pared by the abuses suffered through the weak Henry III. Headstrong Richard II made a way

for the constitutional rule of the Lancastrians. So now it must be said that at the end of the seventeenth century, Anglo-Saxon freedom was saved only through the circumstance that the two Stuart kings were utterly unworthy men,-Charles II, a selfish, frivolous voluptuary; James II, a cruel and stupid bigot. What if the occupant of the throne during this mood of subserviency into which the people had so largely sunk, had been a ruler really good and gifted, a Charlemagne, a Louis IX of France, a Frederick II; — or indeed some one of the heroes of the English line, arbitrary but masterful, William the Conqueror, the second or even the eighth Henry, or Elizabeth? It must be believed that in such a case the fire of freedom would have become extinguished. It was the abuse of power only, by Sovereigns vicious and incapable, that brought the people to their senses.

The nation

resistance.

a

As the reign of Charles proceeded, his private character grew constantly worse; as he sank himself, his example drew his court more and more deeply into the slough of brutal vice. forced into His public policy, also, plunged the nation into ever-increasing disgrace. He sold himself to Louis XIV, engaging the power of his kingdom to aid the selfish schemes of France. He forsook his best friends, the bishops and priests of the established Church, offering for a bribe to become a Catholic, and dying at last in the profession of that faith. James II came to the throne an avowed Catholic. Though his faith was abhorrent, the Anglican Church

in a mass, many of the nobles, and the great majority of the country gentry, were at first ready to be consistent; they adhered to the doctrine of nonresistance and let the new King do his will. But every day it grew plainer that James could not be endured. His chosen instruments were Jeffreys of the Bloody Assizes, Kirk and his "lambs," and in Scotland, Grahame of Claverhouse, - torturers and executioners, who beneath the King's very eyes applied the thumb-screw and the boot, and multiplied everywhere the gibbet and scaffold, till mercy and reason seemed about to flee from the world. Abuses and cruelties stung the nation to resistance.

Though the work of the great Long Parliament had appeared to be utterly discredited and overthrown, it began to be plain that certain important things had been after all established. Subservient though the people had seemed, and unprincipled though the two royal brothers were, yet no effort had been made to set up again the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts. It was clear that no such illegality as the ship-money extortion could again be attempted. It was recognized that the constitution must be that of 1642; all the acts of the Long Parliament which had received the sanction of King Charles I before the outbreak of the Civil War, were admitted.1 A sufficient number had become so sick of absolutism as to make possible that statement of the fundamental principles of the constitution contained in the instrument known as the Declaration of Rights. It was prepared by a committee of which the illus

The Bill of
Rights.

1 Macaulay: History of England, I, p. 119.

trious Somers was chairman. It began by recapitulating the crimes and errors which had made a revolution necessary. James had invaded the province of the legislature, had treated modest petitioning as a crime, had oppressed the Church by means of an illegal tribunal, had, without consent of the Parliament, levied taxes and maintained a standing army in time of peace, had violated the freedom of election, and perverted the course of justice. The Lords and Commons once more in Parliament asserted the ancient rights and liberties of England; the dispensing power had no legal existence; no money was to be exacted without grant of Parliament; the right of subjects to petition, of electors to choose representatives, of Parliament to free debate, of the nation to a pure and merciful administration of justice, all these were solemnly affirmed. The Declaration of Rights, made law by Parliament, became the Bill of Rights.1 James was deposed, and Mary, Accession of his daughter, with her able husband, William and William, Prince of Orange, became King and Queen of England. Both were Stuarts; for William, as well as his wife, was a grandchild of Charles I. Both, however, were sturdily Protestant, decent in their lives, and personages of sense and strength. With William and Mary began for England a better time.

Mary.

To appreciate the momentous character of the Revolution of 1688, a glance must be cast at the condition of other civilized countries at that day. Extinction of France, Spain, and Italy, though nations liberty on the of Latin stock, had received in the early

1 See Appendix C for the full text.

continent.

In all

centuries of the Christian era a strong Teutonic infusion, and at one time had possessed, as we have seen, institutions characterized to some extent by the same Teutonic freedom which had gone with the AngloSaxons to the island of Britain.1 In Germany and Scandinavia the stock was more purely Teutonic, and in those lands the polity of the forefathers had long endured. Russia, though Slavic, was at any rate Aryan, and her people possessed in the mir a village community as marked in its independence as the tuns and burhs of the Anglo-Saxons. these countries, however, the traces of popular freedom had long been effaced. The old national assemblies in France, Spain, and Italy had nearly or quite disappeared. The perishing of liberty under the blight of despots had been in Germany and the northern lands even more complete; in Russia, the local self-government had proved utterly sterile as regards resources for coping with the greed of tyrants. Only in Switzerland there smouldered in valleys almost inaccessible the embers of freedom, by the great world unnoticed and indeed unknown. Holland, to be sure, had wrenched itself from the grasp of Spain, but had fallen apparently into the hands of an oligarchy. Throughout Europe the right of the great to make laws and levy taxes was undisputed; thrones were guarded by regular armies; the prompt penalties for any criticism of the rulers were the dungeon and the scaffold. Again and again the same calamity had been imminent over England. But for Langton and the Barons, in 1215, what might not John have done? Had factious nobles pressed less

1 p. 62.

heavily upon the Lancastrians, could the noble constitutional programme described by Fortescue ever have become real? Had the Tudors dared a little more, or had the one man Strafford not been taken from the right hand of Charles I, where could freedom have harbored? These crises, as we have seen, had all been safely passed. With the promulgation of the Bill of Rights, the crisis of 1688 was also safely passed.

of 1688.

The deposition of James II stands in history under the name of a revolution: it, however, was a strictly defensive movement, having on its side Revolution prescription and legitimacy. The monarchy as limited in the thirteenth century had come down to the seventeenth century. Parliament had behind it a past of four hundred years. The constitution was not formulated, but its principles, scattered throughout time-honored statutes, were engraven on the hearts of Englishmen. No one of its principles was based upon precedents more ancient or more frequent, than that Kings reigned by a right in no respect differing from that by which knights-ofthe-shire exercised authority in behalf of their constituents.2 The Bill of Rights simply affirmed this principle. Not a single new right was given to the people; the whole body of English law was unchanged; all was conducted in obedience to the ancient formalities. The Revolution of 1688 decided that the popular element in the English polity, of such ancient derivation, so often brought very low and yet never extinguished, should once more survive. In 1688, the old land in this struggle against 2 Ibid., p. 216.

1 Macaulay: History of England, I, p. 514, etc.