The Glorious Revolution

In this episode we hear all about the Glorious Revolution, a pivotal moment in British history that saw the overthrow of King James II and the accession to the throne of William III and Mary II. For this we're joined by Professor Clare Jackson, a distinguished historian from the University of Cambridge. She joins us to delve into the religious, political, and military tensions of 17th-century Britain. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Tim Arstall. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

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• 2:18Dan Snow?

  In 1688, England, Scotland and Ireland looked on as yet another monarch was ripped violently from the throne. I think people are getting used to it. Just think about the previous, what, nearly 100 years. Rebel Catholics tried to blow up James I of England. His son Charles, well famously, he'd been swept from power during the civil wars and he was eventually executed. Cromwell had crushed various attempts to bring down his regime. His son had been removed from power by the military. Charles II, well, he had clung on despite the armed revolts. But now, in 1688, his little brother, James II, having recently seen off one invasion

• 3:01Dan Snow?

  by a nephew, now faced a second massive invasion by a second nephew, William of Orange. He was James's nephew, but he was also his son-in-law because William had married James's oldest daughter, Mary. And in November of 1688, William landed in Devon, marched up the country, and James's regime collapsed. William was eventually put on the throne in an exciting bout of constitutional innovation. Alongside his wife, Mary, they were made joint sovereigns to please those who wanted the formal line of succession respected. Afterwards, they called this the Glorious Revolution. But is that just Brits trying to put a positive spin on

• 3:41Dan Snow?

  yet another invasion, another king-deposed, another cycle of chaotic politics? Or was this a fresh, new beginning? The start of Britain's almost unique journey to the present, a story of constitutional monarchy and great power, and great economic, political and military power. This podcast is a story of 1688. We're going to talk about the background, we're going to talk about the revolution itself, we're going to talk the aftermath. And we're basically just going to give you a sense of just how extraordinarily unlikely it would have seemed at the time, that in the decades to come, Britain would establish itself as a dominant global power. Here is the very brilliant Claire Jackson. She's an honorary professor of early modern history at the University of Cambridge. You'll have heard of the fact

• 4:26Dan Snow?

  that her book won the Wolfson History Prize. It's called Devil Land: England Under Siege, 1588 to 1688. And it's a wonderful book. Enjoy.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  T minus ten.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black, white unity till they're dispersed in black unity.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 4:57Dan Snow?

  Fair, tell me about the Isles, England, Ireland, Scotland, in the 17th century and their reputation as the land of revolution. Was this archipelago a bit of a basket case in the late 17th century?

• 5:09Speaker 06

  That was very much the argument I put forward in my book Devil Land. I mean, the name is self-explanatory. Devil Land was what the Dutch thought of England at a time when they were executing their king in public, declaring war on the Dutch Republic and having a defiant republican state. Too much of continental Europe, the British Isles, looked ripe for interference, influence, invasion, and very unstable.

• 5:36Dan Snow?

  Why so unstable? And let's look at the reasons it's unstable. Shall we talk about religion first? What's going on with religion?

• 5:42Speaker 06

  I think that's definitely the core reason for the instability. I think it's important actually as well to remember that this isn't the sort of story we usually tell ourselves about the 17th century. We tend to think the 17th century is, you know, the crucible of constitutional liberties, religious tolerance, commercial prosperity. But the British Isles in the 17th century are three independent kingdoms under the same monarch after the accession of James VI and I. But each of those three kingdoms has perhaps a majority population with a different religious preference. The English have an established Protestant church, but in 1603 it's still quite a new church. A lot of people felt that the death of Elizabeth with no obvious successor that she had acknowledged might be the last chance for England to be reclaimed within the Catholic fold. But nevertheless,

• 6:25Speaker 06

  there's a Protestant church with a hierarchy of bishops. Scotland is also a Protestant country, but it had a much more radical reformation. A lot of its population don't like the persistence of bishops into a Protestant church, and the majority population are probably Presbyterian. And in Ireland, the majority population remain Catholic. Protestant reformation didn't gain the momentum that some of its... Defendants had hoped. The majority population remain Catholic. There's a minority established Church of Ireland that probably attracts about a tenth of the population, but there's also an Anglo-Scottish population increasingly in the north of Ireland, whose inclinations are Presbyterian. They're part of the Ulster plantation.

• 7:05Dan Snow?

  Right, you've painted a, you've painted a very heterodox picture. Then why does religion matter? People might be listening to this thinking, well, these, I mean, you might sound like angels dancing on a pinhead. It's not just religion. You have different outlooks and different political outlooks as well.

• 7:17Speaker 06

  Well, most people in the seventeenth century are probably more bothered about where they end up in the afterlife than what they do on earth. I mean, that's one way of thinking about it. And if you fear that you may be condemned to rot in hell for false beliefs, that's enough to focus your mind very powerfully, because, you know, obviously you would prefer to achieve eternal salvation. And, you know, this is a great age of confessional warfare. I mean, continental Europe in the, what we now call the Thirty Years' War is tearing itself apart. So, you know, trusting your belief that you really do believe the true religion is of fundamental importance. And with a multiple monarchy inheritance, like the Stuarts are trying to juggle, that inherently poses a sort of

• 7:58Speaker 06

  challenge to that ruler's authority. Countries like Spain, you know, they have multiple monarchies. Spain used to rule over the, the Spanish Netherlands. Spain also ruled Portugal and places. But at least those countries were sort of uniformly Catholic. But James VI and I, and then Charles I, and after him, Charles II in the Restoration, you know, have this very unstable archipelagic inheritance of three countries with largely different religious complexions.

• 8:24Dan Snow?

  And certainly, depending on your brand of Christianity, certainly you might be more or less keen on bishops and thereby, by extension, more or less keen on sort of hierarchy and kings and dukes. And so there's dangerous sort of political and revolutionary flavour to your religious choice as well.

• 8:40Speaker 06

  Definitely. And at the other end of the Protestant spectrum, if you're a Puritan, a sort of hotter sorts of Protestants, as they're called, or Presbyterian, you can be seen as a sort of using, I mean, the most cynical argument be that you're just using religion as a cloak for your political preferences. And really, you want to dismantle all the kind of powers and... Riches of monarchy. And this is also the century at the beginning when the pilgrim fathers set sail for New England in sixteen twenty on the Mayflower, sort of disillusioned by the prospect that the Church of England will ever be fully reformed. They want to create a new, much more Puritan church in the American colonies.

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  So we've got, I mean, we've just also, we've mentioned the geography. The Isles are not an easy place to rule over. And that's been, that's been a constant. On top of the kind of geographical complexities, we've got religious divisions. You mentioned Elizabeth before. She left a pretty poor English state behind, didn't she? The rulers of the Isles haven't got much money to sort of batter everyone's heads together and get control.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  All really much sort of plan. Elizabeth is, as you say, notoriously parsimonious. She leaves a big debt. James the Sixth and First is attracted by the idea of acceding to the English crown, but is pretty dismayed when he arrives to find this medieval notion that the king should live off his own, that, you know, he should sort of have enough money from private estates to be able to sort of look after himself. And there's no real, there wasn't in Scotland either, sense that the crown might need adequate finance to run, as he puts it, a royal family. I mean, the English haven't seen a royal family at court for half a century, but when James accedes to the English throne, he's got two sons and a daughter, Henry Charles and Elizabeth. He entertains numerous ambassadors. There are numerous

• 10:26Speaker 06

  things that a monarchy needs to do in the seventeenth century, and it needs money. Why early on, his main advisor, Robert Cecil, who becomes Earl of Salisbury, tries to create a great contract that the crown will give up some of its prerogative dues in return for a workable annual amount from Parliament. And that fails. And from then on, really, until the sixteen nineties, the Financial Revolution, Stuart Monat are very frustrated because the only real way they can get money is from Parliament. Parliament knows this. Parliament uses this power of the purse to exert some leverage or to try to do so, and to try and say no supply without redress of grievances. And more often than not, that often ends in Parliament sort of falling out with successive monarchs and then Parliament being paroled.

• 11:10Dan Snow?

  So, yeah, supply without redress means, we're not going to vote any taxes unless you deal with all these list of problems we put in front of you.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, that there has to be a quid pro quo.

• 11:20Dan Snow?

  Okay, so we've got a poor royal state. I'm trying to rule over this disputatious and divided archipelago. Charles I tries famously, civil war, loses his head. We have the, his successors, his republican successors Cromwell and briefly Cromwell's son, doesn't really work out either. They bring Charles II in to try and do that job. Charles II does okay, but I don't want to get into too much here because we do want to talk about his little brother. Why is Charles II's brother such a bogeyman?

• 11:54Speaker 06

  James VII II, well, he accedes to the crown in 1685 as England's first openly Catholic monarch since the days of Mary Tudor. And I sort of say openly Catholic. Charles II's own religious preferences have long been a subject of speculation, but outwardly, Charles II upholds the Church of England and realises that his power is yoked to the Protestant settlement. On his bed, he makes a Catholic confession and receives his final rites from a Catholic priest. So he may well have been a closet Catholic for all of his life, but that isn't widely known at the time of his death in 1685. Just briefly, before I start talking about James, I think another destabilising influence that perhaps, well, absolutely certainly didn't confront the Tudors, is also the

• 12:39Speaker 06

  power of the printed press in the 17th century. It has grown and grown. And Charles II, especially after the Reformation, after the revolution in the mid-century, knows that he's only going to be on power for as long as his subjects want to be. And it's not just any more kings, lords and commons, there really is a fourth estate, the printed press. And Charles II rules, one might say, relatively successfully. He comes back after the Restoration, determined not to be a king, out for vengeance. He makes very clear in the Declaration of Brader in April 1660, that the only people he will go after specifically are named regis, the people that put their names to the death warrant for his father. He tries to rule as a sub non part sans king.

• 13:22Speaker 06

  The religious settlement that accompanies the restoration is much more narrow than Charles himself would have wanted. He had talked about offering a liberty to tender consciences, but the parliaments that are elected after the Reformation are very fiercely royalist and quite a narrowly and intolerant Anglican settlement is imposed on England. That nevertheless remains in place until the late 1670s, when there is growing nervousness over what will happen, a bit like sort of at the end of Elizabeth's reign, what will happen when Charles dies? What sparks this all into action is a popish plot. There are allegations made that a popish plot is at the centre of government. Charles II is going to be deposed and James, who by now is recognised as having converted

• 14:06Speaker 06

  to Catholicism, will take over. So James's main problem is overt Catholicism.

• 14:11Dan Snow?

  So he's Catholic and again, that means to people, what does that mean beyond them thinking that he's wrong about transubstantiation, that it's the wrong faith? It also means what? That that's about European influence, the influence, not this time, not Philip of Spain like it was with Elizabeth, but this time Louis XIV, France's super Catholic superpower, that you're going to subordinate Englishness and you're not going to take patriotic decisions because you're in sort of hock to European faceless civil servants and bureaucrats. Sorry, I couldn't resist. But anyway, there's a sense there about foreign influences there?

• 14:44Speaker 06

  Definitely that you're potentially, you know, an agent of a foreign power. I think Catholicism means lots and lots of things to different people. And I mean, often it overlaps with popery, which is a more sort of political sense of Catholicism. But certainly that England's interests will not be best served by having a Catholic monarch. And I think, again, going back to why does religion matter so much? You know, a lot of people have a very providential outlook on the world and it seems as though, you know, providence has favoured England at these sort of various key moments. You know, 1588, Elizabeth famously repelled the Armada and then gunpowder plot was foiled in 1605. And the popish plot is again seen as another of these moments when England's

• 15:27Speaker 06

  whole Protestant state, but also English liberties are sort of threatened. And out of the popish plot comes this move for exclusion. These are people who say the English monarchy cannot withstand a Catholic successor, a point, you know, acceding to the throne. Now, you know, a Catholic successor could mean lots of things. It could be somebody who worships, and this is what people hope about James. You know, he will worship privately. He might just go to mass privately, but outwardly he will defend the Church of England and everything will stay the same. Or that once he's on the throne, he will be obliged to fulfill the wishes of the papacy and, you know, that this will overturn and reverse the entrenched reformation.

• 16:10Dan Snow?

  On a side note, you talk about foreign influence and English interests. I mean, when Charles II sold Dunkirk to the French in the early 1660s, that's when he burnt his bridges with me. I thought this, I don't trust, I don't trust these guys to place England's interests at the heart of national policy. So Charles, the-

• 16:31Speaker 06

  It goes back to your point, that goes back to your point about not having enough cash.

• 16:34Dan Snow?

  Yes, yeah, exactly.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  Well, Charles had, when he'd come back to the throne, spoken very honestly to Parliament and said, look, if this is going to work, you need to vote me enough money. And there's lots of talk, but the money doesn't come. So in the end, throughout his reign, Charles is reduced to sort of trying to get money where he can do. It's often sort of, a lot is made of the secret French subsidies he gets from Louis XIV, and they are significant. They're not, they're not the entirety of Crown finance. But selling Dunkirk is just another way of making money.

• 17:01Dan Snow?

  You mentioned the popish, it was sort of strangely complicated, but there's an interesting plot or rumours of a plot at the heart of government. Two sides were formed, and this will be familiar to people. The emergence of these two, what we might call, parties in English politics. Tell me about them and tell me, really, what they were founded to either do or prevent.

• 17:25Speaker 06

  So these two groupings emerge, known as the Whigs and the Tories. Interestingly, both of those terms start off as terms of abuse. I mean, Whigamores are radical Scots Presbyterians despised for being quasi-republican. Tories are Irish Catholic vagabonds. Again, there's a sense of English superiority. They're both terms of abuse, but they stick. There is some overlap between Whigs and parliamentarian groupings of the civil wars and between Tories and Royalists. In the late 1670s, at the time of the popish plot and the exclusion crisis, there are coffee houses, there are colours. There are organisations, there are periodicals and presses that would align themselves.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  So you can't really have a sense of legitimate opposition in the 17th century. Opposition to the monarch is treason. But these are factions that build. And the main objective of the Whigs is to exclude James, Duke of York, from succeeding to the throne. At the moment, Charles II is clearly a very feckoned monarch. He has produced around 14 illegitimate children, but he has not produced a lawful heir with his Portuguese Catholic wife Catherine de Braganza. And for as long as that remains the case, the next in line to succeed him is his younger brother, James, who's three years younger. There's a lot of pressure put on Charles to potentially consider divorce in Catherine of Braganza

• 18:48Speaker 06

  or to claim that he had actually married Lucy Walter, who is the mother of his oldest son, James, Duke of Monmouth, who is a very popular Protestant. Charles refuses all this. He says, no, there was no secret marriage in the civil wars. The only person I've ever been married to is Catherine of Braganza. God may move in mysterious ways, but he hasn't blessed us with any child. The succession belongs to my brother, James.

• 19:13Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History here. There's more to come. It gets better.

• 19:23Dan Snow?

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• 22:31Dan Snow?

  So despite the maneuverings of the Whigs, this proto-political sort of party, this grouping, James does indeed come to the throne. And almost immediately, there is another in this land of revolutions, in this devil land, there is another civil war, thankfully, I suppose, truncated, because Monmouth, aforementioned, rises up and rebels against his Uncle James. There's a battle at Sedgmore, people might have heard of, the last, often said to be the off-pitch battle on India's soil, 1685. Monmouth is executed. So James looks like he's sort of secure on the throne. The first months kind of go all right, don't they?

• 23:07Speaker 06

  They do. Charles dies unexpectedly, but you know, James at this stage is 51. He has two daughters from his first marriage to Anne Hyde, daughter of Clarendon. They are both staunchly Protestant. Indeed, one of them, Mary, is married to- And the leader of sort of Protestant Europe, William of Orange. So if James only lasts as long, you know, as his brother was by the time he dies, this is going to be a relatively brief interlude. Most people assume he will be succeeded by by Mary and then or then by Anne. He has talked very publicly about supporting church and state as by law established. The Commons vote him, customs duties sort of in perpetuity.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  It seems as though he is remarkably secure. He calls a new parliament. It's very sort of strongly royalist. Because the one thing that people had got very alarmed by in the exclusion crisis was the fear of civil war. And Charles the Second had essentially sort of turned the contest against the Whigs by saying that they they are the ones who are going to take us into a world of bloodshed and rebellion. So people have been very scared by that. They kind of rallied around. And when Mormon comes over, people just keep their heads down. They don't want a big revolution again against James.

• 24:19Dan Snow?

  And these are people who remember as children or even as many participated in the civil wars of the mid 17th century, which we now know are the bloodiest per capita wars in the last at least 500 years, if not more of of English and British history. So these are people who the talk of civil war was very real. They'd lost houses, they'd lost loved ones, they'd lost land. This was real.

• 24:41Speaker 06

  Absolutely. And this phrase forty one is come again is often a reference to the destabilising impact of the Irish Rebellion in sixteen forty one. Nobody wants to see, and that was often seen as the trigger for parties to form in England and eventually for civil war to break out. So nobody wants to see England sort of descend into that chaos of people taking brothers taking up arms against one another.

• 25:05Dan Snow?

  Then James the Second and Seventh, really in a very short space of time, managed to alienate everybody on every single side of the political spectrum.

• 25:15Speaker 06

  Yes, I mean, the speed is impressive. One might think, given what I was saying about if he's fifty one, he's got two established Protestant adult daughters, you know, maybe he's a king in a hurry. Maybe he feels he doesn't have that long on the throne. And if he intends to make life better for his Catholic co-religionists, or alternatively to recatholicise Britain entirely, he doesn't have long to do it in. Some of his popularity as well, and initial popularity arises from the fact, you know, he's very well known. He's known more as a soldier. He fought in the French armies under Louis XIV, in the Louis XIV armies in the sixteen fifties. He then fought in the Spanish armies.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  He then, as Lord High Admiral of the Navy, had seen active service against the Dutch during his brother's reign. He'd been very prominent during the Great Fire of London, sort of manning the pumps. You know, he's well known, he's seen as a leader, he's initially trusted. But as you say, he very quickly embarks on this pro-catholicising course. And historians are still divided as to whether he is the kind of just, just the great modern that just simply thinks that these days of forcing people to go to a, to hear religious services, forcing people's consciences is, is not only sort of immoral, it's also ineffective. It just makes people hypocrites. And really, all you need to do is declare toleration, let people believe what they want to.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Or whether he's actually much more intent on pursuing a very sort of aggressively pro-Catholic agenda that's very intolerant to Protestants. And it's not a good time. So he accedes to the throne in the early months of February sixteen eighty five. That autumn, Louis XIV in France revokes the Edict of Nantes that had for decades given toleration and protection to French Protestants. And, you know, Louis XIV is engaged in a long, long running war with, with the Dutch Republic. And a lot of commentators feel he wouldn't have had the nerve to withdraw these protections from Protestants in France, had he not known that there was a nice, pliable Catholic on the English throne.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  And people get very scared in London when there are waves of these Huguenot refugees who arrive in London, telling these awful stories of forced conversions and the Draganat, these sort of, you know, armed. Hordes of soldiers terrorising Protestants in France.

• 27:36Dan Snow?

  And he does things, he will go and put Catholics into senior positions in the military and all sorts of things like that. But he also drives Anglicans a bit bonkers because he shows similar tendencies when it comes to non-conformist Protestant sects and even Jews.

• 27:55Speaker 06

  Yes, he eventually begins to form quite a productive alliance with Quakers, especially the Quaker leader William Penn. So he begins to see that actually the majority of Protestant non-conformists don't sign up to toleration. I mean, toleration means toleration of Catholics. Protestant non-conformists aren't having any of it, except certain, as I say, certain non-conformists. So he forms this quite productive alliance with William Penn. They tour the country in 1687, talking about the need for a new Magna Carta for conscience, that they are going to be the people who, you know, free people from these shackles of only believing in the state church because you face all these penalties.

• 28:40Speaker 06

  I mean, James himself is a Catholic convert. He converted to Catholicism, it's thought, at some point in the late 1660s. It became quite overt in the early 1670s when he was forced to give up his position as Lord High Admiral of the navy. And it is possible that he believes that there are many, many, many more Catholics out there or people who would embrace the Old Faith if only they were given the freedom to do so. He probably, with all the zeal of a convert, overestimates the numbers of, you know, diehard Catholics in conscience. But you can see it in that line.

• 29:15Dan Snow?

  And then the problem for James, isn't it, that he starts to do the things that Anglicans say that Catholic monarchs do, like sort of trying to rule without parliament, trying to.

• 29:28Dan Snow?

  Suspend particular laws because it suits him, all, you know, partly in to pursuing this agenda of greater toleration, but he, he, it starts to look like he's acting like a continental Catholic despot, doing, doing the sort of things that his, you know, his, his relative Louis XIV does in France.

• 29:50Speaker 06

  Popri and arbitrary government is, is the phrase, and the two are seen to go hand in hand with one another. So yes, he does start issuing or suspending the, the test act for certain individuals who he wants to promote, which is seen as very arbitrary. He starts sacking judges who don't, as though they're going to kind of give him the outcomes he wants in test cases. He does win a test case, this case Godden versus Hale, the Catholic who is exempted from the test act to hold an office in the army, is then challenged by his coachman, Godden, and in Godden versus Hales, it is decreed by 11 judges, with only one judge dissenting, that the king has the right through his dispensing power to dispense

• 30:34Speaker 06

  with certain laws in certain instances, and that is hugely unpopular. James continues at the same time issuing these declarations of toleration and indulgence, and insisting that the clerical establishment, the Anglican hierarchy, read this aloud from their pulpits. And this results in another famous sort of, very prominent case where he puts on trial seven very senior Church of England clerics, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, for sedition, for not reading aloud this declaration as they're, as they're ordered to. The bishops come back to James and say, well, we can't in conscience. I mean, kind of ironically, you are issuing this declaration in favour of people's consciences, but we cannot in good conscience read this aloud. James puts them on trial. Interestingly, the

• 31:19Speaker 06

  judges, there are four judges involved, and they, they divide two, two in favour and two against, in terms of whether they think the jury should convict the bishops. But the jury in June 1688 acquit the bishops, and this provokes, you know, un, sort of unbridled celebrations around the country.

• 31:34Dan Snow?

  In June 1688, there was something, one event did not produce unbridled celebration. This was, is this really the inciting incident? Is this the big moment? And that is that James, out of nowhere. Well, his wife produced a son.

• 31:48Speaker 06

  James goes on a very public pilgrimage to various Catholic shrines and holy spaces, holy places in the autumn of sixteen eighty seven, praying for a son. Miraculously, he would say, entirely in God's providence, his wife becomes pregnant, Mary of Medina. But this is his second Italian Catholic wife, whom he married in sixteen seventy three. They had had children, but those children hadn't survived infancy. But then suddenly, in sixteen eighty eight, so fifteen years after his marriage to Mary of Medina, she produces a son. And this changes the dynastic calculations completely, because if Anglicans had been worried about James but thought, well, this is going to be a short reign, we just have

• 32:30Speaker 06

  to sort of sit tight and wait for James to die and him to be succeeded by Mary, who is married to William of Orange, then that all changed, because obviously this baby boy, the Prince of Wales, trumps the daughter's claim to the throne. So actually, much as had been the case around the time of the gunpowder plot, when Catholics had sort of despaired that James seemed no more sort of well-disposed towards Catholics than Elizabeth had been, and that, you know, he'd be succeeded by his Protestant sons, you know, the gunpowder plotters had decided to do something decisive to try and sort of create chaos and achieve their end through violence. The sort of the reverse happens in sixteen eighty eight. The Protestants who'd been thinking this is only a sort of temporary blip, we'll just

• 33:14Speaker 06

  sit tight, found suddenly the prospect of a never-ending Catholic succession.

• 33:19Dan Snow?

  And so the wheels are put in motion. Previous generations were all taught that these Protestant, these far-sighted Protestant aristocrats wrote to James's son-in-law, William of Orange, and invited him to come over. Do you think that was, do you think that was an invitation that was sort of postdated?

• 33:37Speaker 06

  No, I mean, there is, there is an invitation. I think the stories that we tell ourselves about the Glorious Revolution are there for a reason. It was the case that the Immortal Seven, a group of Tories and Whigs, wrote, William is not only James's son-in-law, he's also his nephew. Wrote to William, asking him to intervene in English politics, to restore liberties, to restore Parliament. And this was accompanied with this new dynastic reality of the Prince of Wales. There are rumours that this Prince of Wales is suppositious, that it isn't really a legitimate birth, it's been sort of smuggled in in a warming pan. And in that sense, William is also invited to defend his wife's claim to the throne.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  And certainly part of William's declaration, he is a very skilled propagandist, part of his printed declaration for bringing this very large invasion force to England in 1688, is because he says he was invited to by members of the political establishment. I think if we step back from this for a minute and think, what does William think he's doing? I think the stories we've told ourselves have always been that this is all about England, this is all about us. William's main concern is fighting Louis XIV. And he becomes extremely worried of this alliance between James, his father-in-law and his uncle, and Louis XIV. And what he wants to do is get England on to his side in this big, big war against the French.

• 35:01Dan Snow?

  Yes, this big European coalition conflict, the two sides are lining up, and England is a useful, a key player, and William doesn't want it siding with France. You mentioned this massive invasion force. It is fascinating, isn't it? Because William doesn't take any chance at all. There's no sense like Monmouth of landing in England and then gathering supporters around him and sort of duking it out with the king. He knows he might have to do this all by himself, so he takes a hue, he prepares, he builds a huge fleet and embarks a lot of troops on it.

• 35:30Speaker 06

  There's about 400 ships, 15,000 soldiers, 4,000 horse. I mean, this is massive. We like to tell ourselves again that England has never been invaded since 1066, but I think if you saw this invasion force approaching Devon. In the autumn of 1688, you would have thought otherwise. I don't think for a minute either we should underestimate the massive risk William is taking, launching an invasion of England in the autumn. This is after the kind of camp, traditional campaigning period. His fleet can't set sail for, you know, several, several days in, in the autumn. Once he's decided to invade because of the prevailing westerly winds. James looks at all of this and says, we can call this still favouring me.

• 36:13Speaker 06

  But then those Protestant winds, you know, turn and William takes his fleet to Devon. And he lands on the fifth of November, 1688. So for those who want to see providential significance in dates, you know, this is not only the centenary of the Armada, but the fifth of November is sort of redolent of Protestant success against the gunpowder plot. And he is largely welcomed. I mean, he takes Exeter very quickly. He is hailed as a Protestant deliverer. And as well as, you know, the, the, the 15,000 soldiers and the 400 warships, he also comes with a printing press and immediately sets about justifying his reasons for intervening.

• 36:50Dan Snow?

  I could talk about wind patterns all day, so I will not bore everybody. But it is very unusual and fascinating that the Channel was so kind to William. A little gentle easterly wind blowing him down, flat, calm, lovely. That, that easterly wind also locked up the English, the Royal Navy in its harbour or in its anchorage. Do you think as, as now William has landed, the navy didn't do anything to intercept him? Possibly because of the wind, the army starts to sort of disintegrate and it all gets a bit, do you think there was a, whether it was Protestant conspiracy, an orangist conspiracy right the way through the armed forces?

• 37:27Speaker 06

  I've no idea. I, I doubt it.

• 37:29Dan Snow?

  So, so you think it's just, and it was just, it's cock up rather than conspiracy that the navy didn't manage to sail out and intercept him?

• 37:35Speaker 06

  Well, we might be telling ourselves a very different story had the navy sailed out and intercepted, but I don't think that would have been the end of the story. James is not popular and the promise that William brings with him is popular. I mean, for those who felt the Prince of Wales is a, is a suppositious child smuggled in, then there's clearly a fraud at the heart of this Catholic court. But also, J, there's been a lot of- Protestant exiles in the Netherlands during James's reign, those who really felt that they did not want to live in James's Catholic or Catholicizing England had moved to the Netherlands. And it was now well known in England that although there was toleration in the Dutch Republic, religious toleration, that there were the equivalent of tests acts, that the Protestant church would be secure under William.

• 38:18Speaker 06

  So, given, as we talked about at the beginning, that most people are motivated by security of the Protestant faith, William is popular and Mary is seen as the rightful heir. And, you know, for those who are worried that she is being kept out by this Catholic Jesuitical sort of plot at the heart of government, there are good reasons to support William. And that's, I think, what really begins to freak James out. So James leaves Windsor, he goes down to Salisbury, or goes down to the South West, ready to confront William, and people are expecting this large pitched battle on Salisbury Plain. And James also has a very large standing army. I mean, he used the rebellions of Monmouth and the Earl of Arc, Earl of Arcane, Scotland, to maintain this very large force, around sort of 25,000.

• 39:01Speaker 06

  So the odds, in theory, are with James. But then, much to James's horror, he just gets confronted by large scale desertions.

• 39:09Dan Snow?

  Yep, people, including intimates with him, his own family members, his members of his court, they all disappear off to join William.

• 39:17Speaker 06

  He can't believe that William, who is his own son-in-law and his nephew, that he would be so treacherous, but then equally his own daughter, Anne, suddenly declares for William. And Anne's husband, Prince George, Danish prince, had travelled down with James and then also says, no, I'm joining, you know, I'm joining my sister and brother-in-law.

• 39:37Dan Snow?

  And then someone who people may be familiar with, with the surname of Churchill.

• 39:41Speaker 06

  Yep, John Marlborough, Churchill, is a very key commander in James's forces. He deserts, people start wearing orange sashes, and James has what seems like some kind of breakdown. He's suffering very severe, probably psychosomatic nosebleeds, all of his top command are deserting him, and there is confusion, and they sort of begin to drift back to London, and William's path to the capital lies open.

• 40:09Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us.

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• 41:37Dan Snow?

  So it's so fascinating. This is the moment in British history where the dog doesn't bark. There should have been a huge battle here, at the very least, possibly a civil war, and yet, it's remembered wrongly as a sort of bloodless revolution.

• 41:50Speaker 06

  It was bloodless in England. It certainly isn't bloodless in Ireland, and that pitched battle sort of gets exported to Ireland. And it's not bloodless in Scotland either. It is bloodless precisely because of memories of the Civil War. Preventing the effusion of blood is exactly the reason that most people don't want to take up arms.

• 42:09Dan Snow?

  And I suppose it's also bloodless, because you mentioned James's sort of deeply tragic breakdown, and rather than stay and fight and drag it out, he actually flees. He flees the country.

• 42:20Speaker 06

  And James knows exactly what happened to his father. Charles I. I mean, James had been a teenager when his father had been executed, and... You know, he knows that these sorts of things can turn very quickly. He doesn't want to end up in the Tower of London, being held there, because he says that's the only way that you then end up in a grave. So he flees very quickly to France. And that makes William's position perhaps a little bit more ambiguous. It's one thing to sort of arrive and say, I'm going to oversee a parliament, I'm going to make sure that liberties are restored and that the procedures happen normally. There is then a vacuum, and that's when William orders Dutch troops into London and starts, you know, starts sort of issuing directions about a convention parliament must meet, it can't, there's no king, it

• 43:04Speaker 06

  must meet, and that convention parliament must decide what it's going to do.

• 43:07Dan Snow?

  I always liked the story that James escaped, who was captured, wasn't he? And then William's like, no, let's him escape for goodness sake. It's rather inconvenient to have a father-in-law and uncle who he's just deposed. So William almost helps his, helps his poor old father-in-law escape the second time. Do you think William wanted the throne all the way through?

• 43:25Speaker 06

  It's speculation. I think he wanted England's resources. And I think, he makes very clear that he is not interested in his wife being crowned and him sort of being a hanger-on. He's, as he put it, he's not somebody who rules by the apron strings. I don't think that is initially how he sees things playing out. He absolutely knows that he may have to fight for this, but if in the end, a settlement could be reached in England with his father-in-law and uncle, and parliament can be restored, and all of the things that people are fearful of, if those are averted, then presumably, William has enough going on, frankly. You know, he wants to be campaigning in the continent. You know, this isn't, this isn't really a diversion he's looking for.

• 44:09Dan Snow?

  But this convention parliament, as you describe it, this sort of parliament that's, it gathers and it offers William and Mary the throne, the rulers. The only joint modics in English and Scottish history, they are crowned in early 1689. And then there's all the bits that follow, which traditionally we were told is the start of a constitutional monarchy in the Isles. What's the reality of what happens in the years that follow? Let's start with the legislative reality rather than some of the financial and other changes that happen.

• 44:43Speaker 06

  Well, there is a document drawn up at the time called the Bill of Rights that is later given parliamentary, it should really in a way be the Act of Rights, but it sets out a set of principles that those who meet in the Convention Parliament wish to see observed. There is ambiguity about its status in it is read aloud to Mary and William at the time of their coronation. So it's not entirely conditional, but it makes very clear the parameters. And there are phrases in that that have endured through the centuries. I mean, cruel and unusual punishments are not to, you know, not, not to be included, that parliaments must meet and there are, there are various, so that is a framework for government. And it is the case that Parliament has met every single year since 1689.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  That is not because Mary and William were sitting there and the Bill of Rights was read out, it was because William was intent on continuing this massive war against Louis XIV and needed taxation. And, you know, William is, is much better at working with Parliament than any of his Stuart predecessors, partly because he's been a Dutch stadholder, he has long worked with the Estates General in the Netherlands. You know, he fully understands this quid pro quo that I, if I need the resources to wage my military campaigns, I will work with the representative assembly. So that happens. But it's also clear that the English state cannot raise the kind of resources without an overhaul of financing. So definite deficit financing enters into, so a national debt starts, the Bank of England

• 46:08Speaker 06

  is created in 1694, and then there's a Bank of Scotland created in 1695. A very large sort of civil service begins to emerge. There are some aspects of the Glorious Revolution, as it's called, that don't succeed. There is an attempt to try and remove placement, to make people, to ensure that you cannot have members of the legislative who are also members of the executive, but actually that's Fails and we carry on having a sort of mixed constitution. But nevertheless, and there was also religious toleration passed only for Protestants, not extending to Catholics and atheists. But nevertheless, you know, these are fundamental, you know, pieces of legislation and ways in which politics develops in the 1690s.

• 46:50Speaker 06

  That had remained permanent, but I don't think we should think this is sort of peaceful and stable. I think if you lived in the 1690s. This would be actually still very unsettling. The period between 1619 and 1715 is the period with the most elections in British history, and there is an English history as well. There is a general election every two and a half years on average. So it's as though this is sort of frenetic. Pamphleteering and electioneering, Whigs and Tories, those divisions are now kind of here to stay. It's very adversarial. The outcome of this long running war against William the Fourteenth isn't clear, at least until 1692 and the naval sort of Battle of La Hogue, that begins to turn the balance, but but peace doesn't arrive until 1697.

• 47:32Speaker 06

  And it's very unfamiliar for the English to be involved in this large scale warfare. And especially after Mary dies, so Mary dies of smallpox in 1694. That kind of takes away a bit of the legitimist aspect of the William and Mary double monarchy. And that gives the Jacobites who have opposed William from the outset and seen him as a sort of Dutch usurper and the tyrant. More more sort of grounds to oppose him.

• 47:55Dan Snow?

  I'm going to ask you a question that I know people asked each other in the 18th century a lot, but England and Britain does change a huge amount in the 1690s. Partly because of the Glorious Revolution, partly though because of this massive war and the the needs to build, you know, as we as we know from more recent wars, the First and Second World War, enormous changes that take place when the state is forced to to mobilize enormous resources to fight a powerful continental enemy. But let me ask you whether, do you think there's a sense in which getting back to the kind of political philosophy of the of the Glorious Revolution. Did it legitimize this idea that you can, if you want to, and if if a monarch is bad and is somehow contravening essential natural rights or something, that you can rise up and get rid of a monarch?

• 48:40Dan Snow?

  And and that's that's legit. You're not going to hell. The right of resistance somehow becomes enshrined.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  In a way, you could you could say that about 1640. I mean, it's the time that people take up arms against a monarch that they really don't like. And that leads to a revolution. People have, historians spend a lot of time debating, is 1640 the English Revolution? Or is it 1688? Is 1688, you know, more a sort of revolution to preserve a sense? You know, there's lots of epithets that are often used on it, sort of sensible, you know, that James VII and II is, is the real radical. And all that happens is that the political classes sort of converge and impose a very sort of moderate settlement and that really 1688 is not that radical. And that's very much the argument of, if you read things like, you know, Burke's Reflections

• 49:28Speaker 06

  on the Revolution in France, when he is so appalled at what is going on in France in 1789, he says, look, we've had a revolution, but as was a revolution to preserve, you know, we stopped this kind of bloodshed and terror that you see because we had had that earlier experiences of the 1640s. And I think, you know, there's, there's, there's things to be said on either side. And there's a brilliant moment, 1938, when Trevelyan, just is very, great Whig historian, is very worried about the direction that Europe is going in the 1930s, publishes The English Revolution, which is all about 1688, as a turning point in English history when the forces of moderation hold good and, and these liberties are entrenched. And it so infuriates the young Christopher Hill, who is at this point about to sort

• 50:11Speaker 06

  of sign up as an infantry officer, that two years later, he publishes The English Revolution, saying the real revolution happened in 1640. What happened, I'm not going to say it in these words, but what happened in 1688 was just sort of rearranging the deck chairs. If you want to look at, you know, radical resistance, you need to look at 1640.

• 50:29Dan Snow?

  And where did you come down at the end of this wonderful book project? Where did you come down on the importance of the revolution itself? I know it's very difficult to then, to de-conflict, maybe we shouldn't even try, from, from the massive war, the mobilization of the state that followed it. But if, when did you come down on just how important that moment, 1688 in particular, was?

• 50:54Speaker 06

  I think it is a key moment, but I think it's not immediate. It makes clear the dysfunctionality of the multiple monarchy and sort of regal union. I mean, you know, it doesn't solve the succession. Mary and William, William and Mary do not have children. Anne has lots of children, so it looks as though the Stuart monarchy is is secure. But as we know from, you know, this sort of films like The Favourite, you know, this awful reproductive history of Queen Anne, that her surviving, sole surviving son dies in seventeen hundred. And that really sort of throws up another big problem. So the the political nation in the end make a very startling decision in seventeen hundred to elevate Protestantism over the hereditary right, to say that, you know, from now on, whoever succeeds to the throne must be a Protestant.

• 51:39Speaker 06

  And that means, as we know, that the crown descends in seventeen fourteen on Anne's death to the Hanoverian line. None of that was, you know, needed to be resolved in that way in sixteen eighty eight. It also begins, though, this big involvement in continental warfare. It begins to show that the relationship between England and Scotland doesn't necessarily work if both countries have very different economies and different foreign policies. In some ways, therefore, sixteen eighty eight leads to the Anglo-Scholastic Union of seventeen oh seven as a way of resolving some of these. It also creates real divisions and tensions in Ireland because that big pitched battle between William and James doesn't happen on Salisbury Plain, but it does happen at the Battle of the Boyne in sixteen ninety. And that then lays the Williamite victory, there lays the foundations

• 52:24Speaker 06

  for the sort of what we call the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy of the eighteenth century. So I think that that generation after sixteen eighty eight is is fundamental in sort of the emergence of Britain as a global superpower. But I don't think anybody would have thought that in sixteen eighty nine.

• 52:41Dan Snow?

  I think it would have felt a little bit more chaotic. That would have been a, yeah, you'd have been quite, there'd have been an unlikely prediction, particularly not when the French then won the Battle of Beechey Head a few months later on and and looked like they looked like there could be an invasion. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on, Claire Jackson. That was absolutely fantastic. Your prize winning book is called?

• 53:02Speaker 06

  Devil Land, England Under Siege, fifteen eighty eight to sixteen eighty eight. And I have another book coming out in August about James VI and I, called The Mirror of Great Britain.

• 53:11Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 53:12Speaker 06

  It's the four hundredth anniversary this year of James's death, so that's that's what it coincides with.

• 53:16Dan Snow?

  We would love to have you on to talk about that. Thank you very much for coming on this time.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  Thank you very much, Dan.

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