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‘Abdicate’ and ‘Contract’ in the Glorious Revolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Thomas P. Slaughter
Thomas P. Slaughter
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

A revisionist explanation of the political events of the Glorious Revolution has crept into recent literature virtually unscathed. Briefly summarized, the argument contends that it is difficult to discover evidence of resistance to the Crown in the debates of either the House of Lords or the Convention parliament during 1689. According to J. P. Kenyon, a major advocate of this new interpretation, John Locke's Second treatise of government misled historians and even some contemporaries into believing that parliament deposed James II for breaking the original contract between sovereign and people. Actually, during the long debates in and between both houses ‘it was clear that the word “abdicated”, or the Lords’ preferred choice, “deserted” both implied a voluntary act, if not a rational choice, on James's part’. The Lords especially, Kenyon argues, were careful to dissociate themselves from contract theory. Whig ‘revolution principles’, then, built upon the ‘haste and confusion of the occasion’ were rooted in a misunderstanding of actual events, a mis-understanding fostered by the writings of Locke and Algernon Sydney and enshrined as doctrine by whig politicians and historians.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , June 1981 , pp. 323 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Kenyon, J. P., ‘The revolution of 1688: resistance and contract’, in Neil McKendrick (ed), Historical perspectives (London, 1974), p. 49Google Scholar. The same arguments are expanded by Kenyon, in Revolution principles: the politics of party, 1689–1720 (London, 1977), pp. 12–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 50; Kenyon, Revolution principles, p. 200.

3 The whig historiographical tradition is embodied in Macaulay, Thomas B., The history of England from the accession of James the second, 5 vols. (London, 1849–61)Google Scholar; Trevelyan, George M., The English revolution, 1688–1689 (London, 1938)Google Scholar; and Ogg, David, England in the reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1955).Google Scholar

4 Attempts to supplant the whig interpretation with a tory one include Lucile, Pinkham, William III and the respectable revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954)Google Scholar; Gerald, Straka, ‘The final phase of divine right theory in England, 1688–1702’, English Historical Review, LXXVII, 305 (October 1962), 638–58Google Scholar; Maurice, Ashley, The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (London, 1966); James II (London, 1977)Google Scholar; and John, Carswell, The descent on England (London, 1969).Google Scholar

6 Kenyon, of course, is not the first or the only historian who has assumed that ‘abdicate’ meant the same thing to seventeenth-century Englishmen as it does to us today. M. P. Thompson, ‘The idea of conquest in controversies over the 1688 revolution’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VII (Jan.-March, 1977), 35, for example, also assumes that the meaning of ‘abdicate’ was the same in the seventeenth century. Others making the same assumption include all of those cited above and also Straka, Gerald, Anglican reaction to the revolution of 1688 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1962), p. 4Google Scholar; Geoffrey, Holmes, British politics in the age of Anne (London, 1967), fn., p. 61Google Scholar; and Prall, Stuart E., The bloodless revolution: England, 1688 (Garden City, New York, 1972), p. 263.Google Scholar

6 Kenyon, ‘The revolution of 1688’, p. 48.

7 Oxford English dictionary, cf. ‘abdication’.

8 Kenyon, ‘Revolution of 1688’, p. 57. He offers no evidence that members of parliament linked contract theory to Hobbes and the Jesuits. I have found no specific mention made of Hobbes in either the conference discussion or House of Lords debates. The only discussion of Jesuits linked them to James II, not to contract theory.

9 Quentin, Skinner, ‘Conquest and consent: Thomas Hobbes and the engagement controversy’, in Aylmer, G. E. (ed.), The interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646–1660 (London, 1972), pp. 97–8.Google Scholar

10 In the case of’abdicate’, of course, we are dealing with a word which as yet had no meaning in common law and hence does not appear in legal dictionaries before 1689.

11 See, for example, Robert, Cawdrey, A table alphabeticall (London, 1604); John Bullokar, An English expositor (London, 1616); Henry Cockeram, The English dictionary (London, 1623)Google Scholar; Thomas, Blount, Glossographia: or a dictionary… (London, 1674)Google Scholar; Elisha, Coles, An English dictionary (London, 1677).Google Scholar

12 Coles, An English dictionary.

13 John, Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (London, 1708), cf. ‘abdicare’.Google Scholar

14 Thomas, Elyot, translator from the Greek, The image of governaunce (London, 1549), p. 149.Google Scholar

15 John, Potter, The antiquities of Greece, iv, xv (London, 1715), 351Google Scholar; (Edinburgh, 1813), 11, 345. Other texts using ‘abdicate’ in this way include John Milton, Jus populi (1644), and William, Shenstone, Essays (London, 1768), p. 117.Google Scholar

16 John Calvin, Lexicon juridicum. Quoted in A collection of the parliamentary debates in England..(London, 1741), 11, 192.

17 Richard, Huloet, Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum, pro tyranculis… (London, 1552; 2nd edn, 1572).Google Scholar

18 Thomas Hobbes, De cive (London, 1642; Hobbes’s translation, 1651), 9, 7, p. 139.

19 For a discussion of the use of Grotius in the literature of the revolution following the debates see Mark, Goldie, ‘Edmund Bohun and jus gentium in the revolution debate, 1689–1693’, Historical Journal, xx, 3 (1977), 569–86.Google Scholar

20 Hugonis Grottii, De jure belli et pacis, book 2, ch. 4, para. 2.

21 Cited in House of Commons debates by Sommers, 5 February 1688. A collection of the parliamentary debates in England… (London, 1741), p. 193.Google Scholar

22 Robert, Burton, The anatomy of melancholy (London, 1621; subsequent edn, 1651), 1, 2, 3, 15, p. 127.Google Scholar

23 Roger, Coke, Elements of power and subjection (London, 1660), p. 57.Google Scholar

24 Peter, Laslett (ed.), John, Locke, Two treatises of government (New York, 1967 edn), ‘introduction’.Google Scholar

25 [William Cobbett], The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 (London, 1809), p. 47.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. p. 50.

27 Ibid.

28 The vote on the second amendment was 282 to 151. The history of the proceedings of the House of Commons from the restoration to the present time, II (London, 1742), 207.Google Scholar

29 A collection of the parliamentary debates in England… (London, 1741), p. 184.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. p. 185.

31 Macpherson, C. B., ed. Thomas, Hobbes, Leviathan (New York, 1968), part 11, ch. 2, p. 272.Google Scholar

32 Journals of the House of Lords, 5 February 1688, p. 117.

33 Ibid. p. 117.

34 Ibid.

35 Collection of parliamentary debates, p. 191.

36 Ibid. pp. 191–5

37 Ibid. p. 196.

38 Ibid. p. 203.

39 Ibid. p. 204.

40 Ibid. p. 208.

41 Ibid. p. 249.

42 Ibid. pp. 260–2.

43 In his Discourses concerning government Sidney referred to the ancient Roman ruler Camillus, who, ‘in his fourth dictatorship was threatened by the tribunes with a great fine, and by that means obliged to abdicate the magistracy’ (London, 1751 edn), ch. 2, p. 249.

44 DeBeer, E. S. (ed.), The diary of John Evelyn, IV (Oxford, 1955), 616. Evelyn's entry for 23 January 1689 reads: ‘I went to London, the greate Convention being assembled the day before, falling upon the greate Question about the Government, Resolved that K.Jam: 2d, having by the advise of Jesuits and other wicked persons, endeavoured to subvert the Lawes of church and state, and Deserting the Kingdome (carrying away the Seales and c.) without taking any care for the management of the Government, had by demise, abdicated himself, and wholly vacated his right: and They did therefore desire the Lords concurrence to their Vote, to place the crown on the next heirs.’Evelyn's recollection of the resolution perhaps raises as many questions as it answers about his understanding of events and the meaning of ‘abdication’. Since James ‘abdicated himself, Evelyn must have believed it a voluntary act. From the context, however, it is also clear that ‘abdication’ was not, to Evelyn, always a voluntary and self-motivated action. He also saw the desertion as one in the series of crimes listed in the resolution.Google Scholar

45 There might even be emerging a new ‘school’ of thought on the Glorious Revolution which is neither whig nor tory, but rather ‘conciliatory’ in its vision of events. Several historians have recently recognized and emphasized the whig/tory compromise apparent in the Revolution. See, for example, Western, J. R., Monarchy and revolution (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, J. R., The revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972)Google Scholar; and Jennifer, Carter, ‘The revolution and the constitution’, in Geoffrey, Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (London, 1969), pp. 638–58.Google Scholar

46 The Lords and Commons reasons and justifications for the deprivation and disposal of James II from the imperial throne of England… (London, 1689). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Rare Book CollectionGoogle Scholar