Declaration of Independence - Part Two: The 'Declaration' of William Prince of Orange, 10 October 1688

• 1688: WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE
Last weekend while visiting family in Devon, we stayed at Parliament Cottage which nestles in the hollows near Totnes in Devon. A place of treason and Revolution. An area where, in 1685, locals had been rounded up and executed for their part in a defeated rebellion. So I made this very rough video. In the front garden is a monument commemorating that William, Prince of Orange, held his very first Parliament here in November 1688, having landed with his vast armada on the coast at Brixham just 8 miles away. The cottage has been beautifully restored in recent years by its current owners and is now available via Air BNB as holiday accommodation. Present at William's 1688 Parliament were various English nobles such as Sir Edward Seymour; some sources say that they all then went to Seymour's nearby castle of Berry Pomeroy to be entertained.

I brought the iPad with me, and read William's Declaration through a few times at the very same fireside that William himself had sat beside in 1688. I've just written an 11,000 word paper on the multiple interconnections between William's 1688 Declaration and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, which will soon be published in the Journal of the Museum of Orange Heritage. Renowned American authorities on the period such as Gary Wills and Michael Barone have written about those indisputable links; I touched on some of those links in some of the similar 'selfie' videos I made when in Boston just before Christmas.

• 1770s: THOMAS JEFFERSON
Thomas Jefferson was the most prominent of the five authors of the Declaration of Independence. He studied at the College of William and Mary (website here), in Williamsburg in Virginia, from March 1760-1767.  1776 was the ultimate outworking of the British colonists' desire for their full liberties as defined in law – on both sides of the Atlantic – by the Glorious Revolution in 1688, 1689 and 1691. The two Declarations use remarkably similar introductory vocabulary, and structure. Perhaps Jefferson and co knew that, when King George III saw it, he would realise instantly that it mirrored the prior Declaration of William, on which the British monarchy was founded. 

Back in 1772 the renowned writer ‘Junius’ had already reminded, and warned, King George III by invoking the 1688 Revolution in a letter in the Public Advertiser newspaper in London:

“…The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties … The name of Stuart by itself is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example; and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution it may be lost by another.”

Jefferson's first personal library at his mother's home at Shadwell outside Charlottesville, Virginia, had burned down in February 1770. There are only partial records of what he had there, which include William Robertson's History of Scotland During the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI and also the plays of Londonderry born playwright George Farquhar, and various volumes by John Locke.

Six years after the devastating fire Jefferson was polishing the historic prose of the final version of the Declaration of Independence which he then handed to Ulsterman Charles Thomson to sign off, who then took it to Ulsterman John Dunlap to be printed.

More to follow....

A round table, fit for an aspiring King to hold his first Parliament.

Below: Michael Barone's book, connecting 1688 and 1776, also made the trip with me.

Below: Sir Edward Seymour's Berry Pomeroy Castle today, owned by English Heritage.