Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1689–1720

Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics

by J.P. Kenyon

The period from 1680 to about 1720 was one of the most complex and difficult in the history of British politics, to contemporaries as well as to posterity. The parameters of political obligation were decisively shifted by the Revolution of 1688; statesmen and politicians had now to accustom themselves to the novelty of a parliament in session every year; Britain was almost continuously engaged in the most ambitious and expensive wars in her history to date; political parties were slow to form, and of doubtful repute when they did. Professor Kenyon's Ford Lectures, delivered in Oxford in 1976 and now published as a paperback for the first time, remain a standard account of the period. For this reissue, Professor Kenyon has written a new preface which discusses the book in the light of recent historiography.

Genres: History

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

John Philipps Kenyon was an English historian. He was one of the foremost historians of 17th-century England, a prolific writer and reviewer, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the most accessible book in the world. It's reasonably persuasive, though. Kenyon argues that the famous "Revolution principles" of 1688 were not at all clear in the years immediately following the great event.

The Whigs, Kenyon writes, were generally unpopular and fearful of being seen as rebels, so they couldn't agree even among themselves on the precise nature of the Revolution. Most churchmen, Whigs and Tories alike, eventually gave up trying to determine the right by which William and Mary held the crown; it was a subject dangerous for both Tories, who were vulnerable to the charge of Jacobitism when they pressed the issue of hereditary right, and Whigs, who were in danger of seeming republicans on the old Puritan model when they pressed the issue of parliamentary and popular consent. After 1702, Queen Anne sympathized with High Church Tory piety but frowned on party strife and therefore discouraged ideological purity on both sides. As her reign wore on, Whigs (anticipating the throne's eventual transfer outside the Stuart line entirely) grew bolder in asserting parliamentary supremacy; they overreached, however, in impeaching Henry Sacheverell (1709-10), whose trial forced Whig leaders to moderate their public position on the Revolution. This moderation cost the Whigs their left wing in the last four years of Anne's reign; the party now had distinct "Old" and "Moderate" factions that were each too weak to govern.

Ultimately, Kenyon argues, the idea that the king of England ruled by grace of Parliament and the people -- what later generations often considered Revolution principles -- was the result of mere chance. Specifically, it resulted from the fact that Anne died without an heir. When George of Hanover came to the throne, he obviously could only be legitimate if the Whigs were right. His accession accordingly ushered in fifty years of royal (and popular) favor toward the Whigs. If anything, however, this bloodless victory made Whiggism even less ideologically coherent. The Whigs had a "moral breakdown" after 1715; they established themselves in government and made themselves very comfortable indeed.

[JR Roach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far from a triumph of Lockean contractarianism, the Glorious Revolution was a singularly inexplicable and embarrassing event for both Whigs and Tories for thirty years. Both parties' inability to devise a convincing justification of the replacement of James with William and Mary, especially one that was capable of squaring the Revolution with the looming Jacobite threat and Hanoverian Succession shaped thirty years of British politics and ultimately doomed both the Tory Party and Old Whiggism to political irrelevance after the accession of George I. Kenyon's book is a short and bracing introduction to these debates and the broader political contours of early eighteenth century British politics, although it does presume some basic familiarity with the personalities. It also underlines the centrality of theology to understanding these political divides.