The Glorious Revolution

by Edward Vallance

  Aside from being used as an instrument to exclude the ‘country’ opposition from both central and local government, the Association was also intended to bolster William’s title. As has been discussed previously, the death of Queen Mary in 1694 had deprived the King of the argument, which had been popular with Williamite Tories, that he had a hereditary right by proxy to the throne. The notion that the failure of Fenwick’s plot demonstrated ‘God’s signal providence’ towards William strengthened the claims of earlier court propaganda that the King, like Elizabeth I, was the divinely appointed deliverer of the nation from popery. A royal proclamation appointed 16 April as a day of national thanksgiving for William’s salvation from the Jacobite plot. Published sermons given in response to the proclamation, numbering dozens of titles, hammered home the theme that God’s hand could again be seen at work. Nicholas Brady, in a sermon given at St Catherine Cree church in London, stated that God’s favour to the nation could be seen not only in the revolution,

  by which our Religion and our Liberties were secured; but also by watching over it in a peculiar manner, and defeating all designs which were devised for its destruction. For, not to look backwards to former deliverances, which are much too numerous to be insisted upon at present, how wonderful a mercy have we lately experienced! If an attempt be made to surprise us unprovided (as in the invasion at this time designed) the Winds and the Weather conspire to keep back our enemies til their intentions are discovered, and their contrivances are laid open. If Secret Practices are levelled against the Government and Plots are carried on for imbroiling us again (as in the Horrid Treason so freshly discovered) the Providence of God interposes for us visibly.14

  In protecting William, these sermons insisted, God had saved not only England but Europe as a whole: ‘Providence therefore appeared signally, in preventing so common a ruine; wherein not a single Nation, though powerful and numerous, but the whole interest of Divers States were concerned; and from which, had it taken effect, many Nations might have dated their misery.’15 Edward Fowler, the Bishop of Gloucester, called the discovery of the assassination plot a greater divine blessing than the averting of the Gunpowder Plot, as in 1605 only Catholics had been involved but in 1696 Protestants were among the conspirators. A number of ministers stressed that the plot proved the worthlessness of promising allegiance to William only as de facto monarch. William Stephens hoped that ‘the Knavish Distinction of De Facto, which was the foundation-stone of the late designed Assassination, Insurrection and Invasion, will be left out of his title’. According to Stephens, the scruples of de factoist Tories about swearing to William as ‘rightful and lawful’ monarch were no more than a cover for Jacobite political sympathies.16

  Aside from the sermons’ promotion of the Association, the oath returns themselves formed part of the regime’s propaganda. Hundreds of printed copies of the text of the Association were made on vellum or parchment, ready to be signed. The returns for some counties were vast: the historian David Cressy estimates that those for Suffolk contained over seventy thousand signatures.17 Loyal addresses provided the public with an opportunity to demonstrate their fidelity to the King. The officers of the Shropshire militia hoped that ‘the gratious providence that hath sav’d you, from so many imminent dangers ever watch over you and preserve you long the impregnable bulwark of our Religion, Lives, Liberties and Properties’.18 Many of these addresses referred to William as the saviour of the Protestant religion, not only in Britain but also throughout Europe. The signatories to the Lichfield Association described William as ‘the defender of our fayth, the deliverer of our Church and Nation, the Preserver of the Reformed Religion and Libertyes of Europe’.19 Others commented on the threat of invasion from France. The subscribers for Malmesbury in Wiltshire wrote that, by their ‘Villanous and detestable conspiracy’, Louis XIV and James II had hoped they might ‘with more ease and felicity Invade this Kingdom, subvert its Government, plunder its Cities, alter its laws and religion and make it the miserable seat of Warr and Desolution’.20 The inhabitants of Brackley in Northamptonshire added a humble address to their Association so that the King might know ‘that not onely our Persons but alsoe our principles (without which mistaken men tender but a doubt-full Allegiance) are for the support of your government’.21 An Oxfordshire watchmaker, John Harris, felt that merely signing the Association was an inadequate expression of loyalty and added to his subscription that he did ‘ack[n]o[w]ledg[e] and o[w]ne my sovran Lord King William to be Rightfull and Lawfull King of England’.22 In some areas subscription to the Association was accompanied by great pomp and ceremony. Edward Canby wrote to John Roades in April 1696 with news of subscription at Doncaster, where for ‘the honour of my Lord and the credit of our lordship, we marched in with 200 horse … It made a great noise in the town so that the streets were filled and windows decked with fair ladies.’23

  The 1696 Association represented a considerable coup for William and the court Whigs, both in terms of its value as propaganda for the regime and its effectiveness as a political purgative. However, the sheer volume of returns alone cannot be taken to indicate that the whole nation was united in its loyalty to William III. Many subscribed out of fear or self-interest. The Whig leaders of Norfolk told weavers in Norwich that the more zeal they showed for the King, the more support there would be from the court for a bill prohibiting the import of Indian silks.24 Loyal declarations, while presenting the public with an opportunity to declare its support for the government, also allowed it to make professions of allegiance on terms different from those offered in the Association itself.

  The oath was taken in Britain’s colonies and by British merchants in Europe, and their declarations reflected the different political relationship with the monarchy. The address from the mainly Catholic-Irish population of Montserrat made no mention of William being rightful and lawful king but hoped only that his survival would allow the colonists to continue to go about their business freely and ‘eate our Breade with more safety’.25

  In Malmesbury the declaration referred to William as ‘lawfull and rightfull’ king. This may have been simply an accidental inversion of the phrase in the Association itself, but it could also be taken as meaning that William only had a ‘right by law’ to the throne.26 The address produced by the officers and sailors of Trinity House, Newcastle upon Tyne, made no reference to the King’s legal, providential or hereditary right to the throne and described William only as the ‘deliverer of these nations’ whom they promised to assist ‘against the force and power of France’. There were far more signatures to this loyal declaration than to the text of the Association itself, though the subscribers to the oath claimed they were signing for the rest of Trinity House.27

  Aside from the ambiguous wording of some of the humble addresses to the King, the Association was also refused by a large number of people and many others would subscribe to it only on equivocal terms. English Catholics very rarely appear as refusers of the Association. Yet, despite the apparent loyalty of English Catholics, the Buckinghamshire militia harried their recusant population with such zeal that Robert Throckmorton, a prominent local Catholic, who had asked to stay at home with his sick wife, she ‘havving binn lately lyke to Dye’, and had offered profuse expressions of loyalty to the King, was nonetheless placed in custody in London.28 Quakers, on the other hand, regularly appear as refusers of or equivocators with the Association. Friends are recorded as declining to take it in Brainford in Norfolk, Hoston in Middlesex, Mundon Magna in Herefordshire, Whitechurch near Southampton, Hilsham and Holipstow in Suffolk and Hawkeshead then in Lancashire.29 Suffolk Quakers followed the declaration adopted by the London members of the sect on 28 March 1696 which stated that the setting up of ‘Kings and Governments’ belonged to ‘God’s peculiar Prerogative’ and that they had no part in it but to ‘pray for the King and for the safety of the Nation’. Treacherous designs, they said, were the works of ‘the Devil and Darkness’. They blessed God and were ‘heartily Thankful to the Ki
ng and Government, for the Liberty and Priviledges we Enjoy under them by law’.30 The historian Mary Geiter has argued that the Quaker declarations were part of a political bargain, in return for which the government would promote the passing of the Affirmation Bill, allowing Friends (Quakers) to avoid having to swear oaths.31 If so, William ought to have felt somewhat short-changed. Stripped of its hyperbole, this declaration represents little more than a promise of passive obedience. Given some Friends’ previous cooperation with James II’s religious policies, and the fact that the Quaker leader William Penn was probably a Jacobite conspirator and had been implicated in the 1696 plot, this was less than reassuring.32

  By far the most equivocal response to the demand for a show of allegiance to the King came from the Anglican clergy. Parochial ministers figure regularly in county returns as either refusing or placing limitations on the Association. In Bedfordshire several ministers refused to take the oath. Edward Gibson, Vicar of Hawnes in the county, would subscribe only ‘as far as by ye laws of God and those of this Realm doe oblige or allow’.33 Hugh Owen, the vicar of Sevenoaks in Kent, took the Association ‘according to my own sense and judgement’.34 These individual returns, thick with Anglican bromide, might be deemed relatively insignificant were it not for the fact that, with the exception of Beacon in the diocese of St Davids,35 none of the deans and chapters actually put their names to the text of the Commons’ Association. What they signed instead were two variant forms of a loyal address to the King, which significantly diluted the meaning of the original oath. The first ‘Canterbury version’ of this address left out the promise to revenge or even punish would-be assassins and was taken by not only the clergy in the diocese of Canterbury, but also those in Shropshire, Rochester, Worcester, Bath and Wells and Lincoln.36 The ‘York version’ was identical to that taken at Canterbury except that it described the King as having only a ‘Right by Law to the Crowne’37 and was followed by all the remaining deaneries and archdeaconries that delivered returns with the exception of Exeter cathedral. Here the bishops, dean and chapters acknowledged that William was invested ‘with a legall Right and Title’. In Exeter it was even alleged that clergymen were encouraging locals to refuse the oath by putting ‘scruples into people’s heads’ about the words ‘rightful and lawful’ and ‘revenge’.38

  It is perhaps understandable that the clergy would have had problems with swearing to personally take revenge for the death of the King, but the omission of the word ‘revenge’ was a consequence of more than just clerical scruples, as returns from some laymen demonstrate. In Norwich, the original association of the corporation used the term ‘punish’ instead of ‘revenge’.39 Humphrey Prideaux’s letters suggested an alternative reason for this unease at the idea of ‘revenging’ William’s death. He was concerned that those carrying out any post-assassination vengeance ‘would draw their swords and cut the throats of all the Jacobites’ and that ‘Jacobite’ might be interpreted by these vigilantes to mean all ‘whom the rabble shall think fit to plunder and abuse’.40 Tory clerics (and perhaps Tory politicians) who scrupled at acknowledging that William had anything other than a legal claim to the throne would, Prideaux suspected, be among the first to suffer reprisals.41

  In terms of the sheer volume of signatures, the Association of 1696 seemed to represent a massive public vote of support for William. Yet, when examined more closely, the loyalty being offered to the King seems in some instances highly equivocal. Even those who did offer their allegiance without any qualification did so in many cases on the basis of what William was deemed to represent or defend, rather than out of any sense of personal loyalty to the King. William of Orange was to be supported because he protected parliamentary government and Protestantism, not because of any legal or hereditary claim to the throne or a deep sense of public affection. For his part, though, William felt secure enough to leave the country in May 1696 to go on campaign. The summer saw a number of military advances for the French. Peace with Savoy allowed Louis to concentrate military efforts on Spain, the Spanish Netherlands and the Rhineland, with the result that he seized Ath and Alost in the Spanish Netherlands and captured Barcelona in August. Despite these gains, there had been no military action of great consequence since William’s retaking of Namur and both sides were now looking to sue for peace.

  Although the end result of the Jacobite plot of 1696 had been a resurgence of support for William, as the Axminster Congregational church recorded,

  the Lord was distressing this nation by other means. The coin of the nation being spoiled, there was a great want of current money; besides there was a considerable price on corn and other provisions for the outward man. Likewise the Lord was breaking men in their earthly trades and interest, bringing the nation low, giving it up into the hands of spoilers. The Lord was emptying the nation, making it waste … As with the servant so with the master, as with the buyer so with the seller – men earn[t] wages and put it into a bag with holes, look[ed] for much and it came to little.42

  Coin-clipping had been around as an organised criminal activity since the 1670s. Criminals took rimless pre-Restoration silver coins and sheared off their edges, selling on the clipped metal to unscrupulous goldsmiths. This activity was given a massive boost by the need for silver bullion to pay for the English army’s supplies in Flanders. Indeed, without this illicit activity it is likely that there would not have been enough bullion to meet the army’s needs, given the decline in trade. So, in the words of one historian, ‘England’s war effort had come to depend in large measure upon organised crime’.43 Yet this activity also debased the coinage, with some coins losing 40–50 per cent of their original metal content. With public confidence in the clipped money waning, a recoinage was deemed necessary and in January 1696 Parliament passed legislation providing for the progressive demonetisation of the clipped coin and its melting down and recoining by the Mint. On 4 May 1696 the clipped coin was accepted in payment of tax for the last time, triggering a financial crisis as the circulation of money virtually ceased; some hoarded old clipped coins in anticipation of sterling devaluation, others refused to accept either clipped or unclipped coins.

  In south-east Wales the JP Charles Price complained that many people were in ‘A great Consternation About the Money, not being able to Have any Commoditys for it, tho much of it to my apprehension being good money.’44 The Tory former licenser of the press, Edmund Bohun, now a Suffolk JP, reported from Ipswich in July 1696 that the picture looked bleak, ‘no trade is Managed but by trust … Our tenants pay no rent, our Corne factors can pay nothing for what they had and will trade no more so that all is at a stand; and the People are discontented to the utmost. Many self Murders [suicides] happen in sevrall families for want and all things look very black and should the least accident put the Mobb in motion no man can tell where it would end.’45 In the north of England the problems caused by the recoinage did lead to unrest. There were disturbances in Kendal in Lancashire, where magistrates struggled to restrain a crowd of rowdy and drunken alehouse keepers, finally resorting to placating them with more drink. However, in the aftermath of the assassination plot it was noted that most anger was directed at the King’s ministers rather than the King himself. Hugh Todd noted that in Newcastle the ‘Rabble spoke dutifully of his Majesty, but were very seditious in their Expressions toward the Ministers of State & their Representatives’.46 In Lincolnshire Abraham de la Pryne recorded that in June

  the country people has been up at Stamford, and marched in a great company, very lively, to the house of S[i]r John Brownley. They brought their officers, constables, and churchwardens amongst thm, and as they went along they cryd ‘God bless King William, God bless K[ing] W[illiam]’ etc. When they were come to S[i]r John’s he sent his man down to see what their will was, who all answered – ‘God bless K[ing] W[illiam], God bless the Church of England, God bless the Parliament, and the Lords Justices and S[i]r John Brownley! We are King William’s true servants, God forbid that we should rebel against hi
m, or that anything that we now do should be construed ill We come only to his worship to besieech him to be mercifull to the poor, we and our familys being all fit to starve, not having one penny ith’ the world that will go’ etc. S[i]r Jo[hn] hearing all this (as soon as his man) at a window where he was viewing them, sent them a bagg with fifteen pound in it of old mill’d [unclipped] money, which they received exceedingly thankfully, but sayd the sum was so little, and number and necessitys so great, that they feared it would not last long, therefore must be forced out of meer necessity to come to see him again, to keep themselves and their families from starving. Then they desired a drink, and S[i]r Jo[hn] caused his doors to be set open and let them go to the cellar, where they drunk God bless King William, the Church of England, and all the loyal healths they could think on, and so went their ways.47

  Although these problems did not lead to social revolution or even rebellion, they had a serious impact on the government’s war machine. The coinage crisis brought English military operations almost to a standstill in the summer of 1696. In July the country’s fiscal problems forced the Bank of England to renege upon its commitment to its Continental creditors, leaving the army paymaster in Flanders penniless. With its credit in tatters, William’s government had to rely on loans from the Dutch to keep it afloat.