# Canonical recap data for Glorious Revolution (1688)
# Source: https://recap.at/1688/glorious-revolution
# Format: YAML 1.2 (UTF-8). Generated at request time.
slug: glorious-revolution
canonicalUrl: "https://recap.at/1688/glorious-revolution"
title: Glorious Revolution
aliases:
- Bloodless Revolution
- The Revolution of 1688
- Williamite Revolution
- The Glorious Revolution of 1688
subtitle: When Parliament invited a foreign army to fix their king problem.
recapType: global_event
eventStatus: concluded
startDate: 1688-01-01
datePrecision: year
year: 1688
decade: 1680
country:
name: England
slug: england
summaryShort: William of Orange invaded England in 1688, forcing out Catholic king James II and replacing him with William and his wife Mary. Parliament got more power, religious tolerance expanded, and the monarch's authority took a permanent hit.
summaryLong: |-
  James II had a problem: he was Catholic in a staunchly Protestant kingdom, and he'd just produced a male heir to carry on the dynasty. England's political establishment-nobles, merchants, and bishops alike-had spent three decades watching the Stuarts consolidate power at Parliament's expense. When James began appointing Catholics to high office and suspending laws without consent, the anxiety turned acute. By spring 1688, leading figures including the Earl of Danby and Bishop Henry Compton sent an invitation to William of Orange, the Protestant ruler of the Dutch Republic and James's own nephew by marriage, asking him to bring an army and "restore" English liberties.

  William landed at Torbay on November 5, 1688, with roughly 15,000 troops-a force small enough to seem defensive but large enough to matter. James, watching his own generals defect (including John Churchill, later the Duke of Marlborough), lost his nerve. He attempted to flee to France in December, throwing the Great Seal into the Thames as a final act of defiance. Parliament reconvened in January 1689 and declared James had "abdicated" the throne, then offered the crown jointly to William and Mary, James's daughter. The speed was disorienting: a foreign military intervention, legitimized retroactively by Parliament, accomplished in weeks what might have taken years of civil war.

  The political settlement that followed mattered more than the military one. The Bill of Rights (1689) established that Parliament controlled taxation, that elections should happen regularly, that the monarch couldn't maintain a standing army without consent, and that subjects had a right to petition. Religious toleration-though not full equality-extended to Protestant Dissenters through the Toleration Act. William and Mary accepted these constraints because they needed England's resources to fight Louis XIV's France, and because the alternative was returning to the chaos of the 1640s Civil War. The Glorious Revolution wasn't bloodless everywhere: William's forces crushed a Jacobite rising in Scotland at Killiecrankie in July 1689, and James's supporters fought in Ireland until the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

  Historians have argued for centuries about what this actually was. Contemporaries called it glorious because no English blood was spilled defending the old regime-the contrast with 1642 was sharp. By the 19th century, Whig historians celebrated it as the birth of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary supremacy. More recent scholarship questions how much changed: William exercised real power, Parliament's role remained contested through the 18th century, and the "settlement" papered over deep disagreements that erupted repeatedly. What's certain is that after 1689, the English monarchy never again ruled without significant parliamentary checks, and that precedent rippled across Europe.
lede: In November 1688, William of Orange, a Dutch Protestant prince, invaded England with an army and forced out Catholic king James II. Parliament then declared James had essentially quit the job and offered the crown to William and his wife Mary instead. The bloodless coup-celebrated as "glorious" because it avoided a replay of the brutal civil war from 50 years earlier-permanently weakened the monarchy's power and handed real authority to Parliament, reshaping how Britain would be governed for centuries.
heroImageUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg/1280px-William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg"
heroImageCredit: Wikipedia · "Glorious Revolution"
importance: 50
sourceConfidence: 50
keyFacts:
- label: Date of William's landing
  value: November 5, 1688, at Torbay, Devon
- label: Size of William's invasion force
  value: Approximately 15,000 troops
- label: Monarchs crowned after the revolution
  value: William III and Mary II, jointly
- label: Key legislation passed
  value: Bill of Rights (1689) and Toleration Act (1689)
- label: Major battle in Ireland
  value: Battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690
- label: Parliament convened to resolve succession
  value: January 1689
- label: James II's attempted escape
  value: December 1688, fled to France
- label: Scottish Jacobite battle
  value: Battle of Killiecrankie, July 27, 1689
timeline:
- date: 1688-05-01
  title: James II produces a male heir
  description: The birth of James Francis Edward Stuart, the infant prince, crystallizes Protestant fears of a permanent Catholic dynasty and prompts leading figures to seek alternatives.
- date: 1688-06-30
  title: Invitation to William of Orange
  description: Seven prominent English and Scottish figures, including the Earl of Danby and Bishop Henry Compton, sign a letter inviting William to invade and restore English liberties.
- date: 1688-11-05
  title: William lands at Torbay
  description: William of Orange and his Dutch fleet arrive at Torbay, Devon, with approximately 15,000 troops. The date-November 5-coincides with Guy Fawkes Night, adding symbolic weight.
- date: 1688-11-23
  title: James II flees London
  description: As his own generals defect, including the future Duke of Marlborough, James loses confidence in his position. He abandons the capital and attempts to escape.
- date: 1688-12-11
  title: James throws the Great Seal into the Thames
  description: James makes a final symbolic gesture of rejection, throwing the Great Seal-symbol of royal authority-into the river as he flees toward the coast.
- date: 1688-12-23
  title: James reaches France
  description: James II arrives in France and is received by Louis XIV, ending any realistic chance of his immediate restoration.
- date: 1689-01-22
  title: Parliament declares the throne vacant
  description: The Convention Parliament meets and declares that James has effectively abdicated. It rejects the claim of James's infant son and offers the crown jointly to William and Mary.
- date: 1689-02-13
  title: William and Mary crowned
  description: William III and Mary II are crowned jointly as monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a unique arrangement in English history.
- date: 1689-02-13
  title: Bill of Rights passed
  description: Parliament passes the Bill of Rights, establishing regular elections, controlling taxation, and preventing the monarch from maintaining a standing army without consent.
- date: 1689-05-24
  title: Toleration Act becomes law
  description: The Toleration Act grants freedom of worship to Protestant Dissenters, though Catholics remain excluded from full civic rights.
- date: 1689-07-27
  title: Battle of Killiecrankie
  description: Jacobite forces under John Graham of Claverhouse defeat a government army in Scotland, but Graham's death and subsequent failures limit the uprising's impact.
- date: 1690-07-01
  title: Battle of the Boyne
  description: William defeats James II's Irish and French forces at the River Boyne, securing Protestant ascendancy in Ireland and ending James's last serious attempt to regain the throne.
sources: []
related: []
relationships:
- targetSlug: english-civil-war
  type: evolved_from
  confidence: 95
  evidence: The Civil War (1642) established Parliament's capacity to resist the Crown; the Revolution succeeded because that precedent had already shattered the myth of divine right, enabling William's legal challenge to James II's authority.
  source: ai
- targetSlug: american-declaration-independence
  type: anticipated
  confidence: 90
  evidence: The Revolution's principle that subjects may depose a tyrannical ruler who violates fundamental law directly provided the philosophical and procedural blueprint Jefferson invoked in 1776 against George III.
  source: ai
- targetSlug: storming-of-bastille
  type: anticipated
  confidence: 85
  evidence: 1688 demonstrated that popular uprising against an entrenched monarch could succeed and establish constitutional limits; French revolutionaries in 1789 explicitly modeled their assault on royal authority on the Glorious Revolution's precedent.
  source: ai
- targetSlug: newton-principia-published
  type: happened_during
  confidence: 75
  evidence: Newton published Principia in 1687, one year before the Revolution; the intellectual climate of the 1680s that enabled scientific revolution (empiricism, limits on authority) was the same one that challenged royal absolutism.
  source: ai
gallery:
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Lactic-acid-skeletal.svg/1280px-Lactic-acid-skeletal.svg.png"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Lactic-acid-skeletal.svg/800px-Lactic-acid-skeletal.svg.png"
  caption: Lactic acid
  credit: Wikipedia · "Lactic acid"
  width: 330
  height: 302
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg/1280px-William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg/800px-William_of_Orange_III_and_his_Dutch_army_land_in_Brixham%2C_1688.jpg"
  caption: William of Orange III and his Dutch army land in Brixham, 1688
  credit: Johan Herman Isings
  width: 1557
  height: 1081
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/William_III_of_England.jpg/1280px-William_III_of_England.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/William_III_of_England.jpg/800px-William_III_of_England.jpg"
  caption: William III of England
  credit: Manner of Willem Wissing
  width: 4020
  height: 5246
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/William_III_Landing_at_Brixham%2C_Torbay%2C_5_November_1688.jpg/1280px-William_III_Landing_at_Brixham%2C_Torbay%2C_5_November_1688.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/William_III_Landing_at_Brixham%2C_Torbay%2C_5_November_1688.jpg/800px-William_III_Landing_at_Brixham%2C_Torbay%2C_5_November_1688.jpg"
  caption: William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688
  credit: Jan Wyck
  width: 1266
  height: 1524
culturalContext:
topMusic: []
topFilms: []
topTVShows: []
zeitgeistNote: The late 17th century saw Enlightenment thought crystallizing around natural rights and limited government-ideas the Revolution exemplified in practice. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) directly justified the Revolution's logic, establishing the intellectual template for all future constitutional liberalism.
comparisonThenNow:
- metric: Monarch's ability to dismiss Parliament unilaterally
  thenValue: Prohibited after 1689
  thenYear: 1689
  nowValue: Constitutionally impossible
  nowYear: 2024
  note: The revolution permanently ended Tudor-era royal prerogative; modern monarchs reign but do not govern.
- metric: Religious establishment requirement for public office
  thenValue: Anglican/Catholic monopoly (enforced until 1689)
  thenYear: 1688
  nowValue: No religious test; equality under law
  nowYear: 2024
  note: Toleration Act began the dismantling of state religious discrimination that took 200+ years to fully resolve.
- metric: Parliamentary session frequency and power
  thenValue: Called and dissolved at royal whim; limited duration and scope
  thenYear: 1688
  nowValue: Sovereign legislature; Crown cannot prorogue without constitutional challenge
  nowYear: 2024
  note: Boris Johnson's 2019 prorogation attempt was struck down by courts citing principles rooted in 1688.
impactStatement: William III's invasion in November 1688 deposed James II without a shot fired in the decisive battle, establishing parliamentary supremacy and the principle that no English monarch could rule without consent. The Glorious Revolution became the blueprint for constitutional monarchy and directly shaped American and French revolutionary thought a century later.
consequences:
- title: Bill of Rights Enacted
  year: 1689
  description: Parliament passed the Bill of Rights establishing that the Crown was subordinate to Parliament and securing individual liberties, setting the legal framework for all subsequent English constitutional governance.
- title: Toleration Act
  year: 1689
  description: Religious dissenters gained legal rights to worship freely, though full Catholic emancipation remained delayed. This marked England's shift from state-enforced religious uniformity toward pluralism.
- title: Act of Settlement
  year: 1701
  description: Parliament secured the succession through the Protestant line, codifying the principle that Parliament-not divine right-determined who could wear the Crown and under what constitutional constraints.
- title: Nine Years' War
  year: 1688
  description: William III's consolidated English and Dutch resources to fight Louis XIV's France, establishing Britain as a major European power and ending French hegemonic ambitions in the continent.
- title: American Revolution Ideological Foundation
  year: 1776
  description: American colonists invoked 1688 precedent-that revolution against tyranny was legitimate and that government required consent-as justification for declaring independence from George III.
archiveSnapshots: []
categories:
- revolution
metaDescription: William of Orange invaded England, James II fled, and Parliament seized power. No shots fired, no heads rolled-just a bloodless coup that rewrote the rules of monarchy forever.
wikidataQid: Q161249
originSignals:
- "wikipedia:glorious-revolution"
taxonomy:
domain: political
eventTypes:
- revolution
- regime_change
canonicalClasses:
- conflict
- governance
- transformation
impactRadius: national
velocity: sudden
predictability: forecastable
intentionality: coordinated
domainCoupling: multi_domain
lifecycleClass: transition
