1690, the 12th of July - and only '12 years of Liberty'

(The ‘head-space’ of summer gives opportunities to think, to talk with people. Conversations lead to thoughts which then become ideas. You’ll have seen more posts here over the past few weeks as various ideas bubble up - 15 posts over the past 4 weeks, which at a glance looks like a 300% increase compared with April - June!)

People generally view the ‘once upon a time’ events of King William III and 1690 as the installation of a monarchy, after which it was ‘happily ever after’. Or else that it brought about a perpetual Protestant supremacy, depending upon your perspective. These might be the impressions most folk have of the 12th July celebrations here every year. But as ever this is not the full story. People at the time regarded the Williamite Revolution as the overthrow of the previous, tyrannical, monarchy - replacing it with one which was not perfect, but much better. There are three key building blocks in re-thinking the period:

1. The Stuart Monarchy.
As I’ve posted here before, the Stuart monarchs had been increasingly tyrannical - and for Ulster and Scotland in particular, anti-Presbyterian - from 1603 onwards. It began with relatively low-level interference by the King in how churches operated, and crescendoed with widespread arrests and public executions. It's not even a typical 'Catholic v Protestant' story – during this era the power-hungry Stuarts were Anglicans for 72 years, and Catholic for just 3.

As just two examples – In the 1620s English 'non-Conformists' fled to the wildnesses of America in order to have religious liberty, founding a 'New England' colony. In 1661 Presbyterians in Ulster and Scotland were banned from preaching in their pulpits - beginning an era called 'The Killing Times'. Catholic convert King James II came to the throne in 1685 and immediately turned the south of Scotland into ‘a hunting field’ to round up Presbyterian Covenanters. One monument in Edinburgh recalls 18,000 'martyrs'.

When the 'Comber Letter' was discovered, even though probably a hoax, the widespread terror that it caused among the population was not unfounded - Ulster people knew full well what King James II's army was doing to their kinfolk in the south of Scotland. So what else could they do but flee for refuge behind the Walls of Londonderry? A royal diplomat commented on the starvations of the Siege - 'it matters not how many of them die they are but a pack of Scotch Presbyterians'.

During this whole period the established church was effectively an instrument of the state and Crown. ‘Dissenter’ and ‘Non-Conformist’ churches across the British Isles rejected all state interferences and manipulations. Even in England, many like John Bunyan, and the father of hymnwriter Isaac Watts were imprisoned for not ‘conforming’ with Anglicanism.

2. William’s Revolution of 1688was far from perfect, but it did end the overt persecutions and introduced - at least conceptually - ‘civil and religious liberty’. From 1688 until William’s death in 1702 considerable changes had been brought about - he made the Crown subject to Parliament, and introduced a whole host of liberties which we take for granted today. His biographers often refer to the institutional opposition to his proposed changes from those that we might describe as the ‘civil servants’ of the time. His arrival at Carrickfergus was greeted by thousands of people for good reason.

3. William's Death and the Return of PersecutionBut William died in 1702 and so did much of his Revolution. His sister-in-law Anne, the daughter of James II, came to the throne and re-introduced various forms of legal persecutions including the ‘Test Act’ of 1704. Her first cousin, Lord Cornbury, was Governor of New York and he was one of those who implemented her policies in ‘the Colonies’. Whilst Anne was barring Ulster Presbyterians from public office here, Cornbury was arresting Ulster Presbyterian Rev Francis Makemie and putting him on trial in what is described on a plaque in New York today as ‘the first great victory here for religious liberty’. Below is an artist's impression of the scene and a photo of the plaque.



So the victory of the Boyne in 1690 was not a ‘happily ever after’ at all. It only brought about 12 years of Liberty. The Ulster-Scots emigrants of 1718 had experienced brutal Stuart tyranny, remembered what Williamite liberty had felt like, and opted to risk their futures - and maybe lives - to sail the Atlantic to live free once again.

Ulster-Scots have not always made wise decisions, but pretty consistently, they/we have chosen liberty before nationality. This is the consistent explanation for the paradox of ‘conditional loyalty’, their role in the 1776 American Revolution, the 1798 Rebellion at home, but also the Ulster Covenant of 1912 - the text of which begins ‘Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom …’. 

The basis of ‘The 12th’ is 12 Years of Liberty.

There is much to be re-thought. So Nesca Robb’s award-winning two-volume biography of William of Orange needs to be added to my reading list.