdrew his motion, and on February 6 the Lords voted, as the Commons had voted before, that James had abdicated and the throne was vacant.

23. =William and Mary to be Joint Sovereigns. 1689.=--A Declaration of Rights was prepared condemning the dispensing power as lately exercised and the other extravagant actions of James II., while both Houses concurred in offering the crown to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. As long as William lived he was to administer the government, Mary only attaining to actual power in the event of her surviving her husband. After the death of both, the crown was to go first to any children which might be born to them, then to Anne and her children, and, lastly, to any children of William by a second wife in case of his surviving Mary and marrying again. As a matter of fact, William had no children by Mary, who died about eight years before him, and he never married again. On February 13 William and Mary accepted the crown on the conditions offered to them.

24. =Character of the Revolution.=--The main characteristic of the revolution thus effected was that it established the supremacy of Parliament by setting up a king and queen who owed their position to a Parliamentary vote. People had been found to believe that James II. was king by a Divine right. n.o.body could believe that of William. Parliament, which had set him up, could pull him down, and he would have therefore to conform his government to the will of the nation manifested in Parliament. The political revolution of =1689= succeeded, whilst the Puritan Revolution of =1641= failed, because, in =1641=, the political aim of setting the Parliament above the king was complicated by an ecclesiastical dispute which had split Parliament and the nation into two hostile parties. In =1689= there was practically neither a political nor an ecclesiastical dispute.

Tories and Whigs combined to support the change, and Churchmen and Dissenters made common cause against the small Roman Catholic minority which had only been dangerous because it had the Crown at its back, and because the Crown had been supported by Louis and his armies. A Revolution thus effected was, no doubt, far less complete than that which had been aimed at by the more advanced a.s.sailants of the throne of Charles I. It did not aim at changing more than a small part of the political const.i.tution of the country, nor at changing any part whatever of its social inst.i.tutions. Its programme, in short, was one for a single generation, not one, like that of the '_Heads of the Proposals_' (see p. 555) or the '_Agreement of the People_' (see p. 556) for several generations.

Consequently it did not rouse the antagonism which had been fatal even to the best conceived plans of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. It is much to be regretted that the moral tone of the men who brought about the Revolution of =1689= was lower than that which had brought about the Revolution of =1641=. That this was the case, however, was mainly the fault of the unwise attempt of the Puritans to enforce morality by law. The individual liberty which was encouraged by the later revolution would in due time work for morality as well as for political improvement.