I was really excited to read this book. I found it in a box at a library book sale and was immediately captivated by its unique premise as captured in its subtitle: “The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers.” I have read dozens of books and biographies about the American Revolution over the years but never saw something quite like this: A history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 written by an American author for an American audience to help better explain the impetus behind the American Revolution. “Wow!” I thought. “Sign me up!”
This is an excellent book and I highly encourage you to read it. However, it is not quite the book I was hoping and expecting to get based on its subtitle and back cover description. First of all, concerning style, I would say “Our First Revolution” is very readable. Its New York Times Bestseller status and endorsements from the Wall Street Journal calling it a “political thriller” and late night comedian Jon Stewart gushing that it is “so dramatic and theatrical” may lead the prospective reader to expect something more. What disappointed me most though was that the Founding Fathers were nary to be found. Author Michael Barone includes a short concluding chapter that discusses the legacy of the Glorious Revolution and how, in part, it influenced opinions in the American colonies in the 1770s, but that’s about it. I was expecting a more thoughtful and thorough analysis of American colonial political opinion and how those opinions were shaped by the events and outcomes of 1688. For instance, American colonists often wrote about their natural born rights as Englishmen and of course expressed strong feelings about their liberty and the importance of political representation. I was expecting Barone to tie all of this together to the Glorious Revolution but he never did.
So, in light of these disappointments, why do I give “Our First Revolution” 5 stars? Simple: because it is a fantastic narrative history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Barone writes that, “William III and the improbable Revolution of 1688-89 were indispensable in bringing into being the world we live it today.” The revolutionary settlement brought about by William of Orange’s invasion of England has endured for centuries. “It changed England from a nation in which representative government was threatened to one where it was ingrained, from a nation in which liberties were based on tradition to one where they were based in part on positive law, from a nation where the place of religion was a matter of continued political dispute and even armed struggle to one where it became settled in a way that generally respected individual choice, from a nation that mostly kept apart from the wars of continental Europe to one that saw its duty as maintaining a balance of power there and around the world.” Amazingly, all of this came together rather haphazardly, as Barone shows that William’s overriding motivation in 1688 was securing direct English support in his war against the Sun King, Louis XIV of France. All other religious, political, and economic considerations were secondary at best.
Barone writes that the Glorious Revolution had five enduring legacies. First, it perpetuated and strengthened representative government. Prior to 1688, Barone writes, Parliaments were more of an event than an institution. In the century before the Glorious Revolution, kings called Parliament into session only periodically and when absolutely needed. The events of 1688-89 changed all of that. Parliament has met every year since 1689. “William was taking a resolute stand against the trend to downgrade representative assemblies in England and throughout Europe.”
Second, the Glorious Revolution was a bold step forward for guaranteed liberties. Barone concedes that the 1689 Bill of Rights may appear to modern eyes a “limited and grudging document,” but it did break new ground as an affirmative statement of individual rights and would later inspire our own Bill of Rights.
Third, Barone argues that the Revolutionary settlement of 1689 was a critical step forward for religious liberties, but admits that, “To our eyes the Toleration Act seems a very limited advance.” It did, however, allow Christians of different denominations to live together in the same nation and a rejection of the idea that the Church of England should have a monopoly of worship in the land. This led, Barone writes, to a flowering of religious competition and pluralism, especially in the North American colonies. “In practice,” he says, “toleration reigned.”
Fourth, the Revolution of 1688-89 led to profound economic impacts, most notably the creation of a national debt in 1693 and the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. These two developments, both directly related to William’s pursuit of war with Louis XIV, would serve as the indispensible economic engine that led to the astounding growth of the British economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that in turn fueled the expansion of the British Empire.
Finally, the Glorious Revolution led to “momentous reverberations” in foreign policy. In short, Barone argues that neither King Charles II nor James II regarded France as a serious threat. William III, on the other hand, regarded the Sun King as an existential threat to the freedom and stability of the European world, and Protestantism in particular. The English acceptance of William as king in 1689 unavoidably plunged the kingdom into war with France. “The belief that Britain must maintain a balance of power against a hegemonic and tyrannical power in Europe became deeply ingrained” ever since, Barone writes.
While Barone does highlight these five long-range impacts of the Glorious Revolution, any prospective reader of “Our First Revolution” should know that the book doesn’t actually spend much time crafting and analyzing them. Rather, most of the book is dedicated to explaining the background that led to the historic events of 1688. Indeed, William’s invasion of the British Isles in November 1688 and its aftermath almost feels anticlimactic after Barone’s build up to the event. The author does a remarkable job explaining the complex and convoluted world of seventeenth century European royal politics and early modern British government. Any American with only a limited familiarity with the period will be able to follow the narrative easily.
The story goes something like this. In 1640, King Charles I was overthrown by Parliament and beheaded. His two sons, Charles II and James II, fled to France where they lived in virtual poverty for decades before Charles II was recalled to England to become King in 1660 as part of the Stuart Restoration. Charles reigned relatively successfully until 1685 when he died and was replaced by his brother, James II.
This is where things get interesting. In or around 1668, James, the Duke of York, and his wife, Anne Hyde, converted to Catholicism. They kept the conversion secret until 1673 when James stepped down from his post as Lord High Admiral because of the recently enacted Test Act, which forbid Catholics from serving in public office. Meanwhile, James and Anne had two daughters together: Mary and Anne. The former was married to her first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. She would be the first in line of succession when James ascended to the throne. Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark in 1683. Both Mary and Anne were, importantly, raised Anglicans.
After he became King in 1685, James began to take steps that would loosen the draconian restrictions Parliament had imposed upon Catholics over the years. Specifically, he sought the repeal of the aforementioned Test Act, which required office holders to disavow the doctrine of transubstantiation (i.e. that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are literally the body and blood of Christ), and the penal laws, which had been passed during the reign of Elizabeth I and made it high treason to convert someone to Catholicism and a felony to be a convert oneself or to attend mass. James worked assiduously to influence the Parliamentary elections of 1688 in order to ensure a legislative body amenable to his political prerogatives. Also around this time, James’s second wife, Queen Mary of Modena, gave birth to a boy, known as James Edward, which suddenly opened the prospect of an ongoing Catholic succession to the throne. All of this took place against the backdrop of widespread Catholic persecution of French Protestant Huguenots after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes guaranteeing Protestants certain limited religious toleration in France in 1685. “Louis’s France was seen by Englishmen as an absolutist, oppressive, Catholic tyrant, bent on reducing Englishmen to penury and slavery.” “Protestants were being persecuted by a Catholic king in France,” Barone writes. “What would a Catholic king do in England?”
Barone maintains that James never intended to make England Catholic. Rather, he simply wanted to allow British Catholics – who Barone estimates represented just 2% of the overall population and perhaps as much of 20% of the nobility – to practice their faith on equal terms with other Christians and to qualify for public office. From the perspective of the twenty-first century it all seems quite just and reasonable. That’s not at all how it appeared to people in late seventeenth century England.
At this point in the story enters James’s son-in-law, William of Orange, whose kingdom in the Netherlands was under existential threat from Louis XIV. A potential alliance between the Catholic King James and the Catholic King Louis XIV would be catastrophic for William. He had to act.
William did not take half measures. In the words of historian Dale Hoak: “By every measure, this was the largest military maneuver of its kind since the end of the Roman Empire and, before the advent of the battleship, certainly the greatest such operation ever launched in northern European waters.” William’s force was four times the size of the Spanish Armada of 1588: 500 ships carrying 15,000 men, the largest fleet ever assembled in the English Channel. Once the invasion force landed on 5 November 1688 (Guy Fawkes Day) some 60,000 English language pamphlets were distributed across the countryside by William’s army. The “Declaration” explained that William was “appearing in arms” to save the Church of England and the “ancient constitution” of England and to oppose the “absolute power” of James’s “evil counselors.” It was “one of the greatest and most decisive propaganda coups of early modern times” and “arguably one of the most impressive feats of organization any early modern regime ever achieved.”
It was also all bullocks, according to Barone. The single overriding motivation for the invasion was to prevent James from bringing England into an alliance with France and to get England to join the military coalition of the Dutch. Religion played almost no part of it, he says. “William himself was a Calvinist, no more an Anglican than James.”
Nevertheless, James’s support evaporated in the face of William’s onslaught. Barone titles his chapter on this part of the story as “The Civil War that Did Not Happen.” On paper, James had 40,000 troops at his disposal with which to confront William’s 15,000. But in his time of need James would be abandoned by nearly everyone. In the king’s own words: “My daughter hath deserted me, my army also, and [Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough and ancestor of Winston Churchill] that I raised from nothing, the same, on whom I heaped all favours; and if such betrays me, what can I expect from that I have done so little for? I know not who to speak to or who to trust.” The 55-year-old king tossed the Great Seal of state into the Thames and fled to France.
King William would be out of England for more than he was in it during his seven-year reign. War with Louis XIV was, of course, the overriding priority and the main reason for his invasion of England in the first place. The size of the English state exploded under William. The government’s expenditures rose from 2 million pounds during James’s final year to 8 million pounds in 1696. James’s government had employed some 4,000 civil servants; William employed 12,000. The upshot was, in the words of historian Dale Hoak, “a permanently armed, bureaucratic, imperial monarchy.” England had become, under William, for the first time, a world power.
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