The Glorious Revolution

William of Orange, by Willem Wissing
Public domain

Invasion

William’s fleet sailed on 20 October 1688 but was forced back by a terrible storm in which several ships and five hundred horses were lost. When the wind turned north-easterly on 1 November his fleet set sail a second time. Driven by 'the Protestant wind' the fleet sailed up the Channel and landed at Torbay on 5 November. (The same wind trapped the English fleet in the Thames estuary.) At first his experience seemed to replicate Monmouth’s - he was welcomed by the common people, but the gentry stayed at home. But four days later he entered Exeter and the tide began to turn in his favour. The army defections began on 16 October. On 21 November he began a slow march towards London, which was in the grip of anti-Catholic rioting. By this time Lord Delamere had secured Cheshire for him. On 21 and 22 November the earls of Devonshire and Danby seized Nottingham and York respectively.

Defections

This did not mean that William’s victory was inevitable. Many powerful Tories, including James's brother-in-law the Hydes, and most bishops were not prepared to abandon an anointed king, even if they disagreed with his religion. But at Salisbury on 23 November James lost his nerve. He could only sleep with the aid of drugs and he was bothered by a series of violent nosebleeds. Instead of marching out to meet William, he retreated to London. At this point John Churchill and James's nephew, the duke of Grafton, defected, followed the next night by his son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark. James was especially angry at Churchill’s defection – he had made him lieutenant-general and peer of the realm and felt, quite reasonably perhaps, that he was owed some loyalty.


On 26 November James was back in London, where he learned that Anne, in company with Sarah Churchill and Bishop Compton, had fled from London. He sent out writs for a general election and prepared for negotiations with William. By now the trickle of defections had became a flood. 

Anne, Princess of Denmark, c. 1684,
by Willem Wissing and Jan van der Vaardt

Flight

On 11 December James left London secretly, intending to flee to France, having sent his wife and son away two days earlier. (She landed at Calais on 21 December and wrote to Louis XIV begging for his protection.) James’s last actions were intended to produce an anarchical lack of order. He burned the writs that he had issued for a new parliament and threw the Great Seal into the Thames (between Lambeth and Horseferry). But this played into William’s hands. By deliberately creating a governmental vacuum he forced even the most loyal politicians into taking action to preserve government order. That night the London sky was red with flames from Catholic chapels as the citizens were terrified that an Irish army was about to descend on them – the night became known as ‘the Irish Fright’. This opened up a general threat of mob attacks on property. An assembly of peers and bishops met at the Guildhall and established a kind of provisional government for London. The threat of chaos made William the indispensable agent in restoring order and government.

Unfortunately for William James failed to reach France at the first attempt. He was captured on Sheppey by fishermen who thought he was a Jesuit taken to Faversham, and returned to London, where he was cheered by the crowd. William was still some distance away. But on 17 December Dutch guards took over at Whitehall. On the next day William allowed James to go by boat to Rochester in the correct expectation that he would soon escape to France. 

Abdication House, Rochester
now Lloyds Bank

After staying there a few days, he sailed to Ambleteuse on Christmas morning. Three days later he was united with the Queen at the château of St Germain-en-Laye.

St Germain en Laye
home of the exiled Stuarts

The Convention

James’s flight from London meant that when William reached the capital on 19 December he had the support of both Whigs and Tories. He convened an assembly over Christmas to advise him. At the end of the year separate assemblies of peers and former members of the Commons invited William to take over the conduct of government for the time being and to order a general election for a ‘Convention’ to meet on 22 January 1689.


The Convention assembled on 22 January 1689 in an atmosphere of intense debate, but with an urgent need to produce some sort of agreement. When it met it was clear that the Whigs had made an astonishing recovery from the disasters of 1685 and that they commanded a majority of almost ninety. They therefore held the initiative on the succession issue.

The problem was how to reach that option and retain a show of legality. James, now in France still claimed to be king, but in spite of this the Commons decided that he had abdicated, leaving the throne vacant. The Whig peer, Lord Somers stated: 

…the King’s going to a foreign Power and casing himself into his hands, absolves the People from their Allegiance.

But if the throne was vacant, by what authority was it to be filled? These were in the main conservative revolutionaries who did not wish to be seen to undermine monarchy or hereditary succession. Most still wished to assert that the monarch was chosen by God rather than parliament. The Lords in particular wished to avoid any hint that the monarchy might be elective and were unhappy with the belief that James had abdicated (especially as he denied it!). 

On 31 January the Lords voted (52/47) against offering the Crown to William and Mary, but this was rejected by the Commons and on 3 February William issued a statement that he would be neither regent nor prince. At the same time Anne indicated that she was willing to allow William to take precedence of her in the succession. With the three royals closing ranks and with London guarded by Dutch troops, the peers and commons of the Convention had little difficulty deciding the succession. The solitary realizable option was the joint rule of William and Mary (though with William predominant).

William and Mary: joint monarchs

On 6 February The Lords reluctantly accepted the Commons’ position and on 13 February, the day after Mary’s landing, William and Mary went to the Banqueting House where they were offered the Crown.

The Crown is offered to William and Mary
Public domain

On 11 April William and Mary were crowned at Westminster by Henry Compton, bishop of London. 

The coronation of William and Mary
Alamy stock photos

The absence of Archbishop Sancroft – one of the 400 clergy who refused to take the oath of allegiance - demonstrated the magnitude of the divisions that still existed. He and his fellow non-jurors recognized what the Convention had denied: that

‘the line of male primogeniture had been broken and the new monarch’s authority rested briefly upon military might and more permanently upon the wishes of the majority of the political elite expressed through a legislature with a dubious claim to legitimacy. To that extent the Crown had indeed been made elective (Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England 1689-1727, Oxford, 2000, 22-3).’

This left both Whigs and Tories very vulnerable. The Tories were uncomfortable with the overturning of the succession; in particular Anne’s acceptance that William should take precedence of her seemed a clear indication that the monarchy was elective. The Tories were instrumental in ensuring that the oath of loyalty to William and Mary drafted in 1689 did not describe them as ‘rightful and lawful’. Even so many who took the oath only went along with it after many agonies of conscience. (The words ‘rightful and lawful’ were only inserted after a failed Jacobite plot in 1696.) 

But the Whigs also had problems. Their association with the doctrines of contract and resistance could be used to smear them as closet republicans – a charge the great majority denied. In reality the Revolution was not a triumph for the radical Whig ideology of Lord Shaftesbury's John Locke, but a pragmatic compromise. Most Whigs did not see the situation as creating a precedent.

In July Anne gave birth to an apparently healthy son, William duke of Gloucester. This seemed a providential endorsement of the Revolution.