Scotland and the British Revolution, 1688–1715

Abstract

Revolution in Britain was not a peaceful event tidily packed away before the spring of 1689. It was a violent affair which began with a military invasion of England in 1688 and ended with the jacobite rebellion of 1715. Only then was the rejection of the Stewart dynasty irrevocable. The man who made revolution possible, William of Orange, was the son of Charles I’s daughter Mary, and was married to James VII’s eldest daughter, another Mary. With these dynastic credentials, and with his calvinist faith and hostility to Louis XIV, William was a natural focus for a reversionary interest in Britain. The prickly relationship William had with James before 1685 was exacerbated by the Monmouth and Argyll rebellions, launched unofficially from Holland, and by the protection William granted to British exiles, including a number of Scots. By 1686 William was an active participant in British politics, motivated by James’s pro-French foreign policy at a time when the Dutch were rearming in preparation for an expected clash with Louis XIV, suspicions over the direction of the king’s catholicising policies, and by a desire to ensure that James did not ignite revolution and lose Mary’s inheritance.