How united was Britain in 1688?

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Ian Bishop

How united was Britain in 1688?

To question the unity of Britain at any point in history is to initiate a complex and often controversial debate.  When such and inquiry is coupled with a date of controversy, the difficulties of making a clear analysis are exacerbated.  The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 is such a date.  Superficially, it would seem to be obvious that Britain could not possible have been united in purpose and belief, for the very occurrence of a revolution means that at least two factions were at odds over at least one important issue.  Thus, in order to facilitate useful analysis of such a broad question we must first define the particular aspects of British unity that interest us.

For the purposes of this essay it is the political unity of the nation which must be the focus of our analysis.  The broad nature of the question permits an endless inquiry into all aspects of unity and disunity in Britain.  Many other areas would be valid subjects of study, for example the state of religious unity in Britain, but within the limited scope of this essay, we can best focus our energies upon an examination of the body politic.  The central role played by the political nation in shaping events in 1688 makes it the principle area of interest in this essay.  This is not to say that all other issues of unity in Britain are secondary, let alone irrelevant.  Indeed, without many other aspects of social disunity, the Revolution of 1688 may not have occurred.  However, an complete examination of all such factors is beyond the reach of this essay, and so priority must be accorded to one aspect of British unity.  For the period of 1688, the unity or otherwise of the body politic is of the single greatest importance.  We can make this generalisation on the basis that a broader consideration of unity within the kingdom is not only beyond the capacities of this essay, but also because any clear analysis might easily suffer from excessive complication of the matter.  Although there are many other factors that were doubtless instrumental in allowing the Revolution of 1688 to occur, we can ignore many of them with the knowledge that ultimately all events within history are linked to some extent, and the cumulative effect of such events makes other outcomes possible.  Thus, when concerning ourselves with the matter of disunity in Britain, we can largely ignore concerns of regionalism and other apparently major factors affecting the unity of the nation.  This does not imply that such factors are irrelevant, but rather that we take their import for read and base our analysis around the political body, which can be more productively analysed in this brief essay.   Similarly, a chronological examination of the year 1688 would yield interesting shifts in unity, but would fail to explain the events of late 1688.  Again I do not suggest that such an examination is unjustified, but rather that it is not as useful an explanation of the 1688 Revolution as an inquiry into unity in the body politic.  Since we define the year 1688 by the Glorious Revolution, it seems to me to be more logical within the confines of this essay to focus upon the political events that led up to the events of November 1688 rather than on a chronological survey of the whole year.

It is clear that the body politic must have been divided over issues regarding the constitutional status of the monarch, for the deposition of James II is a constitutional upheaval that could have only occurred as the result of a constitutional divide between groups.  Divisions over other issues must also have existed, particular in matters of purpose.  The fact that a large section of the British nobility were prepared to support and tolerate a foreign monarch rather than their own proves that the constitutional divide between James and the nobles could not have been the sole cause of their disunity.  This is to say that the replacement of a King by another King demonstrates that the actual constitutional institution of kingship was not the cause of revolution. Issues of purpose, that is to say, James’ objectives as King, must have also separated him form the nobility.  Specific divisions between monarch and nobility must have arisen in order that matters of policy became a cause of division.  Given these projections we can further order our analysis of the unity of the British body politic in 1688.  There are three areas of political unity that are of specific interest to this analysis: firstly the matters of policy that set James II and his nobles at odds; secondly the degree of unity within the nobility in their opposition to the polices of James; and finally the level of unity within the Royalist faction.

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If we begin by assessing the first of these areas – the matters of policy that caused disunity and antagonism between James and the nobility – we shall quickly be able to appraise what the level of unity in England’s body politic was.  The first cause of serious grievance and fear amid the Protestant nobility in Britain was the absence of a Parliament.  James had not called Parliament since 1685, robbing the nobles of a chamber in which to make their views known.  This alone would have been sufficient to cause unrest amidst the noble class, but their fears ...

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