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By now the king was set upon a collision course with his natural supporters. The Tory interest was made up of solid support for church and king; it was James’s mistake to believe that they would support one without the other. In 1687 he reissued the Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended the penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters. This was a temporary measure, for James hoped that his next Parliament would repeal the penal code in its entirety. To that end he began a systematic investigation of the parliamentary boroughs, restricting the parliamentary franchise to members of corporations and then nominating those very members. Agents were sent to question mayors, lieutenants, and justices of the peace about their loyalty to the regime and their willingness to vote for MPs who would repeal the Test Acts. Most gave temporizing answers, but those who stood out were purged from their places. For the first time in English history, the crown was undertaking to pack Parliament.

James was following an even more aggressively Catholicizing policy in his other kingdoms, placing power in Ireland into the hands of the Catholic majority for the first time in a century. Disastrously, when an Irish Parliament met, it voted for the return of all the land taken from the nobility and the church over that century—in fact, a majority of all land. When revolution came, it was especially bloody in Ireland, and it saw a further halving of the amount of land held by Catholics and a new and even more severe penal code that threatened the very existence of Catholic worship and rendered the Catholic community at the mercy of a vindictive “Protestant ascendancy” for 200 years.

The Revolution of 1688

The final crisis of James’s reign resulted from two related events. The first was the refusal of seven bishops to instruct the clergy of their dioceses to read the Declaration of Indulgence in their churches. The king was so infuriated by this unexpected check to his plans that he had the bishops imprisoned, charged with seditious libel, and tried. Meanwhile, in June 1688 Queen Mary (Mary of Modena) gave birth to a male heir, raising the prospect that there would be a Catholic successor to James. Wild rumours spread that the queen had not given birth to the child. It was said that a baby had been smuggled into her confinement in a warming pan. When the bishops were triumphantly acquitted by a London jury, leaders of all political groups within the state were persuaded that the time had come to take action. Seven leading Protestants drafted a carefully worded invitation for William of Orange to come to England to investigate the circumstances of the birth of the king’s heir. In effect, the leaders of the political nation had invited a foreign prince to invade their land.

Mary of Modena, detail of an oil painting by Willem Wissing, c. 1685; in the National Portrait Gallery, LondonCourtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

This came as no surprise to William, who had been contemplating an invasion since the spring of 1688. William, who was organizing the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV, needed England as an ally rather than a rival. All Europe was readying for war in the summer of 1688, and James had powerful land and sea forces at his disposal to repel William’s invasion. The crossing, begun on October 19, was a feat of military genius, however propitious the strong eastern “Protestant wind” that kept the English fleet at anchor while Dutch ships landed at Torbay (November 5). William took Exeter and issued a declaration calling for the election of a free Parliament. From the beginning, the Anglican interest flocked to him. James could only watch as large parts of his army melted away.

William IIIWilliam III.Photos.com/Jupiterimages

Yet there was no plan to depose the king. Many Tories hoped that William’s presence would force James to change his policies, and many Whigs believed that a free Parliament could fetter his excesses. When James marched out of London, there was even the prospect of battle. But the result was completely unforeseen. James lost his nerve, sent his family to France, and followed after them, tossing the Great Seal into the Thames. James’s flight was a godsend, and, when he was captured en route, William allowed him to escape again. At the end of December, William arrived in London, summoned the leading peers and bishops to help him keep order, and called Parliament into being.