Dan Snow's History Hit - The Glorious Revolution

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

In this episode we hear all about the Glorious Revolution, a pivotal moment in British history that saw the overthrow of King James II and the accession to the throne of William III and Mary II.For this we're joined by Professor Clare Jackson, a distinguished historian from the University of Cambridge. She joins us to delve into the religious, political, and military tensions of 17th-century Britain.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Tim Arstall.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

In 1688, England, Scotland and Ireland looked on as yet another monarch was ripped violently from the throne. I think people are getting used to it. Just think about the previous, what, nearly a hundred years. Rebel Catholics tried to blow up James I of England. His son Charles, well famously, he'd been swept from power during the civil wars and he was eventually executed. Cromwell had crushed various attempts to bring down his regime. His son had been removed from power by the military. Charles II, well, he had clung on despite the odd armed revolt. But now, in 1688, his little brother, James II, having recently seen off one invasion by a nephew, now faced a second massive invasion

by a second nephew, William of Orange. He was James' nephew, but he was also his son-in-law because William had married James' oldest daughter, Mary. And in November of 1688, William landed in Devon, marched up the country, and James's regime collapsed. William was eventually put on the throne in an exciting bout of constitutional innovation. Alongside his wife Mary, they were made joint sovereigns to please those who wanted the formal line of succession respected. Afterwards, they called this the Glorious Revolution. But is that just Brits trying to put a positive spin on yet another invasion, another king deposed, another cycle of chaotic politics? Or was this a fresh new beginning?

The start of Britain's almost unique journey to the present. A story of constitutional monarchy and great power. And great economic, political and military power power this podcast is a story of 1688 we're going to talk about the background we're going to talk about the revolution itself we're going to talk the aftermath and we're basically just going to give you a sense of just how extraordinarily unlikely it would have seemed at the time that in the decades to come britain would establish itself as a dominant global power here is is the very brilliant Claire Jackson. She's an honorary professor of early modern history

at the University of Cambridge. You'll have heard of the fact that her book won the Wilson History Prize. It's called Devil Land, England Under Siege, 1588 to 1688. And it's a wonderful book. Enjoy. T minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Tre, tell me about the Isles, England, Ireland, Scotland, in the the 17th century and their reputation as the land of revolution. Was this archipelago a bit of a basket case in the late 17th century? That was very much the argument I put forward in my book Devil Land. I mean, the name is self-explanatory. Devil Land was what the Dutch thought of

England at a time when they were executing their king in public, declaring war on the Dutch Republic and having a defiant republican state. To much of continental Europe, the British Isles looked ripe for interference, influence, invasion, and very unstable. Why so unstable? And let's look at the reasons it's unstable. Should we talk about religion first? What's going on with religion? I think that's definitely the core reason for the instability. I think it's important actually as well

to remember that this isn't the sort of story we usually tell ourselves about the 17th century. We tend to think the 17th century is, you know, the crucible of constitutional liberties, religious tolerance, commercial prosperity. But the British Isles in the 17th century are three independent kingdoms under the same monarch

after the accession of James VI and I but each of those three kingdoms has perhaps a majority population with a different religious preference. The English have an established Protestant church but in 1603 it's still quite a new church. A lot of people felt that the death of Elizabeth was no obvious successor that she had acknowledged might be the last chance for England to be reclaimed within the Catholic fold. But nevertheless, there's a Protestant church with a hierarchy of bishops. Scotland is also a Protestant country, but it had a much more radical reformation. A lot of its population don't like the persistence of bishops into a Protestant church, and the majority population are probably Presbyterian. And in Ireland, the majority population remain Catholic. The Protestant Reformation didn't gain the momentum that

some of its defendants had hoped. The majority population remain Catholic. There's a minority established Church of Ireland that probably attracts about a tenth of the population. But there's also an Anglo-Scottish population increasingly in the north of Ireland, whose inclinations are Presbyterian. They're part of the Ulster plantation. Right, you've painted a very heterodox picture. And why does religion matter? People might be listening today thinking,

well, you might sound like angels dancing on a pinhead. It's not just religion. You have different outlooks and different political outlooks as well. Well, most people in the 17th century are probably more bothered about where they end up in the afterlife than what they do on earth. I mean, that's one way of thinking about it. And if you fear that you may be condemned to rot in hell for false beliefs, that's enough to focus your mind very powerfully because obviously you would prefer to achieve eternal salvation. And this is a great age of

confessional warfare. I mean, continental Europe in what we now call the Thirty Years' War is tearing itself apart. So trusting your belief that you really do believe the true religion is of fundamental importance. And with a multiple monarchy inheritance like the Stuarts are trying to juggle, that inherently poses a sort of challenge to that ruler's authority. Countries like Spain, they have multiple monarchies. Spain used to rule over the Spanish Netherlands. Spain also ruled Portugal and places. But at least those countries were sort of uniformly Catholic. But James VI and I, and then Charles I, and after him, Charles II in the Restoration, have this very unstable archipelagic inheritance of three

countries with largely different religious complexions. And certainly, depending on your brand of Christianity, certainly you might be more or less keen on bishops and thereby, by extension, more or less keen on hierarchy and kings and dukes. And so there's dangerous political and revolutionary flavor to your religious choice as well. Definitely. And at the other end of the Protestant spectrum, if you're a Puritan, the sort of hotter sorts of Protestants, as they're called, or Presbyterian, you can be seen as a sort of using, I mean, the most cynical argument would be that you're just using religion as a cloak for your political preferences. And really, you want to dismantle all the kind of powers and riches of monarchy.

And this is also the century at the beginning when the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for New England in 1620 on the Mayflower, sort of disillusioned by the prospect that the Church of England will ever be fully reformed. They want to create a new, much more Puritan church in the American colonies. So we've got, we just also mentioned the geography. The Isles are not an easy place to rule over. And that's been a constant. On top of the kind of geographical complexities, we've got religious divisions. You mentioned Elizabeth before. She left a pretty poor English state behind, didn't she?

The rulers of the Isles haven't got much money to sort of batter everyone's heads together and get control. Or really much sort of plan. Elizabeth is, as you say, notoriously parsimonious. She leaves a big debt. James VI is attracted by the idea of acceding to the English crown, but is pretty dismayed when he arrives to find this medieval notion that the king should live off his own, that he should sort of have enough money from private estates to be able to look after himself. And there's no real, and there wasn't in Scotland either, sense that the crown might need adequate finance to run, as he puts it, a royal family. I mean, the English haven't seen a royal family at court for half a century, but when James

accedes to the English throne, he's got two sons and a daughter, Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth. He entertains numerous ambassadors. There are numerous things that a monarchy needs to do in the 17th century, and it needs money. Quite early on, his main advisor, Robert Cecil, who becomes Earl of Salisbury, tries to create a great contract that the crown will give up some of its prerogative dues in return for a workable annual amount from parliament and that fails and from then on really until the 1690s the financial revolution stuart monarchs are very frustrated because the only real way they can get money is from parliament parliament knows this parliament uses this uh power of the purse to exert some leverage or to

try to do so and to try and say no supply without redress of grievances. And more often than not, that often ends in parliament sort of falling out with a monarch, successive monarchs, and then parliament being probed. So yeah, supply without redress means we're not going to vote you any taxes unless you deal with all these list of problems we put in front of you. Yeah, that has to be a quid pro quo. Okay, so we've got a poor royal state trying to rule over this disputatious and divided archipelago. Charles I tries, famously, civil war, loses his head. We have his successors, his Republican successors, Cromwell and him, briefly Cromwell's son, doesn't really work out either.

They bring Charles II in to try and do that job Charles II does okay but I don't want to get into too much here because we do want to talk about his little brother why is Charles II's brother such a bogeyman uh James VII II well he accedes to the crown in 1685 as England's first openly Catholic monarch since the days of Mary Tudor. And I sort of say openly Catholic. Charles II's own religious preferences have long been a subject of speculation, but outwardly, Charles II upholds the Church of England and realizes that his power is yoked to the Protestant settlement. On his bed, he makes a Catholic confession and receives his final rites from a Catholic priest. So he may well have been a closet Catholic for all of his bed, he makes a Catholic confession and receives his final rites from a Catholic priest.

So he may well have been a closet Catholic for all of his life, but that isn't widely known at the time of his death in 1685. Just briefly, before I start talking about James, I think another destabilizing influence that perhaps, well, absolutely certainly didn't confront the Tudors, is also the power of the printed press in the 17th century. It has grown and grown. is also the power of the printed press in the 17th century. It has grown and grown. And Charles II, especially after the revolution in the mid-century, knows that he's only going to be on power for as long as his subjects want to be. And it's not just any more kings, lords, and commons. There really is a fourth estate, the printed press. And Charles II rules, one might say, relatively successfully. He comes back after the Restoration, determined not to be a king out for vengeance.

He makes very clear in the Declaration of Breda in April 1660 that the only people he will go after specifically are named regicides, the people that put their names to the death warrant for his father. He tries to rule as a sort of non-pastisan king. The religious settlement that accompanies the restoration is much more narrow than Charles himself would have wanted. He had talked about offering a liberty to tender consciences, but the parliaments that are elected after the Reformation are very fiercely royalist, and quite a narrowly and intolerant Anglican settlement is imposed on England. That nevertheless remains in place until the

late 1670s when there is growing nervousness over what will happen, a bit like sort of at the end of Elizabeth's reign, what will happen when Charles dies. What sparks this all into action is a Popish plot. There are allegations made that a Popish plot is at the centre of government, Charles II is going to be deposed, and James, who by now is recognised as having converted to Catholicism, will take over. So James's main problem is his overt Catholicism. So he's Catholic. And again, that means to people, what does that mean beyond them thinking that he's wrong about transubstantiation, that it's the wrong faith? It also means what? That that's about European influence, the influence, not this time, not Philip of Spain like it was with Elizabeth, but this time,

Louis XIV, France's super Catholic superpower, that you're going to subordinate Englishness, and you're not going to take patriotic decisions because you're in some hock to European faceless civil servants and bureaucrats. Sorry, I couldn't resist. But anyway, there's a sense there about foreign influence, is there? Definitely, that you're potentially an agent of a foreign power. I think Catholicism means lots and lots of things to different people. And I mean, often it overlaps with potpourri, which is a more sort of political sense of Catholicism. But certainly that England's interests will not be best served by having a

Catholic monarch. And I think, again, going back to why does religion matter so much, a lot of people have a very providential outlook on the world. And it seems as though providence has favoured England at these various key moments. 1588, Elizabeth famously repelled the Armada, and then the gunpowder plot was foiled in 1605. And the Popish plot is again seen as another of these moments when England's whole Protestant state, but also English liberties are sort of threatened. And out of the Popish plot comes this move for exclusion. These are people who say the English monarchy cannot withstand a Catholic successor acceding to the throne. Now, a Catholic successor could mean lots of things.

It could be somebody who worships, and this is what people hope about James, he will worship privately. He might just go to mass privately, but outwardly he will defend the Church of England and everything will stay the same. Or that once he's on the throne, he will be obliged to fulfil the wishes of the papacy and that this will overturn and reverse the entrenched reformation. On a side note, you talk about foreign influence and English interests. I mean, when Charles II sold Dunkirk to the French in the early 1660s that's when he burned his bridges with me i thought this i

don't trust i don't trust these guys to place england's interests uh at the heart of national policy um so charles the it goes back to your point that goes back to your point about not having enough cash yes yeah exactly well charles had when he'd come back to the throne spoken very honestly to parliament and said look if this is going to work you need to vote me enough money and there's lots of talk but the money doesn't come. So in the end, throughout his reign, Charles is reduced to sort of trying to get money where he can do. It's often sort of a lot is made of the secret French subsidies he gets from Louis XIV, and they are significant. They're not the entirety of crown finance. But selling Dunkirk is just another way of making money.

You mentioned the Popish. It was sort it was strangely complicated but there's an interesting um plot or rumors of a plot at the heart of government two sides were formed and this will be familiar to people uh the the the emergence of these two sort of what we might call parties in in english politics uh tell me about them and tell me really that they're what they were founded to either do or prevent. So these two groupings emerge, known as the Whigs and the Tories. Interestingly, both of those terms start off as terms of abuse. I mean, Whigamores are radical Scots Presbyterians despised for being quasi-Republican. Tories are Irish Catholic vagabonds. Again, there's a sense of sort of English superiorities. They're both terms of abuse, but they stick. There is some overlap

between Greeks and parliamentarian groupings of the civil wars and between Tories and Royalists. In the late 1670s, at the time of the Popish plot and the exclusion crisis, there are coffee houses, there are sort of colours, there are sort of organisations, there are periodicals and presses that would align themselves. So you can't really have a sense of legitimate opposition in the 17th century. Opposition to the monarch is treason, but these are kind of factions that build. And the main objective of the Whigs is to exclude James, Duke of York, from succeeding to the throne. At the moment, Charles II is clearly a very fecund monarch. He has produced around 14 illegitimate children, but he has not produced a lawful heir with his Portuguese Catholic wife, Catherine of Braganza.

And for as long as that remains the case, the next in line to succeed him is his younger brother, James, who's three years younger. There's a lot of pressure put on Charles to potentially consider divorce in Catherine of Braganza or to claim that he had actually married Lucy Walter, who is the mother of his oldest son, James, Duke of Monmouth, who is a very popular Protestant. Charles refuses all this. He says, no, there was no secret marriage in the Civil Wars. The only person I've ever been married to is Catherine of Braganza. God may move in mysterious ways, but he hasn't blessed us with any child. The succession belongs to my brother, James. You're listening to Dan Snow's History here. There's more to come. It gets better.

To be continued... kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so despite the the maneuverings of the wigs that this proto-political sort of party this grouping james does indeed come to throne and almost immediately there is another in this land of revolutions in this devil land there is a another civil war thankfully um i suppose truncated because monmouth aforementioned rises up and rebels against his Uncle James. There's a battle at Sedgmore people might've heard of the last, often said to be the last pitch battle on India's soil, 1685. Monmouth is executed. So James looks

like he's sort of secure on the throne. The first months kind of go all right, don't they? They do. Charles dies unexpectedly, but James at this stage is 51. He has two daughters from his first marriage to Anne Hyde, daughter of Clarendon. They are both staunchly Protestant. Indeed, one of them, Mary, is married to the leader of sort of Protestant Europe, William of Orange. So if James only lasts as long as his brother was by the time he dies, this is going to be a relatively brief interlude, most people assume. He will be succeeded by Mary and then by Anne. He has talked very publicly about supporting church and state as by law established.

The Commons vote him customs duties sort of in perpetuity. It seems as though he is remarkably secure. He calls a new parliament. It's very strongly royalist. Because the one thing that people had got very alarmed by in the exclusion crisis was the fear of civil war. And Charles II had essentially turned the contest against the Whigs by saying that they are the ones who are going to take us into a world of bloodshed and rebellion. So people have been very scared by that.

They kind of rallied around. And when Monmouth comes over, people just keep their heads down. They don't want a big revolution again against Jane. And these are people who remember as children, or even as money participated in, the civil wars of the mid-17th century, which we now know are the bloodiest per capita wars in the last at least 500 years, if not more, of English and British history. So these are people who, the talk of civil war was very real. They'd lost houses, they'd lost loved ones, they'd lost land. This was real. Absolutely. And this phrase, 41 has come again, is often a reference to the destabilising impact of the Irish Rebellion in 1641. Nobody wants to see, and that was often seen as the trigger for parties to form in England and eventually for civil war

to break out. So nobody wants to see England sort of descend into that chaos of people taking, brothers taking up arms against one another. Then James II and VII, really in a very short space of time, managed to alienate everybody on every single side of the political spectrum. Yes. I mean, the speed is impressive. One might think, given what I was saying about if he's 51, he's got two established Protestant adult daughters, maybe he's a king in a hurry. Maybe he feels he doesn't have that long on the throne. And if he intends to make life better for his Catholic co-religionists, or alternatively to re-Catholicize Britain entirely, he doesn't have long to do it in. Some of his popularity as well,

initial popularity, arises from the fact he's very well known. He's known more as a soldier. He fought in the French armies under Louis XIV in the 1650s. He then fought in the Spanish armies. He then, as Lord High Admiral of the Navy, had seen active service against the Dutch during his brother's reign. He'd been very prominent during the Great Fire of London, sort of manning the pumps. He's well known. He's seen as a leader, he's initially trusted, but as you say, he very quickly embarks on this pro-Catholicizing course. And historians are still divided as to whether he is the kind of just the great modern that just simply

thinks that these days of forcing people to hear religious services, forcing people's consciences is not only sort of immoral, it's also ineffective. It just makes people hypocrites. And really, all you need to do is declare toleration, let people believe what they want to, or whether he's actually much more intent on pursuing a very sort of aggressively pro-Catholic agenda that's very intolerant to Protestants. And it's not a good time. He exceeds to the throne in the early months of February 1685. That autumn, Louis XIV in France revokes the Edict of Nantes that had for decades given toleration and protection to French Protestants.

And Louis XIV is engaged in a long, long running war with the Dutch Republic. And a lot of commentators feel he wouldn't have had the nerve to withdraw these protections from Protestants in France had he not known that there was a nice pliable Catholic on the English throne. And people get very scared in London when there are waves of these Huguenot refugees who arrive in London telling these awful stories of forced conversions and the dragonade, these armed hordes of soldiers terrorizing Protestants in France. And he does things, he will go and put Catholics into senior positions in the military and all sorts of things like that.

But he also drives Anglicans a bit bonkers because he shows similar tendencies when it comes to non-conformist Protestant sects and even Jews. Yes. He eventually begins to form quite a productive alliance with Quakers, especially the Quaker leader, William Penn. So he begins to see that actually the majority of Protestant non-conformists don't sign up to toleration. I mean, toleration means toleration of Catholics. Protestant non-conformists aren't having any of it, except certain, as I say, certain non-conformists. So he forms this quite productive alliance with William Penn. They tour the country in 1687, talking about the need for a new Magna Carta for conscience, that they are going to be

the people who free people from the shackles of only believing in the state church because you face all these penalties. I mean, James himself is a Catholic convert. He converted to Catholicism, it's thought, at some point in the late 1660s. It became quite overt in the early 1670s when he was forced to give up his position as Lord High Admiral of the Navy. And it is possible that he believes that there are many, many, many more Catholics out there or people who would embrace the old faith if only they were given the freedom to do so. He probably, with all the zeal of a convert, overestimates the numbers of diehard Catholics in conscience. But you can see it in that light.

And then the problem for James, isn't it, that he starts to do the things that Anglicans say that Catholic monarchs do, like sort of trying to rule without parliament, trying to suspend particular laws because it suits him at all you know partly in to pursuing this agenda of greater toleration but he he starts to look like he's acting like a continental catholic despot doing doing the sort of things that his you know his his relative louis the 14th does France. So, popery and arbitrary government is the phrase, and the two are seen to go hand in hand with one another. So, yes, he does start issuing or suspending the Test Act for certain individuals who he wants to promote,

which is seen as very arbitrary. He starts sacking judges as though they're going to give him the outcomes he wants in test cases. He does win a test case. This case, Godden v. Hales, a Catholic who is exempted from the Test Act to hold an office in the army, is thened by 11 judges with only one judge dissenting that the king has the right through his dispensing power to dispense with certain laws in certain instances. And that is hugely unpopular. James continues at the same time issuing these declarations of toleration and indulgence and insisting that the clerical establishment, the Anglican hierarchy, read this aloud from their pulpits. And this results in another famous, very prominent case where he puts on trial seven very senior Church of England

clerics, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, for sedition, for not reading aloud this declaration as they're ordered to. The bishops come back to James and say, well, we can't in conscience. I mean, kind of ironically, you are issuing this declaration in favor of people's consciences, but we cannot in good conscience read this aloud. James puts them on trial. Interestingly, the judges, there are four judges involved, and they divide two in favor and two against in terms of whether they think the jury should convict the bishops. But the jury inune 1688 acquit the bishops and this provokes un sort of unbridled celebrations around the country in june 1688 there was something one event did not produce unbridled celebration that this was is this really the inciting incident is

this the big moment and that is that james out of nowhere well his wife produced a son. James goes on a very public pilgrimage to various Catholic shrines and holy places in the autumn of 1687, praying for a son. Miraculously, he would say, entirely in God's providence, his wife becomes pregnant, Mary of Medina. This is his second Italian Catholic wife, whom he married in 1673. They had had children, but those children hadn't survived to infancy. But then suddenly in 1688, so 15 years after his marriage to Mary of Medina, she produces a son. And this changes the dynastic calculations completely because if Anglicans had been worried about James but thought, well, this is going to be a short reign,

we just have to sort of sit tight and wait for James to die and him to be succeeded by Mary, who's married to William of Orange, then that all changed. Because obviously this baby boy, the Prince of Wales, trumps the daughter's claim to the throne. So actually much as had been the case around the time of the gunpowder plot, when Catholics had sort of despaired that James seemed no more sort of well disposed towards Catholics than Elizabeth had been the case around the time of the gunpowder plot when Catholics had sort of despaired that James seemed no more sort of well-disposed towards Catholics than Elizabeth had been, and that he'd be succeeded by his Protestant sons. The gunpowder plotters had decided to do something decisive to try and sort of create chaos and achieve their end through violence. The reverse happens in 1688. The Protestants who'd been thinking this is only a sort of temporary blip, will just sit tight, found suddenly the prospect of a never-ending Catholic succession. And so the wheels are put in motion. Previous generations were all taught that

these far-sighted Protestant aristocrats wrote to James's son-in-law, William of Orange, and invited him to come over. Do you think that was an invitation that was sort of post-dated? No, I mean, there is an invitation. I think the stories that we tell ourselves about the glorious revolution are there for a reason. It was the case that the Immortal Seven, a group of Tories and Whigs, wrote. William is not only James's son-in-law, he's also his nephew, wrote to William asking him to intervene in English politics, to restore liberties, to restore Parliament. And this was accompanied with this new dynastic reality of the Prince of Wales. There are rumours that this Prince of Wales is supposititious,

that it isn't really a legitimate birth. It's been sort of smuggled in in a warming pan. And in that sense, William is also invited to defend his wife's claim to the throne. And certainly part of William's declaration, he is a very skilled propagandist, part of his printed declaration for bringing this very large invasion force to England in 1688 is because he says he was invited to by members of the political establishment. I think if we step back from this for a minute and think, what does William think he's doing? I think the stories we've told ourselves have always been that this is all about England. This is all about us. William's main concern is fighting Louis XIV, and he becomes extremely worried of this alliance between James,

his father-in-law and his uncle, and Louis XIV. And what he wants to do is get England onto his side in this big, big war against the French. Yes, this big European coalition conflict, the two sides are lining up, and England is a useful, a key player, and William doesn't want it siding with France. You mentioned this massive massive invasion force it is fascinating isn't it because william doesn't take any chance at all there's no sense like monmouth of landing in england and then gathering supporters around him and sort of duking it out with the um with with the king he knows he might have to do this all by himself so he takes a huey prepares he builds a huge fleet and embarks a lot of troops on it. There's about 400 ships, 15,000 soldiers, 4,000 horse. I mean, this is massive. We like

to tell ourselves again that England has never been invaded since 1066, but I think if you saw this invasion force approaching Devon in the autumn of 1688, you would have thought otherwise. I don't think for a minute either, we should underestimate the massive risk William is taking, launching an invasion of England in the autumn. This is after the kind of traditional campaigning period. His fleet can't set sail for several days in the autumn once he's decided to invade because of the prevailing westerly winds. James looks at all of this and says, well, God is still favoring me. But then those Protestant winds turn and William

takes his fleet to Devon and he lands on the 5th of November, 1688. So for those who want to see providential significance in dates, this is not only the centenary of the Armada, but the 5th of November is sort of redolent of Protestant success against the gunpowder plot. And he is largely welcomed. I mean, he takes Exeter very quickly. He is hailed as a Protestant deliverer. And as well as the 15,000 soldiers and the 400 warships, he also comes with a printing press and immediately sets about justifying his reasons for intervening. and immediately sets about justifying his reasons for intervening.

I could talk about wind patterns all day, so I will not bore everybody, but it is very unusual and fascinating that the channel was so kind to William, a little gentle easterly wind blowing him down, flat calm, lovely. That easterly wind also locked up the English, the Royal Navy, in its harbour or in its anchorage. Do you think, as now william has landed the navy didn't do anything to intercept him possibly because the wind the army starts to sort of disintegrate and it all gets a bit do you think there was a with a protestant conspiracy an orangist conspiracy right the way through the armed forces i've no idea i i doubt it so so you

think it's just it was, it's cock up rather than conspiracy that the Navy didn't manage to sail out and intercept him? Well, we might be telling ourselves a very different story had the Navy sailed out and intercepted, but I don't think that would have been the end of the story. James is not popular and the promise that William brings with him is popular. I mean, for those who felt the Prince of Wales is a supposititious child smuggled in, then there's clearly a fraud at the heart of this Catholic court. But also, there's been a lot of Protestant exiles in the Netherlands during James's reign. Those who really felt that they did not want to live in James's Catholic or Catholicizing England had

moved to the Netherlands. And it was now well known in England that although there was toleration in the Dutch Republic, religious toleration in the Dutch Republic, religious toleration, that there were the equivalent of test sacks, that the Protestant church would be secure under William. So given, as we talked about at the beginning, that most people are motivated by security of the Protestant faith, William is popular and Mary is seen as the rightful heir. And for those who are worried that she is being kept out by this Catholic Jesuitical sort of plot at the heart of government, there are good reasons to support William. And that's, I think, what really begins to freak James out. So James leaves Windsor, he goes down to Salisbury, or goes down to the southwest, ready to confront William. And people are expecting this large pitch battle on Salisbury Plain. And James also has a very large standing army. I mean, he used the rebellions of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll and Scotland to maintain this very large force around sort of 25,000.

So the odds in theory are with James, but then much to James's horror, he just gets confronted by large-scale desertions. Yep, people including intimates with him, his own family members, members of his court, they all disappear off to join William. You can't believe that William, who is his own son-in-law and his nephew, that he would be so treacherous, but then equally his own daughter, Anne, suddenly declares for William. And Anne's husband, Prince George, a Danish prince had traveled down with James and then also says, no, I'm joining my sister and brother-in-law. And then someone who people may be familiar with, with the surname of Churchill.

John Marlborough. Churchill is a very key commander in James's forces. He deserts, people start wearing orange sashes and James has what seems like some kind of forces. He deserts, people start wearing orange sashes, and James has what seems like some kind of breakdown. He's suffering very severe, probably psychosomatic nosebleeds. All of his top commander deserting him, and there is confusion, and they sort of begin to drift back to London, and William's path to the capital lies open. You listen to Dan Snow's history hit, The Best Is Yet To Come. Stick with us. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so it's so fascinating this is the moment in british history where the dog doesn't bark there should have been a huge battle here at the very least possibly a civil war and yet it's

it's remembered wrongly as a sort of bloodless revolution. It was bloodless in England. It certainly isn't bloodless in Ireland. And that pitch battle sort of gets exported to Ireland. And it's not bloodless in Scotland either. It is bloodless precisely because of memories of the civil war. Preventing the effusion of blood is exactly the reason that most people don't want to take up arms. And I suppose it's also bloodless because you mentioned James' deeply tragic breakdown, and rather than stay and fight and drag it out, he actually flees. He flees the country. And James knows exactly what happened to his father, Charles I. James had been a teenager when his father had been executed. And he knows that

these sorts of things can turn very quickly. He doesn't want to end up in the Tower of London being held there because he says that's the only way that you then end up in a grave. So he flees very quickly to France. And that makes William's position perhaps a little bit more ambiguous. It's one thing to sort of arrive and say, I'm going to oversee a parliament. I'm going to make sure that liberties are restored and that the procedures happen normally. There is then a vacuum. And that's when William orders Dutch troops into London and starts sort of issuing directions about a convention parliament must meet. There's no king. It must meet. And that convention parliament must decide what it's going to do. I always liked the story that James escaped. He was captured wasn't he and then william's like

no let him escape for goodness sake william's quite his rather inconvenience to have a father and uncle who he's just deposed and so he's william almost helps his helps his poor old father-in-law escape the second time do you think william wanted the throne all the way through? It's speculation. I think he wanted England's resources. And I think he makes very clear that he is not interested in his wife being crowned and him sort of being a hanger on. He's, as he put it, he's not somebody who rules by the apron strings. I don't think that is initially how he sees things playing out. He absolutely knows that he may have to fight for this, but if in the end a settlement could be reached in England with

his father-in-law and uncle and Parliament can be restored and all of the things that people are fearful of, if those are averted, then presumably he's... William has enough going on, frankly. He wants to be campaigning in the continent. This isn't really a diversion he's looking for. But this convention parliament, as you describe it, this sort of parliament that gathers and it offers William and Mary the throne, the rulers, the only joint monarchs in English and Scottish history. They are crowned in early 1689. And then there's all the bits that follow, which traditionally we were told is the start of a constitutional monarchy in the Isles. What's

the reality of what happens in the years that follow? Let's start with the legislative reality rather than some of the financial and other changes that happen. Well, there is a document drawn up at the time called the Bill of Rights that is later given parliamentary, it should really in a way be the Act of Rights, but it sets out a set of principles that those who meet in the convention parliament wish to see observed. There is ambiguity about its status and it is read aloud to Mary and William at the time of their coronation. So, it's not entirely conditional, but it makes very clear the parameters. And there are phrases in that that have endured through the centuries. I mean, cruel and unusual punishments are not to be included, that parliaments must meet.

And there are various. So that is a framework for government. And it is the case that parliament has met every single year since 1689. That is not because Mary and William were sitting there and the Bill of Rights was read out. It was because William was intent on continuing this massive war against Louis XIV and needed taxation. And William is much better at working with Parliament than any of his Stuart predecessors, partly because he's been a Dutch Stadtholder. He has long worked with the Estates General in the Netherlands. You know, he fully understands this quid pro quo that if I need the resources to wage my

military campaigns, I will work with the representative assembly. So that happens. But it's also clear that the English state cannot raise the kind of resources without an overhaul of financing. So deficit financing enters into, so a national debt starts. The Bank of England is created in 1694, and then there's a Bank of Scotland created in 1695. A very large sort of civil service begins to emerge. There are some aspects of the glorious revolution, as it's called, that don't succeed. There is an attempt to try and remove placement to make people, to ensure that

you cannot have members of the legislative who are also members of the executive. But actually, that fails and we carry on having a sort of mixed constitution. But nevertheless, oh, and there was also religious toleration passed only for Protestants, not extending to Catholics and atheists. But nevertheless, these are fundamental pieces of legislation and ways in which politics develops in the 1690s that have remained permanent. But I don't think we should think this is sort of peaceful and stable. I think if you lived in the 1690s, this would be actually still very unsettling. The period between 1690 and 1715 is the period with the most elections in British history, and there is an English history

as well. there is a general election every two and a half years on average. So it's as though there's this sort of frenetic pamphleteering and electioneering. Whigs and Tories, those divisions are now kind of here to stay. It's very adversarial. The outcome of this long-running war against Louis XIV isn't clear, at least until 1692 and the naval sort of Battle of La Hogue. That begins to turn the balance, but peace doesn't arrive until 1697. And it's very unfamiliar for the English to be involved in this large-scale warfare. And especially after Mary dies, so Mary dies of smallpox in 1694, that kind of takes away a bit of the legitimist aspect of the William and Mary

double monarchy. And that gives the Jacobites who have opposed William from the outset and seen him as a sort of Dutch usurper and a tyrant, more sort of grounds to oppose him. I'm going to ask you a question that I know people asked each other in the 18th century a lot, but England and Britain does change a huge amount in the 1690s, partly because of the Glorious Revolution, partly though because of this massive war and the needs to build, as we know from more recent wars, the First and Second World War, enormous changes this massive war and the needs to build, as we know from more recent wars, the First and Second World War, enormous changes that take place when the state is forced to mobilise enormous resources to fight a powerful continental enemy. But let me ask you whether, do you think there's a sense in which, getting back to the kind of political philosophy of the

Glorious Revolution, did it legitimate this idea that you can, if you want to, and if a monarch is bad and is somehow contravening essential natural rights or something, that you can rise up and get rid of a monarch and that's legit. You're not going to hell. The right of resistance somehow becomes enshrined. In a way, you could say that about 1640. I mean, it's the time that people take up arms against a monarch that they really don't like, and that leads to a revolution. Historians spend a lot of time debating, is 1640 the English Revolution, or is it 1688? Is 1688 more a sort of revolution to preserve a sense, you know, there's lots of epithets that

are often used on it, sort of sensible, you know, that James VII and II is the real radical. And all that happens is that the political classes sort of converge and impose a very sort of moderate settlement and that really 1688 is not that radical. And that's very much the argument of, if you read things like, you things like Burke's reflections on the revolution in France, when he is so appalled at what is going on in France in 1789, he says, look, we've had a revolution, but as was a revolution to preserve, we stopped this kind of bloodshed and terror that you see because we had had that earlier experiences of the 1640s. And I think there's things to be said on either side. And there's a brilliant moment, 1938, when Trevelyan, a very great, weak historian, is very worried about the direction that Europe is going in the 1930s, publishes The English Revolution, which is all about 1688, as a turning point in English history when the forces of moderation hold good and these liberties are entrenched. And it so infuriates the young

Christopher Hill, who is at this point about to sort of sign up as an infantry officer, that two years later he publishes The English Revolution, saying the real revolution happened in 1640. What happened, I'm going to say it in these words, but what happened in 1688 was just sort of rearranging the deck chairs. If you want to look at radical resistance, you need to look at 1640. And where did you come down at the end of this wonderful book project? Where did you come down on the importance of the revolution itself? I know it's very difficult to then to de-conflict, maybe we shouldn't even try, from the massive war, the mobilizations, the state that followed it. But where did you come down on just how important that moment, 1688 in particular, was? I think it is a key moment,

but I think it's not immediate. It makes clear the dysfunctionality of the multiple monarchy and sort of regal union. I mean, it doesn't solve the succession. William and Mary do not have children. Anne has lots of children, so it looks as though the Stuart monarchy is secure. But as we know from films like The Favourite, there's awful reproductive history of Queen Anne that her sole surviving son dies in 1700. And that really sort of throws up another big problem. So the political nation, in the end, make a very startling decision in 1700 to elevate Protestantism over the hereditary right to say that from now on, whoever succeeds to the throne must be a Protestant. And that means, as we know, that the crown descends in 1714 on Anne's death to the Hanoverian line. None of that needed to be resolved in that way in 1688. It also begins, though, this big involvement in continental warfare, it begins to show that the relationship between England and Scotland doesn't necessarily work if both countries have very different economies and different foreign policies. In some ways, therefore, 1688 leads to the

Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 as a way of resolving some of these. It also creates real divisions and tensions in Ireland because that big pitched battle between William and James doesn't happen on Salisbury Plain, but it does happen at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. And the William I victory there lays the foundations for what we call the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy of the 18th century. So I think that generation after 1688 is fundamental in the emergence of Britain as a global superpower. But I don't think anybody would have thought that in 1689. I think it would have felt a little bit more chaotic. That would have been an unlikely prediction, particularly not when the French then won the Battle of Beachy Head a few months later on

and looked like there could be an invasion. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on, Clare Jackson. That was absolutely fantastic. Your prize-winning book is called? Devil Land, England Under Siege, 1588-1688. And I have another book coming out in August about James VI and I called The Mirror of Great Britain. It's the 400th anniversary this year of James's death, so that's what it coincides with. We would love to have you on Talk About That.

Thank you very much for coming on this time. Thank you. you