Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution refers to the overthrow of King James II of England (also James VII of Scotland) by a coalition of English parliamentarians and the Dutch stadtholder William of Orange, who landed at Brixham in November 1688. James II, a Catholic monarch whose policies of religious toleration and reliance on a standing army alarmed the Protestant political establishment, fled to France in December 1688 after his army deserted. In early 1689, the Convention Parliament declared the throne vacant and offered it jointly to William III and Mary II (James's Protestant daughter).

The revolution is "Glorious" in traditional Whig historiography because it was achieved with relatively little bloodshed in England itself—though the accompanying Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691) and the Jacobite risings in Scotland were violent. Its constitutional significance lies in the settlement that followed:

• The Bill of Rights 1689 prohibited the sovereign from suspending laws, levying taxes without parliamentary consent, or maintaining a standing army in peacetime without Parliament's approval.
• The Toleration Act 1689 granted limited religious freedom to nonconforming Protestants (but not Catholics or Unitarians).
• The Act of Settlement 1701 later secured the Protestant succession, eventually channeling the crown to the House of Hanover.

For political theorists, the events of 1688–89 mark a decisive shift from divine-right absolutism toward parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional monarchy. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, published in 1689, is often read as a philosophical companion to the settlement, articulating government by consent and the right of resistance against tyranny.

The Glorious Revolution is frequently cited in international relations and comparative politics as an early modern template for credible commitment by sovereigns to property rights and legal limits—an argument advanced influentially by Douglass North and Barry Weingast (1989), who linked the settlement to England's subsequent fiscal and economic rise.