The Revolution Settlement

The Bill of Rights
Public domain

The Bill of Rights

Immediately before the formal offer of the Crown on 13 February 1689, the Commons had presented William and Mary with the Declaration of Rights. Though at that stage William ignored it, later that year it was translated into a statute, the Bill of Rights.

The lawyers who drafted the Declaration chose ambiguous language which would affirm the political principles to which they could all adhere. Many of the provisions of the Bill of Rights were retrospective, such as declaring the suspending and dispensing powers illegal. The Bill reiterated old rights rather then invented new ones and was certainly not an overt attempt to establish a contractual monarchy. There was plenty of scope for varied interpretation.

One provision in particular did not stand the test of time: the provision 

that the raising or keeping of a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with the consent of Parliament, is against the law.

But what was this to mean in practice? After the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) which ended the Nine Years' War, the question of whether to continue a standing army in peace-time was hotly debated in Parliament. William personally appealed to the Commons to be allowed to keep the Dutch foot-guards. In 1699 the Disbanding Act fixed the number of troops to be kept in establishment and a peacetime standing army was legalised.

Most importantly, the Glorious Revolution established a Protestant succession to the crown. The Test Act now applied to the monarch. In contrast to the European principle of cuius regio eius religio, from this time onwards monarchs and their spouses had to follow the religion of the people. The principle was reinforced in the Act of Settlement (1701) and the Act of Union (1707).


After 1688 no monarch could rule as Charles II had ruled, though this was not because of later developments rather than the Bill of Rights. In some respects post-1688 monarchs were more powerful than their Stuart predecessors because they were Protestants and had at least the passive support of the bulk of the nation. But though both monarchical and legislative authority was strengthened as a consequence of the Revolution, Parliament benefited disproportionately:

1. It met much more frequently and conducted a much greater volume of business
2. Much politics was party based and rested upon carefully articulated ideologies
3. Because of the Triennial Act of 1694 this was an era of remarkable electoral activity, helping to forge important links between central and local politics.

Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, six Parliaments were elected and they met for twenty-two sessions – the majority of them for less than ten weeks. A dramatic change followed 1688, and annual parliamentary sessions averaging twenty weeks became the norm. This changed the nature of MPs’ work and how they saw their jobs.

The Triennial Act was passed in 1694, partly because Parliament never fully trusted William. The subsequent frequent elections were acrimonious, time-consuming and expensive. Between the Glorious Revolution and the Septennial Act (1716) general elections took place every two years. However most seats were uncontested and turnout was often low. In England in 1701 there were c. 118,000 county electors and c. 70,000 borough electors out of a population of about five million.

The Toleration Act

Although the Glorious Revolution was viewed by many as enabling the restoration of the supremacy of the established Church, they were soon disappointed. In May 1689 the Toleration Act allowed:

1. Freedom of worship to all who took the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and made declarations against transubstantiation.
2. Dissenters’ meeting-houses to be registered with the bishop or at the Quarter Sessions. Services had to be conducted with the doors open. The Test Acts remained; this led to the practice of occasional conformity.

In effect, the Act allowed freedom of worship though not rights to hold public office to Protestant Dissenters. John Locke wrote:

‘Toleration has now at last been established by law in our country. Not perhaps so wide in scope as might be wished for … Still it is something to have progressed so far.’

The exclusive relationship between citizenship and Anglicanism was severed. Meeting-houses proliferated. By 1710 over 2,500 places were licensed – there were about 9,500 Anglican parish churches. Although Dissenters were still deprived of public office by the Test Act, the practice of Occasional Conformity and the granting of indemnities in practice allowed many of them to sit on corporations and to vote.

The fiscal-military state

The immediate result of William's invasion was to involve England in long and expensive wars against France: the Nine Years' War (1689-1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). 

These wars proved to be major catalysts of constitutional change. 
The expansion of the army and the navy necessitated a new bureaucracy, particularly in the financial departments of the state.  Crown finances improved: the crown's revenue depended on customs, excise (collected directly by the crown from 1683) and from 1693 the land tax. 

A new system of public credit developed. By measures of 1693 and 1694 the king's debt became the National Debt, financed by borrowing. In 1694 the Bank of England was set up.

With the creation of this 'fiscal-military state' England became a major military as well as naval power.