The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 produced the only joint monarchy in British history, William III (II in Scotland) and Mary II. Parliament made them monarchs in gratitude for Dutchman William's invasion, which its members saw as saving Protestantism from the Catholic James II. When James fled to France, Parliament declared he had abdicated, and the throne was vacant.
The solution to filling the vacancy violated strict hereditary succession, which would have made James' infant son king. But the child had been baptized Catholic and was therefore unacceptable to most members of Parliament. Mary was second in line for the throne, and William, her cousin as well as her husband, fourth. Mary's sister, Anne, was third.
Settling the throne on William and Mary jointly was accepted, if grudgingly, by most MPs in 1689. But it stored up problems for the future. Many people in Britain continued to support the claims of James and his heir. They are known to British history as Jacobites, from the Latin for James, Jacobus. In 1696, Jacobites tried and failed to assassinate William.
William was initially a hero to most in Britain, especially after he defeated a Catholic army led by James in Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne and relieved the siege of Derry (AKA Londonderry) in 1690.
Many English historians have called the Glorious Revolution the "Bloodless Revolution" because it avoided civil war. While that may be accurate enough in England, much blood was shed in Ireland, and some in Scotland as well. It also had some future stings in its tail.
William's Irish victories inspired the creation of the anti-Catholic organization known as the Orange Lodge, which embitters the life of Northern Ireland to this day. The name derives from William's Dutch family, the House of Orange. (The reason the Dutch national football team wear orange.) In Northern Ireland, Orangemen march and beat the Orange Drum every year for "King Billy."
In the early years of their dual reign, Queen Mary was often the effective ruler in Britain. William was away on the Continent much of the time, directing the war with France.
In 1694, Mary died of smallpox, and after that William ruled alone. She was a major loss to him, as she had social skills he lacked. He never remarried or took any mistresses, leading to (probably false) rumors of homosexuality. Courtiers viewed him as cold and aloof. His popularity with the public waned.
One reason was resentment of his Dutch confidants and the Dutch businessmen who came to England during his reign. Anti-Dutch sentiment peaked just after 1700. It produced a brilliant response that speaks even today in our xenophobic world: a poem by Daniel Defoe, "The True Born Englishman."
England owed major innovations to William and his Dutch followers. One was the creation of the Bank of England in 1694. Modelled on the Bank of Amsterdam, it soon became a financial powerhouse for the British government. The London Stock Exchange was also opened, modeled on that of Amsterdam. A third Dutch import was gin.
War with France (The Nine Years' War) ended inconclusively in 1697. It broke out again in 1701 (War of the Spanish Succession). William did not live to direct the new war. He died a few months later, aged 51.
His horse stumbled on a mole's burrow. William fell, breaking his collarbone. He died from the pneumonia that followed. After his death, gleeful Jacobites are said to have toasted "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat," meaning the mole.
William had never produced an heir. The crown passed to his sister-in-law, Queen Anne, who was much more popular than William. But Anne had no surviving heir either, despite numerous pregnancies. The death of her last surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester, in 1700, created a dynastic and political crisis. [Image: Queen Anne, 1705, by Michael Dahl]
Anne was the last of the Protestant Stuart line. Fears grew that her death would lead to a restoration of her father the Catholic James II or his son (James "III").
To prevent this, the English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701. It barred Roman Catholics from the throne. It also provided that if William or Anne had no surviving issue, the throne would to Anne's nearest Protestant relative. She was a German princess, Electress Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I. Dozens of Anne's relatives had better hereditary claims to the throne, but they were all Catholic.
The Act of Settlement only applied to England and Ireland. The English MPS did not consult the Parliament of Scotland, which was still a separate kingdom, although ruled by the same monarch since 1603.
Soon after Anne became Queen, the Scottish Parliament declared that it would not necessarily select the same monarch as England after her death. They would do so, they declared, only if Scotland was granted free trade with England and its colonies.
The fear that Scotland might choose to restore the Catholic Stuarts spurred efforts to achieve something James VI and I had proposed a century before: a formal union of the two kingdoms.
After several years of negotiation, threats on both sides, and a good deal of bribery, the Act of Union passed through both parliaments. Finalized in 1707, it created the Kingdom of Great Britain with one parliament, located at Westminster. It is notable that, as a nation, Britain is nearly as young as the United States. The flag of the new nation combined the English Cross of St. George and the Scottish Cross of St. Andrew. [Image: First Union Jack, 1707-1800]
Many people on both sides of the border opposed the union. Angry Scots claimed that their leaders had sold off their parliament and independence for English gold. Disgruntled English folk were aghast at the prospect of being inundated with lean and hungry Scots barbarians looking to take over their jobs, money, empire, and women. [Image: A Flight of "Scotchmen" descending on London, 18th century]
Both nations benefited from the Union, in different ways. The Scots received the right to trade freely with England and its colonies, something Scots merchants had long desired.
The Union created the largest tariff free economic zone in Europe at the time. Ironically, in 2016 the British (or rather the English) voted to leave today's largest free trade bloc, the European Union. "Brexit" is now one of the most decisive issues in British politics.
In her later years, Queen Anne was plagued by ill health and obesity. At times, she was disabled. She was often grumpy, but 17 pregnancies (at least) can do that. In the early part of her reign, she was close to Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who became her close confidante for several years.
Anne had appointed Sarah's husband John to command the army and made him Duke of Marlborough. He was the Wellington of his time, winning several key battles against the French.
John's stunning victory at Blenheim in 1704 netted him a huge reward from Parliament, which he used to build the massive Blenheim Palace near Oxford. [Image: Blenheim Palace, designed by Sir John Van Brugh]
Despite Marlborough's success on the battlefield, the war dragged on for more than ten years. The Tories, mostly landed gentlemen, turned against the war because of its expense. It was largely funded by a tax on their land.
Around the same time, Anne became estranged from Sarah Churchill. The breakdown of their relationship is portrayed in somewhat fanciful style in the otherwise excellent film The Favourite starring Olivia Colman.
Anne didn't have a menagerie of 17 bunnies. They are there to represent the loss of her 17 children. There is also no evidence she was in a same sex relationship. She adored her husband George, Prince of Denmark, and lamented his death in 1708.
Sarah's husband the Duke of Marlborough wanted to continue the war. Although he was a moderate Tory, he relied heavily on the support of Whig oligarchs to stay in his position.
Anne preferred the Tories to the Whigs, partly because they were staunch defenders of her beloved Anglican Church. The Whigs defended the rights of Dissenting Protestants such as Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists.
After 1710, Anne's support for Tory politicians and declining enthusiasm for the war brought the Tories to power. They began negotiations for peace with France and Spain, which was concluded in 1713 on terms quite favorable to Britain.
The Peace of Utrecht ceded Nova Scotia and Gibraltar to Britain and added the right to trade with Spanish Empire in the New World. That included the right to send one shipment of enslaved Africans to be sold in the Spanish Caribbean.
Anne's already poor health gave way in late 1713, and she died aged 49 after a stroke the following summer. Sophia, the aged Electress of Hanover, had died two months before. In July 1714, Sophia's son George, Elector of Hanover, became king of the new nation of Great Britain, courtesy of Parliament.
The death of Anne was not only a change of dynasty. It was passing of an old mindset. She was the last British sovereign to use the monarch's veto power to stop an act of Parliament. She was also the last to touch for the King's Evil, or scrofula, a lymphatic disease caused by the tuberculosis bacillus.
For a long time after her death, historians tended to dismiss Queen Anne as a nonentity: not very bright, bigoted, fat, and weepy. That view was largely based on the writings of her estranged confidante Sarah Churchill.
Recent assessments of Anne stress the major accomplishments of her short reign: the Act of Union, victory in war, a flourishing economy, and greater political stability than Britain had known for a century, thanks to the development of a working two-party system. Governments came and went without violence.
Anne was a hardworking monarch despite her poor health. She had a major impact on many policy decisions. When she died, the new nation of Great Britain was verging on becoming the leading economic and imperial power in the world, for good and ill. Civil war and political revolution were left behind. Economic and Industrial Revolution lay ahead, under a new German dynasty, the Hanoverians.
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Fascinating as always!
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