A fresh interpretation of King William III's employment of the royal veto provides new insights into the political and constitutional issues of his reign. The veto, or the crown's negative voice as it was called by contemporaries, is a particularly fruitful subject for study in charting the course of politics in seventeenth century England. The employment of the veto offers an accurate barometer for measuring political and constitutional change. It addresses the key issue of sovereignty—who makes law? King or Parliament? It is surprising, therefore, that historians have neglected to examine the implications of William's employment of the veto. As a result, their conclusions about the veto are not supported by a full analysis of the available evidence. What they have overlooked is that a close examination of the bills the king rejected, and of contemporary views of the royal prerogative, demonstrates that underneath the turmoil of Williamite politics lay a stable foundation built on the settlement achieved at the Revolution of 1688/9.

During his brief rule William III rejected a significant number of bills. Between 1692 and 1696 he vetoed five public bills: the Judges, Royal Mines, Triennial, Place, and MP Qualifications Bills. Previous Tudor and Stuart monarchs, with the exception of Queen Elizabeth I, only infrequently invoked the crown's right to refuse legislation. Queen Anne, who followed William to the throne, vetoed only one bill. She was the last monarch to employ this prerogative, although it remains theoretically a legitimate royal power.

In nineteenth century Britain, many evangelicals looked upon the Catholic Church as the incarnation of Antichrist. Their particular interpretation of the Protestant Bible, and especially the Book of Revelation, made it important for them to fight the enemy of true religion. During the 1850s and 1860s the most significant example of this struggle was the campaign to abolish state funding of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland, a subsidy which parliament had approved in 1845 over the protests of a national anti-Maynooth crusade. It is the crisis of 1845 upon which historians have concentrated their studies. The furor over the endowment of Maynooth subsided, but when the Papal Aggression affair of 1850–51 stimulated “No Popery” sentiment, the ultra-Protestants of Britain revived their agitation against Maynooth. The impelling force behind this renewed campaign was principally doctrinal, based on a view of Biblical truth which cast the Catholic Church in the role of Antichrist and made Maynooth appear to be the center of rebellion, disloyalty, and immorality for all of Ireland. One scholar has written that the Antichrist idea intensified feelings of anti-Catholicism and influenced parliament as late as 1851. This essay will demonstrate that the utilization of the Antichrist motif, when combined with several other negative notions about the Catholic Church, helped produce and sustain a revival of anti-Catholicism in the form of the campaign against Maynooth, well beyond the events of 1851.

Lord Acton, one of the most formidable intellects of the last century, was a master of transforming seemingly complicated or contradictory principles into concise epigrammatic statements. Attempting to reconcile Edmund Burke's many liberal views with his reputed Conservatism, Acton asked why was Burke “not an entire liberal? How thoroughly he wished for liberty—of conscience—property, trade, slavery, etc. What stood against it? His notion of history. The claims of the past. The authority of time. The will of the dead. Continuity.” One of the most important lessons to be derived from Burke's writings—recognized by countless authorities as the wellspring of modern British Conservatism—is that Conservatism is not so much a system of thought or ideology as it is a general inclination and regard for history. The behavior of the Conservative Party has been governed by precedent and pragmatism rather than by rationalism and idealism. Words such as dogma, program, or even policy have never been part of its lexicon, whereas such words as spirit, tradition, or even “way“ have more aptly described its approach to politics.

By the twentieth century the Conservative Party's preference for lessons from the past (in accordance with England's common law tradition) to any scientifically derived formulas had gained for it the twin monikers of “the national party” and “the stupid party.” But Conservatism does not claim to possess the “keys or the Kingdom,” notes Ian Gilmour, an active politician and Conservative theoretician. “There is no certainty about the route and no certainty about the destination. As Burke said of himself, the lead has to be heaved every inch of the way.” Such is the way that modern British Conservatives, at least, have wished to perceive themselves.

It was not very glorious at first, at least to many English people of the late seventeenth century. With a king of undoubted legitimacy squeezed out and a new, albeit related monarch installed and recognized by Parliament, the transaction shook government, nation and church alike. It left Jacobite and non-juring splinters all round. The Revolution, happening in fulfillment of ideals of exclusionist Whigs, did not entirely satisfy those partisans, who soon learned that they could not control their masterful king, William III. As for the Tories, their consciences ached due to their resistance to a divinely-appointed sovereign. Few highly-placed Englishmen were comfortable with their need to call in a foreigner to help them solve their domestic squabbles. Indeed, one writer, reflecting on the letter inviting the Prince of Orange to invade England, thought it would have been “more glorious … to assist our undoubted Soveraign [sic], then to suffer him to be dethroned, solely because he is a Roman Catholic.”

Twentieth-century historians called the Revolution other names than “glorious.” It has been dubbed a “sensible,” a “model,” a “moral,” a “respectable,” a “palace,” and simply the English Revolution. All agreed that it was indeed a Revolution, and they themselves were in agreement with some early writers who were contemporary with the event. The Orange Gazette, at the very end of the year 1688, reported on “the Revolutions that had occurred.” The historian Nicholas Tindal wrote that William of Orange himself, in a speech before the House of Lords, spoke of “this late Revolution.” Considerable discussion ensued in Parliament and in pamphlets as to whether William conquered James, or whether the king had abdicated, or had deserted his kingdom. But little question with contemporaries: there was a Revolution.