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Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, the Whiggish Treason and Plot (II)

Compare the English revolutions of 1642 and 1688. The first was violent; the second was not. ~Jesse Walker, Reason I’m sorry, but this is hardly credible.  The armed invasion by William of Orange in 1688 was relatively less violent than the Great Rebellion because James II gave up before there could be a prolonged fight (there were two […]

Compare the English revolutions of 1642 and 1688. The first was violent; the second was not. ~Jesse Walker, Reason

I’m sorry, but this is hardly credible.  The armed invasion by William of Orange in 1688 was relatively less violent than the Great Rebellion because James II gave up before there could be a prolonged fight (there were two major battles in the last months of 1688 after the landing on 5 November and several instances of bloody anti-Catholic rioting), but that’s all.  It’s not as if there were any pacific intentions on the part of the stadholder and the Whig (and some Tory) traitors who aided him.  Once the Royalists rallied in Ireland and Scotland, the revolution became quite bloody and it would have been just as bloody earlier had James II stayed in England to continue to fight the usurper.  As it was, William offered James a way out, and James took it. 

But the war raged on for two years once James connected with his natural supporters.  Anyone familiar with the song Glencoe knows that the new regime was brutal and tyrannical in its suppression of hostile clans in the Highlands:

And cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe,

And murdered the house o’ MacDonald 

Its harsh treatment of Ireland and the bloody legacy of Orange victory in Ulster needs no introduction.  The “Glorious Revolution” was a coup for the benefit of a narrow oligarchy, a sort of establishment that everyone in the Country tradition of dissent from the Jacobites to Jefferson despised with good reason, in part because it did not diffuse power and instead concentrated it in the Whig oligarchy.  Whatever else might be said in favour of the constitutional protections  confirmed after this invasion abetted by traitors, it cannot be said that it was a “peaceful transformation.”  It is also rather hard to take that the 1688 revolution “advanced religious liberty” when it came at the expense of murdered Catholics.

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