WILLIAM & MARY

WILLIAM III. 1694 - 1702

William Of Orange

A group of influential men sent a careful letter to William of Orange, asking him to come over with an army and save the liberties of the English people. This was by no means the first communication that had passed between the two countries, for William and the Whig leaders had long been in close touch. His views were well-known. He believed in religious toleration, was in favour of repealing the penal laws against dissent, but determined to maintain the Test Act, an attitude which satisfied moderate men. Just as Louis was set upon keeping England divided, and therefore out of the Continental fray, so William longed for English membership of the newly formed League of Augsburg. It was clear that the Continental struggle must soon be resumed, and that it might be precipitated at any moment by the death of the invalid King of Spain: an event which had, indeed, been momentarily expected ever since his birth. When it did at last take place, who should succeed to the Spanish throne? That question was to involve Europe in warfare, and in its decision England was to play a leading part.

William saw that the time for action had come. He sailed, and when at last the west wind gave way to the Protestant wind from the east, landed in Torbay upon an auspicious day (November 5), anniversary of the Guy Fawkes plot. Before long he was joined by many soldiers, among them one John Churchill, a brilliant and ambitious young man who had learnt his trade under Turenne, practised it in the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, and had taken care to keep in close touch with William while serving James. Before long he was to be Duke of Marlborough, and one of the greatest of English genera]s. Revolt broke out in the north, and thither fled the Princess Anne. James sought first the safety of his wife and son, sent them off to France, endeavoured to make terms, and was carefully allowed to follow his family across the Channel. His presence upon British soil would have been singularly inconvenient. Six weeks after William's landing, James was in France. William reached London, sent the French Ambassador out of the kingdom, was requested to take charge of the administration by an assembly of those who had sat in the House of Commons under Charles II, together with the magistrates and common councillors of London. A few days later Parliament was summoned, was duly elected, and met.

There was one struggle still. The Tories wished Mary to rule as hereditary monarch, but William refused to be regent, as did his wife to rule alone. The crown was offered to, and accepted jointly by, the two cousins, both grandchildren of Charles 1, and the Glorious Revolution had taken place. A king who wanted to be absolute, but had fled from his kingdom, and thus, as men held, had abdicated his throne, was replaced by monarchs who owed their crown not only to their blood, but to the deliberate choice of their people.

THE accession of William and Mary made it possible for the English people to settle down under the form of government for which they had been struggling. The final victory, too, had come without violence, and was therefore all the more likely to be a lasting one. The execution of Charles in 1649 had caused a reaction in favour of the Royalists which made Cromwell's position a difficult one, but the way in which James had run away left him with very few sympathisers; moreover, there was little apparent change in the form of government except that a king who had been trying to rule by unconstitutional means had been replaced by another who had promised to rule constitutionally. The country was in a prosperous condition; wealth was increasing and trade expanding, so that there was little cause for discontent. The greatest danger to William was the problem of taxation, for the people would be sure to resent heavy taxes. Certain things remained to be done to make the supremacy of Parliament complete, and Acts of Parliament were passed for this purpose. A Triennial Act.1694, said that no Parliament should last longer than three years, nor should the country remain more than three years without a Parliament; the Commons made sure that they would meet frequently by making their money votes annual ones. They also separated the national from the royal revenue, and voted the latter separately as the Civil List.

Something, too, had to be done to settle the religious difficulties of the time. The Dissenters had refused the tempting offers of toleration which James II had made to win their support, because they knew that he really wished to favour the Roman Catholics. They were now rewarded by a Toleration Act, 1689, which freed them from the punishments inflicted on those who did not attend the services of the Church of England, and allowed them a. share in the government. This was the beginning of a policy of religious toleration which was bound to increase as time went on; but at the moment there was no toleration for Roman Catholics or Unitarians.

Another important step in the direction of liberty was made in 1695, when the House of Commons refused to renew the Licensing Act, This Act had forbidden the publication of any newspapers and pamphlets, unless they were licensed by persons appointed by the Government. In the days of James and Charles the press had been controlled by the Court of Star Chamber; even under the Commonwealth only licensed articles could be published, and Milton had protested against this in one of his most famous prose works, the Areopagitica ; at the Restoration a Licensing Act had continued these restrictions. Now there was freedom of the press, and a man could write and print whatever he wished, provided he did not break any of the laws of the land in doing so.

William wished to govern the country by means of a Council containing the best men of both parties. Whig and Tory. He was well aware that the Whigs wanted to get the control of affairs as much as possible into the hands of Parliament and so curtail his power, and that the Tories wanted the Stuarts back again. He hoped, however, to play one party off against the other, and so keep both his position and his power. But he soon found that he could rely for support only upon the Whigs, and by degrees his Council came to consist only of Whigs. Hence there began to develop in the country that system of party government under which we now live: a system in which all the members of the Government consist of one particular party - the party which can, for the time being, obtain the support of a majority of the members of the House of Commons.

One of the greatest difficulties that faced William III and his Government was the question of money. The country was at war with France, and war meant great expense. Up to this time money had been borrowed in the king's name, and the debt had been a royal debt for which the king had been responsible. It proved difficult for the ministers to raise the money, for people thought the king's position on the throne too insecure for it to be wise to lend money to him. For the same reason it was unwise for the ministers to tax the people heavily, and some other method of raising money had to be found. There was already a royal debt of over a million pounds when William came to the throne, and another million was raised in 1692 by borrowing money in the form of life annuities. But still more money was wanted, and the ministers decided to obtain it by borrowing it in the name of the nation, and making the nation responsible for the debt. In this way they formed a National instead of a Royal Debt. The amount raised was £1,200,000; and the lenders were not only promised interest at 8 per cent, per annum, but were also permitted to form a joint stock banking company, to trade as the Bank of England. and have the monopoly of government business and the right of issuing bank notes. This method of raising money proved a very popular one, and by the death of Queen Anne the nation's indebtedness was over £50,000,000. Needless to say, all those who invested their money in this way were likely to support William and his successors and not the Stuarts, for the restoration of the Stuarts might have led to a repudiation of the debts incurred while William was king.

Their reign was not destined to last long. Mary died of smallpox, as had so many of her family, and, eight years later, William, who had always been fragile, and was worn out by his exertions, fell as his horse stumbled over a molehill, broke his collar-bone, and was unable to recover from the shock. But in those short years the British constitution was firmly established upon its new basis, and the power of France checked.