Let’s start with a recap to make sure we know when we are. The Civil Wars are over (Parliament won). Charles I–he was king before the Civil Wars–is dead and Oliver Cromwell became the Non-King after him, but he’s dead too and (one of history’s minor details) Cromwell the Sequel (Oliver’s son) proved unconvincing, opening the way for Charles the Sequel (Charles II to his friends) to become king in 1660. So we’ve had regicide, civil war, more civil war, exile, hide and seek, and some time off to mow the lawn and drink lemonade.

Are we caught up? Good, because when we’re studying English history it’s important to pretend we care about the order of the kings and queens. It gives us–. Nah, let’s start that over: It gives one the illusion that one knows something, or at least it gives one the ability to make other people think one does, which is more important. If one can say all that in Latin–even agonizingly bad Latin; just ask Boris Johnson–one appears to know even more. But now that one has done the order-of-kings-and-some-lemonade bit, one can forget about it and get to the fun stuff.

The fun stuff

One is dropping into crazy times here, so for no apparent reason one will stay with the present tense.

Everyone in Britain suspects that Charles the Sequel is Catholic, but he keeps his opinions to himself so no one has proof. The Church of England is the official church–all that Puritan, ultra-Protestant stuff that happened in between the Charleses has been packed in a trunk and stashed in the attic where only some crazy aunt knows about it–and whether he believes what the Church of England teaches or not, he’s still its head. Which is pretty bizarre, if you think about it for too long, so let’s not.

Religious gatherings of more than five people are banned unless they’re Church of England-approved gatherings. And that ban doesn’t just cover Catholic gatherings, it also covers more Protestantly Protestant ones. No one’s forgotten that religious change isn’t about walking quietly past one church to go to another (or, gasp, to none at all) on a rainy Sunday morning. (I was going to write “sunny,” but this is England.) Religious change is about arrests, wars, hangings, burnings, torment, death, civil war—

Okay, you get the picture: People are on edge. Understandably. Then Charles’s brother James, who’s also Charles’s heir since Charles and his missus haven’t produced an heir in the form of their own tiny baby, converts to Catholicism. Openly.

Everyone is now on a sharper edge.

 

Conspiracies

Then in 1678, a Church of England clergyman, Titus Oates, announces that Catholics are plotting to assassinate Charles and put James on the throne. Cue hysterical reactions, please. Thirty-five people (give or take a few) are executed. After they’re completely and entirely dead, the case against them falls apart. Oates is sued for libel and loses. Later on, he’s convicted of perjury and pilloried, flogged, and jailed. After that, he’s un-jailed and given a pension, although he can’t be unflogged or unpilloried any more than the dead can be unexecuted. Then he becomes a Baptist. Then he’s expelled from the Baptist Church. Then he dies in obscurity.

No one yet knows what the official religion of Obscurity is.

To understand why people are willing to believe Oates’s accusations without examining them, consider the two Treaties of Dover that Charles signed. One is official and one is secret. The official one’s dull and we’ll skip it. In the secret one, he agrees to convert to Catholicism and to back (Catholic) France’s war against the (Protestant) Dutch. In return, France will provide him with enough money that he won’t have to deal with that pesky parliament.

It’s the sort of thing that erases the line between reason and paranoia, leaving people prey to crazed conspiracy theories, although in our enlightened age we struggle to understand how people could happen.

Charles converts to Catholicism on his deathbed, leaving the country to work out its own problems. He figures he’s going to heaven and has no further need for France’s support or Parliament’s or anyone else’s.

So let’s settle in with James the Sequel, who (do I have to remind you of everything?) is Charles the Sequel’s Catholic brother. You can call him James II if you prefer. Or, if you’re in Scotland, James VII, because the kings of England, at this point, are also the kings of Scotland but Scotland introduced the James brand long before England did and that gave them time to work in extra Jameses. Lots of extra Jameses. In fact, they invented the brand, so James has two numbers after his name, one for each country. On days when his ego’s particularly inflated, he adds them up and tells the mirror he’s James IX.

He’s also the king of Ireland, but Ireland doesn’t get consulted about this, or about which number it likes better.

If you think that’s complicated, imagine how you’d feel if I told you numbers worked differently in Scotland.

 

The proto-parties

James’s Parliament is divided into two loose groupings that haven’t condensed into parties yet. One is happy about him being king because after all he is the king and that makes everything okay. The other isn’t happy because he is the king and, look, he’s Catholic.

The two groupings call each other Whigs and Tories. Both words are insults.

Tory comes from Ireland and means outlaw, highwayman. It’s used to describe the Irish Catholics who’ve been kicked off their land by English settlers and end up living as outlaws because they need to eat and what else are they going to do? The word has overtones of Catholicism, so the non-Tories pick it up to insult the MPs who support James, even though the parliamentary Tories aren’t Catholic, they’re high-church Anglican conservatives.

It’s a bitter kind of joke, but it’s a bitter kind of time.

Does it seem like we’re always dropping in on bitter times? That’s when the interesting stuff happens. Have you noticed how interesting our own times are getting?

Yup, I’m scared too.

Whig comes from Scotland and originally means someone who drives his horses to Leith to buy corn. You can see the connection, right? Or it may mean that. It’s all a little murky and depends on what sources you consult. (Sorry, I’ve lost my links here, both the ones on the internet and the ones in my brain.) From driving horses to Leith, it comes to mean a cattle driver. Or in some tellings, a cattle thief. Then it becomes a less than complimentary name for a Scots Presbyterian, which is why it becomes the less than complimentary name for the group of more Protestantly Protestant MPs who wanted to keep James from becoming king on the grounds that (I know, I’m repeating myself but the issue loops through endlessly) he’s Catholic. The word whig is associated with religious nonconformity, rebellion, and MPs who think they have the power to deny an heir the throne.

 

Heirs Protestant and Catholic

Although by now it’s too late to deny James the throne. The kingly hind end is planted firmly on the fancy symbolic chair that everyone agrees only monarchs get to occupy. Uneasy as the Whigs are about that, they mostly just mutter under their breath. It could be worse: James doesn’t have a son and his heir is his grown daughter, who’s Protestant, so as soon as he dies a Protestant will be back on the throne. And another Protestant daughter waits in the wings in case Protestant Daughter One Point Oh! dies. So mutter, mutter, mutter, it’ll all be okay eventually.

Except that James does several things that increase the volume on the mutterbox. After he puts down a rebellion (Monmouth, and it’s interesting but we’re skipping it anyway), he refuses to disband the army that did the downputting. And not only do standing armies still make people nervous, if this army stays standing, James could fill it with Catholics.

Then he boots an assortment of powerful people out of office and brings Catholics into positions of power.

And in case that doesn’t turn the volume up high enough, he resurrects something called the Declaration of Indulgence, which–oh, never mind, you won’t remember it anyway and neither will I. It’s a step toward freedom of religion. That’s enough to work with.  

Is he a champion of religious tolerance or is he using tolerance to pave the way for a Catholic takeover that won’t be tolerant at all? No one really knows–including, quite possibly, the king himself, since so few things in politics go according to plan.

It all reaches a breaking point over two things: First, seven bishops refuse to have the Declaration of Indulgence read in their churches and James (tolerantly) has them arrested. Second and most outrageously, James becomes a father again. And the baby’s a boy. And a boy trumps a girl, even if he’s too young to eat solid food, so as soon as the kid’s genitalia have been verified and long before he’s old enough to discuss theology or gender reassignment or complain that he’s bored in church, he’s edged out his sisters.

This is the cue for conspiracy theorists to get to work: “No way is that baby the queen’s,” they say. “Some Jesuit smuggled him into her bedroom in a warming pan. “

The theory circulates widely. It’s easy to believe the worst of anyone just now.

What’s a warming pan? A metal pan filled with embers. You—or (what was I thinking?) a servant uses it to warm the bed. They aren’t part of the standard priestly equipment–even I know that–and I have my doubts about fitting a baby into one. But regardless of whether James produces his male heir from a warming pan or a queen, the introduction of this tiny proto-Catholic as the next in line to the throne is a step too far for the Whigs. Before the kid can say his first Hail Mary, six peers and a bishop write to William, the Prince of Orange and the husband of James the Sequel’s Protestant daughter and former heir, Mary.

“Come investigate this alleged baby,” they say. “He looks suspicious to us.”

 

The Glorious Revolution

So William comes for a visit, bringing with him upwards of 400 ships, 21,000 men (or 35,000, or 40,000, but let’s go with the lowest number so I don’t get accused of exaggerating), and an assortment of horses. Not to mention 600 ballerinas wearing shocking pink tutus and an uncounted number of sequins.*

It’s the ballerinas who do James in. He flees, tossing the great seal into the Thames on his way out of London, which is the kingly equivalent of eating your list of computer passwords. It should be enough to halt business for at least a while.

William has a claim on the throne in his own right, but he’s lower on the legitimate-heir list than his wife, and now that he’s in London this hurts his manly pride, which (I’ve been told) is a brittle thing and demands constant care. He doesn’t want to hang around the palace as a mere king-consort, sitting on a lower throne and being addressed as Mister Queen. It’s one thing for women to put up with that kind of thing, but a man?

Don’t be silly.

Cue a bit of arm wrestling with Parliament and next thing you know William and Mary are proclaimed joint king and queen, each in their own right. In return, though, they have to accept a Bill of Rights limiting the monarchy’s power. They can’t suspend laws that Parliament passes, raise an army during peacetime without its agreement, mess around with Parliamentary elections, inflict cruel or unusual punishments, deny Protestant subjects the right to bear arms “suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law,” punish MPs or members of the Lords for anything they say in debates, or smuggle babies into bedrooms in warming pans. Unless the babies have sworn their allegiance to the Protestant faith.

Parts of that will sound familiar to Americans. This is where we stole the wording from. But what’s most important here aren’t the particulars, it’s that the king and queen have been chosen by Parliament and have agreed to the limits Parliament put on their power.

The wrestling match between Parliament and the monarchy is over. Parliament’s won.

This is called the Glorious Revolution. Why? Because it’s not a revolution and because if you chose the right side back there at the beginning, you feel glorious.

 

* Okay, I invented the ballerinas. And the sequins, although (to my surprise) they did exist in the 17th century and were used on both men’s and women’s clothing.