July 4th: The Glorious Revolution

The Fourth of July is coming up. Cadence is closed for a four-day weekend, so this is the last day before a break, and so it is time to talk about something off-topic. Well, not that off-topic since I'm going to talk about Independence Day and what the closest equivalents might be in the UK, which doesn't have a formal Independence Day.

Independence Day

Years ago, one of the first years that I had come to the US, I was at a Fourth of July party. Somebody asked me "What do they do in Britain on July 4?"

Usually, at times like this I suffer from l'esprit d'escalier, the wit of the staircase, where you think of a great reply to something said earlier when you are already leaving. But this time I simply said:

"Nothing. We lost."

In Britain, we call it The War of American Independence, and indeed Britain lost. There is a famous amusing history book in Britain called 1066 and All That. Full title 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates. The two memorable dates in British history are 1066 (the Norman conquest) and 55-54BC (Roman invasion of Britain). Like old-school history lessons, 1066 and All That is concerned with the power struggles of nations, or, in their terminology, "who is top nation". The book ends at the end of World War I:

America was thus top nation and history came to a .

This sentence works better if you know that British English calls the period at the end of a sentence a "full stop". The book was published in 1930, so the end of what was still called The Great War was little more than a decade before it was written.

The conversation at that party moved on to a more sensible question, "What is the equivalent of the Fourth of July in Britain?"

Unlike the US, the Russians, the Chinese, the French, and many other nations, there has not been a revolution that changed the country from an old autocracy to whatever the country is today, with a corresponding Independence Day or equivalent. Nor any losing a colonial power. As I pointed out years ago in another off-topic post Can You Pass As a Brit? Just Answer 3 Simple Questions, we let off fireworks in Britain on November 5 in celebration of a failed attempt by Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament (the old one, not the current building). I like to say that "not having had a successful revolution, we have to celebrate a failed one."

But Britain didn't go from absolute monarchy to today's democracy completely bloodlessly. It seems to me that there were three key events.

The English Civil War

First, the English Civil War in 1642-51. Oversimplifying, this was a war between the supporters of Parliament (the Roundheads) and the supporters of King Charles I (the Cavaliers). Or, as characterized in 1066 and All That, "right but repulsive" and "wrong but romantic".

The roundheads (parliament) won, and King Charles I was beheaded in 1649. In dry British humor (it has to have been written by a Brit since Americans don't really do dry humor), Wikipedia says that:

The execution of Charles I was particularly notable given that an English king had never been executed before.

So Britain executed the king and the monarchy was abolished and the Commonwealth of England established as a republic. But the English Civil War was not over, and the supporters of Charles II (who was at least technically the king to his supporters, and had been crowned in Scotland) carried on the fight, eventually being finally defeated in 1651.

From 1649-59 the administration was the Commonwealth, and then the Protectorate, unifying the British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland) under Oliver Cromwell. When Cromwell died, his son took over briefly.

As you've probably noticed, Britain today is a constitutional monarchy, not a republic. That came about in 1660 with the restoration of the monarchy. There was lots of political jockeying for power, but in the end, parliament proclaimed Charles II king and invited him to return from his exile in mainland Europe. But with several conditions. The big one was that the King could not govern without parliament's consent. There would never again be an absolute monarchy.

Cromwell's Head

In my off-topic post in May, Memorial Day: Conway and Collatz, I wrote about how Oliver Cromwell's head is buried in the chapel at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, my alma mater. When I was an undergraduate, it was just known that the head was buried somewhere in the college, but no plaque had yet been put up in the chapel. You might wonder why only his head is there. After the restoration of the monarchy, Cromwell, who had been buried in Westminster Abbey, was disinterred and posthumously beheaded. Eventually, in 1960, his head was buried in the college chapel, about 300 years later. Why that chapel? Sidney Sussex College was Cromwell's alma mater, too.

The Glorious Revolution

Nearly twenty years after the restoration of the monarchy, in 1688, the king was James II (technically, he was James II of England and James VII of Scotland, just like the current queen is technically Elizabeth I of Scotland). James was deposed as king by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, who invaded from the Netherlands. It would be an exaggeration to say this was a bloodless revolution, but there was no mass slaughter.

James was Catholic, which would normally have been a big no-no, but his daughter Mary was Protestant, and she was the heir presumptive. The "heir presumptive" means that if the king died, Mary would become queen, but it was still possible that other things that would happen to push her down the order of succession. This is as opposed to "heir apparent" where, for example, Prince Charles is the heir apparent to Queen Elizabeth today, since no matter who else gets married or has babies, nothing will change that. Nobody was that worried about James' Catholocism, since he was in his 50s and his second marriage was childless after over a decade. So it looked as if eventually Mary would peacefully become queen on the eventual death of her father. But suddenly James had a son (also called James). Even though Mary was older, James was the first-born son, became heir apparent, and so there was the prospect of a Catholic dynasty. (By the way, the rule that the first-born son took preference over any older daughters in the succession of the British monarchy was changed in 2011—not that it should make much of a difference for many years since Prince Charles' eldest child is male, Prince William, and William's eldest child is male, Prince George—and he is only 6 today, so should be king into the 22nd century).

With political support from allies in England and Scotland, in 1688, a fleet of 463 ships landed William and 14,000 men in Torbay. He landed on November 5, so if we wanted, we could change the reason for letting off fireworks in Britain without needing to change the date. He marched on London. The royal armies largely deserted and James fled into exile. Wiliam and Mary were invited by parliament to become the monarch, the only time in British history more than one person has sat on the throne. Usually, people just say "William & Mary" but officially they were William III and Mary II.

For this post, the important thing was the Bill of Rights of 1689, one year later. The official name was actually An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown. This formalized the fact that Britain was a parliamentary democracy (of a sort, not many people could vote yet). Specifically:

• The pretended power of suspending the laws and dispensing with laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal
• Levying taxes without grant of Parliament is illegal

There are some others that will seem familiar to anyone in the US, since the US bill of rights copies many of the concepts and even some of the wording. For example:

• It is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal
• Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law
• Excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted
• Jurors in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders

The Bill of Rights is still in effect, and a 300th-anniversary two-pound coin was issued in 1989 (see the pic).

Great Reform Bills

Officially, this is the Reform Act 1832. This post is getting too long, but this was really the beginning of broadening who was allowed to vote and made Britain more democratic. There would be several more bills that gradually broadened the franchise. For example, the Representation of the People Act 1918 finally gave the vote to all men over 21, and many women over 30. It actually added more women than men to the electoral rolls. Then, in 1928, the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act gave the vote to all women over 21, the same as men. This was reduced from age 21 to age 18 in 1969.

July 4th

So that's how Britain (officially today the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) went from an absolute monarchy to today's constitutional monarchy...without having a true revolution.

As I said at the start of this post, Cadence is closed tomorrow, July 3, through Monday, July 6. Breakfast Bytes will be back on Tuesday. Have a great Fourth of July weekend, even though we will be missing firework displays, barbecues, and many of the things in the picture below:

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