4. Keeping a standing army in time of peace, unless with consent of Parliament, is illegal. 5. Subjects have a right to petition the king. 6. The election of members of Parliament ought to be free. 9. For redress of all grievances and for the strengthening of the 10. William and Mary are declared King and Queen of England, and all who are Papists or who shall marry a Papist are declared incapable of possessing the crown. After the death of both William and Mary, the crown was to go to their children, if they had any. If not, to the Princess Anne and her children; and, in case of their failure, to the children of William by any other wife. The effect of the Revolution was threefold. In the first place, it destroyed the Stuart theory of the divine right of kings, by changing the order of succession and setting up a king and queen who owed their position to the choice of Parliament. In the second, it gave an opportunity for reasserting the principles of the English constitution, which it had been the aim of the Stuarts to set aside. In the third, it began what may be called the reign of Parliament. Up to the Revolution there is no doubt that the guiding force in directing the olicy of the nation had been the will of the king. Since the Revotion the guiding force has been the will of the Parliament. CHAPTER VI. WILLIAM and MARY, 1689-1702 (13 years). William, born 1650; married 1677. Mary, born 1662; died 1694. Chief Characters of the Reign.-George Savile, Marquess of Halifax; Lord Danby, created Duke of Leeds; the Earl of Shrewsbury; the Earl of Nottingham; Lord Godolphin; Lord Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough; Somers; Herbert, Lord Torrington; Edward Russell, created Lord Orford; Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax; the Earl of Tyrconnel; General Talmash; Bentinck, Earl of Portland; Thomas, Earl of Wharton; Viscount Dundee. France. Louis XIV., 1643-1715. Contemporary Sovereigns. Spain. Charles II., 1665-1700. Philip of France and Charles of Austria (rivals). THE new king was not likely to be a popular sovereign. Though he was beloved by his intimate friends, his manners were reserved in general society. At ordinary times his demeanour was cold, and those only who had seen him on the character and policy. field of battle were aware of the energy of his spirit. William's In religion he cared little for outward forms, and was in favour of toleration; in theology his views were Calvinistic. In foreign politics he was chiefly animated by hostility to Louis XIV., whose ambition he rightly regarded as dangerous to the interests of England and Holland, and threatening to the balance of power. At home he wished to allay the strife of parties and to unite the whole nation in support of his foreign policy. Mary, on the other hand, was engaging in her character, and as the representative of the direct line of the house of Stuart, her popularity was of great political importance. William's views naturally allied him to the Whigs, who agreed with him that it was better to fight Louis abroad than to give him peace to arrange an invasion of England. At the same time, the king believed that he would do well not to alienate the Tories, by whom, equally with the Whigs, he had been invited to England; so he formed a ministry composed of the noblemen of both parties, in which The new ministry. Danby was President of the Council, Halifax Privy Seal, Notting U ham and Shrewsbury Secretaries, and Godolphin leading member of the Treasury Board, a committee which discharged the duties of the Lord High Treasurer. At the same time that these appointments were made, James' servile judges were dismissed, and twelve new ones appointed in their stead. The Convention was now, without re-election, made into a Parliament. The annual revenue was fixed at £1,200,000, of which about £700,000 was given to the king for the The revenue. support of the crown, and the rest was voted from time to time according to estimates prepared by the ministers. The first of these sums was called the Civil List. In this way Parliament secured a much firmer hold over the expenditure of the government, and the system has since then been made still more elaborate. In order to weed out all persons disaffected to the government, a new oath of allegiance and supremacy jurors. was imposed on all place-holders both in Church and State. Seven bishops and about three hundred clergymen, who did not admit the right of Parliament to change the succession, refused to take it, and became, with their lay supporters, the body of nonjurors. They were, of course, deprived of their places. The non In 1689 the first annual Mutiny Act was passed. In the Declaration of Rights it had been declared that it was illegal for the king to The Mutiny keep a standing army in time of peace without the Act. consent of Parliament. Since the Restoration, the standing army had been looked upon with great dislike by the Whigs, and it was hardly more popular with the Tories, but the necessities of the times clearly showed that England could no longer afford to be without one. A device, however, was found by which the advantages of a standing army were secured, while danger to liberty was decreased. This plan was to pass the Mutiny Act annually, so that if it were not renewed, the legal authority of the government over the soldiers would cease. As an additional safeguard, the money for the army was voted for one year only, so that if Parliament felt any danger it could, by refusing to pass the Mutiny Act or to vote supplies, deprive the king of the force. The Nonconformists had played an important part in the RevoluThe Toleration tion, and were now rewarded by a bill, passed to allow Act, freedom of worship to Protestant Nonconformists; their political disabilities, however, were left untouched, while the position of the Roman Catholics was unaltered. So many persons were liable to prosecution for the share which they had officially taken in James' proceedings, and in the various conspiracies and disturbances of the last two reigns, that a Bill of The Bill Indemnity was brought forward; but the Whigs tried of Indemnity. to introduce many exceptions, and the struggle between them and the Tories became so violent, that William, appalled at the prospect of governing with such a distracted assembly, was hardly restrained from returning to Holland. Parliament. Parliament was then dissolved, and the difficulty was surmounted by an act of grace from the crown, which excluded only the regicides of Charles I. and about thirty others; this The new number was, for the times, exceedingly moderate. In March, 1690, the new Parliament met. In it the Tories had a majority, partly due to the natural reaction against the government, which always follows a great change, and partly to the unfair advantage which the Tories still possessed through the remodelling of the corporations by the last two kings. Halifax, whose character was always that of a dispassionate critic rather than an active politician, then left the government, and the Tory Danby, who had now been created Marquess of Carmarthen, took the lead. Events in We must now turn to the events in Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland the policy of the last two kings had been in complete opposition to the wishes of the people. Episcopacy had been established as the law of the land, and no one but an Episcopalian had been allowed to sit in Parliament or to vote at elections. The Presbyterians had been subjected to severe persecution, and during the late reign Catholics had been placed in the chief offices. As was natural, the news of events in England produced in Scotland a violent reaction. A Convention was called, whose members were chosen in elections at which Presbyterians voted without regard to the law. The Whigs, therefore, had a majority, and with hardly any opposition they accepted William and Mary as king and queen, and restored Presbyterianism. Nevertheless, the standard of James was raised in Scotland by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, who called the |