Jacobite Risings - Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution

During the 17th century, the kingdoms in Great Britain and Ireland suffered political and religious turmoil in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Commonwealth ended with the Restoration of Charles II, re-establishment of the Church of England and imposition of Episcopalian church government.

In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his Roman Catholic brother, James II and VII. James was not naturally sympathetic to Covenanters. He understandably saw them as troublemakers and initially tried to end their influence in Scotland. The new king also tried to impose religious tolerance of Roman Catholics and to a lesser extent Protestant Dissenters, but antagonized many of the Anglican establishment by this action as they were suspicious of Catholic power. James' half-hearted attempts to woo the Presbyterians seemingly did not win him much popularity among that section of society either. They remembered his earlier suppression of them and did not believe him to be sincere in his recognition of Presbyterianism. Although these actions were widely unpopular, at first the majority of his subjects tolerated these acts because James was in his 50s and both of his daughters were committed Protestants. It seemed that James' reign would be short and the throne would soon return to Protestant hands. In 1688 however James's young second wife Mary of Modena gave birth to a boy, Prince James who was promptly baptized a Roman Catholic. Due to English and Scottish succession laws, Prince James immediately supplanted his older half sisters as heir to the throne. Now the prospect of a Catholic dynasty on the English, Scottish and Irish thrones seemed all but certain.

The "Immortal Seven" invited James's daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to depose James and jointly rule in his place. On 4 November 1688 William arrived at Torbay, England. After he landed the next day, James fled to France. In February 1689 the Glorious Revolution formally changed England's monarch, but many Catholics, Episcopalians and Tory royalists still supported James as the constitutionally legitimate monarch.

Scotland was slow to accept William, who summoned a Convention of the Estates which met on 14 March 1689 in Edinburgh. It reviewed a conciliatory letter from William and a haughty one from James. On James's side, a modest force of a troop of fifty horsemen gathered by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee was in town. Graham attended the convention at the start but withdrew four days later when its support for William became evident. The convention set out its terms, and William and Mary were proclaimed at Edinburgh on 11 April 1689, then had their coronation in London in May. Crucially perhaps, William and Mary definitively accepted the Church of Scotland as a Presbyterian institution after decades of intermittent efforts by various monarchs, including James VI, Charles I, Charles II and James VII to mould the Church of Scotland into an Episcopalian institution more pliable to Royal control and possibly more acceptable to those monarchs who happened to be Catholic. Therefore the already doubtfull potential popularity of Jacobitism among those of the Presbyterian persuasion in Scotland was quite possibly lessened by this act, but on the other hand, for those Scots of an Episcopalian or Catholic persuasion the appeal of Jacobitism could only have been enhanced by this acknowledgement of Presbyterianism in Scotland by William and Mary.