Nige Tassell asks Professor Ted Vallance about the future of both monarchy and state religion had James II and VII not been usurped in 1688
WHAT IF...
In late 1688, King James II of England and Ireland, James VII of Scotland, saw his near-four-year reign drift to an end, after which he disappeared into exile. Replacing him on the throne were his son-in-law William III of Orange, the leader of the Dutch Republic, and William’s wife, James’s daughter Mary II. In England, the change in monarchs, known as the Glorious Revolution, was achieved with little bloodshed. James chose to disband his army, allowing William and his troops, having landed in Devon, to make their way to London relatively unimpeded.
It might have been a largely peaceful surrender of power, but it was a significant one, too. William and Mary’s joint reign broke the notion of the divine right of kings by introducing a ‘contract’ between the monarchy and the people, as represented by Parliament. James, in contrast, had favoured a tighter concentration of power within one individual: himself. Had James repelled William and Mary’s invasion, what kind of monarchy might have developed under him?
“First of all, we need to understand James’s aims for Parliament,” explains Professor Ted Vallance of the University of Roehampton and author of The Glorious Revolution: 1688 – Britain’s Fight For Liberty (Little, Brown, 2006). “He aimed to fashion a House of Commons that would vote for the repeal of the Penal Laws, which excluded Catholics from public life. In this respect, he sought to make Parliament more ‘manageable’, and to use his prerogative powers to dissolve it when it became troublesome.”
Professor Vallance certainly cautions against any notion that the king sought to remove the legislature wholesale. “Had James done away with Parliament entirely, it would have actually made it hard for him to govern,” he explains. “Parliament represented England’s governing classes – its most powerful figures and the individuals who ensured the smooth operation of local government. The rapid swings of political fortune over James’s reign were already creating a chaotic political situation at local level.”
RISK OF REVOLUTION
If the situation had been allowed to persist, could this chaos have turned in
