Thomas Jefferson and the Glorious Revolution

Thomas Jefferson, regarded as the most important author of the Declaration of Independence, studied law at William & Mary College, in Williamsburg, Virginia. So it's not a surprise that Jefferson would cite William and Mary's Glorious Revolution of 1688/89.

Here's an example, explaining how the monarchy was subject to Parliament:

"Since the establishment, however, of the British constitution, at the Glorious Revolution, on its free and antient principles, neither his majesty, nor his ancestors, have exercised such a power of dissolution in the island of Great Britain; and when his majesty was petitioned, by the united voice of his people there, to dissolve the present parliament, who had become obnoxious to them, his ministers were heard to declare, in open parliament, that his majesty possessed no such power by the constitution..." 

- from Thomas Jefferson's Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Within the college collections are these documents from 1688 & 1689, and has both portraits and statues of William and Mary.

From Thomas Jefferson's personal library - 'An Historical Essay on the English Constitution' by Obadiah Hulme (London, 1771)

There were some books that Jefferson had multiple copies of in his personal library; these were books by what he called the "True Whigs". 

One was Obadiah Hulme's 1771 Historical Essay on the English Constitution in (available on Archive.org here). Hulme is an obscure figure, very little is known about him apart from that he also wrote A Plan of Reconciliation Between Great Britain and Her Colonies. It traces the origins of liberty in England to long before Magna Carta, and has some very precise points to make about the Glorious Revolution.

Hulme's "hot take" is that the King wasn't the problem - the Parliament was. Here's a series of extracts on the theme –

1) CONTEXT & KNOWLEDGE OF THE 1689 BILL OF RIGHTS

"... James the Second, inherited all the diabolical spirit of his whole house; was a person that no experience could teach wisdom, laws make honest, nor oaths bind; and therefore the whole nation united, as one man, to exclude him, and his detested race, from the crown of these realms for ever.

We are now come to that epocha, of the English history, commonly called the REVOLUTION; in which the English people were made to believe, that their laws, liberty, and religion were going to be established upon the most constitutional, firm, and stable foundation, under the immortal King William the third, of glorious memory.

Before the parliament, or rather the convention, tendered the crown to William, they made a declaration*, containing, thirteen articles, of some of the rights and liberties of the people, which had been violated in the three late reigns. In the thirteenth of which they declare, That for the redress of grievances, and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently…"

(* Even though Hulme uses the term 'declaration' here, the document presented at the coronation wasn't William's 1688 Declaration but rather the 1689 Bill of Rights.)

2) PARLIAMENT DECEIVES THE REVOLUTION

"… But it appears very evident that, upon this critical occasion, the convention did not do their duty to the people and meant to usurp a power, in the legislative authority, to determine how often the people should exercise their elective rights…

William the third favoured us with this Dutch amendment. But from his time the House of Commons began to act as principals, and to forget their relation to their constituents, as agents, and deputies, from a state formed upon a delegated power; and disposed of the elective rights of the people, as they found it convenient for themselves ..." 

3) WHEN DID IT ALL GO WRONG?

"... I shall therefore not hesitate to date the decline of our constitution, from the REVOLUTION, because the principles of the rebel-parliament of restraining the exercise of the elective power of the people, by acts of parliament, were adopted, into the constitution, at that very critical period of our history.

Hitherto, it had only the prerogative of the crown to struggle with (saving the single instance of the rebel-parliament above mentioned), but at the revolution, which brought William the third to the crown of England, he, and his parliament, began the practice of restraining, the elective power of the people, by the legislative authority..."

4) WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

"... Had King William, at the revolution, intended to have established an independent house of commons, he would have restored the constitution to its first principles; and established annual parliaments; and a new house of commons every year. This would have been an infallible remedy, against all corruption; because no corruption can stick upon a body of men, that is continually changing.

As standing water soon stinks, and a running stream throws out all impurities, so a standing house of commons will ever be a standing pool of corruption..."

.................

Thomas Jefferson's inspiration for his own Revolution is right there in black and white.

- see The Lamp of Experience; Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution by Trevor Colbourn, chapter entitled 'Thomas Jefferson and the Rights of Expatriated Men'.

"The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?" - a perspective on Viscount Castlereagh of Mount Stewart, by Lord Byron (written between 1819-1824)

 

XI

Think'st thou, could he—the blind Old Man—arise

       Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more

The blood of monarchs with his prophecies

       Or be alive again—again all hoar

With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,

       And heartless daughters—worn—and pale—and poor;

Would he adore a sultan? he obey

The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

XII

Cold-blooded, smooth-fac'd, placid miscreant!

       Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,

And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,

       Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,

The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,

       With just enough of talent, and no more,

To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,

And offer poison long already mix'd.

- From Don Juan (link here to The Poetry Foundation)

Cork Assizes in 1689 - Judge Thomas Nugent - Ireland's Judge Jeffreys?

"... I will give a single instance, which may show upon what terms the Protestants stood for their lives: Several gentlemen kept their horses, and armed their servants, in order to defend themselves against the Rapparies or Plunderers, which was called, levying war against the King.

In the County of Cork, one Mr. Brown had been seen in a company of men that were endeavouring to make their escape from the plunderers, but left them and went home; he was however for this brought before Judge (Denis) Daly (Wikipedia here), who acquitted him as innocent:

Afterwards he was carried before Judge (Thomas) Nugent (Wikipedia here) and even he, as bad as he was, at first seemed inclined to acquit him, till he had discoursed with King James, lately come over; and then, by a corrupt Jury, found him guilty, and condemned him to be hanged, drawn and quartered; and the sentence was accordingly executed, no intreaties being able to prevail with King James to pardon him; which made many call to mind the bloody executions in the west of England, and fear Nugent would act over again the infamous part of (Judge George) Jefferies...

... the poor People began to be convinced it was more than a bare threatening, which Sir Robert Parker* and others blabbed out in the coffee house, viz. That they designed to starve one half of the Protestants, and hang the other; and that it would never be well till this was done."

- from Benjamin Bennet, Memorial of the Reformation (London, 1717; Wikipedia here)

..............

• An account of Mr Browne's execution can be found on page 280 of The History of Bandon, and the principal towns in the West Riding of Cork (online here). The description is identical to the method used by Jeffreys in England during the Bloody Assizes of 1685:

"Notwithstanding that the miserable man's wife and his six little children threw themselves ... at James's feet, and besought his pardon; but this effort of hers was more than unavailing, for, adding insult to injustice, he spurned her. The unfortunate man was first half hanged, then his bowels were torn out, and his body cut into quarters..."

The rest of the chapter includes references to the Monmouth Rebellion and connections with the south west of England, and the general fear that James II's army instilled within the civilian community of west Cork.

..............

* Parker (1655-91) had accompanied King James II from France to Ireland.

Judge George Jeffreys, Dissenters and "High Treason", Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1683

Judge George Jeffreys was said to have been Oscar Wilde's inspiration for The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) following a conversation over lunch with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about his novel Micah Clarke (1889) - Jeffreys was a man of youthful handsome looks but a heart of unspeakable evil.

Jeffreys is best known for his barbaric role in the 1685 Bloody Assizes of King James II. A few years ago, historians in Taunton in Somerset installed a series of interpretive panels on the former Debenham's store in the town centre - such is Jefrrey's ongoing notorious reputation that the locals gouged out his eyes and drew a Hitler moustache.

But earlier, in the reign of King Charles II, Jeffreys was already carving out a reputation. Here is an account of his activities in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1683.

"... But I need say nothing of his conduct; the man and his manners are known, and will be remembered for this generation at least; only one instance I shall relate, it not being taken notice of elsewhere.

As he was making his circuit in the north, calling for vengeance wherever he came, and taking it where he could against the Dissenters, he came to Newcastle upon Tyne at the assizes, 1683. and being informed of a company of young plotters and rebels, as they were resolved to make them, sets himself with his usual zeal to suppress them. The case, in short, was this.

A number of young men in the town of Newcastle (about twenty) met together once a week for mutual assistance and improvement in religion; for which purpose they spent some time in prayer and conference; having subscribed a paper containing rules, for the better ordering such a society, and the work to be done in it, taken out of a book of Mr. Isaac Ambrose's (Wikipedia here).

One of the society, upon what inducement he best knows, turns informer, and having a copy of this dangerous paper, with the names of the subscribers, makes a discovery, and the whole matter was laid before Judge Jefferies at the assizes; by which it appeared to his Lordship, that about twenty young phanaticks met together weekly to pray and talk about religion &c. his Lordship, whose business lay as much with such as these, as with felons &c. resolved to make examples of them. When he was prepared to proceed against them, he ordered the doors of the court to be locked up, and kept locked: till such of the young men as were in court were secured; and, at the same time, dispatched the sheriff with the proper officers to apprehend the rest; the doors being still kept closed, which made no small noise and stir in the town. His Lordship, as his manner was, began to breathe out threatening against the Dissenters; and whereas some of the elder of them, with whom his Lordship would have taken an occasion to have talked, were withdrawn from the town; he said, He would take the Cubs, and that would make the old Foxes appear.

The offenders (some of whom are found in court, and others of them brought in by the sheriff) are presented before his Lordship's tribunal: such as knew his Lordship's character, will easily imagine (and some well remember it) with how much indignation and contempt he would look down upon these young men.

One of them, Mr. Thomas Verner, who had but a mean aspect at besft, (and the work he was taken from made him appear at that time meaner than ordinary) his Lordship was pleased to single out, no question to triumph over his ignorance, and thereby expose all the rest.

Can you read, Sirrah, says he? Yes, my Lord, answers Mr.Verner; reach him the Book, says the Judge; the clerk reaches him his Latin Testament; the young man begins to read, Matth. vii. 1, 2. (it being the first place his Eye light upon, without any design in him, as he affirmed afterwards) Ne judicate, ne judicemini, &c. Construe it, Sirrah, says the Judge; which he did: Judge not, lest ye be judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: Upon which it is said, his Lordship was a little struck, and sat in a pause for some while (and he had occasion, methinks, to pause more upon it in the Tower a few years after.)

The issue of the matter, in short, was this, that the young men, tho' never tried, were sent to jail, where they lay above a year) i.e. from the assizes in 1683, till the first assizes after the death of King Charles when they were called upon and set at liberty, with this reprimand by the Judge, Go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto you; adding, that the King's coming to the throne had saved all their lives. 

How they came to escape the trial, which the Judge said he would bring them to, is not very certain ; it is said, the reason was, want of time: However, it was a good Providence to the young men, for had he proceeded against them, it had been much if they had come off with their Lives. The crime charged upon them was no less than high treason, and a jury was provided that would have answered his Lordship's expectations, and followed his directions; one of the jury being asked what they intended to do with the young men; answered, there remained nothing for them (the jury) to do, but to bring them in guilty, for that a paper produced in court, and acknowledged by themselves to be subscribed by them, was by the Lord Chief Justice declared to be high treason; so that if they had been tried, it had been for high treason; and it is known his Lordship seldom saw cause to acquit any such traitors as these..."

- from Benjamin Bennet A Memorial of the Reformation (London, 1717)

1688: "The Liberation of Europe": Allied Forces v the planned Superpower

"In 1686 certain continental powers joined together in a league, known in history as the League of Augsburg, for the purpose of curbing the arrogant power of France. These powers were impartially Protestant and Catholic, including the Emperor of Germany, the King of Spain, William, Prince of Orange, and the Pope.

The latter had but a small army, but possessed a good treasury and great influence. A few years before a French army had marched upon Rome to avenge a slight insult offered to France, and His Holiness was more than anxious to curb the Catholic power that had dared to violate the centre of Catholicity. Hence his alliance with William, Prince of Orange.

King James II, of England, being insecure upon his throne, sought alliance with the French monarch.

When, therefore, the war took place in Ireland, King William fought, aided by the arms, men, and treasures of his allies in the League of Augsburg, and part of his expenses at the Battle of the Boyne was paid for by His Holiness, the Pope. Moreover, when news of King William’s victory reached Rome, a Te Deum was sung in celebration of his victory over the Irish adherents of King James and King Louis."

Who wrote this?

James Connolly, 1913. 

The original meaning of "Revolution" - a turning back, a return to what had once been

Words and their meanings change over time. To our age, the word 'Revolution' means a kind of "burn it all down and start afresh" often with the implied use of force and arms. That's not what was understood in 1700s America and Britain.

When the Founding Fathers wrote of 'revolution' they expressly regarded it as a return, a recovery of the rights as expressed in the 1689 Bill of Rights, and a selection of other earlier documents such as the Magna Carta – rights which successive Parliaments and Monarchs had taken from the people.

“The Revolution (of 1688 in England) was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty ... The very idea of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.  We wished at the period of the Revolution [1688] and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.

All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity ... In the Petition of Right submitted to Charles I, the Parliament says to the King ‘Your subjects have inherited this freedom,’ claiming their franchises not on abstract principles such as ‘the rights of man,’ but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers ... They preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary title ... to that vague speculative idea of ‘natural right.’”

- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

The horrors of King James II's army - Somerset 1685 and Ireland 1689

We were in Somerset again recently, and I visited the Monmouth Rebellion visitor exhibition at Westonzoyland St Mary's Church (link here) and the remote, nearby, Battle of Sedgemoor Memorial which is around a 15 minute walk along stony tractor lanes out onto the Somerset 'Levels'. No grand white marble 'national' masterpiece here, just a simple community monument among straggly trees. We also went to Glastonbury and saw there the brass coloured memorial plaque in an entry to the six unnamed men who were hanged from the sign of the White Hart Inn the day after the battle, on 7 July 1685 - "their bodies left to infect the air"*. 

• At the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 an estimated 1300 of the 'rebel' men were killed, they were mostly just civilians who had armed themselves to oppose King James II's army. Many of their bodies sank into the marshes and still lie there; artefacts and home-forged weapons are dug up from time to time.

• The show trials of the 'Bloody Assizes' began on 25 August, during which 850 were sentenced to "transportation" and sold as slaves to the Caribbean sugar plantations owned by King James II's friends (his wife got the money) and a further 350 or so hanged, drawn & quartered at 50 locations in the West Country.

• But in between the battle and the trials, for the interim six or seven weeks Lieutenant-General Percy Kirke's regiment, not long back from Tangiers in Morocco, conducted a murderous rampage across the south west**. I've not been able to find the statistics of how many they killed, but I'll be back over again later in the year so will find out more at this new exhibition, 'After Sedgemoor' at the Museum of Somerset.

In The Last Popular Rebellion; the Western Rising of 1685 by Robin Clifton (1984) he says that "Kirk's troops marched from Bridgwater to Taunton spreading fear before them, while the militia reorganized itself to begin a great manhunt over the whole county. The fighting was over, the terror was yet to come". The church records from Westonzoyland recorded 1384 corpses, with yet more unrecovered in cornfields three miles away at Chedzoy; a pit for 174 bodies was dug and filled.

But what of Ireland? Four years later, and desperate to cling to power, in 1689 it seems that King James II authorised similar butchery and brutality here. Lord Galmoy, Piers Butler, had regiments in the west of Ireland, and also a regiment in County Down who were active in the 'Break of Killyleagh' which I have been researching for a while now. This quote is from a 1693 source, and not for the faint of heart:

"The Lord Galmoy was likewise sent with forces to guard the passages between the north of Ireland, and those parts of Munster and Connaught that adjoined to Ulster, to prevent the south and western Protestants from joining, who being a malicious and bloody Papist, first drew blood there, causing two gentlemen who had taken arms for their own defence, under Colonel Sandason (Sanderson), to be hanged on a signpost at Belnahatty (Bellaheady), and their heads being cut off, were kicked about the streets by his soldiers, like foot-balls; 

at Omagh he took two others upon the same pretence, and caused the son first to hang his father, and carry his head on a pole through the streets, crying, ‘This is the head of a traitor;’ and then the young man himself was hanged. 

It was also reported, that some of his dragoons meeting with a clergyman's wife, whose husband had fled northward, several of them, one after another, ravished her, and then ripped up her belly, and exposed her with a dead man upon her.

At Tipperary, an English gentleman seeing some dragoons marching towards his house, shut up his doors (it being late in the evening), as if they were gone to bed; but sixteen of them coming thither, and not being quickly admitted, they forced open his doors, calling him traitor for shutting them against the King's forces; and having pillaged all things of value, they then deflowered his daughter and only child before his face; all sixteen lay with her, and three of them (as was affirmed by his family) after she was actually dead. 

These were the beginnings of the villainies which the Protestants suffered from these execrable wretches."

And also this:

"Galmoy was deaf to any thing could be offered in behalf of the two Prisoners but caused them both to be hanged on sign post, had their heads cut off, which he gave to the Soldiers for foot-balls, who when they had pleased themselves for some time with this barbarous diversion the infamous Galmoy ordered them to be set on the Market-house in Belturbet, to remain a spectacle of his dishonour, and their constancy. It is said that Maguire was so much disgusted at this action that he returned to Crom, threw up his Commission, and would serve K James no longer.

This inhuman treatment of these young Gentlemen more and more demonstrated to the Protestants the necessity of their uniting firmly together, and the inhabitants of Derry and Inniskillen having thus bid defiance to Tyrconnel, encouraged the Protestants of other parts to put upon their defence..."

A Monmouth rebel who survived to tell the tale, and to write others, was John Oldmixon. In his Memoirs of Ireland (1716) he described Galmoy, twice, as an 'infamous wretch':

There was among them an infamous wretch, whom no titles could honour; Pierce Butler, Viscount Galmoy. He had a Regiment of Horse, which was quarter'd on the borders of Ulster...

These are unimaginable war crimes. These accounts from Ireland would once have seemed extreme to me, but when we "zoom out" from merely Ireland and balance these with what is known about what King James II had authorised his army in the West Country of England, and of the barbarities his regiments inflicted upon Scotland even earlier, starting during his years there as Duke of York – and also what James II's cousin Louis XIV was doing to the Huguenots in France – it's entirely plausible. 

That being the case, to reduce the 1688 Revolution which finally overthrew James II to merely being an encounter between two kings and their armies on opposing banks of a river, of generals and military strategy all overlaid with a quasi-religious gloss, is to utterly utterly miss the point.

"Zoom out" even further, leaving the narrowness of Ireland behind, and the Glorious Revolution was the Liberation of Europe.

* from The Last Popular Rebellion; the Western Rising of 1685 by Robin Clifton (1984), p 224.

** In The Western Rising, an Account of Monmouth's Rebellion by Charles Chenevix Trench (1969) a letter from Kirke is quoted in which, one week after the Battle of Sedgemoor, he said that "the rebels lately buried are not sufficiently covered ... press ploughs and men to come to the said place where the rebels are buried that there might be a mound erected on them".

"American vs. French Revolution — What's the Difference?" : Dr. Joseph Loconte

The same noun but totally opposite outcomes. Not all revolutions are the same. Where do your rights come from - your inherent Created humanity, or the power of the state?

"Ireland After the Glorious Revolution" - educational worksheet pack (published by HMSO and PRONI, 1976)

I found this on the shelves again recently, I picked this up years ago. It's a startling example of how knowledge was once mainstream. I doubt there's anything comparable today.

Seeds of Liberty - John Miller - "The Dublin establishment viewed the Ulster Scots with suspicion"