The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution all started with the King, James II. He was the last Roman Catholic King of England, Ireland, and Scotland. He was monarch from 1685 to 1688 because he was defeated from an attack and gave up his throne.  He was ruling at the time and he had many problems along the way. He was remembered most for having complications with the Anglican Establishment and Parliament. Many thought that James wanted the monarch to rule the whole country. Today we call that dictatorship.

At first the heir to the throne after James II was his daughter Mary who was Protestant. That all changed when he had a son named James Francis Edward Stuart. When this happened the Parliament was nervous that there was going to be a centralized monarchy about to happen. There were even some groups that supported the monarchy (the Tories) and decided to stand with the other groups that supported Parliament (the Whigs) because everyone thought that dictatorship was going to happen very soon.

So, when it came to the time for James’s son to become king, Parliament had enough and decided to encourage William III of Orange to invade England. Even though being king can be very powerful, William became successful in getting James’s family out of the throne. They simply fled and William was able to make Parliament select himself and his wife Mary to be co-monarchs.

Because of this revolution, Parliament became more and more powerful and the monarchy became less powerful. There were actually many restrictions to the monarchy that were made and the Parliament ruled most of the country. As far as religion, there wasn’t any time soon going to be Catholicism in England.

The Glorious Revolution shaped what was going to be the American Revolution.