Page 12 - History 2020

over 150 years of instability and bloodshed.” This was one of the underlying reasons
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why the 18 century was much more stable than the 17 . Making parliament
supreme over the monarchy was incidental to all this, a by-product of the Act of
Succession which was a by-product of the Glorious Revolution. Our unwritten
constitution seems to proceed in this winding, indirect way. From this perspective,
1688 in itself doesn’t look all that consequential. We may therefore conclude that
Mrs. Thatcher was not being very precise when she called 1688 ”the first step on the
road which led to the establishment of universal suffrage and full parliamentary
democracy”.

However if we look at the bigger picture, 1688 clearly did matter. It helped
strengthen English dominance over Scotland and Ireland. It put Britain at the
forefront of the titanic European war against Louis XIV. This in turn, according to a
pioneering historian of British imperialism (John Seeley “The Expansion of
England” 1883) helped set us on the path to global empire. In short, 1688 deserves
our attention. In fact it demands it, since the accepted popular view of its significance

falls so far short of the historical reality.

One final thought: If we decide that 1688 may deserve the title “Glorious” after all,
one implication is that it may be time to reassess one of our more neglected and
unloved monarchs, William III.

Next session we’ll continue the story by looking at the emergence of our
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parliamentary system in the 18 century. This will focus on two historical figures: Sir
Robert Walpole and his system for managing parliament, the “Robinocracy”; and
Edmund Burke, scourge of the French Revolution, and the man who gave the British
Revolution its philosophy: modern conservatism.

Epilogue: Alice Lisle and Judge Jeffreys
Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys was put in charge of punishing rebels involved in

the 1685 Monmouth Rising who were hunted down after their defeat at the Battle of
Sedgemoor in Somerset. The brutal mass executions ordered by Jeffreys, mostly by
hanging and quartering, with and without trials, caused people to give the
proceedings the nickname “the Bloody Assizes”. About 250 died, executed at the rate
of about a dozen a day (hanging, drawing and quartering was a lengthy process*).
Many more, around 850, were transported. Some army offices shot three captured
rebels as part of the entertainment at a regimental banquet. Jeffreys has been
variously described as “a legal bully-boy for the monarchy” and “a man of violence
and blood.” Neither justice nor mercy were high priorities for him. Men were offered

clemency if they confessed, and were then summarily hung, drawn and quartered