Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 79 of the United States.

Episode 79 of a glorious revolution.

In our last episode, we tracked how England got through the 1670s and 1680s,

ultimately getting us up to King James 2nd, fleeing the country in December 1688. In a bloodless revolution, William of Orange

invaded the country and took control, all with the support of the people. Today, we'll get into

just what this meant. The Whigs and the Tories were forced to abandon some long-standing principles

for the good of the people. One such feature was the move towards democracy. Indeed, the post-revolutionary

settlement would define the scope of British political liberty until the 1832 Reform Act. The Tories had long believed in the

divine hereditary right. The king ruled because God had ordained it. This put them in a rather

uncomfortable position. Parliament had expelled James II and intended to replace him.

This meant either that Parliament was divine, or there was no such thing as divine hereditary right.

They attempted to form a compromise and have James' daughter Mary as sole ruler, and then William would be the Prince consort, but given the broader geopolitical situation, that was inadvisable, to say the least.

Expelling James and advising the Dutch had put England on a collision course with France, William needed as much authority as possible to fight this fight. He needed to be joint ruler.

The Tories agreed in the national interest. The right wing of the party remained Jacobite and several high church

bishops gave up their power because they were simply unable to reconcile their consciences.

This is important and to explain how important it is I need to jump forward in the story a little bit.

This was a huge issue for the Tories.

The Wigs had their issues with the settlement,

but the principle of Parliament interfering with the succession was very uneasy for the Tory party to cope with.

It broke a line of succession going back centuries

to just hand the throne over to a dutchman. They knew they had to, but it caused deep divisions.

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