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dislike of James as a Catholic, because they believed that Parliament should not tamper with the lawful succession to the throne. To foil these efforts, Charles dismissed Parliament in 1681, relying on French subsidies to rule alone. When he died in 1685, his Catholic brother came to the throne.

CHART 15.1 A Simplified Look at the Stuart Dynasty

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The accession of James II (1685–1688) virtually guaranteed a new constitutional crisis for England. An open and devout Catholic, his attempt to further Catholic interests made religion once more a primary cause of conflict between king and Parliament. Contrary to the Test Act, James named Catholics to high positions in the government, army, navy, and universities. In 1687, he issued a new Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended all laws barring Catholics and Dissenters from office. Parliamentary outcries against James’s policies stopped short of rebellion because members knew that he was an old man and that his successors were his Protestant daughters Mary and Anne, born to his first wife. But on June 10, 1688, a son was born to James II’s second wife, also a Catholic. Suddenly, the specter of a Catholic hereditary monarchy loomed large.

A GLORIOUS REVOLUTION A group of seven prominent English noblemen invited William of Orange, husband of James’s daughter Mary, to invade England. An inveterate foe of Louis XIV, William welcomed this opportunity to fight France with England’s resources. William and Mary raised an army and invaded England while James, his wife, and their infant son fled to France. With almost no bloodshed, England had embarked on a “Glorious Revolution,” not over the issue of whether there would be a monarchy but rather over who would be monarch.

The events of late 1688 set the Glorious Revolution in motion. The far more important part was the Revolution Settlement, which confirmed William and Mary as monarchs. In January 1689, the Convention Parliament asserted that James had tried to subvert the constitution “by breaking the original contract between king and people” and declared the throne of England vacant. It then offered the throne to William and Mary, who accepted it along with the provisions of a declaration of rights, later enacted into law as the Bill of Rights in 1689. The Bill of Rights affirmed Parliament’s right to make laws and levy taxes and made it impossible for kings to oppose or do without Parliament by stipulating that standing armies could be raised only with the consent of Parliament. Both elections and debates of Parliament had to be free, meaning that the king could not interfere. The rights of citizens to petition the sovereign, keep arms, have a jury trial, and not be subject to excessive bail were also confirmed. The Bill of Rights helped fashion a system of government based on the rule of law and a freely elected Parliament, thus laying the foundation for a constitutional monarchy.

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CHRONOLOGY Limited Monarchy and Republics

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Poland

Merger of Poland and Lithuania

1569

Sigismund III

1587–1631

Beginning of liberum veto

1652

United Provinces

Official recognition of United Provinces

1648

House of Orange

William III

1672–1702

England

James I

1603–1625

Charles I

1625–1649

Petition of Right

1628

First Civil War

1642–1646

Second Civil War

1648

Execution of Charles I

1649

Commonwealth

1649–1653

Death of Cromwell

1658

Restoration of monarchy

1660

Charles II

1660–1685

Cavalier Parliament

1661

Declaration of Indulgence

1672

Test Act

1673

James II

1685–1688

Declaration of Indulgence

1687

Glorious Revolution

1688

Bill of Rights

1689

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The Bill of Rights did not settle the religious questions that had played such a large role in England’s troubles in the seventeenth century. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted Puritan Dissenters the right of free public worship (Catholics were still excluded), although they did not yet have full civil and political equality since the Test Act was not repealed. Although