Monarchy by Lee Christopher

Author:Lee Christopher [Christopher Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909657236
Publisher: Bene Factum Publishing
Published: 2013-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Protestant William III, Prince of Orange and his wife Queen Mary enthroned in 1689 at the overthrow of the Catholic James II, at the behest of Parliament.

Tories were confused. They rightly supposed they supported the monarch. But had they not been devoted to the person they saw as constitutional successor to Charles II, James? The Tory instinct was to be wary of anything that smacked of revolution and 1649, a period many of them had witnessed. The Whigs had problems enough with James II, or any monarch for that matter. To have an invader on the throne via his Stuart wife was too confusing to a group that was not politically dysfunctional, any more than the Tories were. The common parliamentary unease about the circumstances of the William and Mary accession produced considerable ambition to enforce terms and conditions on the new rulers, and not fall into the Restoration trap of being so pleased to have got themselves a monarch again that they all but emptied the coffers into the king’s Treasury.

The single moment to judge the step-change in the role of monarchy and the emerging powers of Parliament could well be the revision of the Triennial Act. There were in fact three Triennial Acts. The first was agreed while Charles I still had his head. As we have noted earlier, only the king could summon Parliament. Parliament did not have the routine of meeting all the time other than during elections, as now it does. In 1641, Parliament and the king agreed that Parliament could not be dismissed by the monarch and sent into recession until it suited the sovereign to recall the assembly—often when the king needed money that Parliament only could sanction. The first Triennial Act stated that Parliament was to sit for at least fifty days and, more importantly, it could not be dissolved for more than three years at a time.

Three years later, an amendment to the Act stated that Parliament must meet at least once every three years. It was a fruitless amendment and with the new monarchs a new agreement was struck. The 1694 Triennial Act had Parliament meeting at least once every three years and sitting for not more than three years. It is not truly certain how William felt about the 1694 Act, but it would be likely that as long as Parliament gave him the money to prosecute his war against the French in the Netherlands, he would see his lot as a good bargain. He was not as fussed as Mary’s family about the trappings and regalia of monarchy, but this was now four years on since Parliament had restricted the money he could expect from the most powerful taxer in British history, Customs and Excise.

Parliament had few options. William had arrived in England as a Dutch prince at war with France. By making him English monarch, Parliament found itself and the English buying into William’s war. Britain, at William’s declaration, was now at war with France. The expense of war was crippling.

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