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Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, the Whiggish Treason and Plot

The only good thing about the farcical V for Vendetta was that it made American audiences slightly more familiar with Guy Fawkes and the little rhyme English schoolchildren later learned as a way to execrate Fawkes’ memory (from which the title of this post has been adapted). In much the same way that history about […]

The only good thing about the farcical V for Vendetta was that it made American audiences slightly more familiar with Guy Fawkes and the little rhyme English schoolchildren later learned as a way to execrate Fawkes’ memory (from which the title of this post has been adapted). In much the same way that history about Fawkes has largely gone down the memory hole for most people in this country, and stemming from the same biases that prevent his name from being revered as a would-be tyrannicide, as I noted upon the release of the embarrassingly bad aforementioned Vendetta, people in the English-speaking world still remember another fifth of November (that of the landing of William III’s army of invasion) in glowing terms as “the Glorious Revolution.”

Though I will save some of my preferred epithets for the revolution until November, when I will have more to say on the anniversary of the invasion, it still amazes me that Anglo-American historical memory all but applauds the blatant high treason in which many Whigs conspired with a foreign prince to invade their country and overthrow their legitimate monarch. They guaranteed by this course of action that their country would also be entangled in a foreign war. Looked at in that way, a central moment in the history of the Anglo-American liberal tradition is tainted with disloyalty and a lack of patriotism, which ought to give anyone who regards loyalty and patriotism highly some pause about that tradition. It is little wonder that the Jacobites and their Tory successors found little worthwhile in that tradition.

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