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Plus ça change…? New perspectives on the revolution of 1688*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen Taylor
Affiliation:
University of Reading

Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Clark, J. C. D., ‘The Glorious Revolution debunked’, The Sunday Telegraph, 24 July 1988, p. 15.Google Scholar

2 Trevelyan, G. M., The English revolution 1688–1689 (Oxford, 1938)Google Scholar. Compare, for example: ‘In Scotland… the settlement of 1689 was one-sidedly Presbyterian. And the result was that civil war remained endemic… until 1746. In Ireland, the Revolution Settlement was a racial and religious re-conquest of the most brutal kind’ [Trevelyan]. ‘Was 1688 a bloodless revolution? In Scotland, armed resistance to William was the immediate result: suppressed only after two pitched battles, it inaugurated an era of intermittent guerrilla warfare which ended only in 1746. Ireland was subjected to the greater horrors of invasion and conquest in a war lasting two-and-a-half years’ [Clark].

3 Clark, , ‘The Glorious Revolution debunked’.Google Scholar

4 Most notably John, Miller, whose arguments are neatly summarized in ‘The potential for absolutism in later Stuart England’, History, LXIX (1984), 187207.Google Scholar

5 Jones, J. R. in Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. I.Google Scholar

6 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 92.

7 On Europe see Carswell, John, The descent on England. A study of the English revolution of 1688 and its European background (London, 1969)Google Scholar and Jones, J. R., The revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972)Google Scholar. For Scotland and Ireland compare Trevelyan, English revolution, ch. 7, with Western, J. R., Monarchy and revolution. The English slate in the 1680s (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Speck, W. A., Reluctant revolutionaries. Englishmen and the revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, as well as the works by Carswell and Jones. The more old-fashioned ‘whig’ historians seem to have been much more aware of Britain's other kingdoms. See also Ogg, David, England in the reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1955), ch. 9.Google Scholar

8 Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 1.

9 Ibid. p. 79

10 Ibid. pp. 54–5.

11 Ibid. pp. 80–1.

12 It was not until Anne's seventh pregnancy that she produced a healthy heir, the duke of Gloucester, who was born in July 1689. Gregg, Edward, Queen Anne (London, 1980), p. 72.Google Scholar

13 Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 7. See, for example, Dickinson, H. T., ‘The eighteenth-century debate on the Glorious Revolution’, History, LXI (1976), 2845CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenyon, J. P., Revolution principles. The politics of party 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldie, Mark, ‘The roots of true whig 1688–94’, History of Political Thought, I (1980), 195236Google Scholar; Gunn, J. A. W., Beyond liberty and property. The process of self-recognition in eighteenth-century political thought (Kingston and Montreal, 1983), esp. ch. 4Google Scholar; and, most recently, Wilson, Kathleen, ‘A dissident legacy: eighteenth-century popular politics and the Glorious Revolution’, in Liberty secured? Britain before and after 1688, ed. Jones, J. R. (Stanford, CA, 1992), pp. 299334.Google Scholar

14 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 5; Revolution of 1688–9, P. 8. The former makes the point with reference to the making of the revolution, the latter with regard to the settlement.

15 See, for example, Straka, Gerald, ‘The final phase of divine right theory in England, 1688–1702’, English Historical Review, LXXVII (1962), 638–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunn, , Beyond liberty and propertyGoogle Scholar, ch. 4; Clark, J. C. D., English society 1688–1832. Ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar

16 Revolutions of 1688, p. 18.

17 Ibid. pp. 103, 118–19, 117, 122–4.

18 Ibid. p. 22.

19 Ibid. p. 43.

20 From a very different perspective W. A. Speck's recent account of the behaviour of William's English supporters in the months before the invasion casts further doubt on Beddard's argument here. ‘The Orangist conspiracy against James II’, Historical Journal, XXX (1987), 453–62.Google Scholar

21 Anglo-Dutch moment, chs. 3 (by Israel) and 10 (by Israel and Geoffrey Parker). Quotation at p. 122.

22 Quotations from Revolutions of 1688, pp. 73, 75, 94. Cf. Anglo-Dutch moment, pp. 129–32.

23 Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 7.

24 Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 12.

25 The most succinct statement of the opposite case is Carter, Jennifer ‘The revolution and the constitution’, in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, ed. Geoffrey, Holmes (London, 1969), pp. 3958.Google Scholar

26 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 23. See also Revolutions of 1688, p. 97.

27 Revolution of 1688–9, chs. 6 and 8.

28 This hardly explains, however, why only one of the other three volumes under review here contains an essay dealing with the Toleration Act, and that essay, by Gordon Schochet (Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 9), largely confines itself to Locke's Epistola de tolerantia. Mark Goldie, however, provides a much fuller account of the circumstances surrounding the composition and publication of the Epistola in his ‘John Locke, Jonas Proast and religious toleration 1688–92’, in The Church of England c. 1689–c. 1833. From toleration to tractarianism, ed. John, Walsh, Colin, Haydon and Stephen, Taylor (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 143–71.Google Scholar

29 From persecution to toleration, ch. 6, quotations at pp. 169, 154–5.

30 Ibid. ch. 13, quotations at pp. 334, 354, 359–60.

31 Revolutions of 1688, p. 135.

32 Two mentioned by Goldie are Thomas, Tenison and Sharp, John. From persecution to toleration, PP. 349. 355–6.Google Scholar

33 But see the important article by John, Spurr, ‘The Church of England, comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689’, English Historical Review, CIV (1989), 927–46.Google Scholar

34 E.g. The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 (36 vols., London, 18061820), IX, 1162 (Sir John St Aubyn).Google Scholar

35 On the catholics, see Bossy in From persecution to toleration, ch. 14.

36 Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 2, quotations at p. 35.

37 Carswell, , Descent on England, pp. 1112.Google Scholar

38 Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 3. It is an even more substantial contribution if it is read together with ch. 10, ‘Of providence and protestant winds’, by Israel and Geoffrey Parker, which provides the evidence for some of the points made in the earlier chapter.

39 Jones, , Revolution of 1688, p. 190.Google Scholar

40 Anglo-Dutch moment, pp. 114–19.

41 Revolution of 1688–9, p. 25.

42 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 160.

43 Speck, , Reluctant revolutionaries, p. 150.Google Scholar

44 Revolutions of 1688, ch. 3, quotations at pp. 145, 146.

45 Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 15, quotations at pp. 252, 255.

46 Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 4. It should be read as a companion piece to his article on the antecedents of the revolution in By force or by default? The revolution of 1688–9, ed. Eveline, Cruickshanks (Edinburgh, 1989).Google Scholar

47 Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 14.

48 Hayton, , ‘The Williamite revolution in Ireland’, in Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 5Google Scholar; Kelly, ‘Ireland and the Glorious Revolution: from kingdom to colony’, in Revolutions of 1688, ch. 4Google Scholar. Quotations from Anglo-Dutch moment, pp. 188, 199.

49 The Declaratory Act of 1720 was the moment of completion. Revolutions of 1688, p. 189.

50 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 211.

51 Davies, K. G., ‘The revolutions in America’, in Revolutions of 1688, ch. 7Google Scholar; Johnson, Richard R., ‘The revolution of 1688–9 in the American colonies’, in Anglo-Dutch moment, ch. 6.Google Scholar

52 Revolution of 1688–9, ch. 16, quotations at pp. 265, 268, 267. See also Greene, J. P., Peripheries and center. Constitutional development in the extended polities of the British empire and the United States 1607–1788 (Athens, GA, 1986).Google Scholar

53 Anglo-Dutch moment, p. 277.

54 Revolutions of 1688, p. 285.