Before the Glorious Revolution
Graham Goodlad examines the controversies surrounding the development of royal power under Charles II and James II.
The Debate
The traditional view of the Glorious Revolution was that it saved England from the power-seeking designs of James II and secured the development of constitutional monarchy, civil and religious liberty and the rule of law. This heroic interpretation of the events of 1688-89 was fixed in the national consciousness by the enormously influential History of England, written by the mid-nineteenth century historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. It established a widely held picture of a tyrannical ruler whose ambition was to establish a Catholic absolute monarchy, modelled on the example of Louis XIV's France.
Although later historians reacted against Macaulay's Whig triumphalism, subsequent research tended to confirm the essentials of this interpretation. In Monarchy and Revolution (1972), J.R. Western argued that James continued a trend towards royal absolutism, which had begun in the final years of Charles II's reign. Only the intervention of William of Orange in the autumn of 1688 brought about a change of direction, perhaps at the last possible moment.
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