Constitutionalism: The Dutch Republic and the English Revolution

This is Unit Two of Western Civilization Two: constitutionalism in the Netherlands and in England, the other half of the exam's first band. Unit one ended with Louis the Fourteenth's ledger. This unit is the kingdom that refused him, and its governing idea is the anchor's argument that England's failure to build absolutism produced the stronger state. The failure comes first: a poor crown, three attempts at the prerogative, one civil war, one execution, one deposition. The strength comes next: once parliament was the government, it built the state it had starved, and the Bank of England financed the wars that bankrupt France could not. Beside England stands a republic of merchant towns whose stadholder became England's king. By the end you will be able to describe England in sixteen hundred. To trace Charles the First to the block. To describe the Protector and the Restoration. To describe sixteen eighty-eight, the Bill and the Bank. To describe the Dutch Republic. To sequence, read, compare and classify. And to state why failure produced strength.

Three entries on the starting point: a backwater with a divided church, a crown that begged for money, and a Scottish king with two kingdoms.

A quarter of France's people.

WC2 0101 England in 1600: A Backwater With a Divided Church

In sixteen hundred England had a quarter of France's people, the anchor's figure, a weak monarchy and powerful landowners. Its church was nominal: only Anglicans held office, but a high-church faction loved Catholic ritual while Puritans wanted Calvinist austerity. Scotland was Presbyterian, Ireland Catholic and colonized. The anchor's irony: this backwater became the first great constitutional monarchy.

Kings who had to beg.

WC2 0102 A Poor Crown: Parliament's Purse and the Gentry

The crown had a small bureaucracy, no standing army, and revenue only from taxes that a gentry-dominated parliament could approve or refuse. Whether parliament could make law stayed open. Kings, the anchor says, had to beg, plead and bargain. France taxed without asking; England could not.

One king, two kingdoms.

WC2 0103 James I, 1603: Two Kingdoms, One King, and the Royal Prerogative

Elizabeth died in sixteen-oh-three without an heir, and James the Sixth of Scotland became James the First of England: one king of two kingdoms, one kingdom only from the Act of Union of seventeen-oh-seven. He insisted on the royal prerogative, despised parliament, and kept the peace.

Four entries on the son who confronted parliament: the Petition of Right, the Long Parliament, the New Model Army, and the trial no king had faced.

Eleven years without parliament.

WC2 0104 Charles I: Forced Loans, the Petition of Right, Eleven Years Without Parliament

Charles the First, king from sixteen twenty-five, backed the high church, taxed without parliament and forced loans. Parliament answered with the Petition of Right in twenty-eight, no taxation without parliament and no arbitrary imprisonment; Charles dismissed it and ruled alone eleven years. The anchor ends the personal rule in thirty-six; the witness, in sixteen forty.

Poverty, not tyranny, summoned parliament.

WC2 0105 Scotland's Liturgy, the Long Parliament, the Grand Remonstrance

Charles imposed a high-church liturgy on Presbyterian Scotland; the Scots raised an army, and in sixteen forty Charles summoned parliament for money. It declared his measures illegal in the Grand Remonstrance, dismissed his ministers, and sat for years as the Long Parliament. An Irish Catholic rising killed thousands, and Charles was suspected of collusion.

Disciplined, paid, financed by London.

WC2 0106 Civil War From 1642: Roundheads, Cavaliers, and the New Model Army

War came in sixteen forty-two: parliament's roundheads, with Scottish allies, against the king's cavaliers. In forty-five Cromwell united parliament's forces in the New Model Army, disciplined, regularly paid, buying supplies instead of plundering, financed by London. One in eight men fought, the anchor says.

A king judged by his subjects.

WC2 0107 A King Executed, 1649

Captured and tried by parliament, Charles was executed as a traitor in sixteen forty-nine. The anchor's point is the charge: a king judged by his subjects' representatives for treason against the kingdom. England became a technically republican state, the Commonwealth. Regicide settled nothing, and Louis learned the opposite lesson from the Fronde.

Three entries on what followed: the ideas the war let loose, the general who became Lord Protector, and the two parties one question created.

Ordinary people arguing politics in print.

WC2 0108 Levellers, Diggers, and Two Thousand Pamphlets

Among the roundheads the Levellers argued for a democratic republic and the Diggers for common ownership of land. The army defeated both; their language survived. Censorship collapsed, and the anchor counts over two thousand political pamphlets in sixteen forty-two. The names rest on the anchor alone; the exam spells Levellers with two l's.

A restoration for lack of an alternative.

WC2 0109 The Protectorate, Ireland, and the Restoration, 1660

Cromwell ruled from sixteen forty-nine and took the title Lord Protector in fifty-three, the witness's date, governing through the army; his invasion of Ireland is still remembered with bitterness. He died in fifty-eight, and parliament restored the monarchy in sixteen sixty. The anchor's forty-nine for the Protectorate is recorded, not used.

Could parliament choose the king?

WC2 0110 Charles II, Whigs and Tories, and the Exclusion Crisis

Charles the Second, Louis's cousin, adopted absolutism's trappings without dismissing parliament and secretly agreed with Louis to re-Catholicize England. When the Whigs tried to exclude his Catholic brother from the succession, the Tories, holding to hereditary right, beat them. The anchor leaves the crisis unnamed; the course calls it Exclusion.

Four entries on the settlement: a Catholic heir and a Dutch invitation, the Bill of Rights, the Bank, and the Britain Voltaire admired.

Seven nobles write to a Dutch prince.

WC2 0111 James II, a Catholic Heir, and William of Orange, 1688

James the Second, king from sixteen eighty-five, appointed Catholics in defiance of the Test Act. When a son was born in eighty-eight, seven Protestant nobles invited William of Orange, Dutch stadholder and husband of James's daughter Mary, to bring an army. The English army defected and James fled. Glorious, the anchor says, because bloodless and conclusive.

A monarch, but parliament makes law.

WC2 0112 The Bill of Rights and Europe's First Constitutional Monarchy

Parliament made William and Mary co-rulers under the Bill of Rights of sixteen eighty-nine: no suspending laws, no taxes, no peacetime army without parliament; free elections, free speech in parliament, frequent parliaments. The anchor calls it Europe's first constitutional monarchy. No written constitution; the phrase means this statute.

The state they had starved.

WC2 0113 After 1688: Parliament Governs, and the Bank of England, 1694

Once the elites in parliament were the government, they taxed and built the state they had starved. War with France from sixteen ninety drove it. The Bank of England, founded in ninety-four, the anchor's date, sold state-backed bonds at reasonable interest: debt managed, wars financed. Bankrupt France against solvent Britain.

The model of a free state.

WC2 0114 Britain in the Eighteenth Century: Hanovers, Parliament, Voltaire's Model

The Hanoverian kings deferred to parliament on law and taxation. Britain became France's perennial adversary and political opposite, bent on a commercial overseas empire and on pushing France out of North America and India. Voltaire looked to Britain as the model of a free state. Where the anchor says a written constitution, the course says the Bill and statute.

Three entries on the other republic: the United Provinces, the year they nearly died, and the golden age.

No king, no court.

WC2 0115 The Dutch Republic: The United Provinces, the States General, the Stadholder

The anchor treats the Dutch as merchants, not a state, so the witness supplies the government: the United Provinces, a federation whose provinces sent delegates to the States General, with a stadholder, and from sixteen seventy-two William the Third as de facto hereditary head. Towns run by merchant elites. This entry rests on the witness texts, not the anchor.

One man, two states.

WC2 0116 William III, 1672: The Dutch War and a Stadholder Who Became a King

In sixteen seventy-two France, with England, attacked the Republic; the Dutch War ran to seventy-eight, and William became stadholder that year. He made himself Protestant Europe's champion against French absolutism and, in eighty-nine, king of England. Witness-built; the earlier regents appear only in the course's disclosure.

Europe's middlemen and bankers.

WC2 0117 The Dutch Golden Age: Middlemen, Bankers, Toleration, and the End of Dominance

During the revolt against Spain the Dutch made trade their lifeline: middlemen for Russian timber, English cloth and German wine, and Europe's bankers, inventing formal currency exchange and the stock market. The seventeenth century was their golden age, Rembrandt its painter. Louis's wars ended Dutch dominance, the anchor says, not prosperity.

Four procedures: the revolution on one line, the Bill clause by clause, France against England on five features, and five factions sorted by one question each.

Three fixed points, a Restoration between.

WC2 0118 Sequencing the English Revolution, 1603 to 1689

Hold sixteen-oh-three, forty-nine and eighty-nine, with the Restoration of sixty splitting the second gap. Then place: the Petition of Right, twenty-eight, before the personal rule; the Long Parliament, forty, before the war; the New Model Army, forty-five, before the execution; Cromwell as Protector, fifty-three, before the Restoration; Exclusion, after sixty and before James's accession in eighty-five; William's landing, eighty-eight, the year before the Bill. Petition, Long Parliament, army, execution, Protectorate, Restoration, Exclusion, William, the Bill. The anchor's two dates differ from the witness, and the order holds either way.

Each clause forbids what the last king did.

WC2 0119 Reading the Bill of Rights, 1689

Ask two questions of any clause: what power it denies the crown, and which of James's acts it answers. Four clauses from Avalon's text, paraphrased. Suspending laws without parliament is illegal: James's dispensing with the Test Act. Levying money by prerogative is illegal: Charles the First's forced loans. A peacetime army without consent is against law: James's army. Free elections, free debate, frequent parliaments: eleven years without one. The framers claimed to restore ancient rights, not invent them. A king who may not tax, suspend laws or keep an army is sixteen eighty-nine, and the viewpoint behind it is Locke's, whom unit five reads.

Consented to, not small.

WC2 0120 Absolutism and Constitutionalism Compared: France and England on Five Features

Five features: who administers, who consents to taxes, who commands the army, how the crown borrows, what binds the king. France answers each with the king, England after eighty-nine with parliament. Intendants from Paris against the gentry in the counties. The taille tripled without a vote against the Petition and the Bill. One hundred fifty thousand soldiers against a peacetime army forbidden without consent. Titles sold and a bankrupt king against the Bank's bonds. Reason of state and Bossuet's God against a statute passed by the body that chose the king. Not weak crown against strong crown: England's state grew larger once parliament owned it. Constitutional meant consented to.

Worship, the franchise, the succession.

WC2 0121 Classifying an English Faction: Puritan, High Church, Leveller, Whig, Tory

Five factions, one question each. Puritans and the high church divide over worship: austerity or ritual. Levellers stand alone on the franchise: a democratic republic. Whigs and Tories divide over the succession: may parliament exclude an heir, or does birth decide. A churchman wanting Calvinist plainness is the Puritan; a bishop restoring altar rails is high church; a soldier demanding the vote for all free men is the Leveller; a member voting to bar James is the Whig; his opponent holding hereditary right divine is the Tory. They cross: most Whigs were Anglicans, and the Tories who beat Exclusion still invited William. Classify by the question.

One capstone entry: from a poor crown to the Bank of England, and why failure produced strength.

Three attempts at the prerogative, then a Bank.

WC2 0122 Why Absolutism Failed in England and the State Grew Stronger

The failure came first. The crown was poor, taxed only with a gentry parliament's consent. Charles claimed the prerogative, forced loans, accepted the Petition and ruled eleven years alone. A Scottish prayer book ended that, because a Scottish army needed an English one, and an English army needed money, and money needed parliament. War in forty-two, a king executed in forty-nine, a Protectorate as authoritarian as the king, a Restoration that settled nothing, and a deposition when James produced a Catholic heir. The Bill of Rights forbade taxes, a peacetime army and the suspension of laws without parliament. Three attempts at the prerogative, one civil war, one execution, one deposition. The strength came next. The earlier conflicts came from the state's smallness and parliament's refusal to fund a crown it did not control. After eighty-nine the elites in parliament were the government, and they built the state they had starved: war with France demanded it, and the Bank of England financed it with bonds investors trusted. Where Louis died bankrupt, Britain borrowed and stayed solvent. Consent turned out to be the cheaper way to raise money and the surer way to keep it.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe England in sixteen hundred, a crown that begged, and James with two kingdoms. You can trace Charles from the Petition of Right through eleven years alone, the Long Parliament and the New Model Army to the block. You can describe the Levellers, Cromwell as Protector, the Restoration, and the Exclusion crisis that made Whigs and Tories. You can describe the invitation of sixteen eighty-eight, the Bill's clauses, the Bank, and Voltaire's model state. You can describe the United Provinces, William as stadholder and king, and the golden age. You can sequence, read the Bill, compare five features, and classify five factions. And you can state the chain, failure first, strength next, which is this unit's one idea. Unit three opens on the three eastern monarchies that copied Louis instead.