A statute declaring that no Catholic may wear the crown, that taxation without parliament is illegal and that parliaments must be held frequently (1689)
The Bill of Rights, enacting the Declaration of Right of February 1689
Monarchs · Stuart
William III and Mary II
William 1650–1702; Mary 1662–1694
House of Stuart and House of Orange-Nassau — the Glorious Revolution
In office: 1689–1702 (Mary II to 1694)
The only joint sovereigns in British history, William of Orange and his wife Mary, elder daughter of James II, accepted the crown in February 1689 on the terms of the Declaration of Right. Their reign fixed the constitutional settlement — a Bill of Rights, regular parliaments, a Protestant succession and a national bank to pay for war — while William spent most of it fighting Louis XIV. Mary died of smallpox in 1694; William ruled alone until a riding accident killed him in 1702.
How to spot them
- ▸The only joint monarchs of England, crowned together on 11 April 1689
- ▸Stadtholder of Holland; the Protestant wind; King Billy and the Orange tradition in Ireland
- ▸Mary was James II's elder daughter and William's first cousin as well as his wife
- ▸No children; the throne passed to Mary's sister Anne
In the reign
Freedom of worship granted to dissenters who swear the oaths, but not to Catholics or Unitarians (1689)
The Toleration Act
Soldiers billeted on a Highland clan turn on their hosts at dawn for a late oath of allegiance (1692)
The Massacre of Glencoe, 13 February 1692, on the MacDonalds
A joint-stock corporation chartered to lend the government £1.2 million for a French war (1694)
The founding of the Bank of England, under a scheme by William Paterson
An act requiring parliament to meet at least every three years and to be dissolved within three (1694)
The Triennial Act
An act settling the crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant heirs (1701)
The Act of Settlement, which also barred Catholics and their spouses from the throne
The lapse of the Licensing Act ends pre-publication censorship of the English press (1695)
Parliament simply declined to renew it
A king's horse stumbles on a molehill at Hampton Court and the rider dies of a broken collarbone and pneumonia (1702)
Hence the Jacobite toast to 'the little gentleman in black velvet'
Quick-fire facts
- •William was the son of William II of Orange and Mary, Princess Royal, daughter of Charles I; he married his first cousin Mary in 1677
- •The Convention Parliament offered them the crown jointly in February 1689; they were crowned on 11 April 1689
- •The Scottish Convention passed the Claim of Right in April 1689, a parallel to the English Bill of Rights
- •William defeated James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690; the Treaty of Limerick ended the Irish war in 1691
- •The Nine Years' War against Louis XIV was closed by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697
- •Mary died of smallpox at Kensington Palace on 28 December 1694, aged 32; Purcell wrote the music for her funeral and died the following year
- •They chartered the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1693, the second-oldest college in the United States
- •William commissioned Wren's work at Hampton Court and at Greenwich Hospital, and made Kensington Palace a royal residence because his asthma suffered at Whitehall
- •William died on 8 March 1702 after his horse Sorrel stumbled; both are buried in Westminster Abbey
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- The Royal Household — William III and Mary II (r. 1689-1702)
- Steve Pincus — 1688: The First Modern Revolution