The People, the Law, and the Constitution in Scotland and England: A Comparative Approach to the Glorious Revolution

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in recent years in taking a British approach to the problems of the first half of the seventeenth century, Restoration historians have been slow to follow the trend. Instead, the historiographical traditions for Charles II's and James II's three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland have remained largely independent; rather than coming closer together, if anything they seem to be growing further apart. We see this in particular with the historiographies of the Glorious Revolution in Scotland and England, which have become curiously “out of sync.” It used to be the case that the Revolution in England was seen as a most unrevolutionary affair, a bloodless palace coup brought about as much by the Tories as the Whigs; by this account, James was not overthrown for breaking his contract with the people, but was regarded as having abdicated, and the framers of the Revolution settlement simply sought to vindicate ancient rights and liberties (as they put it in the Declaration of Rights), rather than assert any new constitutional principles. If the Revolution in England tended to be seen in a conservative, perhaps even Tory context, the radical, Whig revolution was still to be found, but north of the border, in Scotland. For it was in Scotland where the Whigs were unequivocally the architects, where James was seen as having forfeited his crown by his arbitrary and tyrannical style of government, and where a truly revolutionary settlement in church and state was established.