In Our Time - The Glorious Revolution

Episode Date: April 19, 2001

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the the Glorious Revolution. In 1688, with a fair wind behind him and no naval opposition in front, William of Orange and his Dutch fleet sailed safely into Torbay on the South coast and thus began a period of history known - in England at least - as The Glorious Revolution. The story goes that the English, fed up with their Catholic King James II and alarmed at the prospect of a Catholic succession, ‘invited’ William to come to England and save Parliament, Protestantism and the rights of ordinary citizens. William was cheered all the way to London where, with the backing of Parliament and the people, he and his wife Mary were installed as joint sovereign monarchs of England, Ireland and Scotland. Victorian historians like Macaulay claimed that this was the era that defined British democracy, but how much of the spirit of 1688 is enwrapped within our unwritten Constitution? Were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?With John Spurr, Reader in History at the University of Wales, Swansea; Rosemary Sweet, Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester; Scott Mandelbrote, Fellow and Director of Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1688, with a Protestant wind behind him, a known naval opposition in front, William of Orange and his Dutch fleet sailed safely into Torbay on the southeast coast,

and thus began a period of history known, in England at least, as the glorious revolution. The story goes that the English fed up with their Catholic King James II and alarmed at the prospect of a Catholic succession, invited William to come to England and save Parliament, Protestantism, and the rights of ordinary citizens. William was cheered all the way to London, it goes, where with the backing of Parliament and the people here and his wife Mary were installed as joint sovereign monarchs over England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

Victorian historians, like McCauley, claimed that this was the era that defined British democracy, but how much of the spirit of 1688 is enrapped within our unwritten constitution were the events of 1688, either glorious or revolutionary. The women to discuss the place in history of that glorious revolution is John Spur, reader in history at the University of Wales-Swonzie, Rosemary Sweet, a lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Leicester, and Scott Mandelbrot, a fellow and director of studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Scott Mandelbrose, an alliance of the Wings and the Tories, who became known as the Immortal Seven, wrote to William in Holland in 1688 and asked for his help, Why were they writing and why were they asking him and why was this not a sort of act of treachery? Well, they were writing because they were unhappy personally with the events that had taken place earlier in 1688, particularly with some of the decisions of James II's government, especially concerning religious policy, but also concerning intervention in many of the institutions of the state and especially those institutions that were held to support the Church of England

and the authority of traditional rulers in both local society and national society. They chose to write to William because William was involved in British politics over a long period, going back to the early 1670s. He was married to the daughter of James II, who was seen, as the true Protestant heir by many of them. And he himself had a respectable role to play in English politics because of his descent from the Stuart line. He was, in fact, not only the son-in-law of James II,

but also James' nephew. William was not, in a sense, committing treason, therefore by being interested in English politics, nor were those who wrote to him. But the people who wrote to him did so, I think very much with a desire to change the nature of English politics and very much also from a perspective of feeling left out of the way that politics was going. These were not a wholly representative group of individuals. They were people who were losing office, who were being removed. removed, for example, from positions in the army, positions in local government by James,

who were worried personally about James's attack on the church, in the case of one of them, Henry Compton, who had been involved in the protest of the bishops against James' ecclesiastical policy and had been tried by the Crown as a result of that. We didn't quite centre on the notion of James II's Catholicism, which was that the binding factor, their fear of his Catholicism and their fear of the forces of Catholicism, was that the thing that drove them most of all? Yes, I think so.

What worried them most severely was the fact that James had, in a sense, given an extra twist to the policy of toleration that the monarchy had been pursuing on and off from the 1660s really against the opposition of most of the political, class of England particularly, but also of the other kingdoms. And James's twist was to forward, especially the Catholic religion to which he had converted, to which his wife belonged, and into which the child with which his wife became pregnant in 1688 would be born, raising the prospect

of a Catholic heir and a continuation of this Catholic policy. Catholic policy threatened the individuals such as those who wrote to William because it seemed to undermine both their faith in the Church of England, which they've been brought up, and which regarded, in many cases, the Pope as Antichrist, and their position in society, which James's policy of furthering the place of Catholics through appointing Catholics in the army and at court

seemed to undermine by removing the prospect of promotion for loyal Protestants. Thank you. Can you ask you whether you can tell us a bit about the Tories and the Whigs, John, what did they stand for then? And was it very peculiar that a few of them should join together in sending this invitation to William Orange? Well, it was essential that is joined together because one of the important points about this invitation is that it's asked for by William. William wants a representative sample of the English ruling elite to write to him saying, please intervene.

So he engineered it? He engineers it. There's an orangist conspiracy, as it's called, as a conspiracy organised by William's agents in England, which is to a large extent responsible for easing William's intervention. William came to help his allies and to help the English because their liberties were under third. threat. Their parliament was under threat, their succession was under threat. That's the way he plays it.

Going back to your question, the real problem about Whig and Tory, are there labels which constantly mutate? They're not set in stone. And one of the real difficulties are that the Whigs and Tories of 1688 are not the Wigs and Tories that first emerge in the aftermath of the Popish plot and the exclusion crisis at the beginning of the decade, nor are they the Wigs and Tories of the 1690s of the period after the glorious revolution. The Whigs and Tories of 1888 are really the people, as Scots explained, who represent the political nation, the aristocrats and gentry who run the country and who've, between them, agreed that there's only one group of people

who shall be sort of frozen out of the shares of political office, and they're the Roman Catholics. And under a series of legislations passed in the previous, two decades, Catholics had been excluded from office. Officially their religion was banned, but in practice many of them were allowed to secretly worship or privately worship. But what happens clearly is that James comes to the throne intent on removing those bans on public worship for Catholics

and those restrictions on their access to office. And he tries to get the laws that restrict their... access to office repealed, and when he can't get the laws repealed, he asks, he begins to basically subvert the laws himself by dispensing individuals from them. How far as I asked, Scott, how far is this opposition to Catholicism, something that is deep in the personalities, in the character and the history, the men involved, the immortal seven, as it were, and how far is it a camouflage, a sort of handy camouflage of the fact that they were losing office,

they were losing authority, they were losing access to the King's ear. It's deep. I think it's a taproot of most political action in the 17th century. Anti-popery is one of the great themes that runs through 17th century history. Why it's so deep is difficult to explain to a modern audience. One reason, clearly, is to do with the strength of the historical myth that's built up about England and its Protestantism. Another reason is to do with the idea that where Popery first arrives, in its wake will come arbitrary government, authoritarian government.

And it's that kind of inability to really disentangle the two, Catholicism and arbitrary government, which means that if you discern one, you discern the other. And that almost everybody involved in the glorious revolution did fear that Catholics, if they were allowed, freedom of worship, would use that as a first step to becoming the dominant and then the only religion. They would in effect subvert any toleration they achieved and use it for their own ends to become the dominant power. Resbury Sweet, does James II suffer from what could be a perennial Stuart problem of absolutist instincts? Is he trying to rule the English in the way that envies Louis the 40s ruling

the French? Well, this is a question which, his story. Historians have recently discussed in some detail, in that some people would argue that James was never intent on absolutism, that he was simply trying to secure a specific end. And as John has outlined, that was greater toleration for Catholics. But whatever the real case may have been, the perception was that he was intent on absolutism and that Louis VIII was 14th was. his model that there were plenty of people who were aware that there were and had been links with the French court that Charles II of course had been involved with the French negotiations in the secret treaty of Dover and as John was outlining this inextricable connection between Catholicism and absolutism was something which most observers would have been very aware of.

And James's actions did seem to smack of absolutism. He was trying to manipulate parliament. He was trying to pack parliament so that it would return MPs, which would be favourable to his policies, which would enable him to relieve the Catholics. He was being authoritarian in revoking charters, which previous monarchs had granted. He was building up a standing army, which it was feared, could. be used to impose his will as Louis XIVor 14th had been doing in France. And all the time the English were being fed with rumours, for example, from the French Huguenots who were leaving France after the revocation of the Edict of Norton 1685. And we're building up this kind of connection between absolutism and Catholicism. So whatever James II's real aims were, this was the perception. And certainly Stuart Monarchs, did have a very authoritarian view of government, that they weren't tyrants,

they never have behaved in a tyrannical manner or would never have wanted to, but they did believe that they were divinely ordained by God and therefore had absolute authority and would use it. So in a way, James I second raised the prospects of two ancient enemies of England as it saw itself. One was Rome and the Pope takeover, the other was France and the French,

with whom English had battled for literally hundreds of years. That was part of it. But what kind of state is James himself in in 688? After all, William builds a fleet, gets a huge loan and patiently builds a fleet. His agents are all over London and so one assumes that James had some intelligence of that. How does he see it coming? Does he see the danger coming? If not, he's the only one who doesn't see it coming?

He's certainly seeing the danger coming by the late summer of 1688. And this is when he sets in train a whole series of measures which try and undo the changes of the last three years, that he suddenly suspends all the arrangements for the meeting of the parliament,

which would have returned a majority very much in his favour. And he suspends his plans for revoking the borough charters. But it all creates hopeless confusion and is too late. And by this

time the invitation has been issued to William and people are aware that there is a crisis emerging. And it does seem that his qualities of leadership declined during the late autumn of 1688 and he lost his nerve and after William landed, he completely panicked and a series of fatal misjudgments because it wasn't a foregone conclusion that William's invasion would have succeeded at all. And his previous record, as a leader was actually being a fairly competent and astute leader. But he lost his nerve and that enabled William to take advantage of a sort of vacuum in authority. Before we move on to the Glorious Revolution, what it marked and what it entail, let's just finish this story.

It seems, Scott Middlebrook on paper quite easy. William gets what Napoleon never got, a favouring wind which wafts his fleet across the Torbay. changes one day and we have the famous Protestant wind that brings him over. He lands and he takes two months to get to London, which is sort of the length of an election campaign really. There's a bit of a scuffle around Salisbury, but James flees. He doesn't meet with what could be called serious opposition of any sort. Could you tell us why that is?

Well, it's quite true that William lands relatively easily, joins troops who have been raised for him in the West Country, and as Rowe suggests, that also James loses his nerve and therefore a commander who ought to have been feared, collapses in front of him, flees to London. He was indeed ill and suffering from some kind of nasal infection, also from, I think, some form of nervous collapse, perhaps. But the key to the key.

thing is that although James had been building up the army, and also indeed the Navy in this period, he both expected an invasion to come from somewhere else, not unsurprisingly, given the direction that the winds had been blowing in for much of the period prior to November,

and he didn't count on the fact that most of his senior officers were going to defect to William, and that was the key factor, really, in transforming. The Churchill defected, isn't it? John Churchill defected you. I thought that with a name Churchill, but that sort of person to defect.

Well, he did indeed defect, and that was in some ways both the decisive military factor in the invasion, and I think one could fairly say, perhaps the decisive military factor in Churchill's, decisive factor in Churchill's subsequent military career, since he makes his name because of his ability to defeat French generals, rather than to win battles under their command, which would have been the situation had he remained loyal and defeated William's invasion. It does look like a relatively bloodless coup, but it very well might not have been, and William clearly landed with the intent of fighting a war,

and possibly a war that would have lasted for some time. He was fortunate that Louis XIV, who might have been expected to come to the aid of his ally, James, had just committed himself heavily in central Germany, and therefore couldn't invade the Netherlands, couldn't send help to England. By 1690, Louis is able to do that, and there is a war which William has to fight quite seriously for the possession of his kingdoms. But that war takes place in Ireland rather than in England.

John Spur, do you think that when William launches his fleet and gets to England, gets to Tall Bay, he's got his eye on the throne, he thinks he will become king? No, I don't. I think it's a moot point when that realization strikes him that this is possible. Many people think it really turns on James' first flight on the 11th of December when James first leaves London, but is unfortunately caught by some over a zealous kind of dog...

Because William wanted him to get out, isn't it? Basically, William was hoping he'd disappear from the sea. Lightly guarded Palace on the river with boats waiting to take him to France. What happens the first time James is nabbed by some seamen at Favisham brought back because they think he might be a Jesuit. They're not sure who he is, because obviously this is in the 17th century, you don't actually, if he's in the skies, and know what the king looks like necessarily.

But he's brought back and then moved again to Rochester, where he's, as you say, left with the doors open and the guards sort of likely sort of dispositioned. But just picking up a point you made earlier about the length of this campaign and the parallel with an election campaign, William brings with him a printing press and one of his important tactics

over those months in November and December is winning the hearts and minds of people. He launches a very extensive propaganda campaign with three declarations, and it's got to be said some bogus declarations are also circulating, promising all sorts of things. I just think it's rather funny. William the Concret when he comes brings his own castles,

sort of pre-fowed castles, and William of Orange brings his own printing press. It's one of the things that William is very astute in the ways of propaganda, and always had been. It interfered before in English politics at this level of propaganda. And now he was using this,

to devastating effect. Can I just ask you, Rosemary Street, briefly, before we move on to this Bill of Rights, do you think this was more an invasion than anything else? We read from Dutch sources that London was full of Dutch troops, and we talk about Tobay, and Scott said, look, he could have had a big fight on his hands, and he might have been in trouble because of so on and so forth.

So was this more an invasion just because the fight didn't happen, doesn't make it any less of an invasion? Yes, I think that's a very fair way. of looking at it and it certainly wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the Dutch support that the glorious revolution is something which it is impossible to understand fully without

looking at the wider European context and what we have to think about is why the Dutch were willing to support William. William didn't have troops and ships of his own right. He was a merely stadtholder in the Dutch Republic which didn't give him any

powers equivalent to a monarch. He had to have support of the Dutch and particularly the boss of the Amsterdam stock market who actually put up the loan, which would pay for the invasion. And if William hadn't had substantial support, it would have been much less likely that the military leaders who Scott referred to would have defected

because there wouldn't have been chances of their succeeding against James II. Okay, well, I spent a bit too long on that, so let's get on to Six in 88, James the second, is considered to have abdicated because it's pushed off to France if they don't try to bring him out. They say he's abdicated, which legitimates in their view, the kingmaker's view, William and Mary, nephew of James and Mary daughter of James to succeed, and in the Whitehall Banqueting Hall, where Charles was first was executed,

a bit of unfinished business goes on, and a bill of rights is read out to them. Now what rights, can you give us the essence of the importance of those rights? And what were they supposed to do? but they weren't asked to sign it, they weren't asked to agree to it. In fact, William took not the blindest, been a notice of it. But what was that for and what did it signify Scott Mandelbrot? Well, in a way, it was for confirming many of the things that mattered to the governing class that had led the revolution, but that had mattered perhaps in a way which drew on,

a language of political protest and resistance to monarchy, that some of that governing class found distasteful, so that it stressed, for example, the importance of the monarch listening to the subject's grievances. It stressed the necessity of the monarch abiding by legislation and removed from him the right to suspend that legislation as James the state. Second had done. It didn't, however, include general statements about religious freedom of the kind that William himself might have wanted. It included some rights that might seem slightly surprising to modern ears, such as the right of Protestant subjects of the Crown to bear arms

in order to give them perhaps the freedom to resist their government if it behaved in a way that they found unacceptable. So it was a curious amalgam, really, of rights which were very commonly held to be important by members of the political class, and some rights that hinted at a much more radical view of the role of people in government and a much more conditional view of the position of the executive.

And that, of course, is why William found some of the things he was asked to say slightly disturbing. Rosemary Sweet, do you think this Bill of Rights is key for the constitutions that follow and the moves that follow for the next in the long 18th century? And if so, what's its key elements? I wouldn't say the Bill of Rights itself was key for future constitutional developments. The Bill of Rights was a statement, which, as Scott said, laid out, a series of principles which Englishmen wanted or believed should be upheld

and which they hoped William would observe. And we're very much short about Englishmen here, aren't we? Because Ireland is a different matter. England was there. Because Ireland and Scotland were different matters here. Scotland made an entirely separate agreement. What was crucial for the future constitutional development was really the fact that William had embarked on this war with Louisville 14th,

which Scott mentioned earlier. And it was this which necessitated William calling Parliament regularly because he had to get the money to finance the war. But Parliament had refused to award William Customs and excise for life. They did not want William doing a repeat of what Charles II had done, which was to live off a customs revenue and never call Parliament. So they ensured that the civil list was not sufficient to fulfil all his needs. And so this meant that William would have to reach.

returned to Parliament every year in order to raise taxation. And it was this which enabled Parliament to assume a greater role in English constitutional development. And it was that rather than any statement in the Bill of Rights, which actually led to the development of parliamentary monarchy of the 18th century. And William, had he been able to, would have happily ruled about Parliament as indeed would Georgia first, but monarchs were not able to because of financial settlement. Surely, Rui, one of the problems about the Bill of Rights is it legitimates the revolution.

Without it, people would not have bought into the revolution. It's designed as a great fudge, great compromise, to make people accept this change of dynast, well, change of ruler. And it underpins all those later decisions to fund the war. I mean, I can see why people nowadays try and draw a distinction between the Bill of Rights, which in many ways is a backward-looking document referring to all the errors of the Stuart Kings over the 17th century. But equally, it's a design to, as it were,

allow everybody to see something in the revolution with which they can identify and share. But does it? It is a temporary fudge, but very soon after the consensus is fracturing and there are plenty of dissentient voices. I would still argue that... But revolution principles,

the idea that you're standing up for the revolution, shoe. It's something which actually becomes important rather later in the 18th century rather than the 1690s. I think it would be difficult to claim that either the Bill of Rights in England or the claim of right in Scotland was a truly inclusive measure, John. It creates rather... Both pieces of legislation create categories of people who are still excluded from their society. and both of them marginalised people who had taken perfectly respectable political visions on the events of 1688, including positions that might allow the revolution to go ahead.

But in any revolution there have to be people, while the losers, the point is you have to also fashion some kind of compromise which will include as many people as you possibly can. And the whole business of the abdication and vacancy resolution, the idea that the throne is vacant, rather than that James has been deposed is absolutely crucial to allowing Tories to accept that the revolution is part of God's plan.

An active toleration, which comes a year later, fits into this, even though it doesn't go as far as the unpassed act of comprehension. But the act of toleration is part of this, isn't it? Scott Mandelbrot. The act of toleration is certainly part of it, and it's a curious fact that this revolution, which in a sense was caused by religious intolerance to some extent, brings in a new monarch, William III, who is in fact

probably more keen on toleration than James II had been. James II had allied with the Protestant dissenters because he was desperate for allies. William III wanted toleration for the Protestant dissenters because he didn't see any reason why they should be persecuted. And that was a threat numerically and politically, well beyond the scale posed by the very small numbers of English Catholics whom James II was planning to promote. And this is one of the reasons, I think, why the revolution settlement doesn't actually settle many of the major questions of British politics and produces two or three decades of political ferment, which mean that the idea that the Declaration of Rights has

solved everything in 1688 is a difficult one to sustain. William has great difficulty forming governments in the 1690s and behaving in the way in which he would like to behave towards Parliament, which is very much the way of a powerful monarch, partly because the principles for which he has stood are principles which many of those in Parliament themselves find it difficult to accept. Rosemachie, do you think the idea that these the Bill of Rights and the Act of Federation, that time, embodied ideas of liberty and enlightenment, which said, as it were, serviced England

for the next 120 or so years well. At the time, I don't think it had anything to do with enlightenment. Liberty, yes, the liberties of Englishmen to hold Parliament, and that it certainly was securing liberties in that sense. But the whole association with Gloria's Revolution, with toleration, with values which are associated with the Enlightenment, was something which was retrospectively imposed. Just as Locke was retrospectively associated with it, although he had very little to do it at a time.

Yes, exactly, that it became very easy in a hundred years' time or so, to look back at the revolution and read into it values or ideals which people now cherished in the later 18th century of the 19th century and project those back into 16. But that's very interesting. It's interesting itself, isn't it? although they didn't specifically say the things it was said to have stood for, yet it stood for things that people lived by. I mean, Walpole was criticised because he didn't,

he wasn't really following the glorious revolution and so on. It became something else, didn't it? It became very, very useful. Yes. And it became a liberalising and enlightening, enabling force. Well, I don't know about enlightening force, and I'm not even sure about a liberalising force. We're talking in narrow terms, but I would argue that, but you're the history.

It certainly became extremely important as a form of political rhetoric that when political outs wanted to criticize the political inns, what you said was that they were betraying revolution principles because the revolution was held to have established parliamentary monarchy. And the liberties of freeborn Englishmen were held to reside in the continuance of parliament, therefore anything which imperiled the revolution settlement. and the balance of powers was something which was extremely dangerous. And so retrospectively, the glorious revolution became a kind of ideal which could be wheeled in to attack those who held power or were deemed to be manipulating power in a way which was unconstitutional. Mandelberg, would you like to comment on that? The ideas of liberty and property which dominate mainstream political debate in the 18th century

are not the same as the ideas of liberty and property that were held by radical Whigs who had looked to the revolution as a way of changing the nature of English society, and those included men like John Locke. Their ideas are taking up very much later in the 18th century and there continues to be throughout the 18th century a stream of criticism, which looks to the revolution as having in some sense been unfulfilled. On the other hand, there is a very conservative interpretation of the revolution, which I think does answer to the description that you've given, Melvin,

which is to see the revolution as having changed English society for the better by bringing it back to its true nature. And that true nature is rewritten as a result of the revolution in a number of important ways, most importantly, I think, in the way in which the idea of toleration, which doesn't always mean what it sounds like it means, but nevertheless some sort of broadness to the English church comes to be a defining element in the politics and government of the church

and the relationship of religion to politics and thereby to take out some of the tension that had dominated 17th century treatments of that issue. But on the other hand, that happens largely because of the success, the political success in the church of men who support the revolution and the exclusion from preferment of its opponents. So there is always a dimension of conflict, even where there seems to be ironicism and general agreement.

As John Spur said earlier, it's very difficult to get a grip on, the depth and the ferocity and the axiomatic nature of religious feeling and religious intolerance at the time. But can I just ask, before we move on, this phrase, glorious revolution is one which brings a smile to contemporary, faces now weary with sort of writing off so much positive about the British and English past

but do you think it could still in any sense be called the glorious revolution John Spur well it could be if you take into account that it's well this again is a contentious point that it is relatively bloodless that for people like McCauley looking back from the 19th century it's the precursor to the revolutions as they see it of Catholic emancipation and of parliamentary reform at the beginning of the 19th century. In other words, they see the glorious revolution as enabling England to avoid the bloody French revolution of 1789

or something like it. So the glory resides in that, the compromise and the fudge, the realism, the pragmatism, if you like, which perhaps enables us to overcome, in England and Wales, at least, this problem with a monocular religion was totally unacceptable. and then its compromise nature allows constant reinvention or reinterpretation. There are people quoting it like Wilkes in the 1760s, almost 100 years after the event, who think the Glorious Revolution stands for the kind of platform that they advocate,

and they advocate reform of the franchise. And there's nothing about the franchise in the Glorious Revolution. It is not an issue in 1689. So in other words, it is constantly reformed, this means, myth, this powerful myth that Scott's just spoken about and becomes really an important linchpin. It becomes

used, obviously, against Parliament. The great threat in the 18th century is Parliament. Not kings, not over mighty kings, but corrupt parliaments. And it's used against parliaments. In other words, it's used against a different kind of target. So you can see what it was a glorious revolution

in England and Wales. It wasn't so glorious if you're an Irish Catholic, though, was it, Rosem Smith? No, and Ireland and Scotland are areas where the glorious revolution was extremely bloody, that there were conflicts and extremely heavy mortalities in both countries. And in Ireland, of course, is where the legacy has most poisoned subsequent history. From the Battle of the Boin. The Battle of Boin, indeed, in the siege of dairy and the other conflicts.

And as Scott was saying earlier, it was a conflict which lasted. for nearly three years and then the aftermath was considerably protracted and involved their expropriation of large numbers of Catholics, their total exclusion from all kinds of political life and it secured a Protestant ascendancy

in Armond, but at considerable cost and it secured a division in Irish society, which although the manifestations of this division didn't actually become apparent until the later 18th century, the nomenclature, of course,

is one which refers right back to the Battle of a Boyne, the Orangeman and the Alsterman were the supporters of William of Orange. And in that sense, I think that's one of the reasons why the Vaglornist Revolution, and its testantinuary,

wasn't celebrated very visibly at all in Britain, that it would have created far too many tensions in modern British society to have started recalling the events of 1688,

88, 89 and William of Orange. Is it true that there's a dimension to this which we haven't got time to spend a great deal of time on, but we can refer to it, that we've overlooked so far, and that's the, that William William of Orange brought an economic implant to London from Holland, the stock exchange, the ways of raising and manipulating money, which was a great re-gearing of the city economy in London.

Is that true? I don't think it's true that William of Orange brought it. I think it is the case that in the 1690s there's widespread development in the commercial practice. and financial practices of London. But isn't it on the Dutch model? On the Dutch model indeed, but on a model which some people have been trying to develop based on Holland well before William. What William does is allow people to have both the opportunity to develop this, people who have come back from the Netherlands in some cases,

but also people who look to the Dutch model who felt excluded by James, and much more importantly, William gives these returnees, also exas like the French Huguenots and so on, the opportunity to make financial gain, partly by loaning money to the government because of the war. It's really the war that creates this, and in the sense that William brings the war, he creates it, but only in that sense.

And yes, it does copy Dutch models, but it's very quickly linked into a sense of resentment against aiding the Dutch and a view that amongst many people in England that the moneyed market is something which is hostile to some of the principles of the revolution itself. Did these two, Johnsport, did these two interact, did the glorious revolution get a boost from the fact that there was this economic change? Very much so.

About that time and a few years later. Yes, because what happens is that, the landed interest, as they're called, basically the state owners. The growing aristocracy. Yes, they're paying for the war. The land tax, which is a swinging tax on a scale that England had never experienced before, underpins the war effort. The moneyed interest, the people in the city, the stock jobbers and others,

who are earning, as it seems to many onlookers, money from manipulating money. In other words, from strange and, as it seems to many people, inexplicable methods. They become regarded as almost war profiteers. They become synonymous with the war and its extension. People think they're dragging the war out to profit themselves, to enrich themselves, at the cost of the aristocracy and gentry. So it becomes deeply divided as an issue really because

one of the problems with the war is that it's paying for it is a political touchstone. Which side do you stand on? Rosen-Reed. Well, I think one's also got to take into account that there was ongoing economic expansion anyway, which would have happened irrespective of the glorious revolution, that England's commercial economy had been growing steadily from the 1670s onwards, and the navigation laws of the 1670s and 80s had enabled commerce to expand. And that was why Charles II had been able to rule without Parliament.

The increased revenues and customs had given him so much more money to play with. and there were huge amounts of money floating around in London looking for investment and this is why we have so many joint stock companies, so many people willing to invest not just in the national debt but in other schemes. So it's a combination of a peculiar economy enforced by war and a period of rapid economic growth like of which England hadn't experienced. And the combination of these does create a... extremely volatile dynamic society in London.

And this whole stock-jobbing finances, money-ed-interest business is something which is very London and which is quite a limited duration as well. It's not something which lasts for many years into the 18th century after the South Sea bubble in 1722. It's a syndrome which is already becoming normalised, if you like. And the Bank of England's created in this period too, isn't it, Scott Mandelbrough? The Bank of England is created by a group of financiers in 1694, yes.

It really initially is a scheme for loaning out money in order to finance the war effort. Do you see these is mutually, we've got very little time, mutually reinforcing, these financial things set in place and the ideas set in place of the Bill of Rights, the Act of Toleration? They're mutually reinforcing in the sense. that they allow the government to survive and to win the war eventually. Without that, there would have been major change, I think, in Britain. To what extent they really last as a way of reinforcing one another through the 18th century,

I think is harder to say for the reasons that Roe has given. Thank you very much. John Spurs, Scott Mandelbroe and Rosemary Sweet. We'll be back next week with literary modernism. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4. podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio four.