Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The Glorious Revolution was neither Glorious or a Revolution

It was a Coup D'etat of Rich Nobles replacing a King they didn't like with a King they did.

Three of the "Immortal Seven" weren't even Whigs but were Tories, they were ideological Conservatives to the right of even Burkean Conservatism, they did not even pretend to care about making society more Equal or Democratic.  They were Monarchists who simply didn't like their current Monarch.

And here is the thing being ignored by modern Centrist History YouTubers who want to see it as part of the lineage of Progressive Revolutions that created the Modern Western Liberal Democratic Status Quo we now take for granted.  The thing James II was trying to do that so deeply offended Parliament, was codify into English Law the right to Freedom of Religion.

Yes James II and the prior Stuart Monarchs did believe in the Divine Right of Kings to wield Absolute Power.  But frankly to me justifying this Coup D'etat as a Revolution agaisnt that is the same as arguing the South seceded over State's Rights.  The "right" Parliament was fighting to keep was the right to persecute Catholics and Baptists.

Now I'm not saying James II didn't do things that modern 21st Century Progressives and Leftists wouldn't see as a good reason to revolt against him.  His Religious Freedom did only conditionally include Scottish Presbyterians and I've seen no evidence it included non Christians.  Meanwhile the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and rise of Plantation Slavery in the Southern North American colonies was going strong (in fact he was heavily involved with it before he became King as head of the Royal African Company).  But none of those things are what offended Parliament or were in any way reversed by the new regime.

The Parliamentarians spoke as if this was Self Defense, as if his reforms were a threat to their Protestant Religious Liberty.  Which makes them exactly like modern Republican voting Evangelicals claiming it violates their freedom of religion to not let them discriminate agaisnt the Gays.  And it's disturbing how many modern Protestants still buy this rhetoric.  I've seen 21st century people refer to these Parliamentarians as "seeing through James deception, that Religious Tolerance for everyone meant tolerance for Catholics" as if that was ever a valid objection.

But James II and his reforms weren't just supported by Catholics, they were also supported for example by Baptists and the Quakers who founded Pennsylvania.

This isn't the only time the conflict between the Jacobite Monarchs and Parliament was driven by their desire to ease restrictions on Catholics, but James II was innovative in extending it to dissenting Protestants.  A lot of people think James I was the one Stuart free of this association with Crypto-Catholicism, many Evangelicals need to since his name is attached to their favorite Bible.  But in fact these same conflicts were already there, many Translation choices of the KJV were driven by his High Church agenda, like saying Bishop and Deacon instead of properly translating those words, and arguably using the word Church itself, Tyndale always translated Ecclesia as Congregation.

This is why the Puritans/Congregationalists were the most anti-Stuart before James II but then became supporters of James II.  Even Puritan leaders in New England expressed support in-spite of their issues with the changes being made to how New England was governed.

It is easy to fall into the trap of looking back on the conflicts between King and Parliament in English history and think Parliament must represent "the people" because it's technically elected representatives.  But the people who had the right to Vote on representation in Parliament were only wealthy land owners, and that remained the case well into the Victorian era.  In fact property requirements were not gone entirely till the same time Women got the vote in 1918.

The house of Commons had a name that is to modern ears misleading.  It represented people who were technically "commoners" in that they were not heirs to a centuries old Feudal title of Nobility.  They were part of what in France at the time would be called the Third Estate.  But they were still the wealthy land owning minority among those "commons", the Bourgeoisie in Marxist terminology.

So when the King and Parliament were in conflict it may very well be neither had the best interests of most of the people in mind.  But in these kinds of conflicts it's very reasonable to suspect that an Individual may be more likely to care about the lower classes then a group, because the people in Parliament were frequently subject to group think, it was easier for the King to allow his personal sense of moral responsibility to override any class allegiance.  But it didn't always or even usually play out that way though, Richard II betrayed the Peasants' Faith in him in 1381.

Webster Tarpley is an FDR Progressive who's view of English history tends to be that even when the King didn't actually care about the poor they were still by default helped by him making things difficult for the Nobles.  That logic however presumes the Peasants were only really hurt by the Nobles when they went out of their way to mess with them.  It ignores how the system itself screwed them over even when no one actively did anything.

I am overall against Monarchy.  But I am willing to consider it preferable to Representative Democracy, especially one that's still operating under Capitalism.

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