Mary II of England - Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution

Disgruntled Protestant politicians and noblemen were in contact with Mary's husband as early as 1686. After James took the step of forcing Anglican clergymen to read the Declaration of Indulgence—the proclamation granting religious liberty to Catholics and dissenters—from their churches in May 1688, his popularity plunged further. Alarm amongst Protestants increased when his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son—James Francis Edward—in June 1688, for the son would, unlike Mary and Anne, be raised a Roman Catholic. Some charged that the boy was "supposititious", having been secretly smuggled into the Queen's room in a bed-warming pan as a substitute for her stillborn baby. Seeking information, Mary sent a pointed list of questions to her sister, Anne, regarding the circumstances of the birth. Anne's reply, and continued gossip, seemed to confirm Mary's suspicions that the child was not her natural brother, and that her father was conspiring to secure a Catholic succession.

On 30 June, the Immortal Seven secretly requested William—then in the Netherlands with Mary—to come to England with an army to depose James. At first, William was reluctant; possibly he was jealous of his wife's position as the heiress to the English Crown and feared she would become more powerful than he was. According to Gilbert Burnet, however, Mary convinced her husband that she did not care for political power, and told him "she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him King for life". She would, she assured him, always obey her husband as she had promised to do in her marriage vows.

William agreed to invade and issued a declaration which referred to James' newborn son as the "pretended Prince of Wales". He also gave a list of grievances of the English people and stated that his proposed expedition was for the sole purpose of having "a free and lawful Parliament assembled". William and the Dutch army, without Mary who stayed behind in the Netherlands, finally landed on 5 November, having been turned back by storms in October. The disaffected English Army and Navy went over to William, and on 11 December the defeated King James attempted to flee, but was intercepted. A second attempt at flight, on 23 December, was successful; William deliberately allowed James to escape to France where he lived in exile until his death.

Mary was upset by the circumstances surrounding the deposition of her father, and was torn between concern for him and duty to her husband, but was convinced that her husband's actions, however unpleasant, were necessary to "save the Church and State". When Mary travelled to England after the New Year, she wrote of her "secret joy" at returning to her homeland, "but that was soon checked with the consideration of my father's misfortunes". William ordered her to appear cheerful on their triumphant arrival in London. As a result, she was criticised for appearing cold to her father's plight. James, too, wrote a diatribe against her criticising her disloyalty, an action which deeply affected the pious Mary.

In January 1689, a Convention Parliament summoned by the Prince of Orange assembled, and much discussion relating to the appropriate course of action ensued. A party led by Lord Danby held that Mary should be sole monarch, as the rightful hereditary heir, while William and his supporters were adamant that a husband could not be subject to his wife. William wished to reign as a King, rather than function as a mere consort of a Queen. For her part, Mary did not wish to be Queen, believing that women should defer to their husbands, and "knowing my heart is not made for a kingdom and my inclination leads me to a retired quiet life".

On 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee on 11 December 1688, had abdicated the government of the realm, and that the Throne had thereby become vacant. Parliament offered the Crown not to James's eldest son, James Francis Edward (who would have been the heir-apparent under normal circumstances), but to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. The only precedent for a joint monarchy dated from the sixteenth century: when Queen Mary I married Philip of Spain, it was agreed that the latter would take the title of king, but only during his wife's lifetime, and restrictions were placed on his power. William, however, would be king even after his wife's death, and "the sole and full exercise of the regal power executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their joint lives." The declaration was later extended to exclude not only James and his heirs (other than Anne) from the throne, but all Catholics, since "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince".

The Bishop of London, Henry Compton, crowned William and Mary together at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689. Normally, the Archbishop of Canterbury performs coronations, but the incumbent Archbishop, William Sancroft, although an Anglican, refused to recognise the validity of James II's removal. Neither William nor Mary enjoyed the ceremony; she thought it "all vanity" and William called it "Popish". On the same day, the Convention of the Estates of Scotland—which was much more divided than the English Parliament—finally declared that James was no longer King of Scotland, that "no Papist can be King or Queen of this Realm", that William and Mary would be joint sovereigns, and that William would exercise sole and full power. On 11 May, William and Mary formally accepted the Scottish crown.

Even after the declaration, there was still substantial support for James in Scotland. Viscount Dundee raised an army in the Scottish Highlands that won a convincing victory at Killiecrankie on 27 July. The huge losses suffered by Dundee's troops, however, coupled with his fatal wounding at the start of the battle, served to remove the only effective resistance to William and the uprising was quickly crushed, suffering a resounding defeat the next month at the Battle of Dunkeld.