Glorious Revolution

Caty Zick
Discussion 1H

--Note: I know this one has already been done, but I did it on accident and thought I would just post it anyway--

In 1688, William II lead an army to remove James II from the throne of Great Britain in what came to be known as the Bloodless or Glorious Revolution. As a result, James II fled to France, and William and Mary take the throne in 1689 and established Protestant rule.

Neither the Whig nor Tory parties could accept Catholic James II as ruler, and when he produced a male heir, the possibility of a Catholic lineage became a reality. Protestant Dutchman William of Orange, along with his wife Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, became part of a plot to overtake the throne from James II. Along with a small army, William marched from southwestern England toward London, causing the King and his allies to flee. The fight was not yet over, however, as for the next fifty years a group of people called the Jacobites (supporters of James) continued to fight for James, his son (often called “the Old Pertender”) and his grandson (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”) as the rightful heirs to the throne. After the failure of one last desperate Jacobite uprising in 1745, the Jacobites faded into the background, clearing the way for William and Mary to ascend to the throne. The Glorious Revolution is often viewed as the beginning of a stabilized, unified Great Britain.

Some poets who secretly sypmathized with the Jacobites:
-Aphra Behn
-Dryden
-Pope
-Johnson
-Robert Burns

Dr. Makdisi discussed the Glorious Revolution during his lecture on February 19th, and information on the Glorious Revolution can also be found in the introduction to the Norton Anthology, Volume C, on pages 2058 to 2059.