The Glorious Revolution
In November 1688, William III of Orange crossed the Channel with an army of approximately 15,000 at the invitation of seven English peers alarmed by James II's Catholic policies — his use of the dispensing power to place Catholics in military and civil offices, the Declaration of Indulgence, and the birth of a male Catholic heir in June 1688 that threatened a permanent Catholic succession. James II's army melted away through desertions, and he fled to France in December, an act Parliament subsequently treated as abdication. The Convention Parliament offered the crown jointly to William and his wife Mary (James's Protestant daughter) in February 1689, accompanied by a Declaration of Rights — enacted as the Bill of Rights in December 1689 — that prohibited a Catholic monarch, forbade the Crown from maintaining a standing army or levying taxes without parliamentary consent, and guaranteed free elections and freedom of parliamentary speech. The settlement permanently distinguished English constitutional monarchy from the Continental absolutist model and, by bringing England actively into the anti-French coalition, decisively altered the balance of European power for the following generation.
- Year: 1688 CE
- Category: Political
