An invitation signed by seven noblemen and sent secretly to The Hague (30 June 1688)
The 'Immortal Seven', including the Earl of Danby and the Bishop of London
History · Early modern
The Glorious Revolution
1688–89
The deposition of James II and the birth of constitutional monarchy
When James II's Catholicising policies were crowned by the birth of a son and Catholic heir, seven leading Englishmen invited his Protestant son-in-law William of Orange to intervene. William landed at Torbay with a Dutch army, James's support melted away, and he fled to France. Parliament declared the throne vacant and handed it to William and Mary on conditions — the foundation of the British constitution.
How to spot them
- ▸1688: a king deposed with almost no fighting in England, and a Dutch stadtholder crowned in his place
- ▸Quiz clue: 'the Immortal Seven', 'Torbay', 'the warming pan', 'the Great Seal in the Thames'
- ▸Produces the Bill of Rights, the Toleration Act and Britain's only joint sovereigns
- ▸Bloodless in England — and anything but in Ireland and Scotland
What happened
A Dutch fleet landing at Brixham in Torbay on the fifth of November (1688)
The date deliberately echoed the 1605 plot; the easterly that carried him was called the Protestant wind
'The liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain' — a banner motto
Displayed on William's standard as he advanced on London
The 'warming-pan' rumour about a newborn prince smuggled into the queen's bed
The birth of James Francis Edward Stuart in June 1688 made a Catholic dynasty likely and triggered the crisis
A fleeing king dropping the Great Seal into the Thames (December 1688)
He was caught in Kent, then deliberately allowed to escape to France a second time
A Declaration of Right read out before a crown was offered to a husband and wife jointly (13 February 1689)
The Boyne, 1690, and the siege of Derry the year before
The Irish war that settled the question by force, and is still commemorated every July
Quick-fire facts
- •James II was Charles II's brother and an open Catholic; his heirs had been his Protestant daughters Mary and Anne until a son was born in June 1688
- •William of Orange was both James's nephew and his son-in-law, married to Mary
- •The invasion fleet was some four times the size of the Spanish Armada, and landed unopposed at Brixham on 5 November 1688
- •Key defections included John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, and James's own daughter Anne
- •The Convention Parliament declared that James had 'abdicated' and the throne was vacant; William III and Mary II reigned jointly from 1689
- •The Bill of Rights 1689 barred Catholics from the throne, banned a standing army in peacetime without parliamentary consent, and required free elections and frequent parliaments
- •The Toleration Act 1689 allowed Protestant dissenters freedom of worship, but not Catholics or Unitarians
- •The Scottish settlement came through the Claim of Right 1689; the Bank of England (1694) grew out of the war finance that followed
- •In Ireland the Jacobite war ended with the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, whose generous terms Parliament then gutted
- •Jacobites — from Jacobus, Latin for James — kept the cause alive through risings in 1715 and 1745
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Glorious Revolution
- Steve Pincus — 1688: The First Modern Revolution